‘Ja, Mevrou, little bumps, all red and itchy, like mosquito bites on your eyes,’ I lied.
‘Itchy eyes, now you making sense, itchy eyes, I know.’
‘Like there’s chillies been rubbed in.’
‘Chillies? When a person has chillies rubbed in their eyes they can’t see.’
I had to decide quickly whether I could see or not and decided being blinded by chillies meant I couldn’t.
‘No, seeing was out of the question.’
‘If you couldn’t see, how did you know they were red and looked like mosquito bites, hey?’
‘I saw them just before I couldn’t see. There was this mirror,’ I added hastily, ‘in the bathroom. I was looking, and these red mosquito bites are popping onto my eyeballs and all of a sudden it went all dark and then the itch like from chillies came.’
‘Jy praat kak, Voetsek! You speak shit, Voetsek!’
I was getting in deeper than I cared to be. ‘No, honest, Mevrou, the itching came after I went blind, that’s how Doctor Van Heerden knew it was ventriculi cardio-cular appendage. That’s the certain sign, first, red mosquito bites that are these little bumps all over your eyes on the white part, then everything goes black and then the itching starts. That’s another one of the mysterious medical mysteries. You can ask him if you want.’
‘But then you woke up this morning and you can see again?’
‘Ja, perfectly, as if nothing had happened. A miracle.’
‘Then another miracle happened, hey?’
I looked at her, not quite knowing what she meant. ‘No, just that I could see good as new.’
‘And what you saw was that your dirty clothes that left here to go to the wedding are now all of a sudden clean?’ she pointed to my shirt. ‘Turn around.’ I turned so that my back faced her. ‘There was mud on the back of your shirt and on your backside too, now it’s gone. Turn back.’ I turned to face her again and she looked at me accusingly. ‘So be so kind as to tell me how the miracle of the disappearing mud came about?’ She pointed at my chest. ‘This shirt is clean and so are the shorts.’
I had done all that tap-dancing for nothing. We were back on the business of the forbidden clean clothes. Lying to Mevrou was compulsory, but with her one-track mind you had to be very careful because she’d always come back to the first point.
‘Germs!’ I said. ‘You get them from mud. They had to wash my clothes because they might be holding germs that gave me ventriculi cardio-cular appendage.’
‘So now we got germs in the eyes that make red lumps like mosquito bites that itch like chillies been rubbed in but only after when a person goes blind, and all of this is caused from mud?’
I must admit, even to me, it didn’t sound very plausible. The germs theory was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The idea of linking my dirty clothes to a medically mysterious disease wasn’t going to work. Mevrou wasn’t going to buy the mud theory.
‘I’m a farmer’s daughter, you hear? Also a highly trained three-certificate nurse, I could even have been a sister, and I’m telling you straight, Voetsek, the only thing that comes from mud is wet dirt!’ She jabbed a fat finger at me. ‘Take off that germ-free shirt and shorts!’ she barked.
I removed my Marie-washed shirt and stepped out of my shorts, and stood naked in front of this large, terrifying woman.
‘Ventricle means a sort of hole or cavity in an organ and cardio means your heart.’ She pointed at my little dangling dick and sniffed in obvious disdain. ‘Appendage means something sticking out, but what’s there isn’t big enough to be one,’ she said. ‘It all has nothing to do with bumps on your eyes, man! You think I was born only yesterday? I wasn’t a theatre nurse for five years for nothing, you know. I’ve seen plenty of eyes in my time but never even one with bumps on it. You going to have to wake up very early in the morning before you can fool a three-certificater like me!’ She paused, then asked, ‘Who washed you dirty clothes? Was it that one-certificate nurse that you went tippy-toes around our backs to befriend without getting first our permission?’
There wasn’t any point in lying any longer. ‘Ja, Mevrou.’
‘Well, you can tell this so-called “mixed grill” nurse, who works in a mother’s café and knows from nothing things that are medical, that if Meneer Prinsloo and Mevrou Van Schalkwyk decide to send a dirty person to a wedding we don’t expect a clean one to come back. We won’t be insulted like we just pieces of dirt!’
