“The Triangle it is indeed.”
“You are the captain.”
“Sure I am. For now I will be captain at the wheel. I want to be here when the twin arrives.”
“I’ll start cleaning up inside.”
“Thanks.”
“What about the water?”
“There is nothing we can do about it. My poor carpets! Now I definitely have to get those shampooing people.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. Leave it to the bilge pumps. I can see that they are working overtime. Get some sleep. You will need it. It cannot be much longer before the fun starts. Another thing, please bring me my harness. Also, don’t come into the cockpit without yours. And remember to clip on. We will have to stick to this arrangement until the storm is all over.”
“Yes captain.”
Grant shook his head in silence. It was just luck that the monster wave did not hit earlier, with Madeleine standing in the cockpit all unsecured. As they bore into the night, carried forward by the thrust of the diesel engine, he looked behind more than ahead. He wanted to see the twin coming.
***
It took Juliana only a few years to cut her husband to pieces and to reconstitute him according to her vision. By the time she had her fifth child, the process was complete. The farmer struggled valiantly at times to assert himself, but it was to no avail. The struggles just made it more fun and in the end she had him down cold. Then she became ill.
The doctors could not find the reason for her illness, despite sending her to various specialists. It was a worrisome development that brought the local minister to her bedside as much as the young family doctor. They observed with deep concern how she sometimes slipped in and out of delirium, her consciousness in a world of its own. The minister talked in hushed tones to the farmer about the children. Who would look after them?
What the doctor and the minister did not know was that there was a third visitor in the room. The spirit, resident of the mountain which towered over the farm, made contact with the feverish mind of the young woman, whispering all kinds of things. It took her along to her favourite fantasies, those which involved massive calamity of her enemies. And who were her enemies in her current situation? Were they not around?
There was the neighbour, for instance. He offered to help when it was time to slaughter the big hog. Her husband knew about vines and things that grew in the soil and yes, some basic things about animal husbandry but not enough about preparing the best cuts from the big boar pig. She had a special relationship with that pig. Was she not the one who fed it the remains of her own table twice a day? She was entitled to all of that pig. But the neighbour had other ideas. He got her weak-minded husband to give him the best cuts. Actually, her husband offered, but it did not matter. He had no business accepting.
When she focused on the neighbour and poured hatred on him, somehow she felt so good. In fact, much, much improved. She opened her eyes and saw the young doctor at her bedside.
“How do you feel,” he asked.
“Much better,” she said.
“It could be that the injection I gave you yesterday is now working,” he said hopefully. If only he knew. She closed her eyes and in her fantasy world the neighbour came to a grisly end. Whenever she felt the fingers of the illness closing in on her she went into her fantasy. And then it really happened.
The neighbour was on his way to the market in Cape Town, an hour’s drive away, when a tyre blew out. The truck rolled, spilling produce all over the road and crushing the two workers who rode on the open load body. It happened in exactly the same spot where wagons sank to their bellies into the mud three hundred and fifty years before, giving Aitsi-!uma reason for much mirth. Juliana woke up in a good mood and declared herself healed. The doctor praised his medicine. The minister called it divine intervention and made Juliana stand up in the first church meeting that she attended after her recovery. She was an instant celebrity and lapped up the warmth that the faithful bestowed on her. Henceforth she would enjoy a special status amongst those who valued spiritual things. More than one person said that she could actually sense the spirituality in her.
Only Juliana knew exactly how she was touched. She was learning, and many an accident, seemingly purely at random, befell those who dared to cross her. From time to time a bout of illness visited her again and every time she threw off its coils by exactly the same means. Only the victims differed. Not that she needed an illness to do what she did.
On a wall in the pantry, a place where no visitor was allowed, she began to assemble bits and pieces that reminded her of her targets. Mostly, it was photos, but other personal items also made an appearance. Only on a very deep level, so deep that she was unable to articulate it, did she sense her oneness with shadowy figures that went before her, including an old man called A!-man, who had done exactly the same thing on a ledge of the mountain directly overlooking her farm.
***
Grant motored north westward, every nerve alert to the seas and the weather. After two hours of uneventful cruising he decided that the monster wave of earlier was probably a loner. How do waves like that develop? Perhaps there was an earthquake on the ocean floor. Perhaps they were hit by two waves criss-crossing each other and they just happened to be at the point of intersection. The sea was nobody’s playmate. That much was true and he was learning to appreciate it. Hopefully his boat was up to anything that the sea could throw at them. When he mentioned to the French customs guy in Marigot that she was built for the rough stuff he was not kidding. He remembered those trials in Table Bay. It gave him confidence. You had to have faith that your boat could do it. Your life literally depended on all the systems functioning as they should. If you did not have the faith, you’d rather not go onto the ocean at all.
