The past two weeks have brought the happy news that both Kopano Matlwa and Rosamund Kendal – pictured together at left – have returned to the SA Lit scene, with follow-up novels to their very well received Coconut and The Karma Suture, respectively. (And they’re staying in the Jacana stable to boot.)
Today, Kendal’s hilariously-titled The Angina Monologues is in the spotlight on BOOK SA. The novel tracks “three women medical interns from vastly different backgrounds [who] are sent to a rural KZN hospital where gang assassinations and rogue snakes are facts of life and AIDS simply does not exist.”
Click here to keep reading the tantalizing blurb, and keep scrolling for a good taste of Kendal’s latest:
* * * * * * * *
Rachael called in her next patient, a young man dressed in overalls who walked into casualty with a limp. He told her that he had been bitten by a snake.
‘A snake? Did you say a snake?’ Rachael asked, hoping that she had heard incorrectly. She had never had to treat a snake bite before.
She had never even seen a snake bite before. In fact, the only snakes that she had ever had any contact with had been safely behind glass at the reptile park. ‘Where did it bite you?’ she asked.
‘In the garden. I was busy gardening.’
‘No, I meant where on your body did it bite you?’
The man lifted his trouser leg to reveal a swollen, red lower leg.
The puncture mark was visible at the centre of the swelling. Rachael looked around casualty for Dr Ribbentrop; her knowledge was far too limited to manage a snake bite on her own. She caught sight of him leading an extended Indian family into one of the free cubicles.
‘I’m just going to speak to one of the other doctors quickly,’ she explained to the patient.
As she was walking away she vaguely remembered learning that one should always ask snake-bite victims what kind of snake had bitten them, or at least what it had looked like. She went back and asked the patient, glad that she had remembered to do so before she spoke to Dr Ribbentrop so that she would be able to give him an answer when he asked her. Engrossed in self-congratulation, she was only partially aware of the patient opening an old cooler box in response to her question. The slate-grey snake inside, obviously desperate for freedom, flung itself from the cooler box as soon as the lid had been lifted and headed straight in Rachael’s direction.
Rachael screamed. It was a scream so primal that it was partially out of her mouth before she actually registered why she was screaming.
She jumped backwards onto the examination bed, a feat that she would never have been able to perform without the presence of a hissing reptile to incite her, and continued her screaming from the relative safety of one metre above ground. Sister Naidoo was also screaming now, and started running in the opposite direction to the snake, and the large Indian family that Dr Ribbentrop had been on the verge of seeing had spread itself out in various panic-stricken directions. Only Dr Ribbentrop seemed calm. Rachael watched the snake slither over the grey linoleum floor, on which she had been standing a few seconds earlier, and make its way beneath one of the casualty cupboards.
‘Right, could we please have some calm in here!’ Dr Ribbentrop shouted. ‘It’s only a bloody snake.’
Startled anew by his voice, Rachael abruptly closed her mouth and clamped off her screaming. The casualty unit was in chaos.
Rachael’s patient had tried to jump up onto the examination bed next to her but, because of his lame leg, had fallen and was now lying on the floor below Rachael, trying to drag himself in the direction of the exit. Sister Naidoo was standing on the sisters’ desk with a fork in one hand and a letter opener in the other (Rachael couldn’t imagine that either would be particularly effective against a snake, since both were rather close-proximity weapons). The sick child who belonged to the extended family, and whom Dr Ribbentrop had been about to put onto a nebuliser for asthma, had pulled the nebuliser from the wall when his mother grabbed him to escape. The child was clinging desperately to the disconnected mask, inhaling ineffectively through it, while oxygen was escaping into the room. The asthmatic child’s father had managed to pull himself up into one of the large stainless steel sinks at the back of casualty. Unfortunately, the sink already contained a bloodied delivery set that had been used for a birth earlier in the day, and the placenta from the same birth.
‘My God, my shattered nerves,’ he wailed, realising what he was standing in. He extricated himself from the bloody mess, shaking pieces of placenta from his trousers. ‘My shattered nerves,’ he reiterated. ‘I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I can feel the poking starting in my chest. I need something to calm me down.’
He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt with shaking hands and pulled out a single cigarette and a lighter.
The next few seconds seemed to Rachael to unfold in slow motion. She heard Dr Ribbentrop screaming something at the man. She heard his shout a split second later, just before the very loud bang. The explosion, as the leaking oxygen combusted, was almighty. Luckily, the gas had been on a very low flow rate.
Sister Naidoo sprang from the desk, dropped her fork and letter opener and, with extraordinary presence of mind, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall behind her. Remarkably, it was still working. The fire was quickly put out, but by the time Sister Naidoo had gained control of the fire extinguisher the room was covered in a thick layer of white foam. The mother, now resembling a bedraggled snowman, grabbed her asthmatic child and ran from casualty. The father followed, leaving behind him a trail of placenta-specked froth. The snake was nowhere to be seen.
It took Rachael and Sister Naidoo and Dr Ribbentrop and one of the porters and the hospital cleaner two hours to create some sort of order from the mess.
‘It was a Mozambican spitting cobra, an m’fezi,’ Dr Ribbentrop said to Rachael matter-of-factly afterwards. ‘I’ve sent your patient through to the snake-bite unit.’
‘Oh, fantastic,’ Rachael said, relieved that she no longer had to manage the patient. She should have known that snake bites would be sent to a special unit. It was probably somewhere in Durban; perhaps the patient had even been airlifted there.
‘Down the corridor and to the left,’ Dr Ribbentrop continued.
‘You can go see your patient there.’
