We moved forward, but very slowly, at little more than walking pace. Once we passed the lights of the police car, I could see further ahead. The line of people, partly obscured by the mixture of mist and smoke from township cooking fires, seemed endless. My father glanced at them as he drove. ‘What is it, Pa?’ I asked.
‘The Newcastle bus boycott,’ he said.
‘Don’t they want to ride on the buses?’
‘They say the bus fare is too high. So they walk all the way to their work in town from Madadeni.’
‘Where’s Madadeni?’
‘It’s the township. It’s down that way.’ He waved a hand in the direction from which the line of people was coming.
‘And is the fare too high?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Ahead of us the traffic had again come to a halt. My father let the car’s engine idle. Visibility was a little better now and we could see perhaps a kilometre down the road. All that way, then down a side road to the left, the stream of people was coming. ‘One thing I do know,’ my father was speaking again, ‘we can’t let what happened in Mozambique happen here.’ He seemed to think about that for a few moments, then added, ‘But we must do what is right. If the fare is too high, we must pay attention.’
Looking at this procession of people who could not afford the bus fare, I could see no connection between them and the stories of brutality and killing that had reached us from Mozambique. The straggling column of people, making their way along the road, reminded me of Mrs Muller who wanted her brother declared white so that he could get a job. I stayed at the window until we were moving again and the grey morning shut out the long stream till we could no longer see its members.
twenty-three
Abraham, Annie and I took a while to get over the collapse of our business. Some months later we did embark on a new enterprise, but sadly it was not a towering success. We persuaded a sweet factory to let us do market research among Durban’s teenagers. They agreed, but would only pay us fifty a month, plus the sweets that our interviewees would consume, and they were not very generous there either. We managed to negotiate them up to sixty, so that the figure was divisible by three, but that was as far as they would go. So, on some Saturday mornings, we got some friends together and ate chocolate bars, jub jubs, nigger balls, that we later were told had to be called black balls, and cheap fish-shaped marshmallows.
Our contract only lasted six months. Reports to the company that were unfailingly rosy caused our downfall. We thought that if we flattered them enough, we could keep the relationship going indefinitely. But our mendacity was our undoing. When they closed us down, a woman from the company’s marketing team told us, ‘Frankly, we did not want only good reports. We wanted honest assessments. Your findings and our results in the marketplace differ radically.’ We did learn something about market research though: flattery is not helpful, only the facts are.
In those years, we visited the farm every three or four months. I enjoyed all our visits, but some stand out in the memory more clearly than others. This is particularly true of one in the early summer of 1975. It has remained in my thoughts ever since. It may be partly because we had not been to the farm for perhaps six months. It may also have been because of all that happened in those two days between Abraham and me, and also between Oupa and me.
Oupa and Ouma did not come to the city often that year. We only saw them on those occasions when Oupa had vegetables he wanted to bring to market. His vegetable crops were just a side issue for him. Sugar was where he made his real money. But sometimes he had a small crop of peas, beans or even tomatoes, if he had succeeded in keeping the insects at bay that year. When he had a crop, he would either drive down in his three-ton truck or send one of his Zulu supervisors.
When he had first seen my motorbike, he had laughed so much that my father complained to Mama that I would think the whole thing was a joke. On his next visit, Oupa had loaded it onto the back of his truck and slapped me on the back so hard I thought he might dislocate something. ‘Never mind, young man,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after it for you until you’re at the farm again. You can ride it there. It’s your Oupa’s land. No one can tell you what you’re allowed to do there.’ I loved him even more after that.
As always, Uncle Stefan, Abraham and Auntie Virginia drove to the farm in convoy with us. Abraham was getting tired of people telling him what he could and could not do. In the week before, he had been making plans about all the things we were going to do on the farm. Mostly, he wanted to ride with me on my motorbike and he made me promise that he could also take a turn in front.
