The Satanic Mechanic

by Sally Andrew

  ‘It was so . . . humiliating,’ she said, looking down at her trembling hands, then lifting her head up to face Ricus. ‘You can’t know what it feels like.’

  ‘A real violation,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, a violation. I was violated! Nothing has been the same since then. Nothing.’

  Tata made sympathetic clicking noises with his tongue.

  ‘But why must I be forgiven?’ she said. ‘It was them who did the crime.’

  ‘Ewe, Sisi,’ said Tata Radebe. Yes, Sister.

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ said Ricus.

  ‘My husband had a gun. He could have used it, but he just sat there.’ She punched her right fist into her left palm. ‘He just sat there!’

  ‘You feel angry with him for not protecting you?’ said Ricus.

  ‘He says he didn’t want us to get hurt. Says it could have been much worse. That the jewels were not worth risking our lives for. He was a coward, and now those jewels have gone. For ever.’

  She looked at me now, and the pupils in her eyes were big and black.

  ‘I shot one of them,’ she said. ‘The kathiki deserved it. I took the gun from my husband’s belt. They were running away, with my jewels, and I leant out the window and shot. One of them fell, and the others picked him up and they got away.’

  She buried her face in her hands, crying now. Ousies brought her a napkin, and Lemoni sobbed into it, saying, ‘Xriste mou. My Jesus.’ Or maybe she said, ‘My Jewels.’

  She looked up, at Dirk. Her eyes were red, her eyeliner a little smudged.

  ‘Forgiveness . . . why must I ask forgiveness from thieves?’ She looked around at us, her lower lip trembling. ‘It’s not my fault. It’s not!’

  ‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Ricus. ‘We are not blaming you for anything.’

  ‘You are. I can see it in your eyes. You think I’m a . . . spoilt brat.’

  Dirk shook his head in denial. Tata shook his head in another sad kind of way.

  ‘I hold no judgment of you,’ said Ricus. ‘It is for you to make peace with yourself.’

  She blew her nose and said, ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to get so . . . emotional. It’s just the . . . violation. It makes me so . . . upset. It’s so . . . unfair.’ She took out her handkerchief from her handbag and used it to wipe under her eyes. Ousies gave her a fresh napkin, and Lemoni blew her nose again. Fatima brought her some more tea.

  ‘Thanks, koukla,’ she said. ‘Thanks, doll. You are all very kind. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . make a fuss.’

  Tata Radebe ran the flat of his hand over his chest, and the praying mantis that was sitting on his knee flew into the air. Tata followed it with his gaze, high up into the sky.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  When Lemoni was calm and pretty again, Ricus asked the rest of us: ‘So how has it been going with the self-forgiveness?’

  Dirk spat into the ground, Fatima held her hand over her eyes, and Tata poked the tip of his kierie into the sand.

  I said, ‘It is not easy. To forgive myself, I must tell Henk what happened. But when the time comes to do it, the words just run away.’

  Ricus nodded, and Fatima said, ‘Forgiveness is not just something to give yourself. You must take action first. I have been a coward. I must do an act of courage. That is how I can forgive myself.’

  ‘Doll,’ said Lemoni, ‘you were brave with those satanists. You hit that devil-woman’s knife to the ground.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Fatima gave a small smile and shook her head. ‘But it was not enough.’

  Tata Radebe cleared his throat and said, ‘What you say is true, Mama. Because I was afraid, a good man lost his life. My umoya will be free when I save a life. A good life.’

  ‘Fok,’ said Dirk. ‘There is nothing I can do to make up for the bad things I have done.’

  Ousies put some wood on the fire, and orange flames jumped up.

  ‘And I’m not just talking about all those dead okes in Angola,’ said Dirk. ‘I know there is no way to make that right, but that is not the thing that sits on me, here, every day.’ He banged on his chest with hands like the claws of a falcon.

  We all looked at Dirk, who was now watching the fire. A rock pigeon cooed gently.

  ‘Nee, fok,’ he said. ‘I cannot forgive myself for what I did to my wife. And our son. Never.’

  Another pigeon replied to the first one. Doo doo doo.

  ‘Never,’ said Dirk.

  Both pigeons cooed together, loudly.