Rachael’s heart didn’t just sink, it plummeted. She still had no clue how to treat the snake bite and she was far too embarrassed to ask Dr Ribbentrop now. From the way he had looked at her while he was wiping fire-extinguisher foam from the casualty floor, she got the distinct impression that he blamed her entirely for the huge casualty fiasco. She would have to hope that there was a sister in the snake-bite unit who could give her some advice. She turned around and was about to walk away when she remembered the snake. It had disappeared beneath the cupboard but had not subsequently reappeared.
‘What about the snake?’ she asked Dr Ribbentrop, momentarily too concerned about being bitten to worry about what he thought of her. ‘Will you get someone in to remove it?’
‘The m’fezi is a shy snake; it won’t attack unless it’s cornered,’ he answered impatiently. He was still wiping foam from his hair. ‘They can spit, though,’ he continued, a small smile starting to flicker at the corner of his mouth. ‘According to some records they can spit from a distance of up to two metres with incredible accuracy. They usually hide in rock crevices … or any other dark place,’ he said, looking pointedly at the bottom of the cupboard. Rachael made her way as quickly as possible from casualty to the snake-bite unit.
The Handbook of Trauma (proudly published in the United States of America) informed Rachael that she should administer antivenom as soon as possible in order to treat the bite. When she asked the sister in the unit for antivenom, the sister looked at her as though she had asked for cocaine.
‘For that bite?’ the sister asked. Rachael nodded hesitantly. ‘We’ll have to order some from Pretoria,’ the sister continued doubtfully.
‘Don’t you usually treat with antivenom?’ Rachael asked, beginning to doubt her trauma handbook. The sister shook her head. Obviously, they did things differently in America. Since she didn’t possess a South African trauma book (she made a mental note to buy one as soon as possible), Rachael had no option but to swallow her pride and go ask Dr Ribbentrop for help. She walked back to casualty, carefully avoiding the cupboard, and asked Dr Ribbentrop if he could help her manage the patient. Contrary to what she had expected, he wasn’t at all irritated with her. While they walked back to the snake-bite unit together, he gave her a quick tutorial on the management of snake bites.
‘Ninety-eight per cent of snake bites aren’t fatal,’ he reassured her. ‘Giving antivenom is usually more dangerous than the bite itself.’
By the time Rachael got back to casualty after treating her snakebite victim, Seema, the rather aloof Indian intern, had arrived and was getting ready to take over from her. Rachael handed over her patients to Seema and then lingered in the unit for a while, listening to the sisters and staff singing. It amazed her that they managed to harmonise together, without an instrument to guide them. It also amazed her how much energy they seemed to be able to muster for their singing after working a full twelve-hour shift. She was so exhausted she was sure that if she tried to sing all that would emerge would be a tired whimper. She felt something wet her ankle and bent down to wipe it off. As she did so, she felt another squirt, this time on the back of her neck. She was looking up at the ceiling to see where the water was dripping from when she realised that what she had felt had not been a drip. It had been a distinct spray.
Dr Ribbentrop’s words played through her mind like somethingfrom a horror movie: spitting cobras could aim from two metres. She screamed and clambered onto the nearest examination bed, something she was by now getting good at. The singing stopped abruptly and Rachael waited for the sisters to start running out of casualty, or at least to climb to places of safety, but they remained where they were – and started laughing. Something was not right.
Rachael slowly turned to look behind her. One of the community service doctors was standing with a dental syringe and needle in his hand, laughing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered. ‘Dr Ribbentrop told me what happened and I couldn’t let the opportunity slip. I’m really sorry.’
He exploded into a fresh bout of guffaws, which rather threw in doubt the sincerity of his apology. Rachael didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or shout at the doctor. Before she could make up her mind, he extended his hand in greeting.
‘Shane Pillay,’ he said.
He has nice eyes, Rachael noticed. Under different circumstances, she probably would have thought him quite good-looking. She decided to join in the laughter.
BOOK SA is pleased to bring you this excerpt from his book:
* * * * * * * *
Clouds pass overhead like a fleet with sails billowing against the blue, their shadows rallying across the veld under the noon sun. A white bank masses beyond where the town sits in its hollow this side of the river. The route on horseback he remembers like lines on his own hand, like a story known without quite imagining all that could be found in its reading. Early spring rain, surely. When he sees the collapsed roof of Ounooi’s old farm stall he gears down and fumbles for the indicator on the wrong side of the steering wheel. He turns on to the gravel as Leonard Cohen’s voice on the radio sings, ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
He steps out, leaving the car to idle. The gate is unlocked, as Benjamin said it would be. The smell of recent rain on grass and soil fills his head. It is as if he has never been away. Sky and cloud reflect in the water beneath the cattle grid as he pushes the gate across it. Tire-tracks mark the sand and gravel, the roadside undisturbed except for shoe and foot prints. He sees purple and pink cosmos that have shot up out of season through fences above new green. Paradys – Dawid & Beth Steyn. Rust has nibbled away part of the white lettering. A stranger might take a moment to infer the P and s of the farm’s name. But he is not a stranger.
The plane landed well ahead of schedule and he’d planned a detour along back-roads as his one indulgence before he leaves again tomorrow night: a few hours’ drive, skimming beauty that could make him weep. After the paperwork at Avis and exchanging dollars for rands he found his way around the construction work at Johannesburg International. No longer Jan Smuts, as it still was when he left. Free of the slow morning traffic he sent a text to Kamil: Got in early. Now in car. Sleep well, Love M.
He’d called his brother on the farm. ‘Welkom tuis, Michiel,’ Benjamin said – welcome home – and asked about the flight and whether he’d slept. A few hours from Atlanta he’d tried to watch a movie. Unable to ditch the virulence of memory he took a pill. He slept for at least eight hours across the Atlantic and woke from a dream – a waking dream from which he’d almost reached sideways to feel for Kamil – of Ounooi bodysurfing, and faces and voices he could not distinguish from what was there before he thought he’d fallen asleep. He gazed at the dry landscape growing visible as if it were lifting towards him. Angola. He was sure he recognized the green Kunene as they passed over into Namibia. His head dropped low to the window to see eastward into the sun, searching for what might be the Caprivi corridor and the Kwando or Zambezi rivers.
