by Ian Patrick
‘Ag, sorry, Fiona. But you obviously don’t know.’
‘What?’
‘What?’ added Ryder. ‘You’re not going to tell me, Piet...’
‘I’m afraid so, Jeremy,’ replied Cronje. ‘It’s not a game you want to watch.’
Ryder looked devastated. No prospect yet of the Sharks recovering their form.
‘He’s telling lies, Detective Jeremy,’ said Mavis Tshabalala. ‘Sergeant Piet there is lying. You’ll like the game. I watched it this afternoon. Our team was brilliant.’
‘Yissus, are you also a Sharks fan, Mavis?’
‘Yet another thing you don’t know about Mavis, Koeks,’ interjected Pillay. ‘Yes, she’s been a supporter of the Sharks for a long time.’
No-one would divulge the score.
The Ryders did their farewell hugs and kisses and high-fives, and all the guests started moving off to their cars, which were parked in a long line behind one another on the driveway. As they did so, sirens could be heard.
They all paused and looked up toward the King Cetshwayo Highway, little more than a hundred metres up the road. They saw the flashing blue lights of two police cars hurtling down the highway toward Durban.
Nyawula looked at his watch as he spoke.
‘Just on midnight. Another day in Durban. Maybe you shouldn’t take your phone off the hook, after all, Jeremy. Lots of devils still out there for you to deal with.’
Laughter. Final farewells. Final wisecracks. The guests got into their cars and drove off, leaving the Ryders alone. They watched the last car drive away up the hill, then sat down on the edge of the patio, looking up at the full moon.
Sugar-Bear hobbled out very slowly, in obvious pain, and stood between them.
‘Good dog,’ said Fiona, putting her face into the dog’s furry neck.
‘Good boy,’ said Ryder, tweaking his ears gently.
A third police car hurtled down the highway toward Durban, its siren sounding and its blues flashing.
Sugar-Bear barked once, very softly, almost to himself, as if encouraging the vehicle. Then he sat down. The Ryders smiled at each other. Then each of them reached out an arm to hug the dog.
The three of them sat in the moonlight.
The sound of the siren faded away until it was swallowed in the dark underbelly of the city.
GLOSSARY
ag - ah, oh, well
aikona - no, no way, not there at all (see also haikona)
amaBenzi - referring to the drivers of Mercedes Benz cars, flashy and ostentatiously wealthy people
amaIntellectuals - the intellectuals
amaNdiya - the Indians, used pejoratively (song by Mbongeni Ngema, theatre practitioner)
amaphoyisa - the police
babelas - hangover
bakgat - great, excellent, fine, good
bantoe - corruption of bantu, associated with racist usage
bhuti - brother
blerrie - bloody
bliksem - hit, punch, strike
boere - (referring variously to) farmers, Afrikaners, policemen
boet - brother, male friend, dude
bok, bokke - buck, bucks (bokke as in Springboks)
boykie - boy: diminutive, little boy
bra, my bra - brother, my brother
braai, braaivleis - barbecue
breek - break
broer, bru - brother
bulala - kill
charra, charro - slang term for person of Indian ethnicity, often racist
china - friend, chum
chune - to tell someone
daarsy - there it is, there you are, that’s it, dead right
deagle - desert eagle
dis reg - that’s right
donner - hammer, hit, beat up
doos - box (lewd, meaning vagina), fool, idiot
dop - alcoholic drink
dronkgat - drunkard
dwaal - in a daze, lost
eekhoring - squirrel
eh-heh - yes, affirmative
eina - exclamation expressing pain
eish - interjection expressing disappointment, regret
ek sê - I say, I’m telling you
Engelsman - Englishman
fok - fuck
fokall - fuck-all, nothing
fokken - fucken, fucking
fokoff - fuck off
gatvol - fed up
geld - money
gemors - mess, disarray
gif - poison, marijuana
hayi - no, no way (see also tchai)
hayibo - no, no way
haikona - no, no way, not there at all
hau - expression of surprise (what? hey? oh?)
heita - hello, howzit, how is it?
helluva - ‘hell of a’ (as in helluva long time)
hodoshe – (Xhosa) carrion fly that lays its eggs in dead bodies, nickname for hated prison warder
hunnert – hundred
impimpi - sell-out, informer
ja – yes
ja’k stem saam - yes, I agree (ja, ek stem saam)
jeez - jesus (exclamation of surprise or frustration)
jirra - exclamation of surprise derived from ‘Here,’ Afrikaans for ‘God’
jislaaik - expression of astonishment (see also yissus)
jong - young man, friend
jou - your, you
jy - you
kak - crap, shit
kêrels - guys, chaps, police
kif - great, cool, nice
klaar - finish
koeksister - (lit. cake sister) braided dough sweet delicacy
laaitie - lighty, young one
laduma! - score!, celebrating a goal scored in football
lanie - fancy, posh
lank - long, a lot, very
lekker - great, nice, tasty
likhipa inhlanzi emanzini - it takes the fish out of the water (i.e. ‘it’s so hot that it takes...’)