‘It was my fault, Mevrou, I didn’t tell her I had strict instructions to stay dirty.’
‘Ja, I can see you also to blame and that’s why now you getting six of the best, Voetsek. Bend! Now touch your toes.’ Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! ‘And now two bansella to remove the bumps on your eyeballs.’ Whack! Whack! ‘And put some bumps on your arse.’
The months passed quickly, and it was soon coming up to the time to leave for the Bishop’s College. The closer the time came the more I worried about Tinker. I simply couldn’t imagine being without her at my side, or even how she’d cope without me. Doctor Van Heerden asked if he could look after her while I was away, saying he missed Helmut a lot and it would be a great honour to have Tinker around.
‘I know she’s a one-man dog, Tom, but I could sort of be her uncle. There’s plenty of rats around the place and they take the newly hatched chicks, she would be doing me a great favour.’
I could see he really wanted her and that was one small good thing, that she didn’t have to stay at The Boys Farm. Even though old Mevrou Pienaar loved her a lot, but with Mevrou and Meneer Prinsloo you could never tell what might happen.
Tinker and me, we’d have these long talks when she’d sit on my lap under a tree by the creek or down at the library rock, and I’d try to explain to her what was going to happen and assure her that she’d be all right. I’d tell her about how I had to get an education and this was an opportunity not to be missed, and that I’d come down every school holiday to be with her. She’d prick up her sharp little ears and then sometimes lick my face, but if you looked into her eyes you could see that she was just as concerned as I was. Leaving somebody you love that much is a very hard thing for anyone to do.
You begin to realise that in life nothing stays still, just when you not looking, everything changes and not always for the better. Not that I can say this next change that happened was bad because it wasn’t. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I had in my mind decided when I grew up to marry Marie. I knew she was older than I was, but eleven years was the same as Mevrou Booysens and the doctor. So, if they could do it, why not us? But, of course, all my hopes were smashed to smithereens by the scene that had taken place in the moonlit parlour. I couldn’t get the picture of the soft light on her shoulder and the gold of her hair, like a halo, out of my mind. Marie had drawn back from Sergeant Van Niekerk at the same moment I passed the parlour door and the moonlight also showed the curve of her breasts. I don’t know what it was, but I knew it was very beautiful. Also, that something inside me had changed forever.
Now that Mevrou Booysens wasn’t herself any more and had turned into Mevrou Van Heerden, the Impala Café was up for sale. To everybody’s surprise, it was bought by Mr Patel, of Patel & Sons, for one of his sons who was coming back from Bombay with a brand-new wife. They were going to change the place into an Indian restaurant. Mr Patel said they were going to call it the Impala Curry House. ‘We are keeping old tradition and having new one as well, mixed grills we are having any time you want, but also very, very jolly good curry,’ he’d announced. This didn’t go down too well with the town and here are some of the things the volk were saying all over the place. ‘What does an Indian know about mixed grills? Next thing you know you getting curry chops, man! Nobody is going to eat that Charra food. It is a well-known fact that Indians are always looking for ways to cheat a person. Take, for instance, old meat that’s not so fresh, put a bit of curry on it and you can’t taste that it should be given to the dogs. Curry is little piec
es of meat that burns your mouth so much that drinking water doesn’t help. That’s step one. Step two is that you have to drink lots of beer and eat lots of rice so they make a bigger profit all-round. Can’t you see how clever that is? But if Patel’s son thinks he can trick a boer then he and his new wife, who doesn’t even speak Afrikaans, have another think coming, we not stupid, you hear? The boere won’t go to eat there after church on Sunday because it’s a heathen place, and it’s the Lord’s day also, so they go back to their farms drunk from all the beer and with their mouths still burning all over the place.’
Those were the things people were saying. I must say I was a bit surprised at Mr Patel doing a stupid thing like this, even if it was for his son. One thing was certain, he was not a stupid man. If cheating was his main business, as everyone said, answer me this. He was not the only shop in town that white people and blacks could go into to buy stuff. The other shops were all owned by good Afrikaners, so why was Mr Patel the only person in Duiwelskrans that drove a brand-new Buick straight eight? People don’t go twice into a shop where cheating is going on unless they are the stupid ones.
