The Satanic Mechanic

by Sally Andrew

  Below is my phone number. You are welcome to bring a date or a friend.

  All best wishes,

  Annemarie van der Walt

  (my real name!)

  The idea of a date vs a friend pulled my mind to that teenager’s letter. But I steered it back to the Supper Club. Maybe I should go to the KKNK. But it was quite a long drive to Oudtshoorn. I yawned and looked at the office clock. Only 8 a.m. and I was tired.

  I heard revving and squealing; Hattie had arrived outside. There was the clicking sound of her neat footsteps up the path. I put on the kettle to make her tea.

  ‘Hello, Tannie Maria,’ she said. ‘You’re here bright and early.’

  ‘Morning, Hats.’

  ‘Goodness gracious, Maria, what happened to you? You look dreadful.’

  My hand went to my hair.

  ‘No, not your hair, the rest of you. You look like you haven’t slept for a week.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, or tried to say, but it came out funny: ‘I-i-i’m fi-i-i-i-i-ne.’

  ‘My, oh my, Maria,’ said Hattie, pulling her chair up next to mine and sitting down. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  She handed me my coffee and a rusk.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m on a di-i-i-i-et.’ To my surprise, I found I was crying.

  She drew in her breath in shock. ‘No! Is that why you’re in such a state?’

  I shook my head. Then nodded my head.

  ‘You’ve been having trouble sleeping for a while, haven’t you?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Have you tried sleeping tablets?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Have you been to see a doctor?’

  ‘I saw a counsellor. She put me on this diet.’

  ‘What a load of poppycock!’ Hattie said. ‘You need a doctor, Maria. I know we’ve got doctors in Ladismith, but there’s an excellent one in Oudtshoorn that I’d like you to meet. Doctor Walters. You are coming to the KKNK, aren’t you? It’ll be fun.’

  I found a tissue in my handbag and blew my nose. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I feel so tired—’

  The phone rang, and Hattie answered. ‘Klein Karoo Gazette . . . Jess!’ She listened for a while and then said, ‘Hold on . . . Maria, Jessie says Slimkat is fine, but something has happened. Warrant Officer Reghardt Snyman, Detective Henk Kannemeyer and half the Ladismith police are at the KKNK. Can I tell her we’re on our way?’

  I took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The drive to Oudtshoorn is beautiful. Wild green hills and mountain passes with lovely patterns of red rock. But I kept my eyes closed for a lot of it because Hattie was driving. I was crazy to have agreed to go in her car. But I really was tired. I’d packed quickly and hoped I had everything I needed. A change of clothes, my diet lunch in a Tupperware (boiled egg and salad). I’d asked my neighbour, Rita van Tonder, to come and feed my chickens and put them in their hok at night. I’d said she could help herself to their eggs. She’d tasted them before and knew they were worth the drive from her apricot farm to my house.

  I opened my eyes as we wound our way down the Huisrivier Pass, and I saw a nice picnic spot under a pepper tree, with a view of the valley and hills.

  ‘Shall we stop here for lunch?’ I said.

  Hattie looked at her watch, and the car wiggled. ‘I don’t think we have time. Jessie wants to meet us at 3 p.m. in the beer tent.’

  I didn’t think I’d be able to eat in Hattie’s car and keep my lunch, so I swallowed two diet pills.

  ‘Now, you will see the doctor in Oudtshoorn, won’t you?’ Hattie said, turning towards me, the wheel turning too.

  ‘Mm . . .’ I said. ‘Do you mind if we talk later? I feel a bit car sick.’ I felt okay, really, but when she spoke to me, her eyes left the road, and I was worried we might end up with the worst kind of car sickness: the one that leaves you dead in a wreck.

  As we got close to Oudtshoorn, we passed some ostrich farms, and I thought about the Ostrich Supper Club. I’d phoned Annemarie to say I was coming, and she’d sounded so friendly. I wondered what they’d be serving for dinner.

  In town, we drove down Voortrekker Road. The pavements were full of people strolling along, and the lampposts were covered with bright posters and banners. I could see some big tents, a Ferris wheel and a Computicket stall. The traffic started getting thick. Hattie glanced at her watch and brushed against a banner by the side of the road. Then she hooted and overtook a Volkswagen Beetle.