That weekend Uncle Pietertjie stayed away, but a cousin by the name of André, another one I had not seen before, had driven down from Pretoria. It was the first time I had seen him, but I had heard Mama talk about him being gay, using the English word, and by that time I knew that was something to be despised. My father called him a damned moffie and that sounded even worse than being gay. He was also rumoured to have occasionally invited black people to visit him at home, but Mama told us not to believe that André was a kafferboetie. Just because André was gay did not mean that you had to believe every bad thing about him. He was about the same age as Uncle Pietertjie, but none of us kids called him Uncle. He was just André to all of us. Usually calling an adult by his first name, without an Uncle or Auntie to prefix it, earned you a slap on the back of the head, but not in André’s case. There seemed to be a tacit agreement that he was not an uncle.
As always, Abraham and I slept in the outbuilding. They found a place for André inside the house. My father told Ouma that you could not have a moffie sharing a room with Abraham and me. It was all right to be nice to him, but to expose two young boys to him that way was out of the question.
I had been surprised on that visit. When we got out of the car and Ouma hugged me, she had seemed to be blinking away tears. At supper under the trees, I discovered why. Oupa raised his voice in the way that he had when he wanted everyone to understand that what he had to say was important and that he desired their attention. He told us that he was sorry that he would not be able to join the others for hunting the next day, but he had to go to the station. The bodies of some of the local boys who had been killed on the border were coming home by train and it was his duty to be there to meet the train. At that Ouma started crying.
Mama wrapped her arms around Ouma. ‘Toe maar, toe maar,’ she said in that soothing way she had.
But Ouma shook herself loose, rose quickly and hurried towards the house, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘I don’t know why the Lord is punishing us so,’ she sobbed.
Mama rose, as if to follow, but Oupa waved a large hand, showing her to sit down. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but this has upset your mother more than it would usually have.’ He paused a moment, looking vaguely round the table at the members of his family before continuing. ‘You remember young Tjol, Auntie Marie’s Tjol?’
‘I last saw him when he was a child,’ Uncle Stefan said. ‘He must be fifteen or sixteen now.’
‘He would have been nineteen, but he was killed on the border in South West. They walked straight into an ambush. Tjol was on the front armoured car. Instead of being inside, he was sitting on top.’ Oupa shook his head. ‘He was always a wild one. He should have been inside.’
‘I don’t care what he was doing wrong,’ Uncle Stefan growled. ‘He was killed by a kaffir’s bullet. That’s all that matters to me.’
‘I don’t know why you have to use that word,’ my father said. ‘We’re all shocked by Tjol’s death, but we don’t have to use that ugly word.’
Uncle Stefan pointed a thick finger at my father. ‘Bernard, don’t you preach to me. As far as I am concerned, a kaffir’s a kaffir. I treat my kaffirs well at work, but when one kills a boy like Tjol, I want blood.’ Abraham was leaning forward with both his elbows on the table, following the exchange between his father and uncle. ‘In any case,’ Uncle Stefan went on, ‘since when are you a kafferboeti
e? We all know that your job is to keep the kaffirs in their place.’
My father put down his knife and fork and looked straight at him. He hated anyone referring to his work, except in the most serious terms. ‘I do what I do to protect all of us, but I don’t call the Bantu by ugly names. We don’t need to do that.’
It was suddenly one of those moments when things could have gone very bad very quickly. My father was looking straight into Uncle Stefan’s eyes. Uncle Stefan was trying to smile, but it was a nervous smile and there was nothing friendly in my father’s look. He had a way of looking at you that made you feel that the blood in your veins had run cold.
As always, it was Oupa who stopped this sort of thing from developing. ‘You two, you stop this right away. It’s terrible that Tjol was killed. It’s even worse if we fight about it.’
Oupa raised both hands, the palms facing us and the fingers spread. It was a sign that he was not finished speaking. ‘Tjol’s body arrives by train tomorrow morning. I have to go. If you want to, you can all go shooting. None of you knew Auntie Marie well. But Ouma and I have to go. We have known her for thirty years or more. We have to give her our support.’
Ouma did not come back to the table that evening. Her absence and the reason for it, followed by the argument between my father and Uncle Stefan, extinguished the festive atmosphere completely.
The only one of the adult men who had nothing to say about Tjol’s death was André. He looked from one to the other as they spoke, but kept his thoughts to himself. None of the other men seemed even to notice him.