‘Your wife not with you?’ From the woman beside him, her eyes on his ring finger as he filled out his passport number on the landing form.
‘I came alone.’ It’s against the law for me to get married, Kamil would have said, giving his bittersweet smile, enjoying the consternation, the uncomfortable silence or hurried disavowal.
Ochre and brown thirty thousand feet down; space and land vaster than ever in memory, divided here and there by a straight white road. Into his drowsy mind came a convoy of Buffels on a track of fine white powder, a prehistoric centipede, each military vehicle a tiny rectangular vertebra. Occasionally he’d make out a homestead or a kraal, dry riverbeds . . . here is my hand, take it, let’s jump into the abyss, whatever happens; even if we fall to death, let us at least be hand in hand . . . Ounooi or Karien had underlined the words in a copy of a Brink novel, kept with the other Bs on the highest shelves behind Ounooi’s desk. Had the book once been banned?
‘We’ve been taking our anti-malarials for the past month.’ The passenger beside him invited conversation.
‘You should be fine.’ He smiled before twisting his back to see further out.
Had he dreamed of the doctor? Or Lieutenant Almeida on a quiet hot night with the glow and smell of cigarettes? On his flight out of here he’d sat at the back of the plane, in the smoking section. This morning, for the first time in years, he’d longed for a cigarette. Over Botswana the pilot announced the Makarikari Salt Pans and the Limpopo River; then marks of denser population, bigger towns, smoke rising from coal power plants, tarred roads tying everything into a net of scars. Land more deliberately mapped and fenced. Like crossing from Mexico into California. Waiting in line for the bathroom he set his watch nine hours ahead. In the cubicle’s drone he hunched awkwardly to wash his face and clear his head, brush his teeth and take a pee.
‘Watch for potholes once you reach the Free State. Keep to the right side of the road,’ Benjamin had said on the phone.
‘The left.’
‘Left is right here, wise-guy. Don’t forget. Alida can iron your church clothes while you take a shower, and she’ll have a bite ready for you.’
‘I thought I’d take a look at things on the way and stay at the hotel in town. I can have lunch at the Wimpy.’
‘The Wimpy closed years ago, Michiel. They’re opening a McDonald’s. Are you sure you want to stay in town?’
‘I think it’s easiest.’
There was a long pause from the phone. ‘Do that then. We’ll meet you at church. My wife and children are looking forward to meeting you.’
A while later his phone rang. Benjamin again: ‘Seeing as you’re early, Oubaas suggests you fetch him from Paradys. Giselle and I’ll go ahead to see to everything at church.’
‘You think that’s a good idea, Benjamin?’
‘It was his suggestion, Michiel.’ A pause after his name, long enough for the guttural ch of his brother’s Afrikaans to register. ‘He’s reaching out. It’s time you quit your crap. He and Alida will be waiting for you.’
‘Oubaas and Alida both?’ He tried to keep skepticism from his voice. It’s a funeral, he reminded himself. Take the path of least resistance. Get it over with. ‘Alida is like his shadow. She’ll have him ready and dressed. Use the disabled parking space at the church.’ Michiel heard the signal of an incoming text message. ‘I’ll go by the farm, if you think that’s wise.’
‘Alida has the remote for the homestead gate and she’ll lock everything again after you drive out. This must be difficult for you, Michiel,’ Benjamin added. ‘But more so for Oubaas than for any of us.’
Beyond the cattle grid, towards the koppie, cattle browse in the unplowed field. He again inhales the smell. This, then, is where the reunion with the old man is to take place: with him in his Levis and Nike Airs made in Cambodia, on the prohibited soil with a name that reads arady. Not beneath the spire with its bell (which tolls in B flat, Karien said), within the tall white walls and oak paneling, attired in formals. Not quite as he has imagined over the past few days. Not with his father, anyway. Though with Benjamin it will be at the church after all. And with Karien, too, who will not, he knows, miss Ounooi’s service. Mourning overshadows resolve, if only temporarily. I figured things out on my own and took care of it. What I know today is that I have no need to hear from you or see you again. In the early years – in England and Australia, when his thoughts still came mostly in Afrikaans, before San Francisco and Kamil’s domestication of him – his mind played with encountering anyone from here. He had pictured the other’s face and his own feigned indifference when, offhandedly, he would say oh, that was a long time ago. I scarcely remember those days. The one time he bumped into someone he knew – the woman on the jetty in the Solomons – he’d tried, only to see the deception register at once. Mostly he’d imagined seeing Karien. Had he come across her he would have fallen to his knees before her. He’d pictured De Niro in The Mission, climbing beside the Iguazu Falls to the Guaraní. With what he would have weighted himself in place of armor and weaponry, he did not know.
Oubaas suggested you come to Paradys. Transport him to the church. Difficult to reconcile with all he knows, remembers. Have age and the shakes indeed mellowed the old goat? Nothing Ounooi said during her visit gave any such thing away. Echo to her husband’s Narcissus, her loyalty rarely allowed recognition that her sons’ father was an impossible man. And what of Benjamin’s it’s time you quit your crap? The phrase’s ordinariness suggested that culpability – the source of individual and shared grief in a decade and a half of silence – somehow belonged to Michiel.
