Off the Voortrekker Road

by Barbara Bleiman

  If he were found guilty, van Heerden would lose his position in the church and his reputation would be irreparably sullied. What’s more, with the new stiffer penalties, he faced possible imprisonment for up to seven years. There was a huge amount at stake.

  ‘Incarceration and disgrace,’ thought Jack, and his stomach churned. He tried to give van Heerden a smile of encouragement, a signal of support, the comfort of knowing that there was at least one person there who had his interests at heart. But van Heerden was standing limp, staring blankly in front of him, looking as if the first hostile word uttered might cause him to collapse under the strain of it all and bring the whole proceedings to an abrupt, if temporary halt. ‘You’re here now, at last, Johannes,’ Jack said to himself. ‘You’ve got to see it through to the end.’

  He heard the Judge explain to his client and to the other party, the woman involved, what the procedures of the court would be. Unlike van Heerden, she seemed calm enough, standing beside her own counsel, with her gaze focused intently on the Judge as he spoke. There were warnings from him about the seriousness of the charge and reassurances about the rights of the two accused to expect that justice would be done. Jack saw his client being presented with the worn leather Bible. He heard his voice quavering across the quiet courtroom, as he swore the oath on the book.

  Now it was time. Jack knew that he would have to begin, that every word would count, each weighed and measured and placed in the balance. What he said would have its impact, not just on Johannes van Heerden, his wife and his family, his church and community but also on Jack himself and on his wife Renee as well. He’d been waiting for this day, just as van Heerden had, with trepidation, and now it had come. He stood up and prepared himself to speak.

  Chapter 2

  1939

  Pa’s hardware store stood in Parow, at the far end of Main Road, the long thoroughfare stretching east to west across Cape Town that eventually came to be renamed Voortrekker Road, after the rugged, tough-minded Afrikaners who had settled the Cape. Parow, in those days, was quite a distance from the city centre, out beyond Woodstock, Maitland and Goodwood. Property was cheap and rentals easy to come by, so Malays and Jews, Afrikaners and English had started to crowd in, and the suburb was growing by the day.

  On one side of the store was Irene’s, the women’s outfitters. It sold corsets and brassieres, blouses, suits and bright cotton frocks, the most glamorous of which appeared on two smiling, painted mannequins in the window. On the other side stood Krapotkin’s butcher’s shop, its large plate-glass window filled with pallid sausages, mounds of worm-like minced beef and lean joints of lamb hanging from silver hooks. A sticky yellow paper in the front of the shop was always black and buzzing with flies. Krapotkin was a large, pink-faced man, with hands as red and raw as the meat he handled and a voice loud enough to wake the cockerel himself. He was in the shop, from early morning till late at night, heaving dripping carcasses and slapping bloody joints of meat onto wooden boards, slicing, chopping, grinding, sawing through flesh and bone, all the while singing, laughing and swearing so loudly that my mother said that Krapotkin and his butcher’s shop would be the death of her.

  The hardware store had a sign painted on the front with, “Neuberger’s Handyhouse”, in a clear, unfussy style. It stood a little apart from its neighbours, its whitewashed walls yellowed with age, its sloping tiled roof in some need of repair. On one side of the door stood rolls of carpet, stepladders and brooms. On the other were baskets filled with dishcloths and dusters, bars of waxy household soap and boxes of washing suds. A notice in the window said, “Everything you need, from soap and rice to chicken feed!” and “10% off for bulk bargain buys!” A faded red-and-white striped awning was pulled down every morning to provide shade from the hot midday sun and wound back up every evening when the store was closed.

  My father, Sam, had bought the store six years earlier, just before his marriage to my mother and I was born a year later. He worked all hours, either out the front or in the back yard, cutting wood or linoleum, measuring string, counting nails and screws, cutting strips of biltong or weighing biscuits from the big jars that lined the counter. The hired girl, Ada, helped out while my mother moved between the kitchen, the back yard and the shop front, cleaning and cooking, talking to customers, and keeping an occasional eye on me.

