Sometimes Joe says things like ‘I don’t know, man, sometimes I’m so scared. Since Engel died I keep having the feeling that something terrible is going to happen.’ He sniffs his armpit: ‘I can actually smell it. Fear.’
He works himself silly on that bulldozer, he goes in search of physical labour to counteract afflictions he can’t really put into words. He too will become human, naked, afraid and lonely like all the rest.
The Paris–Dakar rally is costing him a wad; he’s found a couple of sponsors, with Bethlehem Asphalt chief among them, and for the rest a few shopkeepers who are in for a laugh. They give him T-shirts with their names and logos on them. The arm wrestling has paid off well, and with that job of his he’ll make out all right. On 1 January he has to be in Marseille for the start of the rally. Sixteen days later the whole circus will grind to a halt in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt; just because it’s called Paris–Dakar doesn’t mean it automatically starts and ends there.
One day, when Joe comes by with a big map of Africa and shows me the route, I suddenly realize that he has an ulterior motive: Sharm el-Sheikh is on the Red Sea, not far from the village of Nuweiba where Papa Africa kept shop when he met Regina. But Joe says nothing about that, and I don’t press the point. He rolls up the map, then reconsiders.
‘Shall I hang it up in here?’ he asks. ‘Then you can sort of see where I am.’
It’s a nice, big classroom map on a scale of 1:75,000,000, a Wenschow relief-like map. Joe has traced the route with magic marker.
Outside the poppies stand out remarkably red against a seashell-gray sky, at times the sun breaks through at evening and colours the clouds. Wood pigeons and magpies hop about on the roof of my house, I can hear them clear as day. They pick at the moss growing on the corrugated asbestos.
I can move freely again, but Lomark feels different. The dyke, the streets have become foreign to me. The hope once prompted by Joe’s arrival is extinguished, we are what we were and always will be. Joe is a redeemer without promise; he didn’t bring progress, only motion.
‘We do our best,’ he said a long time ago, ‘we build an airplane in order to see the secret, but then you find out that there is no secret, only an airplane. And that’s fine.’
He cast a spell on our world, but after it rains the colours wash right off again.
The E981 is getting closer all the time, you can already see the machines in the distance and after dark there is a flood of artificial light from over there. The provincial highway is one big obstruction, people complain, but too late. Egon Maandag is rubbing his hands in glee, the E981 means a mega-order for him. In the end, though, I think it will work out badly for Bethlehem too; the lack of an exit will hurt his company’s logistics.
Summer blends into fall, I’m getting back into decent shape and sometimes wrestle against Hennie Oosterloo to keep the rhythm going. I don’t think Joe and I will be attending any tournaments this year, he’s too busy with other things. After Paris–Dakar we’ll see how it goes.
One day I run into India on the dyke, she’s moved out of the house and is studying ‘something with people’ in the west of the country. A light drizzle is falling from the yellow sky. India is pleased to see me, she’s dyed her hair black, which makes her face very pale.
‘Frankie, I haven’t seen you for such a long time,’ she says.
She looks like she’s going to cry. I take out the notepad and write that she looks like an Indian, with that hair of hers. The paper grows soggy in the rain. India runs her hand matter-of-factly through her hair.
‘This isn’t hair,’ she says, ‘this is a mood.’
We move off together toward Lomark, when we part she seems very concerned.
‘Keep an eye on Joe a little, would you, Frankie? He seems kind of . . . kind of lost lately. You know what I mean?’
I know very well what she means, and watch her go, in her olive-green army coat that Joe once wore and that belonged to their father, if I’m not mistaken. The coat is dark with rain and hangs heavily on her shoulders. She turns and gives me a little wave, the girl who you think smells faintly of peaches.
On 20 December Joe takes off for Marseille, to be there for the start of the race. He doesn’t have enough money for a flatbed, he’ll have to drive the whole way himself.
‘Gives me a chance to test the thing right away,’ he says.
He has meticulously traced out a route along the back roads; on the main roads there’s too much of a chance of being stopped and asked troublesome questions. Once the rally starts, though, he’s home free. I admire his stoic disregard for time, effort and gravity.