The north easterly wind picked up again. He could feel it blowing on them from a ninety degree angle to their course and it confused him. Have they passed the high pressure cell? He had to know. He unhooked himself and grabbed some cold Mahi-Mahi and hot coffee. He had his meal at the navigation station from where he sent an email to request the latest Gridded Binary File for the area. Two minutes later he opened up the freshly arrived weather map. He identified the bunched up isobars that meant high winds from the west, not from the east. But where was that high? He could not make head nor tail of it. The time of the forecast was 06:00 UCT, which was very current. He downloaded a text forecast but had no help from it either. He took the barometric pressure and tried to match it with the isobars on the weather map.
The matching pressure told him that they might have crossed the cell of high pressure. They were on the other side! He requested a bigger map and found the hurricane, which he studied carefully, especially noting the distance between themselves and its centre. It was still too far away to be of any significance yet. But the further away they could get from it, the better. They needed speed and the new north-easterly breeze was just what he required. He finished his coffee, closed the computer and made his way up to the deck. He unfurled the mizzen and used it to keep the yacht pointed into the wind as he hoisted the main sail and set up the foresail as well. Then it was rudder to windward. The sails filled and the yacht accelerated all the way to eight knots. He hit the button that killed the engine and noticed that they maintained their speed.
The yacht felt like a sailboat again. The fact that he was leaving a nasty hurricane far behind the transom made him happy too. At six thirty he felt that he had had enough. Yes, Madeleine would probably be sleeping deeply right now, as she had done on the day before, but duty was duty. You had to be robust to sail on the open ocean. He called but there was no response, just as he expected. He called twice more before he opened the cabin door and grabbed the sleeping bag where he thought he’d find a leg. Bingo. There was no monkey business this time and he was grateful for it. He just had to do it again, get into her cabin so that he knew whether it was still there, the thing that took possession of him the day before.
<
br /> Madeleine was completely unimpressed. “Ahemm,” she moaned.
“Time for your watch,” said Grant.
“Are you sure? I’m still so tired.”
“Yes it is, I’m afraid. It’s beginning to get to you, but I’m tired too.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. He stood in the door until she sat up. He thought that she was going to fall over again but gave her the benefit of the doubt. To his mild surprise she staggered into the cockpit a few minutes later.
“I think we have moved out of harm’s way,” he said. “We have a cell of high pressure between us and the hurricane.”
“And what about the monster wave?”
“The mate of the earlier monster must have gone to sleep or perhaps it went elsewhere.”
“Or perhaps it will only come later.”
“Not after all this time. It’s cold. Get yourself some coffee and then I want to see if I can raise my routers on the SSB. We still have a hurricane somewhere east and you cannot be too cautious.”
“You know your hurricanes,” Grant said when he joined Madeleine where she sat tethered to the railing.
“It’s fading,” she said and immediately unclipped herself.
“You’re right. It’s no longer a hurricane. It’s been downgraded to a tropical storm, which means we might just be spared.”
“Can we turn around then?”
“Nope. It is still very stormy behind us. And there is something else. There is another system to the north-east, the remnants of a massive cold front. I think that big wave of last night might have come from the cold front. The cold air that we are experiencing also comes from there. And of course there is now this tropical storm, which no one knows exactly where it will go next. Hopefully you are right and it will die on the spot.”
“It would be very strange if it didn’t.”
“We take no chances. The way we’ll play it now is that we will simply continue on this course, doing seven to eight knots over the ground if we can as long as we have wind. We will continue toward the lee of Bermuda and slip back to St Georges or Hamilton when all the vile weather has passed.”
“I suppose there is no other option,” said Madeleine.
“I’ve had breakfast, so I’m going to my bunk. Please make some for yourself. If something changes, you’ll call me of course.”
Madeleine made an incomprehensible sound.
“Pardon me?”
“Don’t worry, I was just yawning.”
“Another thing. Use the engine if the wind dies away. Let me show you how to start it.”
“Fine. I’ve got it,” said Madeleine, once she has identified the start button and throttle lever. “Go to sleep.”
***
It was day four. Despite the hour it was still as dark as if it was midnight. The light of the new day was slow in coming, if at all. Madeleine looked around for any lights that would indicate other ships on their patch of the ocean but there was nothing.
Her eyes fell on the soft foam-rubber cushions on the lee cockpit seats. She decided that the temptation was simply too big. She curled up on it and closed her eyes. The problem was that the tiredness simply did not go away. She missed a full eight hours’ sleep and her deep worry about the course that they were taking was sapping a lot of her energy as well.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Braam Malan stepped out of his office just as a twenty two metre long articulated truck eased its way through the double volume gate of the big yard. He always felt a bit like a farmer of old at the end of the day when the herders brought back the cattle from a day of grazing. What had happened out there? Was there any damage? Did they meet with any lions? His eyes ran over the rig, looking for tell-tale signs of trouble, such as a shredded tyre, a tear in a side-curtain or scrapes on the fenders. Everything seemed to be in order. The driver was lucky, because he was a strict boss and quick to let his employees know their mistakes. He believed in looking over his fifty seven trucks and seventy trailers himself. There was a piece of farmer’s wisdom in that as well. He father often used to say that the eye of the master kept the oxen fat.