When I asked Sergeant Van Niekerk about this, he said, ‘Ag, Tom, it’s simple, Patel gives credit. You can put it in the book and pay at the end of the month.’
‘Don’t the other shops give credit?’
‘Ja, but only to white people.’
‘Why don’t they also give credit to kaffirs?’
‘Because they think kaffirs won’t pay at the end of the month,’ he laughed. ‘That’s where Patel’s clever. Black people always pay. It’s the whites who sometimes don’t. I’m always going around and knocking on white doors and saying, “Pay up, or else”.’
See what I mean? But you learn in life that the same people can be very clever in some things and very stupid in others. Clever giving credit to kaffirs and stupid opening up an Indian restaurant in a town like Duiwelskrans. So Marie said, ‘I’m going to cook you your last mixed grill before the Impala closes and becomes an Indian restaurant that my mum told them isn’t going to work, but they don’t want to listen, what can you do, hey? At least we had the decency to warn them that this isn’t a curry-type town.’
I don’t know where that ‘your last mixed grill’ came from, because Gawie had had a mixed grill the time I burned my hand, but I hadn’t had one yet. But I didn’t say anything. A mixed grill doesn’t come along every day and having the last one that was really only the first, but wasn’t ever going to be cooked again was a big honour, I can tell you. Now, I suppose you’re wondering how come I’m suddenly eating the last mixed grill at the Impala Café after church on Sunday and not eating stale bread sandwiches at The Boys Farm. How did I get permission to do this?
Well, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. It was Meneer Prinsloo’s one and only brilliant idea called Government Permission Monthly Outing. He got the Dominee to say it in church. Anyone who wanted to invite a boy to lunch on Sunday could, and the boy only had to be back at The Boys Farm by five o’clock in the afternoon. A boy was allowed to go only once a month because, remember, we had to work in the vegetable gardens and water the fruit trees on a Sunday. So that was why I could go to the Impala Café and have the last mixed grill in history.
Let me tell you, it turned out to be a mixed grill and a half! Here’s what was in it: sausages two, piece of liver, bacon rashers two, chops two, piece of steak (not small), fried egg one, chips (lots), tomato sauce. You could have cold slaw also, but I didn’t. You could get cold slaw at The Boys Farm when the cabbages were in the vegetable garden and they had too many, so why eat it now. I couldn’t finish it all because I had to leave room for a one-legged bowl of ice-cream. Tinker got her football stomach with what was left over, and we could hardly walk back to The Boys Farm we were so full. At one stage on the way home, Tinker did this little vomit and it was tomato sauce. I don’t think dogs like it.
After the mixed grill Marie said, ‘Come into the house, Tom, I want to talk to you.’ She’d gone and brushed her hair and put on the same bright-red lipstick she’d had on at the wedding, and she’d taken off her apron. So we went into the parlour and sat on the same settee where you-know-what happened in the moonlight. ‘Tom, you know I love you, so I want you to be the first to hear the good news, after my mum, of course.’
I tried to smile because I was pretty sure I knew what the good news was going to be. But my mouth, all of a sudden, went sort of all squiffy. ‘Is it Sergeant Van Niekerk?’ I stammered.
‘Clever boy!’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands. ‘Magtig, there are no flies on you, Tom Fitzsaxby. How did you guess?’ Her eyes were shining and I could see she was very happy.
‘I’m good at guessing things,’ I said.
‘We’re going to be married before you go to that posh boarding school in Johannesburg, just so you can be there. You’re going to be best boy, you hear? It’s something you can have in weddings.’
‘I don’t think I’m allowed, Marie,’ I said, thinking it best to warn her right off. ‘Mevrou is very against weddings. I have to get permission from Meneer Prinsloo, otherwise it’s called “tippy-toeing around people’s backs”. You also have to wear your dirty clothes unless you’ve got the high-up inspector from Pretoria’s permission because Mevrou won’t give it.’ It all came out at one time, like speaking vomit. This was because I didn’t know what to say and I was angry that she was going to marry before I could grow up and be the lucky husband. Not that I didn’t think Sergeant Van Niekerk wasn’t a very good choice. He was the best there was, you couldn’t get better. It was just that everything a person loved was now changing.