In the early morning hours the three of us – Joe’s mother, P.J. and I – go out to wave goodbye. It’s cold, it’s raining, the world is full of blue shades. Regina holds her umbrella over me so that only my left side gets wet. She’s dried up ugly, as we say around here when a woman doesn’t grow old gracefully. Dull is what she’s become, crushed by love.
The bulldozer is growling on the parking lot in front of the bank. Joe says, ‘Well, I guess I’ll get going now,’ and P.J. cries a little. They hug and Joe whispers something in her ear that I can’t hear. She nods sadly and bravely, they kiss. Then Joe holds his mother tight and tells her not to worry, that he’ll come home safely because ‘nothing can happen to you in one of these babies’. He shakes my hand and smiles.
‘Don’t forget your calcium, Frankie, OK? I’ll see you next year.’
He hugs P.J. one more time, she doesn’t want to let go.
‘See you soon, girlie. I’ll call.’
He climbs into the cab, it’s an awesome sight to see him up on that thing. He touches the gas, the wipers sweep across the glass, the monster starts to move. Joe sticks his hand out the open window, rolls out of the parking lot, honks and heads down the street. This is the last we’ll see of him until 1 January.
Then there is the TV bulletin on RTL 5, each night from eleven-thirty to midnight, with all the news about the rally. I watch in my parents’ living room, we see the drivers in a park near a grandstand, there’s a marching band and a cadmium-yellow bulldozer sticks out above all the rest – covered with stickers from Bethlehem Asphalt, Van Paridon Rentals, Bot’s butcher shop and a few other lesser sponsors. He made it, he got to Marseille along the back roads, and that in itself is a miracle. Now he only has to drive 8552 kilometres to Sharm el-Sheikh. At the table, Pa mutters that Joe’s ‘not right in the head, ever since those bombs, too’.
The first day, the caravan heads to Narbonne; the next day to Castellon in Spain, close to Valencia. In the harbour of Valencia the whole shooting match is loaded onto a ferry to north Africa. In Tunis Joe drives into the sun, one day later he reaches the desert. Sometimes, when the rally is filmed from the air, we catch a glimpse of him with a huge cloud of dust fanning out behind. The drivers make a beeline south, and on the fourth day Joe gets in just before the time limit. If you don’t make that, you can turn around and go home. I hear him mumble something about ‘the nick of time’. It seems like he was mistaken, that the bulldozer isn’t as perfect a desert vehicle as he thought. The landscape is beautiful but demanding, the first drivers become stranded in sand dunes and deep holes in dried-up wadis. The rest arrive in Ghadamès, a dot just across the Libyan border, in that part of the world where the map turns yellow with 6,314,314 square kilometres of desert. Joe is really in the Sahara now, with a bulldozer . . .
On the seventh day, and for the first time, he appears on the screen by himself, after a puzzling 584-kilometre stage along the Algerian–Libyan border. It’s already dark by the time he comes in off the desert and drives up to the encampment.
‘That’d be him,’ says Ma, who’s only half paying attention to the screen.
Joe’s face is brown and dirty, the camera crew’s lamps illuminate him against a royal-blue sky and a decor of tents, satellite dishes and men in motorcycle leathers bustling on and off. Joe looks over the interviewer’s shoulder and says hello to someone we can�
�t see. His T-shirt reads BETHLEHEM ASPHALT, LOMARK, with smaller letters underneath saying FOR ALL YOUR PAVED NEEDS. Why, the interviewer asks, did he decide to take part in a bulldozer?
‘It’s only a small step from a truck to a bulldozer,’ Joe says. ‘Except for a camel, I figured it was the best means of transportation in the desert.’
‘And is it?’
Joe grins tiredly.
‘No.’
‘Are you having a rough time?’
‘I’m sore all over, and it’s a pity that you don’t get to see much of the desert. I came here for the desert, but you have to concentrate on the road all day. Especially the ergs, dunes and stuff, sometimes that sand is like talcum powder. The landscape moves and you have to find your way through it.’
‘You’re taking part under the name “Joe Speedboat”, what does that mean?’