Sally-Ann Murray’s first novel, Small Moving Parts, has been receiving the kind of critical attention every author hopes for upon debut. Both Michiel Heyns and Sharon Dell carroted it -as did Omeshnie Naidoo – and Murray is set to participate in the upcoming Time of the Writer, which will help raise the book’s profile even higher.
The “playfully post-modern” novel is centred on the life of a little girl, Halley Murphy. Get to know her world:
* * * * * * * *
For Halley, these may be flats, with flat roofs, but Kenneth gardens is never a flat surface. okay, she thinks, so yes, if they were seen from high above. But for the tenants this is never, though Halley is always trying to figure out how to climb onto the forbidden roof parapet so she can see down, like a bird, and maybe fly. How would you know unless you try?
For now, though, she’s obliged to live from the ground up, which is an altogether more complicated kind of complex. At Kenneth gardens each block has its own main entrance, a single doorless opening into a squat, curved tower. Except for ixia Court, which has a functional, straight-roofed entrance hall. Halley believes that this is the only block with such a mediocre distinction, and it troubles her, because she likes the surprising accomplishment of the other buildings’ curves, the hint of superfluous style and refinement. The beautiful fullness which swells the access to every block except the one in which they live, where the blunt, straight line rules supreme.
Unfair! And of all places, she thinks, it is the entrance to their block which ought to be rounded, because their family is only females. there’s her mother, and Jen, and Halley. Which altogether makes 3.
Mommy sleeps in the main bedroom, you and your sister in the other one, and there’s a small enclosed porch off the back just for breathing space.
There is no substantial difference, in truth, between the block in which the Murphys live and all the rest. Whether the entrance is curved or straight, any pretence at flourish falls away as soon as you walk into the poky entrance hall, take two steps and come smack bang face to face with three rows of gaping wooden postboxes. Six, triple-stacked: 1 2. 3 4. 5 6.
Whichever block you live in, then, Ixia or Arum, Watsonia or Jasmine, any of the others . . . in all of them your options are limited. You can go up the stairs: on each floor there are two flats, shouldered side by side. or, if you don’t want to head in, you can turn around and leave, wondering where to go. Or you can forget about what your mother has taught you concerning not messing with people’s private things, and climb into a postbox of your choice. if you could.
Since you can’t, using the matches you’ve stolen from your mother’s bag, or if those are finished the plain old sun forced to an excruciating focus with your pocket magnifying glass, you set alight the bundle of dry leaves and newspaper that you’ve wrapped around your own stinking shit and stuff it into the postbox marked number 5. And then you scarper, run like crazy and leave people to think it’s the fault of the neighbourhood hooligans. Who of course are boys.
Because you are never naughty. You try not to be naughty. You are good. You try hard to be good. though you do not yet understand that the existence of love presupposes that damage has been done. People may not know it, but love is a compensation; it must make up for what has been lost.
*
From the back porch, ixia Court overlooks Walton Place, which is a short side street. Most of the other flats lie along Queen Mary Avenue, which is very long. if she goes out to the narrow front balcony, shared by all the tenants, Halley imagines she can see everything that’s happening on the avenue.
In the middle of Queen Mary are wide traffic islands, planted with trees. The exotic triumphal march begins way down the bottom in Congella with tall, waving palms, the long trunks thicker than elephants’ legs. then it’s on to a broad-canopied stand of orange flamboyants, and then delicate pink camel’s foot near the Murphys’ block. After, the pattern almost repeats, but as if it can’t quite remember what it’s supposed to be doing, and then gradually it gives up, disappearing into tall grass and grow what may. But even once the islands end, the avenue continues in an absent-minded way, winding over the hill, up down up, until with some relief it arrives at the University.
Here, it is delighted to be reconciled so unexpectedly with King George, and the two, well met, proudly survey the Jubilee gardens. Back down the slopes, even the Murphys’ end of Queen Mary would be quite scenic if the men from the flats didn’t use the shady islands as a parking lot and a convenient place to wash and fix their cars. Come weekend, rags, beers, radios and soapy buckets are hauled over from the flats; jumper cables, spanners, the works, are jumbled noisily out of gaping boots. You can’t go barefoot among this tinkering, because the men empty ashtrays and other rubbish on the grass. there’s lots of stompies and crushed papers and spark plugs. gnarled wire, broken glass. So it’s not at all regal, despite Queen Mary.
And except for Mary, who was obviously a queen, the people after whom the roads have been named are strangers to the tenants of the flats. Nobody can tell Halley about Walton, who is their side street. Or the mysterious Kenneth of Kenneth gardens, who maybe once owned this whole place when it was really a garden.
Most people don’t seem to care about the anonymity of the names. A road’s a road. the street is just your address, and while it would be nice to live somewhere better, here’s not always so bad. Nora tells her eldest that whatever it’s called, a road is mainly a way of getting somewhere. From A to B, as people are fond of saying, Nora laughs. Which Halley doesn’t reckon is really that far, if you look around.
For the children in the flats, what matters most is that you walk half-road down Queen Mary to get to the tearoom, where sometimes you have money for sweets. A sucker. Chappies. Nigger balls. Creamy toffees.
But money aside, for Halley and Jennie there are particular complications, as their mother has decided that her daughters’ singular directional arrow is up.
So they are the only children they know from the flats who are enrolled in a school called Convent High, on the prominent hill at the height of Queen Mary, the crown upon her majestic head. it’s a high school and primary school both, so the adjective ‘high’ means elevated, and perhaps refers also to the panoramic vista over Durban. indeed, given that the institution is run by the Sisters of the Holy Family, it may also be intended as an invocation to raise the eyes upwards in spiritual aspiration, the dutiful desire of clumpy clay to be transformed into heavenly bliss.
This upwards distinction in the lives of the little Murphys continues an earlier precedent, when they were sent to Davaar Kindergarten, a progressive infant establishment run by two Swiss-german sisters, the Misses Zwinckel.