  She parked the car on a yellow line, and we had to walk the last few blocks towards the big tent with the blue and white stripes; the streets were closed to cars.

  We passed art galleries and bookshops. A small crowd of people watched a man juggling ostrich eggs in the street, and from a yellow tent came the sound of someone singing. On the other side of a low fence were the Ferris wheel and bumper cars, and those rides that throw children about and make them scream. We walked past a food stall making roosterkoek, and another selling kudu sosaties. The griddle bread and kebabs smelt wonderful. I saw a stall with a sign saying Ostrich Supper Club, but there was no one there now. Hattie was trying in a polite way to get me to hurry, but I don’t believe in hurrying. Well, my legs don’t. I did the best I could and was a bit out of breath by the time we got to the beer tent.

  Jessie was sitting on a bench at one of the long white tables. She jumped up and waved when she saw us. Her dark hair was in a ponytail. Half the tent was made up of those long tables, then there were rows of plastic chairs facing a big wooden stage. Nothing was happening on the stage, and no one sat on the chairs, but there were quite a few people at the tables. A nice mix of coloureds and whites.

  On the far side of the tent were beer and food stalls. There was a caravan selling those kudu sosaties, and a queue in front of it. Two black men in T-shirts were preparing the meat on a grid over a fire. A young white woman in a yellow apron was taking orders and making the kebabs at a wooden trestle table.

  ‘Haai, Tannie Maria,’ Jessie said, giving me a hug then turning to Hattie. ‘I’m so glad you guys came.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I must go now-now. I promised to do a review of Wie’s Bang vir Virginia Woolf? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ she translated for Hattie.

  ‘So Slimkat is okay?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I went to his book launch; so did an army of plainclothes police.’ She leant forward so our heads were closer together. ‘Someone tried to kill Slimkat yesterday.’

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ said Hattie. ‘What happened?’

  ‘No one will tell me the details,’ she said. ‘Reghardt won’t talk, and Slimkat’s cousin pulled him away before he could answer all my questions. But Slimkat told me they’d tried to kill him. And he agreed to another interview with me; we’re meeting here this evening.’

  ‘Well, I’m jolly glad they’ve got Slimkat well guarded,’ said Hattie.

  ‘Ja, well, the Oudtshoorn police want to make sure nothing messy happens at the KKNK. They’ve roped in lots of help. Once the festival’s over, they’ll leave him to his fate.’ She handed us each a festival programme. ‘There are a few events in English, Hattie. And of course there’s art and music.’

  ‘I do understand some Afrikaans, you know,’ said Hattie.

  ‘And some nice food events, Tannie M,’ said Jessie. ‘I must run.’

  ‘Now do be careful, Jessie,’ said Hattie. ‘You’re a journalist, not a policewoman. Leave the police to investigate this attempted-murder business.’

  ‘I’m an investigative journalist,’ said Jessie, flicking her ponytail as she hurried off. ‘See you later.’

  Hattie looked at the programme and said, ‘Ooh, there’s a talk on the art of Pierneef. If I hurry, I might catch it.’ She jumped up. ‘Do come along, but do you mind if I go ahead? I’d hate to miss the beginning.’

  She could see I wasn’t going to jump up and rush anywhere. I watched her leave the tent, trot across the grass and out of sight.
I glanced at the programme; I would study it in a moment. First I had an appointment with a kudu sosatie.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sosaties were fantastic. The kudu wasn’t cut in the usual cubes but in small thin pieces, seared over hot coals. There were sweet sosaties made with pineapple and dried apricots. And savoury sosaties made with mushrooms and baby marrow. They were served with a choice of honey-mustard sauce or tomato-chilli sauce. I had a savoury sosatie with honey sauce followed by the sweet one with chilli sauce.

  The chilli sauce was in a red plastic squeeze-bottle, like a tomato-sauce bottle, and the honey-mustard in a yellow one. But they tasted nothing like the usual stuff you get with hotdogs. They were both delicious homemade sauces, full of flavour.

  And the kudu was tender, with that smoky fire taste. Kudu meat is quite subtle, not full of kick like springbuck.