  ‘How can I?’ He looked at Ricus. ‘I don’t even want to.’

  ‘Tell us about your son, Dirk,’ said Ricus.

  ‘My wife is dead. I didn’t kill her. But I may as well have. I treated her like crap. And now she’s gone, and I can’t make it right, no matter what I do.’

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Jamie, his name is Jamie.’

  He looked into the fire again. The rock pigeons were quiet now, like they were listening, but there were other birds making little chirpy sounds. Ousies got up and started that quiet sweeping behind our chairs.

  ‘I dondered her when she was still pregnant,’ said Dirk. ‘Kicked her. The doctors say there was some genetic what-what, but I know I fucked him up. He came out all fucked up. Cerebral palsy. He’s in a home. In George.’

  ‘Do you love him?’ asked Ricus.

  ‘I . . . Fok off. Of course.’

  ‘When you think of him, is love the biggest feeling in your heart?’

  ‘Fok, man. What are you saying? Of course I care about him, he’s my boy.’

  ‘What is bigger in your heart? Love? Anger? Guilt?’

  ‘Of course I feel fokken guilty, man; I fucked him up. And I’m angry. With myself, not with him. He’s a good boy. A sweet boy. He looks just like his mother. I visit him. When I can. Sometimes I feel too bad to go, so I stay away, you know.’

  ‘Dirk, your son needs your love. If your heart is full of guilt and anger, you cannot give it to him. For the sake of your son, for the sake of the mother of your son, you need to forgive yourself. Because then your heart is free to love.’

  Dirk closed his eyes and his face went all red, as if he had stopped breathing. It started to get full like a balloon. Then something exploded; spit shot from his mouth, and his whole body started shaking, but he was silent. Then came the sound. First a small sound, like a little boy trying to get breath, and then a chugging like a steam train as the tears and snot poured down his face. Ousies gave him a napkin and then another napkin, and he filled them with his sobs.

  We sat with him for quite a while. His back curled over, like he was protecting a young animal on his lap. He cried, and then he was quiet. The rock pigeons cooed, and we sat with him. Then he cried some more. In my mind, it was difficult to forgive him, but somehow my heart did it so easily.

  After a while, he wiped his forehead and his cheeks, and blew his nose. He looked around him as if he was seeing us for the first time.

  ‘I love that boy,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Ricus was a good counsellor. He knew when it was time to be quiet and time to say something, and when it was time to eat.

  He turned my pot of fritters next to the fire, then pulled a long fat thing out of the black cast-iron pot and laid it on the grid on top of the coals.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ said Ricus.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Lemoni.

  ‘Pofadder,’ said Ricus.

  Lemoni squealed and swatted at the air with her hand. ‘Ew. How disgusting!’

  You shouldn’t be rude about food, but I felt sorry for her, so I explained, ‘It’s sausage.’

  ‘I am not eating puffadder,’ she said, ‘whatever way you cook it.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Dirk, who was more sorry for her than I was. ‘We’re not eating snake. It’s just the name of a kind of thick sausage.’

  ‘Oh. It still looks gross.’

  I frowned, but Ricus just smiled and adjusted the sausage on the grid.

&nb
sp; ‘Before we eat,’ he said, ‘bring your awareness back to your body and your senses.’

  I could smell my pumpkin fritters and hear the sausage grilling. I heard Mielie bark and looked up to see her herding her sheep towards the kraal. The sun was falling, and the long white thorns on the trees were now a reddish colour.

  Then the sun was gone, and there was just a bloody smudge in the darkening sky. Ricus dished up two plates with sausage and pumpkin fritters, and gave them to Ousies.

  ‘For Johannes and Kannemeyer,’ he said.

  Johannes was behind the red Mini van, tidying up, packing away his tools. Henk was further away, and Ousies walked out into the veld with his food.

  Fatima helped Ricus to serve Lemoni, Dirk, Tata and me. Dirk ate all his sausage in the time it took Lemoni to nibble on the edge of her pumpkin fritter.

  ‘This fritter is divine, koukla,’ Lemoni said to me.

  ‘And the pofadder is excellent,’ I said to Ricus, when I had swallowed a juicy mouthful. ‘Roasted coriander seeds?’

  ‘Ja, crushed. And dried thyme,’ said Ricus.