‘Don’t you worry about the clothes, you hear? And guess what? You’re also getting a wedding present from Doctor Van Heerden and my mum.’
‘But I’m not getting married!’ I said, surprised. ‘You the one who gets the presents.’
‘Ja, that’s true, but you’re like our little boetie now. You’ll see, you’ll like it.’ Then she took me in her arms and gave me a long kiss on the mouth. ‘Oh, I do love you, Tom,’ she said. She smelled of roses, and the lipstick had this sort of greasy taste. She drew back and looked directly into my eyes, her hands gripping my shoulders. ‘There’s also a big, big secret, but you’ve got to swear on a stack of Bibles you won’t tell, hey?’
I didn’t think it would be polite to remind Marie that I wasn’t the one to swear on stacks of Bibles and then go and tell people all over the place. ‘I promise on my word of honour,’ I said solemnly.
‘Tom, the sergeant and me, we also going to have a little baby!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Love That Can’t Wait for Weddings
NOW KEEPING A SECRET is one thing, but growing fat in the front is quite another. Either Marie was eating too much and putting on weight in only one place or the secret was well and truly out for all to see. People were giggling behind their hands and saying, ‘Shotgun wedding, hey!’ I wasn’t quite sure why it’s called that, and I couldn’t find out because my main-asking people were all involved. I mean, I knew it was because Marie had got the baby in her stomach before the wedding, which is, it seemed, a sort of a sin, but one that happens quite a lot in our part of the country. But why shotgun?
Anyway, when the Dominee said in church, ‘If anyone should know any just cause or reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them declare it now or forever hold their peace,’ you could hear the start of a giggle or two around the place. He has to do this for three Sundays, and on the last one when there were a few too many giggles coming from the congregation, the Dominee glared down at us and thumped the pulpit with his fist. ‘Marriage is a serious business, you hear? Let me tell you something, this kind of marriage has a long tradition among the volk. In the olden days when the Great Trek was not long over, people were scattered far and wide and could only come into a dorp for Nagmaal once a year. That was the time for the young people to take a look and see what was ava
ilable for a nice wife or a good husband. You think only church and communion takes place at Nagmaal, hey? You are quite wrong. These, you must understand, are regte Boere with red blood in their bones, and the young men and women have got natural urges!’ He chuckled suddenly. ‘I can assure you many a young girl must get married long before the next Easter comes around, and some after the offspring have sprung off!’ He paused as this got a good laugh from the congregation. ‘God is a practical man who likes to take shortcuts. For example, six days only to create everything, and then a nice day of rest. The Lord does not see this example of natural urges as a deep sin, but only as a God-given opportunity to defeat the tyranny of distance. So, I will not tolerate this sniggering in my church when an essential God-sanctioned tradition is taking place. Can you even imagine a better combination than a policeman and a nurse? To keep the law and to heal the sick and then, together, to bring forth the fruit of the womb. Hallelujah!’
That stopped the giggling quick smart.
As for Marie, she said to me, ‘Ag, Tom, who cares what people say. I love Jan van Niekerk and I want more than anything in the world to have this baby, and anyway he asked me to marry him long before I didn’t have my time of month.’
‘What time is that?’ I asked.
Marie laughed. ‘I keep forgetting you still little and don’t know these things, it’s called my menstrual cycle and it happens to a woman.’
If that was supposed to inform me, let me tell you something for nothing, it didn’t. But when later I got out from under the bed my Meneer Van Niekerk’s Shorter Oxford English Dictionary I was in for an even deeper mystery. I looked up menstrual cycle. This is what it said: ‘The process of ovulation and menstruation in female primates.’ So I looked up menstruation and what a shock I got: ‘The process of discharging blood from the uterus.’ That definitely couldn’t be it, if a person was discharging blood all over the place there would have to be something seriously wrong with them, and Marie was a very healthy person. So I looked up ovulation.
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