  The sosaties weren’t very big, and I still felt hungry, and I got to wondering what the sweet one would taste like with the honey-mustard sauce and the savoury one with the chilli sauce. As a food writer, it was my duty to research this properly. I am glad I did, because it was the last sosatie I ate that had the best combination: The honey-mustard sauce with the sweet apricot sosatie.

  I went up to the Kudu Stall and asked the young blonde girl who was serving if she would give me the recipe for the sauces.

  ‘Ag, sorry, Tannie,’ she said, brushing some hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I already checked with my boss because another tannie also asked me, but he said, no, he won’t share them.’

  I was sorry about that. Recipes were made to be shared. I cheered up when I saw Hattie walking towards me.

  ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I do wish you’d carry a cell phone. The Pierneef talk was fabulous. There are some super little art galleries and second-hand bookstores. I can’t resist a good bookstore. How was your afternoon? What did you get up to?’

  ‘Research,’ I said. I wiped my mouth with a napkin, and threw it into a big green bin.

  ‘I could do with something to eat,’ said Hattie. ‘I forgot to have breakfast. And lunch.’

  I shook my head. How could someone do that?

  ‘Come with me to the Ostrich Club dinner,’ I said.

  ‘Super,’ she said, and we walked together out of the beer tent.

  The sun was setting, and the pale-blue sky was smudged with red. A little tractor drove past us, pulling small carriages filled with children. As we strolled along the walkway between the stalls, the sounds around us got louder. Music from the Ferris wheel. A band starting up in the beer tent.

  ‘I wonder who is playing tonight,’ said Hattie. She paused in the light of a buttermilk-pancake stall and looked at the programme. ‘It’s Kurt Darren. That should be lively.’

  We walked on to the Ostrich Supper Club. The stall was now decorated with big pink ostrich feathers, and a stove and pots were laid out on the trestle table where a man and a woman were chopping vegetables. He was roundish with a rough beard, and she was a skinny tannie with tight grey curls and a blue apron. Behind them, inside the stall with its canvas walls, was a dining table with a white cloth and candles. There were about six others standing and sitting here. They were dressed quite smartly, and I felt a bit shy in my veldskoene.

  The woman with the little curls looked up at me and smiled. ‘We’ll be having a cooking demonstration now-now,’ she said. ‘We’re making a sort of cottage pie with ostrich mince and sweet-potato topping. There are some ostrich recipe booklets here. They are free.’

  Hattie and I each picked up one. It was a little black-and-white stapled booklet. On the back was a list of the sponsors, which included a few wine and ostrich farmers.

  ‘Look, here’s a recipe of yours, Maria,’ said Hattie, pointing to my name on the page. It was the cottage pie recipe.

  ‘Are you Tannie Maria?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and this is my friend Hattie.’

  ‘Ag, you came. That is so nice.’ She called over her shoulder: ‘Annemarie, our guest of honour is here.’

  ‘Guest of honour?’ said Hattie to me.

  ‘Ja, well, I sort of helped, with my letters, to introduce them to each other.’

  ‘Tannie Maria?’ said a woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a pink dress that matched the feathers.

  She was looking from me to Hattie. She had never seen a picture of me, and I had not seen her. Though I would have recognised her because she’d mentioned the scars. Her face was lined with white scars like the way mud cracks when there is a long drought.

  Hattie pointed at me, and I offered her my hand, saying, ‘Annemarie.’

  She did not shake my hand but took it in both of hers and pulled me to her and gave me a hug.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said.

  ‘This is Hattie,’ I said, ‘the editor of the Gazette.’

  She held Hattie’s hand.

  ‘Come inside, come inside,’ she said. ‘Let me introduce you.’

  Ag, those people were so warm and friendly to me, they felt like the big family that I’d never had. What with no brothers and sisters, and my father gone so much, it was only when we visited with my cousins in the Free State that I really had a lekker nice big family like that. That little canvas stall was full of warm good food, delicious red wine, and talk and laughter. Annemarie was holding the hand of the round man with the beard, Stefaan, and sometimes I caught them looking at each other, and there was such happiness in their eyes.