  ‘And Worcester sauce,’ said Dirk.

  ‘You have made pofadder, then?’ Ricus asked.

  ‘Ja, once, on a hunting trip.’

  Lemoni cut off a small piece and chewed. She nodded, like it was not bad.

  ‘What meat is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Springbok and kudu,’ said Ricus.

  ‘Liver, heart and kidney,’ said Dirk. ‘Stuffed into the intestine.’

  Lemoni coughed and some of her mouthful might have come out. But at least she didn’t say anything. And she did eat up all of her fritter.

  Ricus gave us napkins and cleared up the plates, then Ousies collected the napkins and swept us towards the fire. My pot was still there, with leftover fritters inside it.

  As I joined the fire circle, I heard Henk call ‘Kosie’ and saw a dark figure chasing what looked like a dog and a lamb. I guess Henk had been distracted by his dinner, and Mielie had taken the chance to herd Kosie to bed.

  We stood around the fire, looking into the coals. Tata, in his dark suit, almost disappeared into the night. Just the moonlit flash of his white T-shirt beneath his jacket made him visible. Lemoni was holding her handbag under her arm and cleaning her fingers with her handkerchief. Ousies offered her another napkin, which she used to polish her fingernails, then Ousies took it back again, adding it to her bundle of napkins. She dropped a handful of dried thyme on the fire and then began that song that sounds like distant winds and birds that live deep in the forests.

  She threw the pile of napkins onto the fire, and we all disappeared in the smoke. I closed my eyes so they wouldn’t sting. Far away, Henk shouted ‘Kosie!’ again. There was a clanging of Johannes and his tools. The sound of a truck on Route 62. An owl called, joining in with Ousies’s song. Whoo hooo.

  Then there was a short sharp sound.

  Very loud. Like a car backfiring. Or a gunshot.

  I stepped back out of the smoke and saw Tata, his hand to his heart. Ousies was catching him from behind as he fell. His fingers slipped, and I saw the hole leaking red onto his white T-shirt.

  The weight was too much for Ousies to hold, and she lowered him slowly to the ground. The napkins caught fire, and the light flared across Tata’s face. He had a small smile on the edge of his lips. His eyes were wide open, staring.

  I waited for him to blink. But he did not.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Ricus fell to his knees in the sand and pressed a napkin to the heart wound with one hand and put his fingers on Tata’s neck with the other. Ousies crouched on her haunches and rested her hand gently on top of Tata’s head.

  ‘Fok,’ said Dirk.

  Lemoni, her fingers pressed to her mouth, said, ‘Xriste mou!’

  ‘Allah yerhamo,’ said Fatima.

  ‘Henk!’ I shouted.

  Johannes appeared in the circle of panel vans with a spanner in his fist. Henk ran in with a gun in one hand and a lamb under his arm.

  ‘Nobody move,’ he said, aiming the gun towards our small circle at the smoking fire.

  The lamb wriggled, and he put it down. Henk pulled a torch from his belt. Lemoni clutched her handbag to her chest, and Fatima wiped her hands slowly down the sides of her dress.

  ‘I mean it, stay still,’ said Henk.

  He shone a bright torchlight on us, and Dirk blinked like it hurt his eyes, and again said ‘Fok.’

  Henk turned his light onto the circle of panel vans that surrounded us, and onto the moonlit veld beyond. The lamb ran under the black Defender van. The rest of us stayed very still.

  ‘What happened?’ said Henk, looking at me.

  ‘Tata,’ I said. ‘He’s been shot.’

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Ricus, still pressing the napkin onto Tata Radebe’s chest.

  The napkin had a stain like a red flower.

  ‘Who shot him?’ said Henk.

  Fatima said softly, ‘I couldn’t see.’

  Lemoni said, ‘It was from behind me, I think.’

  ‘There was smoke,’ I said, ‘from the fire. I closed my eyes a moment. It sounded close. Very loud.’

  ‘Ja, close,’ said Ricus.

  Henk swept the torch across us and let it rest on Dirk.

  ‘Put your weapon down slowly, on the ground,’ he said.

  It was then I saw the pistol that Dirk was holding by his side, just behind his thigh.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’ I’m not sure if I said it out loud or if it was a sound drumming inside me. No. No. Ousies was singing a soft song that went with my drumming.