madala - old man
mal - crazy, mad
mampara - fool, dolt, idiot
manne - men
mBenzi - singular for amaBenzi
mense - men, people
mina - me
mfowethu - brother
moer - murder, kill, beat up, also the moer in (‘fed up with’)
moerse - large, big time, huge
moegoe - idiot
my bra - my brother
nè? - not so?
nee - no
nek – neck
nooit – never
ntombazane – girl, young woman
ntombazane, ngifuna ukudla nawe – girl, I want to eat (with) you
nyaope - street drug (see also whoonga)
oke, ou, ouens - bloke, blokes
oom - uncle
ouma - grandmother
ou toppie - old man, father, old person
pallie - diminutive for ‘pal,’ friend
poep - fart
praat - talk
reg - right
Seffrika - South Africa
shaddup - shut up
sharp, sharp-sharp - OK, yes, quick-quick
shibobo - fancy footwork (sweet moves, like nutmeg) from football
shweet - sweet, cool
sies - sis, expression of disgust
sisi - sister, young woman
skabenga - crook, criminal, no-good
skelm - thief, crook
skollie, skollies - crook, gangster (from the Greek skolios: crooked)
skrik vir niks - scared of nothing
snoeks - little fish, term of endearment
sommer – simply
sosatie - kebab
soutie, soutpiel - derogatory term for English South African (salty penis)
spookgerook - (lit.) ghost-smoked, stoned to the point of paranoia
struesbob - as true as Bob
sug - care (‘you think I sug/care?’)
suss - to have suss - to be sharp or streetwise
swak - weak, broke
tchai - no, no
way (see also hayi)
thula wena - shut up, you
tjaila - time to go home
tjommie - chum, good friend
toppie - see ou toppie: old man, father, old person
tokoloshe - evil spirit from Zulu mythology
trap - stairs, staircase
trek - pull, leave, exit
tronk - jail, prison
tsotsi - gangster
twak - nonsense, rubbish
uclever - the clever one
uitlander - outlander, alien
umlungu - white one, white man (vocative: mlungu)
val - fall
vragtig – truly, yes, really
vrek - die, dead
vrekked - died
vroeg - early
vuvuzela - plastic horn noisemaker, prominent at football matches
warder - South African term for prison guard or correctional officer, not to be confused with warden used in other countries, and which in South Africa would refer to a much more senior officer.
wat? - what?
weet - know (jy weet? - you know?)
wena - you
wena ungowami – you are mine
whatchamacallit - what you may call it, thing, object, whatever it might be
whoonga - slang for nyaope
woes - angry, ‘the hell in’, incandescent
yebo - yes
yini? - what?
yislaaik - variation of yissus
yissus - expression of astonishment, derived from Jesus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian Patrick writes full-time from his home in the United Kingdom. After working as an actor, director and teacher in theatre, film and television, he turned to an academic career and for some years published scholarly essays in a range of international academic journals.
‘Not particularly page-turning stuff,’ he says. ‘Then one day the editor of a journal with a slightly more commercial and business-oriented focus, who had solicited an essay from me based on my scholarly research, asked me what my fee was. I had never considered the possibility that anyone might want to pay me for publishing anything I wrote, so I suggested that he pay me whatever he thought appropriate. He did so. After the resulting pleasant surprise I considered that there might be another dimension to writing.’
He believes that his years as an actor and director now play a modest part in his writing, as does his past experience in scholarly research. ‘My fiction is based to the best of my ability on research and fieldwork. I have to believe every word my fictive characters say, every action they undertake,’ he says.
‘I endeavour to make my fiction plausible and authentic. This requires exhaustive work and detailed research, and friends on occasion express surprise that it takes me at least a year of full-time work to write an eighty thousand word crime thriller. In my view, however, although it is clearly desirable to arrive at one’s destination by bringing a work to publication, it is the journey that is the really exciting and enjoyable part of writing. I can only hope that readers will also enjoy the journey of discovering my characters and their foibles, their actions and their experiences. I hope, too, that they will inform me about and forgive me for any lapses in my work or any errors of detail.’