‘That that’s my name, that’s all.’
The interviewer sniffles.
‘Really?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well OK, Joe. What do you expect from the drive tomorrow?’
‘I haven’t had time yet to pick up the road book, I still have to eat and fill the tank, and the clutch is slipping.’
‘It’s going to be a real killer, I can tell you that much already: five hundred kilometres to Sabha, lots of rocks and across the sand hills of Murzuk Erg. How does that sound?’
‘It’ll work out.’
‘Good luck tomorrow, Joe. See you in Sabha.’
Joe walks away from the lamps, we see highlights from earlier that day, including a Dutch construction supervisor wrestling his motorcycle up a sand dune. He finally makes it to the camp two hours before Joe.
There’s a clear difference between the amateurs and the professional entries; the pros always arrive early at the camp, where their backup crews are waiting. They shower, put on clean clothes and appear before the cameras spick and span. The amateurs don’t have crews, often not even a mechanic. And because they usually arrive late at the camp, they’re the ones who show the desert most. They’re dirty, tired and rattled, and often sleep only a couple of hours a night. At five in the morning they’re awakened by the first Antonov transport planes leaving for the next camp, where a little city – complete with kitchens, toilets, a press tent, huge satellite dishes and even a fully equipped operating room – arises in the desert within a few hours. One hour later everything is already covered in dust and sand, the cursing from the press tent knows many languages.
Joe holds his own, the race heads northeast, and he completes one of the most difficult stretches of the rally with no real setbacks. Just after sunset he reaches Sabha. The camera crew is starting to warm to the idea of a Dutch driver in a bulldozer: that morning they filmed his departure from camp, and they’re waiting for him when he arrives. The scoop is raised on the front of the dozer, high in the cab Joe gives them the thumbs-up. Two ladder-like constructions have been attached to the side of the machine so he can free himself from the sand if he gets stuck; hanging on the back are two huge spare tyres.
The drivers are exhausted, bruised and lame. There are lots of accidents, one driver has been killed.
On Saturday afternoon P.J. drops in unexpectedly. She’s in Lomark for her mother’s birthday on Sunday. She’s wearing a coat with a silvery fur collar, and she shakes the water from her hair. I make tea and am grateful to see her.
‘Are you following Joe a little?’ she asks.
Glistening drops of rainwater are hanging from both ear-lobes. Every night, I write. He’s fantastic.
Together we look at the classroom map of Africa. Yesterday Joe left Sabha in the Libyan desert: the map shows no human settlements until the oasis at Siwa, just across the border with Egypt, where hopefully he will arrive tomorrow. It’s one vast, empty ocean, Joe is all alone between the sand and the stars.
‘He’s only called twice,’ P.J. says. ‘Once from France and the other time from Tunisia, or wherever it was. It feels like he’d be closer if he was on the moon.’
We drink tea, P.J. practices rolling cigarettes for me. The rollups are sort of wrinkly, but I’ll smoke them with love.
‘Do you write about him, about Joe?’
Indeed, I’ve started writing again, to ward off the emptiness. But I’m not sure I approve of my tone. The prose is as rectilinear as the border between Libya and Egypt, and perhaps equally void of illusions.
‘Could I read it? What are you laughing about?’
Thought you’d never ask.
‘Yeah, really? Is it OK?’
One condition – from start to finish.
‘Oh, I’d love that, I want to hear you talk. Do you know what I mean? For me, those books are your voice.’
A few minutes later she’s lying on her stomach on the rug with a pile of notebooks in front of her. The stove is lit, I smoke and watch her read, she’s put my desk lamp on the floor beside her and flips the pages at regular intervals. When she laughs I knock on the table; I want to know what she’s reading.
‘The way you write is so funny’, she says. ‘Especially about Christof, you’re really too hard on him. He’s such a sweetheart.’