  There was just one man at the table who did not look happy. He sat very quietly, his hair and eyes shiny and dark, his face unshaven. He was long and thin, and his clothes were an olive-grey. He reminded me of a black mamba. He didn’t eat much of what was on his plate, even though the cottage pie was excellent. I couldn’t have made it better myself.

  I got up to help Annemarie with the pudding. We stood at the table, dishing warm brandy tart into little bowls.

  ‘It’s so nice to see you happy,’ I said.

  ‘Ja,’ she said, ‘I am. And you helped me get here. When I first wrote to you, I was scared to go out of the house. And now I have this group of friends, and Stefaan. And it wouldn’t have happened if your letters hadn’t told us to go to the Agri to meet each other.’

  She gave me the cream to spoon onto the plates. I swallowed a yawn. My sleepless night was catching up with me. We carried bowls to the table, two at a time.

  The dark-eyed man turned down the brandy tart with cream. He looked at me with what seemed like anger, even hatred, when I offered it to him.

  ‘Is that guy okay?’ I asked Annemarie, as she and I came back to the trestle table to dish up pudding for ourselves.

  ‘Nick? Ag, shame,’ she said, covering the cream, so the little muggies didn’t fly in. ‘He was in my therapy group, but it moved to Ladismith before he had time to sort himself out. The group’s mainly for people with PTSD, but Nick, well, he’s got special problems of his own. It helped me so much, that group. Stefaan and I were dating, but I was still all messed up, and we couldn’t get . . . close, you know.’

  ‘Ja,’ I said, knowing too well.

  I took a mouthful of tart, and I closed my eyes and let the sweet warm brandy and cream sing down my throat to my belly.

  ‘Jirre,’ I said. ‘This is delicious.’

  ‘It’s my mother’s recipe. I don’t think Nick will work out here in the Supper Club. He needs a proper therapy group. His bad vibes can bring an evening down. Ag, shame. I wish I could help him.’

  ‘What’s that therapy group you spoke about?’

  ‘Well, after my . . . accident . . . There’s this guy, Ricus, who runs the group. He’s actually a mechanic. They call him the satanic mechanic.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t know why. Maybe because he comes from Hotazel, up north.’ She pronounced it ‘hot-as-hell’. ‘I heard rumours about a woman there, a snake charmer. It’s probably rubbish; you know how people talk. Anyway, he’s not a satanist; he’s a real healer.
I don’t know what I would have done without him, really.’

  ‘Can you give me the recipe for this brandy tart?’ I said, as I polished off the sticky pudding in my bowl. ‘And the mechanic’s details?’

  ‘Sure. Do you have people who write to you with post-traumatic stress disorder? You’ll like his approach. He thinks part of the healing process involves eating lekker food.’ Yummy food. ‘He’s got his group going again, just outside Ladismith. Too far for me to travel, but I wish Nick would go and stay there a while. I know Ricus’s number off by heart. Have you got a pen?’

  So that’s where I first heard of the man who was to turn my life the right way up and upside down: the satanic mechanic.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  There was an autumn chill in the air when Hattie and I left the Supper Club, but we felt all warm inside.

  ‘What a delightful evening,’ said Hattie. ‘Let’s go and check on Jessie, before we head to our guesthouse.’

  ‘She should have spoken to Slimkat by now,’ I said.

  As we walked back towards the beer tent, we could hear a band playing in the distance. Then there was the sound of live singing, chanting and stamping behind us.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Hattie, gripping my arm. ‘A riot.’

  It was a crowd of people toyi-toying in the darkness. A lead voice sang out in Xhosa, and the chorus chanted, ‘Hai! Hai!’ You could feel the ground shake as the whole group lifted their knees high and stamped down on the earth. ‘Hai! Hai!’

  We stepped back, beside a biltong stall, and I peeped out from behind the big jars of dried meat. The heart that was beating in my chest came from my father and my mother. My mother’s heart felt the fear of the Swart Gevaar – the Black Danger – which approached us, fists raised high. My father’s heart felt the excitement of the people taking power into their own hands. When he died, I learnt he had been an underground member of the ANC.

  ‘Hai! Hai, Hai!’ called the crowd as they were almost upon us.

  I wondered whether this was a protest against the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees itself. The KKNK was mainly a white Afrikaner event and might be seen as symbol of the old apartheid government.