  I could not accept Tata was dead. I could not believe that Dirk . . .

  Dirk put his gun down on the ground.

  ‘Put your hands in the air. Take a step back. Now,’ said Henk.

  ‘Fok, nee,’ said Dirk, shaking his head but stepping back and lifting his arms up as Henk picked up the gun on the sand.

  Henk sniffed the end of the barrel before putting the pistol into a plastic bag.

  ‘You can smell I haven’t used it,’ Dirk said, ‘I was just—’

  ‘Wait,’ said Henk, who was now on his cell phone.

  Henk barked orders in Afrikaans into his phone. The sight of Tata Radebe lying there on the ground, and the sound of my heart beating No No No made it difficult to listen, but I heard him calling for an ambulance, for Piet Witbooi, and a team for this and that.

  Mielie barked in the distance. Everything was happening very slowly and also very fast. The song of Ousies made time stretch in a strange way. Her voice was like a jackal from the other side of the Swartberge that was singing to its family far off in the Langeberge.

  It felt like she was singing about the life of Tata. His birth and his growing up, and all the things he had done and felt and lost.

  Henk did not silence her, but when he spoke again, she sang more quietly; the sound hummed in our bodies.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Henk said.

  ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ said Dirk.

  ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ said Henk, as he knelt down and put his fingers on the neck of Tata. ‘Anything you say can be used against you.’

  Tata and Dirk remained silent. The song of Ousies filled the air again. Henk shone his torch around our feet, at the mess of our tracks around the fire. Then he stroked his torchlight over the sand that Ousies had swept with her broom.

  ‘Who else has got weapons?’ he said. ‘Now is the time to give them up.’

  Ricus reached for his belt. ‘I have got a revolver.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A knife in a sheath at the back of my shoe,’ said Ricus.

  Henk removed both these weapons from Ricus and put them in Ziploc bag.

  To Johannes he said, ‘Put that spanner down, on the chair over there.’ Johannes put it down. ‘Then come stand over here with the others.’

  The crickets had now joined the sounds of Ousies. She was still squatting beside Tata, sin
ging the song of his life.

  ‘Tannie Maria,’ said Henk, ‘I need your help searching the women. Starting with this big handbag here.’

  Lemoni’s eyes went wide, and she clutched the bag tighter.

  ‘Open it up, ma’am,’ he said to her.

  ‘You want better light?’ said Ricus. ‘We can turn on the headlights.’

  Henk nodded.

  ‘Johannes,’ said Ricus, and Johannes started towards a panel van.

  ‘He stays,’ said Henk. ‘I haven’t searched him yet. You go.’

  Ricus turned on three sets of panel-van headlights; we all blinked like rabbits, and Henk put his torch back in its pouch.

  ‘Tannie Maria,’ he said. ‘Take the bag and empty out every item on the chair. Look for weapons of any kind.’

  I did not take the bag but waited for Lemoni to pass it to me.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said.

  I’d never searched through another woman’s handbag before. When I carried a bag, it was just for keys, a small hairbrush and my lipstick (and maybe some pills). Lemoni’s had a lot more. A whole make-up kit. A cell phone. A mace spray, which I held up to show Henk because it was a weapon. A big purse with money and cards. A little velvet box.

  ‘Please,’ she said as I opened the box, ‘don’t drop them.’

  Inside was a pair of earrings for pierced ears. The sparkled like giant drops of water in the panel-van lights. I showed them to Henk and put them back in the box.

  ‘Any other weapons?’ he asked us all.

  The owl called Whoo hoo.

  ‘Maria, pat these two women down.’ He pointed to Lemoni then Fatima. ‘Look for a gun.’

  I looked at him, and I looked at them. I did not like playing policewoman, treating my friends like criminals. Henk gave a quick angry shake of his head, his moustache trembling. He glanced at Tata Radebe lying on the ground. ‘We are going to find the killer,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t think one of us . . .’ said Lemoni, but she lifted her arms up so I could run my hand down her sides. Her clothes were so tight, I could see there was no place to hide anything, but I patted here and there, in case.

  Henk searched Johannes with one hand while he held his gun in the other.