Kinder garten: Kenneth gardens. Perhaps Nora found the sounds pleasing, relished a certain balance in the euphony. Certainly, she knew from excellent repute that the school offered a caring home from home and a sound educational grounding. Both of which, of course, she’d already been working on herself.
People had snorted, called her a hard taskmaster for showing and sounding a boxed series of phonic flash cards to her first-born when she was but a speechless infant. But by the age of two, though still a spindling, Halley Murphy was able to read. the proof of the pudding, Nora knew, lay in the eating. Not that she had much taste for it herself.
In order to secure a place for Halley and then later Jennie at Davaar, their mother put her pride in her pocket and requested special fee arrangements, and having heard her account, the refined foreign ladies were happy to accommodate, given the woman’s evident respectability and her selfless efforts to rise above unfortunate circumstances. thus are the little girls enrolled in their diurnal round. There they are then, four, and three. Halley and Jennie in their vanilla pinafores buttoned at the shoulder, the scalloped skirts finished in royal blue satin stitch. the girls’ faces are shielded by broad white panamas, and each child clutches a blue cardboard suitcase stencilled in white with her name. Halley Murphy. Jeanné Murphy.
Nora puts the children on the corporation bus every morning, their season tickets looped in clear plastic luggage tags around the suitcase handles. Each time, she arranges with the driver about where to stop, although Halley knows perfectly well since she’s already been doing this for several months by herself. like her mother, she has a good sense of direction. When nursery school is over at midday, the sisters know to wait outside until the Umbilo number 7 bus comes and then they get on and go all all all the way until the driver stops at the tearoom on Queen Mary, and then they get off together and walk home.
The slightly bigger girl, baby blonde hair turning to brown under her hat, she likes to hurry since there is always still so much to do. And she chides her slowpoke sister, who dawdles, swings her hat by its elastic like an Easter-egg basket, tries to twirl it on her finger, the sun glinting upon her dark, shiny curls.
For the rest of the afternoon, they play with their friends until their mother comes back from work. Which could be soon after two, if she can do half-day, or later, if not. All depending.
During which time, the girls shift for themselves, Halley keeping an eye on Jen.
* * * * * * * *
Small Moving Parts is published by Kwela, an imprint of the NB group
It is with much trepidation that I begin this new life, and with it, this journal. I have not attempted such a record for decades, not since I was a girl. Yet I find myself alone at this table with a pen in my hand and an exercise book in front of me, hoping that these scribblings can help me. This, and also my watercolours, albeit in different ways.
Circumstance keeps arriving at my door. It might appear that I chose to come here, but it wasn’t so. Mummy died, leaving me unexpectedly with no roof over my head because of an unfortunate debt of which I had no prior knowledge. Phoebe came down for the funeral, and happened upon an advert for this position that had miraculously become available. I am fated. God plants my every step.
The irony is that Mummy could not abide the rich, and warned against their pernicious company, yet because of her death I have arrived, hat in hand, at their doorstep. I will, however, take due precautions. Mummy was right in that money is a potential corrupter, particularly in combination with idleness. She need not fear, however, as in this position on my current salary, I will not be susceptible to the vices of the wealthy!
I have a carbon copy of my letter of application, stuck into the back of this journal. Phoebe looked it over before I sent it. She says I have a good handwriting, but I think the loops come out too childishly.
Dear Mr Talbot,
I would like to apply for your advertised position of Matron. I do not have experience directly in the field, but I was a student nurse for a few months after my schooling. Unfortunately, I had to leave before obtaining my diploma as my mother was ill. Thereafter I worked in Mr Lawson’s pharmacy situated in the Main Road for many years; thus I have a knowledge of routine medicines. An aspect of my employment was to attend to people who needed their dressings changed or their blood pressure taken. I have a good manner with people. Mr Lawson’s kind reference is enclosed.
My hobbies are reading and walking. I am in good health, although occasionally troubled by minor episodes of asthma. I am a practising Anglican; Father Evans’s reference is also appended.
I hope very much that you will grant me an interview. It would be an honour to be associated with your prestigious school.
Yours faithfully,
Phyllis Wilds
*
Dressed appropriately for the occasion, I hoped, in my newest frock (though no garment can compensate for frumpishness), I started out for the dining hall somewhat early, worried both about being late and not knowing in which direction north lies. On the way there, passing what I remembered as the staffroom on my tour with Mr Paine, I saw the light on inside. Through the door, which stood ajar, I could see Mr Paine, drink in hand, half listening to another, more animated gentleman with a rim of reddish hair around a shiny pate. I also caught a glimpse of another in the room, but I did not want to tarry for fear of being thought eavesdropping. As I continued towards the dining hall, sudden doubt caused panic to clutch at my chest. I was faced with the dilemma of whether to return to my room for my pump, thus risking being late for dinner, or to press on, so risking a full asthma attack in public view. Thus my thoughts ambush me, for I tend to think too slowly.
I could not properly recall Mr Paine’s instruction – whether I should in fact be meeting the other housemasters before dinner in the staffroom north of the dining hall. The latter seemed to be the case, for that indeed is where they were. Time was marching on; it was apparent I would not have time to return to my room. I went back to the staffroom and, hesitating, I stood in the rectangle of light falling through the door, my heart racing. I had never been into a staffroom before; it had been strictly forbidden to enter it at the school I’d attended as a girl.