I think about Joe, thundering eastward at that moment through a world of sand and stone, alone with his thoughts and his eyes on the tracks in front of him. P.J. makes little noises as she reads. I wish I had written more in order to keep her here, this steady happiness should last forever. I try to figure out how much time she’ll need, at least ten hours I reckon, maybe longer. On her left is the pile she still has to read, on her right the ones she’s already had, the ones about the time Joe’s bomb went off in the boy’s bathroom at school, the warm glow of the early years, before she arrived. P.J. herself appears in book eleven or twelve. She won’t get that far today; she asks me what time it is and is shocked when she sees the kitchen clock.
‘Is it OK if I come by tomorrow, early, Frankie? It’s so . . . fantastic, I wish I could read it all at once.’
That evening I see that Joe is still in the race; he’s had a fairly easy day and looks content. The program has promoted him to the subject of a daily item called ‘Speedboat in the Sand’. It lasts barely ninety seconds, recaps what he did that day and ends with a short interview in which Joe delivers a few pithy remarks. Tonight he’s wearing a T-shirt from Santing Painters, with a logo advertising the discount winter rates.
‘It’s actually more a battle against boredom,’ is how he summarizes the rally for us. ‘You don’t see anyone all day, the only person you can talk to is yourself, and at night you rub salve on your butt against the bedsores. Like living in a blind alley, if you ask me.’
The bedsore salve he got from me, I had a couple of tubes lying around that weren’t too far past their expiration date.
‘You don’t feel all alone, now do you, Joe?’ the interviewer badgers.
‘As long as you don’t lose your way, you’re never alone.’
Ma, on the couch beside me, nods.
‘Joe puts things really well.’
The next morning I shower at my parents’, pick up around the garden house and wait for P.J. Whether I’m expecting visitors, Ma wants to know. Around four in the afternoon darkness begins to fall and my cigarettes are finished. I’ve just started in on my fourth bottle of beer when the door opens and P.J. comes in. She doesn’t explain why she’s so late, I signal to her to get herself a beer. She opens the fridge, takes a bottle and pops the swing-top like a real pro.
Congratulations on your mom’s birthday, I write.
‘Pfff, we’ve got family over, real Afrikaners, all they talk about is that country. It’s completely exhausting. Hey, did you see it, “Speedboat in the Sand”?’
In his element.
‘He makes me laugh so hard, everything he says is so atypical for that whole clique.’
She rummages in her bag, pulls out a book, Herodotus’ Histories. She opens it and looks for something.
‘My father looked it up,’ she says. ‘Abou
t the Western Desert in Egypt, where Joe is now. Here, from page twenty-four on.’
I read about Cambyses, a ruler in some age or other who sends a big army into the desert to enslave a tribe called the Ammonians:
. . . the force which was sent against the Ammonians started from Thebes with guides, and can be traced as far as the town of Oasis, which . . . is seven days’ journey across the sand from Thebes. The place is known in Greece as the Island of the Blessed. General report has it that the army got as far as this, but of its subsequent fate there is no news whatever. It never reached the Ammonians and it never returned to Egypt. There is, however, a story told by the Ammonians themselves and by others who heard it from them, that when the men had left Oasis, and in their march across the desert had reached a point about midway between the town and the Ammonian border, a southerly wind of extreme violence drove the sand over them in heaps as they were taking their noonday meal, so that they disappeared forever.
‘A whole army gone, like that,’ P.J. says. ‘Imagine if archaeologists ever found them, mummified in the sand . . . My father says it was something like fifty thousand men.’
Are you worried?
‘A little: what if he gets lost? It’s so incredibly huge and empty, I mean, if a whole army can disappear . . . ?’
She looks at the books lying on the floor, precisely as she left them yesterday, and says: ‘Maybe I should get reading again, I still have a ways to go.’
A little later she’s lying with a pillow under her stomach, reading my History while I leaf through those of Herodotus. I think about that vanished army, overtaken by a violent southerly wind, huge waves of sand . . . Joe is out there somewhere, maybe he’s already crossed the Egyptian border on his way to the oasis at Siwa. He’s been gone for three weeks and is already halfway through the rally, his equipment is still intact, on good days he keeps up with the truck class. In my eyes he’s performing a miracle, but I can’t shake the thought that he’s being followed by a shadow that goes by the name of Achiel Stephaan.
Joe Speedboat Page 26