The next morning I was woken by Oupa’s strong, farmer’s hand shaking me. ‘Come, come. It’s five o’clock already. Do you want to sleep all day?’ He laughed at that, as if it were a wonderful joke. His broad, grinning face was just inches from mine as he put an enamelled mug of coffee down heavily next to my bed. A moment later Abraham was getting the same treatment. I could see that, because of Abraham’s illness, Oupa shook him less roughly, but he would not exclude him from the robust, manly treatment he dished out routinely.
Oupa believed that a good young boer should be out of bed by half past four to milk the cows, start the ploughing and see that the labourers’ work for the day was organised. By eight o’clock he could return to the house for breakfast, which would have been prepared by whichever womenfolk were available. An hour later you should be back on the plough. He never quite got used to the idea that for city Afrikaners, there were no cows to milk and no lands to plough, in fact, that life followed an altogether different pattern.
Even when there were three dead boys arriving at the station, the chores had to be done first. He would not only be up long before sunrise, but he would see to it that all of us were up too. By the time I stumbled out into the twilight of early morning, Oupa was at one of the tables under the trees slicing chunks of meat from what remained of the braaivleis. He laid the slices on a large plate in preparation for a pre-breakfast snack. Oupa ate meat at least three times a day, sometimes more, usually red meat. He smoked all day and drank substantial quantities of brandy. According to the wisdom of modern nutritionists, he should have been dead before he was sixty, but at seventy-five he was still strong enough to wrestle a young ox to the ground.
He beckoned me to join him. ‘I think your father wants to go hunting,’ he said. ‘I would like to come if it wasn’t that Tjol’s body is arriving today.’
The idea of Tjol’s body lying in state with a terrorist bullet hole in it, was enormously romantic to me. The only other dead body I had seen at that time had been Rocha’s. This time I would be able to get up close. ‘Can I come with Oupa?’ I asked.
He looked at me curiously. ‘It’s not going to be much fun. We are just going to meet the train.’
‘I would like to come.’
‘Why, Chrissie?’
I needed a good answer and I needed it right away if I were to persuade Oupa to take me. I cast around in my mind for only a moment before I found it. ‘I feel I should pay my respects,’ I said reverently.
‘You’re a different sort of boy, Chrissie,’ he said. ‘I like a boy who behaves like a boy, but who also has a serious side.’
I glowed in the warmth of Oupa’s praise. It’s true, I thought, I do have a serious side.
Abraham had followed me outside and was close enough to listen to the conversation. ‘Would you also like to come, Abraham?’ Oupa asked him.
But Abraham was ready for the invitation. ‘No thanks, Oupa. I’m not feeling very well.’
Oupa patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘You rest then.’
I looked at Abraham and knew that he was up to something. The moment we were alone, I found out what it was. ‘While you’re away, can I ride your motorbike?’
My motorbike? I had waited the last six months since the last time I had been able to ride it. He could have asked for anything else and I would readily have given it to him, but I was going to be away with Oupa for hours and he would be riding my motorbike. He was sick, everyone was treating him like an invalid. But he wanted to ride my motorbike instead of lie in bed like other sick people. This sickness was altogether too convenient. ‘All right,’ I croaked at him without any pretence of enthusiasm. He could have been sending me to the gallows. ‘Have fun.’
It took another three hours before we finally left for the station. I thought that Ouma would be coming, but when Oupa went to fetch her, I heard her crying in the kitchen. ‘I can’t go,’ she was saying. ‘It’s too terrible. I don’t know what we did that the Lord is punishing us this way. Poor Marie, she’s a good woman, but look at how the Lord is punishing her.’
I heard Oupa’s mumbled reply, but his back was turned to me and I could not make out the words. ‘No,’ Ouma was speaking again. ‘The thought of Tjol’s dead body is too terrible.’
Later, when we were alone in the car, I started working on Oupa again. ‘Will we get a chance to pray over Tjol’s body?’ I asked.
He gave me another surprised glance before answering. ‘I suppose so, if that’s what you want. I’m sure you can, if you feel the need.’
‘I do feel the need,’ I said. ‘I feel that I would like to pray over Tjol’s body to show my respects.’
‘Good, Chrissie. I’ll see to it that you get the opportunity.’