Reminding myself I was now a member of staff and no longer that little girl, and that all would be well, God willing, I entered to meet my colleagues. I retain a distinct image of the next few moments; it is fixed into my mind like a photograph in an album. would that I could burn it to ash as I had those holiday snaps I’d found while clearing out Mummy’s house. As I entered, my eyes sought out Mr Paine as my link with this new life. As his gaze locked onto my face, I saw his eyes widen with what I can only describe as shock, his mouth opening as though about to shout out a warning. I found myself suspended in frozen time, anxiously awaiting clarification as to my error. All conversation stopped, as though a flipped switch had silenced a radio. My mind was imprinted with the image of the three besuited men, drinks in hand, staring at me in various permutations of anger and surprise.
I mumbled my apologies and fled.
*
It is a pathetic conceit to imagine that the act of destroying a photograph achieves anything substantial or consequential. The function of a photograph, it seems to me, is to point towards some inner constellation of thoughts, images, feelings and events. It provides a reminder of something that resides entirely within the mind’s eye. Those holiday photographs, where Alan and I and Phoebe squint out of dead black and white time at a viewer situated in the present, do not transport me back to the exact moment the photograph was taken: where we are posed within the family setting, at the lunch table, or on the stoep, or trying to overturn the hammock with one of us in it; even those shots of us in the canoe or catching crabs do not remind me of the scald of sun on my back, or the salt sting of the wind. They point entirely to my shame and loss, those troublesome twins that live at my side, whether there be photographs or not.
Through the window Devil’s Peak is sombre and brooding today, its large bulk leaning over me.
Over the years, I have often wondered what became of Alan.
*
I will never forget last night. I retired early after taking prep for the standard sevens, dispensing a few medicines and settling the junior dormitory entrusted to my care. I lay down on the lumpy mattress, confused and tearful. At table, no mention had been made of my blunder. The housemaster, Mr Paine, passed me the rice, but no one passed the gravy, and I was too frightened to ask for it, so went without. Mr Leighton, with his shiny pate, spoke at length about the condition of the rugby field, and Mrs Talbot, from behind a thick layer of face powder, inquired in an idiot voice whether I had ever travelled outside the cape. I mumbled a reply, for I am ashamed to say I have not even ventured as far as the sea since I was a girl.
The sight of the sea holds certain memories I would rather not visit. Mrs Talbot then told me about her recent travels overseas with Mr Talbot, to Venice and Greece. Such extravagance in post-war times smacks of an inheritance; I was about to inquire politely about her family when Mr Talbot glared at me and rang the bell for pudding.
I am a disgrace, and I do not know why, unless it is that women are not permitted in the staffroom. Indeed, Mrs Talbot had not been there.
For a while I lay in the darkness and scolded myself for the indiscretion I’d committed on my first day, and also for my pathetic tendency to cry. I had left the curtains open, for I was having difficulty breathing, despite my pump. The night sky through a window has always appeared an escape, of sorts, ever since I’d brought disgrace upon my family. I feel Mummy still sitting heavily on my chest, pinning me down. not a bad thing, really; I have always been a dreamer, and need to be disciplined and reminded of the task before me.
What I then heard as I lay in my room shocked me upright. A low roar sounded out, then another. I felt the vibration as though in my bones.
I thought I was going mad. Mad girl, Mummy used to say. Too much imagination for your own good.
But after a few more of the same, I was convinced. I realised that the sound could only be coming from the zoo, situated some miles away on the side of Devil’s Peak. My suspicion was confirmed today at breakfast by Mrs Talbot. The night had been very still, and the majestic voice of the trapped beast travelled across the suburbs, which only served to increase my sadness. I wished to comfort him, to let the poor creature know he is not alone.
* * * * * * * *
Trespass is published by Kwela, an imprint of NB Publishers
BOOK SA is pleased to bring you this excerpt from Edyth Bulbring’s latest youth offering, Pops and the Nearly Dead – a book whose blurb makes judicious use of the emoticon:
When I told my two best friends that I’d be spending three months with my grandfather at a retirement village in Port Elizabeth, they said there was no ways I’d survive the boredom. Not in a million years.
Themba said it sounded worse than being sentenced to life in a monastery without his stash of naughty mags.
And Buster said that even James Bond couldn’t have survived this kind of torture – and we all know what happened to his goolies in Casino Royale.
x a trillion
But Themba and Buster didn’t know anything about my crazy grandfather Pops – who isn’t boring at all – or the weird stuff that was going to happen to him.
And they hadn’t met Regina Versagel – a girl who may or may not wear black knickers.
Get to know Randolph St John Goodenough and his world of ultimately-surmountable obstacles (one hopes) a little better:
* * * * * * * *
My father says that a chap has to be an expert at something. He says that being a kind of general knowledge all-rounder just means that you land up not knowing very much about anything.
Take my friend Buster, for example. His specialty is James Bond – the movies, not the books. Buster’s a bit dense when it comes to the written word, but you can ask him absolutely anything about Bond Movies and he can tell you. And apart from this fantastic knowledge, he also has sound opinions on the topic – opinions that you would feel confident adopting as your own if you were in a conversation with members of the opposite sex and wanted to sound interesting.
Buster knows which of the Bond girls is the hottest. It’s Halle Berry, of course – except Buster pronounces it like Hell and not so that it rhymes with Sally. It’s the cool way to say it. People who are intimate with Halle say it like this, Buster says. He’ll tell you she’s the hottest – at least once a week. ‘Halle is the hottest,’ he’ll say – which is quite funny when you first hear him say it, or say it out aloud yourself, but not every week.
And Buster holds the view that the latest Bond guy is the best. I’m of two minds about this. I wasn’t crazy about the powder-blue swimming trunks in Casino Royale. Not the cut you understand – that was just fine for a guy who packs a healthy lunch box – it was the colour I found a bit dodgy. That’s not to say I’m a Roger Moore or Sean Connery fan. They were both a bit crumbly at the edges towards the end, and Roger’s gums were in a bad way – a complete age give-away (like in an old dog).