  Where could I be found, on a typical day in 1939, four-and-a half years of age and living in the Handyhouse with my ma and pa? Occupying myself with toys? Splashing about in a tin tub of water to keep me cool in the blistering heat of the day? Playing a game of five stones with a little friend, or sharing a tasty slice of homemade melktert? No. I would be sitting in the corner of the store, on my sack of beans. The sack was high enough up for me not to attempt to climb down but not so high that I would do myself serious damage if I did. Little Jackie, aged four, knock-kneed, wide-eyed, dressed in shabby grey shorts and a grubby cotton shirt, stick legs swinging against the rough hessian of the bulging sack, sitting watching and saying nothing.

  Ma would tell me stories at bedtime. Sometimes they were fairytales, sometimes family stories but often the two were mixed together, a blend of fact and fiction, magic and mundane, then and now; the biblical, the superstitious, the humorous and the sad, all woven together into a strange and complex fabric.

  ‘Once upon a time, long ago and far away, ’ my mother said, ‘there lived a man named Solomon, who was a cobbler. He was born into a Jewish family in a shtetl far away in Russia, a poor peasant, but clever and practical and full of hopes and dreams, a storyteller, a joker, the centre of attention at every wedding, barmitzvah, festival day or village party. He built a small wooden house for himself, he married a decent Jewish girl, he fought for the Czar, he saw his house burned and his synogogue razed to the ground, he felt hunger and he felt fear, and, finally he took his destiny into his hands and fled with his lovely wife across the wide seas, the swelling oceans to Cape Town, where he settled and had a family, a gaggle of girls, who, one by one married and left home themselves. One of his daughters was called Sarah. That’s me, Jackie, your own mother, your ma. Solomon is Oupa, your very own grandfather. ’ She kissed me on the head and then she carried on.

  ‘And then it came to pass that Sarah married Samuel. And they lived in a store and they called it the Handyhouse. And soon they had a child of their own, a little boy with many names: Jacob, Jack, Jankele, Little Jackie, son of Samuel and Sarah, grandson of Solomon, the shtetl cobbler, the man with a stout heart, a steel will and a voice that told an endless river of tales.

  Your curly black hair comes from your grandfather, Jackie, your skin as dark as an Eastern prince’s, your black, black eyes, like the ‘ten a tickie’ buttons your father sells in the shop. Your looks you got from Oupa, that’s for sure. Maybe you got his cleverness too, with your serious eyes that always seem lost in your thoughts. But what happened to your voice, Jankele? Where oh where has it gone? Who knows? Perhaps it’s been locked up by an ogre, in a great big iron box in his castle? Maybe, like a little bird, it’s flown away over the seas to find its way home to its nest in Russia? It’s waiting there, collecting up all its stories, getting itself ready to fly back again to Parow, and tell them, when the right moment comes?

  Four-and-a-half years old; too young to start school, too old to be carried around on Ma’s hip or wrap my legs round her waist and hang my arms from her neck, too big to sit in the highchair in the back room, sucking on rusks and pieces of salty biltong, while Ma, Pa and Ada bustled around me. So all day long, I sat on my sack of beans in the store, the Handyhouse, or in the sawdust on the floor, where someone could keep an eye on me. I watched the customers coming in and out, the bell tinkling as they stepped on the mat, carrying their parcels of dried peas or biscuits, candles or string.

  Here was Mr van der Merwe, with his flat nose and sunburnt face, his strong, hairy legs spread wide. He had patches of damp sweat under his
armpits and down the back of his khaki shirt. He scratched himself inside his trousers, like Ma told me not to. ‘It’s rude in public,’ she said.

  ‘Ooh yirrah! That sun’s a bugger today.’ His Afrikaner voice was hard like gravelly stones and each word seems to trip up his tongue on its sounds.

  ‘I’ve brought you something,’ he said to Pa, dropping his voice down low, till it was almost a whisper. He handed over a small brown paper envelope. ‘It’s not the whole lot. But it’s the best we can do.’

  Pa stared at him, stony-faced. ‘We’ve been waiting for well over two weeks now. Your wife promised to pay up days ago.’

  ‘Times are hard,’ said Mr van der Merwe, shaking his head. ‘It’s not easy.’