Everything was going well so far, but there was more that I wanted to know. ‘Does Oupa know where the bullet hit Tjol?’
‘No. I never asked.’
‘Will we be able to see it or will they have covered up the hole?’
He glanced away from his driving long enough to get another look at me. This time his expression had changed from one of pleased surprise to something closer to puzzlement. ‘Chrissie, Tjol’s body will be in a coffin.’
A coffin? I had not thought of the possibility of a coffin. The army were bringing him back in a coffin. Where did they get the coffins? Did they take a pile of coffins with them to the fighting to accommodate the soldiers who got shot by the terrorists? Whatever the truth, I would not be seeing the bullet hole or even Tjol’s body. And it was much too late to ask Oupa to turn back and leave me at the farm. I settled down for the rest of the drive. One thing I did realise was that I would have to do a convincing job of praying over Tjol’s coffin while Abraham enjoyed himself on my motorbike.
By the time we reached the station, the train had already arrived, but the railway people had not yet offloaded Tjol. It was only after we got there that I remembered that it was not Tjol alone who was being delivered to his family. The platform was crowded with the bereaved and their families. There were probably more than a hundred people, all dressed in their Sunday, go-to-church clothing, even Oupa and me. This was going to be the kind of occasion when seriousness and praying were going to be required and therefore I needed to dress as if for church. After all, if you were going to speak to the Almighty, you should dress respectfully. It was what our community demanded and, in any case, it stood to reason.
Auntie Marie w
as surrounded by her surviving children and her second husband, Tjol’s father having died long before. Her brothers and sisters and their families, and a few friends were present. Oupa went straight up to her and kissed her on the lips.
‘This is my grandson Chris, Bernard’s son,’ Oupa said to Auntie Marie. He had spoken very softly. The gathering was almost completely silent, the men standing stiffly upright, mostly with their hands folded in front of the genital area, as if for protection. The ladies and girls stood close to their menfolk, some of them crying. If anything had to be said, it was said in a whisper.
This subdued group of people had gathered to receive the bodies of some of their boys who had died trying to keep their homes and families safe. Not a soul present was unaware of the events in Mozambique almost two years before. And now three of their own boys had died on a different border. The boys had gone away to the South West African border singing and joking. They were going to teach those terrorists a lesson. And this was how they came back.
‘Chris has come to pay his respects,’ Oupa explained to Auntie Marie.
At that the Auntie whose eyes were already red-rimmed looked at me and started crying again. A moment later she advanced on me and seized me in a pair of strong female arms and pressed me against her soft, cushiony bosom. This was not something I had expected, but there was nothing to do but wait until I was released. ‘Thank you, young Chris,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you very much. You’re a good boy.’
Suddenly I felt rotten. I had manipulated Oupa into bringing me with a lot of pious talk that meant nothing and here was this kind-looking auntie who was so grateful to me for coming to meet the body of her dead boy. Any pride I felt at misleading Oupa disappeared like chalk writing on a slate that had been wiped clean. My throat seemed to have closed tight, but I managed to murmur, ‘It’s all right, auntie.’
Oupa and I joined Auntie Marie’s group, also standing carefully erect with our hands folded in front of us, as silent as the others. When the railway people eventually offloaded the coffins, a row of military policemen formed a protective line next to them, then stepped away in smart order to let the bereaved approach. The coffins looked very handsome. I knew a little about wood because Uncle Stefan did a lot of woodwork in his garage. Abraham and I sometimes helped him with sandpapering and varnishing. I thought I recognised the wood of the coffins as meranti and I could see that someone had worked hard to give them a French-polished finish. They looked grand. Auntie Marie went and stood next to Tjol’s coffin, resting one hand on it, and Oupa told me this was a good time to pray over Tjol’s body. So I took up a position next to Auntie Marie and also placed my hand on the smooth surface of the wood. I said a silent prayer for Tjol’s soul, that he would be accepted into heaven and that his comrades would kill all the terrorists responsible and that when I was old enough, in just a few years, I would kill more terrorists than anyone else ever had. From behind me I heard a female voice saying softly, ‘He’s a serious boy. How do you get your boys to grow up that way?’
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