I’m grateful to Buster. Because of him, I can hold my own in any conversation about Bond Movies and sound like I really know what I’m talking about. Chicks go crazy for guys who can converse. Absolutely crazy. I know this from this other guy, Themba. He’s the expert on All Matters Of A Sexual Nature. And that includes what turns babes on.
But Themba’s not as open as Buster and when he does share something he’s not as clear and direct. He likes to speak in double meanings and make mysterious hand signals and mouth movements. Most of the time I never understand what Themba’s going on about and I don’t like asking – you don’t want to look like a complete virgin. But what I do understand makes me feel like throwing up or dying from a heart attack. I’m never sure which is the stronger feeling.
My father’s area of expertise, however, is not as useful as Themba’s and Buster’s. He’s an expert on Water. He knows where to find it, how to find it, how to clean it, how to transport it, even how it tastes (it doesn’t taste of anything). Which you must admit is pretty dry. For Water.
I suppose there are a couple of people who find my father’s knowledge useful though, because he keeps on getting job offers in faraway places with strange names. The latest place is called Bangkok. When I told Themba he fell on the ground laughing. I hadn’t given it much thought until then, but I admit it’s a pretty rude-sounding name.
Where they got it I just don’t know. It’s kind of hard to imagine a whole bunch of government people sitting around a table considering what to call the capital of Thailand and coming up with Bangkok as a serious option. Maybe they held some kind of national competition, where people had to enter names, and then they pulled one out of a hat and some joker like Themba entered Bangkok and they were stuck with it. That’s probably how it happened.
Unlike my name. I was assigned my name before I was born. If I’d been a girl, I would have been called Hermione. Like one of those big-toothed princesses from some random Northern European country – not the Harry Potter girl (she’s hot, as hot as Halle).
Hermione St John Goodenough. Pretty ghastly. But not as bad as the one I got. Randolph St John Goodenough. I mean, shoot me. Put me out of my misery.
There’s a whole bunch of us Randolphs. My father, his father and his father all the way back along the family tree. It’s a tough name to live with. When I meet people I like to say, ‘Call me Red, all my friends do’, on account of the fact I have hair that looks like bad sunburn. Red. Now there’s a name for a real guy. But people tend to go for the easier options – Carrots, Ginger or, kill me now, Randy.
Randy! I mean, Themba has the stats at his fingertips, and he says that guys think about All Matters Of A Sexual Nature every thirty seconds. Well, it’s something like that. And it really doesn’t help having a name like Randy. It kind of puts me in the percentile of guys who think about it every fifteen seconds.
To make matters worse, Themba calls me Randy Handy on account of the fact that he says that my only sexual experience has been with my hand. Mrs Hand and her five ugly fingers. Themba says it like he knows it’s a fact. He has this real expert air when he speaks of All Matters Of A Sexual Nature.
I used to be a bit envious of people who had The Knowledge. Even of my father and his boring Water, because at least he earns a packet and gets to go to capital cities with sexual names. But I’m not any more. Because I too am now a bone fide Expert.
It’s a recent thing. Up until a year ago I was an all-rounder. One of the despised who knew nothing of any real value because it was stuff that anybody could know if they watched enough television or read a couple of encyclopaedias. Then, one day, I woke up and discovered that I was an Expert, part of that group of people who others seek out for specialist advice.
To be honest, I didn’t feel completely over the moon about it. Because, hey, my area of expertise is not a big crowd puller. It’s hardly going to make me the centre of every conversation with the babes and it’s certainly not going to make people all hot and sweaty like they get over the stuff Themba and Buster know. But I didn’t feel totally peed off either. Maybe it was because of how it happened. Because, you see, The Knowledge didn’t just come to me over night. Nor did it come to me from books and movies, like Themba’s and Buster’s, or from years of serious study, like my father’s. I gained my expertise from real life experience. My knowledge is on the ground stuff – like a trade. And even though it’s not something that I decided on and then pursued, I worked for it too. I have scars to show for it all. I earned my stripes.
It all happened because of Bangkok. Last year my father received a job offer from an organisation asking him to go and organise some water for the people of Thailand. Not all of them, just some of the ones who live in Bangkok.
To cut a long story short, my father thought this sounded pretty interesting, so he accepted the job and told me and my mother that we were relocating from Nairobi (where we had lived for the past four years) to that place which I will call the capital of Thailand from now on because calling it by its name makes me think of All Matters Of A Sexual Nature. And I don’t want to use up more than my quota. It wouldn’t be fair – especially if I stole time off some poor bloke in the lower percentiles who only got to think about getting it every fifty seconds.
I was dead keen when I heard. Everybody, even those with hardly any general knowledge at all, knows that the people from the East can’t say their Rs. There, in the capital of Thailand, I would be Landy. Landy Goodenough. Or Led to my new Thai friends, like a wrinkly rock and roll star who’s still hot. No more Randy or Randy Handy or Carrots or Ginger or any of the other names that define me as the poster boy for contempt and ridicule.
My father’s posting to the capital of Thailand was for five years. There were a couple of things my parents needed to organise before I could join them – a house, a school, a car or two, a washing machine, some staff, et cetera et cetera. They said I needed to be patient. They would send for me when they’d sorted out their lives and got settled. In the meantime, I was being packed off to the Nelson Mandela Gardens Retirement Village to live with Pops.
Mike Nicol’s Mace Bishop is back – and forced to take matters into his own hands yet again, as he and his partner-in-preventing-crime (sort of) Pylon Buso fight old foe Sheemina February over a crooked property deal, plus the odd assassination or two.