  ‘For us too,’ said Pa. ‘I’ll expect the rest next week.’

  He turned abruptly to Millicent, the Shapiro family’s maid, to serve her. Mr van der Merwe cleared his throat, raised his hand awkwardly in a half-hearted farewell and left the shop.

  With her yellow-brown skin, her hair plaited and knotted in tight rows on her head, Millicent was usually the last to be served, even when Mrs Shapiro had asked her to fetch back the family’s groceries in a hurry. I was dark-skinned, like Millicent, taking after my mother’s peasant father, as she had so often told me; not pale like Pa, or peachy-pink like some of the little English girls who came into the store, or red in the face like Mr Krapotkin, the butcher, not black-black like the boys who swept the road outside the store, or the labourers who climbed out of the truck every morning to work on the new shop across the road.

  And here was Millicent, saying ‘Yessir’ to Pa and waiting to be served, as usual.

  ‘Tell your madam that I don’t have the crystallised fruit. I’m expecting an order.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And tell her the snoek is fresh from the smokery. Best quality fish. That’s why it’s a bit more pricy than usual.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And make sure you don’t throw away the bill by mistake when you unpack. It’s tucked inside the big paper bag.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘At least you can rely on the Shapiro family to pay up,’ Pa said when Millicent had left and the shop had gone quiet. ‘A good Yiddishe family.’

  ‘Times are hard,’ Ma said. ‘With all this talk of Smuts taking us into the war, people are nervous – they don’t want to spend money.’

  ‘Times are hard, times are hard. That’s all I hear.’ Pa sighed. ‘Of course they’re nervous. Aren’t we all? But I’ve got a living to make,’ and he went out the back to the yard, slamming the door behind him.

  Ada was cleaning the counter, slopping soapy water onto a cloth and wiping it vigorously, her thin arms stretching as far as she could reach, in great sweeping movements. She paused to wipe her forehead.

  ‘How’s your mother, Ada?’ Ma asked. ‘Any better?’

  I felt sorry for Ada. My mother always said, ‘Poor whites are almost worse off than Cape coloureds. They have nothing.’ I liked Ada. She patted my head and kissed me on the cheek. She made me bread and butter when Ma was upstairs lying on her bed with her door shut. She told me silly jokes and sometimes, if the coast was clear and there was no risk of Pa appearing, she came up close and dropped a little chewy caramel into my hand. It was a shame if Ada had nothing.

  ‘My ma? She’s so-so,’ Ada said.

  ‘Would you like a little bit of time off to go and see her?’

  ‘Ag yes, missus. That’d be nice, lekker. But if you need me here, with it coming so soon and everything, then I’ll stay. My friend Maisie’s visiting Ma for me sometimes. I’m paying her a few tickies to go by the hospital and check on her. But it’s not the same as me going myself. It’s not long now, the doctors say. Her time’s coming.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Ada, and you don’t usually ask for these things. And you’re a hard worker as well. Even Sam thinks so. I’ll talk to him and maybe you can go early this evening and come back on Thursday. Give you time to see your Ma.’

  ‘Thank you missus. You’re good to me.’

  Ma went over and patted her on the shoulder. ‘And now I think I’ll go find Sam and speak to him.‘

  Ada came and picked me up from the floor. She brushed the sawdust from my shorts and kissed me heartily on the cheek.

  ‘You don’t know what’s coming little man!’ she said. ‘You don’t know what’s gonna hit you, when your ma’s time comes.’ She laughed heartily, but I didn’t know what was so funny. Ada’s mother’s time was coming; Ma’s time was coming. Ma’s time kept coming and coming but it never seemed to arrive. And when it did, I couldn’t think what it was going to bring.

  Chapter 3

  It was an especially hot day. I had had my early afternoon nap. The air hung heavy; the shop was quiet. There was a lull too in the hum of the flies buzzing round the biltong. Perhaps they were also feeling sleepy, just waking from their lunchtime doze?

  Ma was tidying the drawers in the store; Pa was out in the yard, taking stock.