He took over the business from the old man. On the side-curtain of the truck passing in front of him the name of the enterprise read AB Malan & Son, Transporters. He was the son and his father changed the name of the business shortly after he was born. They were both baptised Abraham Bernard. The old man was called AB and he took the moniker Braam from a young age to set the two apart. Transport was in their blood. The old man often joked that if cut, he would bleed diesel.
The transport yard was on the edge of the town of Kimberley. It was big, which allowed for trucks to turn around inside the yard without backing and that was how it was supposed to be. The yard sported a fully equipped wash bay, where a compressor purred away while a driver and assistant were washing their charge with a pressurised hose. In addition it had a six hundred square metre warehouse and a row of store rooms that housed sets of tyres and spare batteries. When the last truck was in, he took a walk along the line of buildings. Everything seemed to be in order.
Force of habit took him beyond the borders of the truck park, over gravel, soggy from the shower that fell earlier, to a house which stood to the one side of the property. Malan senior was sitting on the veranda, from where he kept up a watch on proceedings. Braam had tolerated this for so long that he did not mind anymore. Senior was eighty five years old, for three years now a widower, opinionated and quarrelsome, every year more so than before. At the end of every day Braam took his seat next to the old man, shared the trucking news of the day and got an overview of current affairs in return. Senior was an avid news watcher. His main target was the government.
“Yes,” he said, “do you know what they’ve done now?”
“No,” said Braam. It was the usual introduction and it was his usual response.
“They are putting the bloody electricity prices up. It is getting so high now that it will kill off the mines and most of the industries as well.”
“Fortunately we don’t use too much electricity,” said Braam.
“But our customers do,” said AB. “If everything slows down, think how it will affect us. Maybe some of the mines will have to close.”
“Mmm, yes,” said Braam. “The mines that still survive around here are all small operations. They could be affected. If they scale down it means fewer loads with mining supplies from Johannesburg. You’ve got a point, Dad.”
“Even the farmers will be affected,” said AB.
“To a point I agree,” said Braam, “but it simply means the price of beef, mutton and maize will go up. It will not affect us, I think. Our trucks will still run to Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg with their products as before. And as far as prices are concerned, we get a lot of free stuff from the farmers.”
“I see more and more farmers are now buying their own trucks and trailers,” grumbled AB.
“Quite frankly,” said Braam, “I don’t mind too much if they run in their maize themselves. I have fifteen grain carriers and when do we use them? Only in May and June. For the rest of the time it is capital sitting there.”
“We have to provide a service,” said AB. “The same farmers give us their cattle and sheep to transport.”
“Then why are we seeing more of them buying their own trucks now?” asked Braam, countering his fathers’ earlier logic.
“Prices,” said AB. “But they will learn. Once they’ve made their sums they will see how expensive it is to run a truck at today’s fuel prices.”
“And driver salaries,” said Braam. “I suppose they will come back.”
“They will,” said AB, “but transport will always be a hard business. Up and down all the time. We thought we were out of it when the new government came in but just look where we are now. We are the biggest in Kimberley.”
“We were fortunate that the railways collapsed. That created a massive demand for trucking.”
“I see on the ne
ws that all these unused railway tracks are disappearing bit by bit,” said AB. “They simply steal it, overhead wires and all and cut it up for the recycling trade.”
“And now the trucks are destroying the roads,” said Braam. “I’ve never seen it so bad.”
“They don’t care,” said AB. “They drive on the few well maintained highways from the office to their homes and they don’t see how bad things are in the rural areas. If they don’t start repairing roads soon, we will have even more problems. No wonder the economy is going down.”
Braam’s cellphone rang and he looked at the number. “Yes, Skhosana? What!” he exclaimed. “What about the spare? Oh, you used it this morning. I’ll get the mechanic out there. Take the wheel off so long.”
He speed dialled another number. “Two blowouts in one day from this truck,” he said to his father while the phone rang. “He said he went over a series of potholes and bang went the tyre.”
“Did he roll the truck?”
“No, he’s my best driver.”
The recipient of the call picked up.
“Magnus,” he said, please take two trailer tyres to number fifty one. It’s standing on the R31, thirty kilometres from here. Help him put one tyre on and leave the other one as a spare. Make it quick. He’s pulling a load of sheep that must be at Cato Ridge by five o’ clock in the morning.”
“It’s never been this bad,” said AB, “even in my days.”
“It makes me furious,” said Braam. “Only the tyre companies make money. You must see how old whatshisname, Fred from Firestone, smiles when he stops here. We always have business for him.”
“I saw you had some other visitors today as well.”
“Ah, yes, the guy from Nissan was here. He showed me a catalogue of the new UD four forties.”
“You are not thinking of buying, are you?”
“Not really, but it does not do harm to look. They are light on diesel, comparatively speaking. All fully automatic. That’s the thing, nowadays. The computer basically drives the truck and decides what gear is the best.”
The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure Page 19