  ‘I need to get some more chickenfeed and lucerne from Pietersen’s, out beyond Paarl,’ Pa muttered to Ma, coming through from kitchen, with his light summer jacket slung over his arm. ‘Make sure you look after things in the store. You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘Don’t I always?’ Ma replied, without looking up from the glass bowl she was polishing with a yellow cotton duster.

  ‘Don’t let old Rabinovitz buy another thing without paying his last bill. You’re too soft on him. You need to set limits.’

  Ma sighed. Pa didn’t seem to like leaving the shop in her care.

  ‘He’s a schnorrer, that man, always after something for nothing.’

  ‘He’s sad and he’s lonely. He comes in for a bit of company, that’s all.’

  ‘And no handfuls of biscuits for every child who stands there looking at you with big eyes. No paying on account either. Cash only. And,’ Pa looked towards me, ‘no treats for the boy.’

  I didn’t expect any. My father kept the lids tightly screwed on the sweet jars, with their tickie twists, liquorice sticks and sherbet fountains, and I knew only too well that the fig rolls and digestives were not for me.

  ‘Go if you’re going,’ said Ma. ‘For goodness’ sake go.’ She came behind the counter, moving heavily, and lumbered over to the stool that Pa had placed there for her.

  ‘Don’t overdo things. Use the stool,’ he said a little more kindly and put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Go. Please. I’ll be fine.’

  Pa took the keys for the old Ford, grabbed a paper packet filled with wads of notes from a drawer under the till, and went out back, to the rooms where we lived. I heard the door into the yard slam shut and the sound of the engine turning over, as Pa cranked it in vain. There was a shout of ‘Blooming useless!’, the creak of the bonnet being opened, more furious cranking and then finally it took, the engine humming into life and growling its way slowly out of the back yard.

  Ma eased herself onto the stool and slipped off her shoes, stretching out her feet in front of her.

  ‘Oy vay,’ she said, blowing air out slowly through her mouth. ‘I’m tired, Jackie, so very tired. I could really do with a nice little sleep, if only I didn’t have to look after you and the store. I’m getting too big for all this work.’

  Her light cotton dress was stretched tightly over her stomach and her legs, in her thick stockings, looked puffy and swollen, like the fat pink boerewors sausages from Krapotkin’s next door. I wondered why she’d grown so large.

  I sat on my sack waiting for something to happen, for Ma’s head to nod forward and her mouth to go slack, for the store door to open and for one of the customers to walk in. With one hand I felt inside the top of the sack, and pushed my fingers in, allowing the slippery beans to flow through m
y fingers and roll between them. The beans rippled and swelled under my bottom as they shifted, sank and settled. Ma’s head dropped down and she dozed.

  At last the store bell tinkled and in came Mrs van der Merwe. Ma roused herself, stood up and squeezed on her shoes. Mrs van der Merwe was a regular customer. She came in every few days, to pick up something, always in those same old-fashioned linen dresses of hers, with her beige felt hat pinned close to her head and her old brown lace-up shoes polished so hard that they were as glossy as the paint on our wooden stairs.

  ‘Mr Neuberger not here?’

  ‘He’s gone to Paarl to pick up supplies from the wholesaler’s.’

  ‘Leaving you alone to mind the store?’ Mrs van der Merwe raised one eyebrow.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Ma. ‘Ada’s here to help. And still a month to go.’

  I watched Ma sorting Mrs van der Merwe’s shopping. She lifted the lid from a tin and scooped out some white flour that she weighed on the scales, then poured carefully into a brown paper bag. She squeezed a roll of string into Mrs van der Merwe’s basket, next to the flour, a twist of birdseed, some wooden clothes pegs and a small can of maize oil. She carefully placed on top a bag of Garibaldi biscuits that she had sealed up with a piece of sticky tape.

  ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘All done.’ There was a moment’s silence. Mrs van der Merwe was shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other.

  ‘Put it on the list for me, will you, Mrs Neuberger, my dear? I’m a little short this week. Mr van der Merwe’s due some money from Willy Nel for a job he did for him. Willy’s promised to bring it over this evening, so I’ll be able to pay you tomorrow, honest to God I will.’

  Ma hesitated. ‘I’d like to, Mrs van der Merwe, only…’