It’s BOOK SA’s great pleasure to bring you an excerpt from the 2nd Mace Bishop novel, Killer Country. Nicol can make even a family breakfast come over as gritty and ominous:
* * * * * * * *
6 Saturday
Mace popped a piece of croissant into his mouth, cracked open the newspaper to the story on page three: another four tourists robbed by the mountain mugger. All those rangers running around the mountain, they couldn’t catch this prick doing over the tourists. Unbelievable. Waves a knife at some Germans then disappears like he’s a spectre. Mace shook his head. One mugger getting away with it again and again. The sort of incompetence encouraged vigilantism. Wasn’t too far out of Mace’s mind to go up there, sort it out.
‘Papa,’ Christa said, ‘I’m trying to tell you something.’
Mace put the paper down on the breakfast table. ‘I’m listening.’
‘You’re not,’ said Christa. ‘Come on, Papa.’
‘I am,’ said Mace, wiped crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I heard you the first time. I think I know this person, came to your school. Tell me again.’
Oumou, wearing a blue kikoi, came out of the house with coffee to where they sat eating breakfast beside the pool. Below them the city, Saturday quiet; up on the mountain early tourists rode the cable car to the top pointing at the sights: the harbour, the Waterfront, Robben Island, the curve of the bay along the West Coast.
Oumou said, ‘That is a bad story, Christa.’ But she smiled as she said it.
‘You didn’t laugh?’ said Mace.
‘She did,’ said Christa.
‘Oui,’ said Oumou. ‘I have to say so.’
‘There you go,’ said Mace. ‘So let’s hear it again.’ Cat2 stirred on his lap and he rubbed at the scar-tissue where as a kitten she’d been nailed to a wall. The cat arched against his massage.
‘Okay,’ said Christa. ‘This woman came to tell us about drugs. How she used to shoot up stuff, inject it into her leg so many times that they had to cut it off. Her leg.’ She giggled.
‘Heavy,’ said Mace, leaving the cat and stretching for an almond croissant.
‘She’s got this cool chrome pole screwed into her knee with a Nike on it, matching the one on her real foot.’
Mace smiled. ‘Yellow trainers.’
‘How’d you know?’
‘I just do.’
Christa glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Like how?’
‘If it’s the same person, that’s what she wears. Get on with the story.’
‘Okay. So she’s telling us about spiking between her toes. She’s got this syringe filled with blood and stuff, that’s gross and she’s showing us.’
Oumou poured coffee from the Bialetti. Smacked at Mace’s hand running up her thigh under the kikoi.
‘Maman! Papa!’ said Christa.
Mace winked at his wife, caught Christa watching them. ‘Tell it, C.’
‘You’re not listening.’
‘I am.’ Mace squeezed Oumou’s knee, returned his hands to breakfast. Smeared honey on the croissant, broke off a piece. He masticated, swilled it down with a mouthful of coffee.
‘So she unscrews it. Not unscrews. You know sort of pushes a button behind her knee, that pops off the pole.’
‘Prosthesis.’
‘That word,’ said Christa. ‘Pro-thesis.’
‘Pros,’ said Mace, feeding croissant to Cat2. ‘Prosthesis.’
‘Anyway,’ said Christa, ‘like she’s standing there on one foot, with her pros … whatever in her hand. Waving it like a wand. And we’re going, ah yuk, and she shouts “catch, hey”. Throwing her artificial leg down to us. For real. Right at us. Near to me. Everybody’s pushing not to touch it.’
‘What’s she doing?’ said Mace. ‘The woman on her one leg?’
‘I told you,’ said Christa. ‘She’s laughing. It’s, like, a big joke.’
Mace helped himself to more coffee and topped Oumou’s cup. ‘And then Pumla grabbed hold of it?’
‘Her and some others,’ said Christa.
‘But not you?’
‘I touched it.’ Christa grimaced. ‘It was all warm at the knee part.’
‘So who took off the trainer?’
‘Pummie.’ Christa glanced at her father.
Mace grinned, Pylon would like that one: his step-daughter getting in on the act. ‘And?’
‘The wooden foot had green toenails. That’s so gross.’
‘It’s supposed to be.’
‘Mace!’ Oumou laughed. ‘You are being unkind. This woman is brave, to talk about it.’
‘Of course,’ said Mace. ‘I agree she’s brave. It’s what she does, how she earns a living, being a motivational speaker. It’s what people do. You rob banks, you do your time, afterwards people pay big money to hear you speak. Or you get raped, your throat’s cut, you’re left for dead, you’ve got a new career.’
‘Mace.’ Oumou frowned at him.
‘What?’
‘That is not nice.’
‘That’s what happens. This chick was a druggie. She gets over it, she gets a new life. Goes to show how people move on. Turn stuff around.’ He pointed at Christa. ‘We got one right here. A couple of years ago she was paralysed for life.’ Mace flashing on the gunshot. Hearing Christa cry out. Seeing her collapse. The blood stain darkening at her stomach. He looked at his daughter, looking back at him across the table: her Zen face, her Buddha smile. Mace thought, this is why I’ve got to get out. Washed down the wish with coffee.
Heard Christa saying, ‘Papa! Papa, listen.’
Mace smiling at her.
‘Pummie wanted to know why she painted the toenails.’
‘What’d she say?’
‘She said to remind her of her foot. That she’d once had a real one.’
‘That is sad,’ said Oumou.
‘She’s tough,’ said Mace. ‘If it’s the woman I’m thinking of. Lives with an investigator, ex-cop, we used him once to track down stolen stuff. Chews a lot of mints. Nice guy. Him and his one-legged doll.
Mace’s cellphone rang. He reached for it lying on the table next to the basket of croissants and rolls. The screen displayed ‘Pylon’. He thumbed him on. Watched Christa push back her chair and stand. Beautiful, the black costume against her honey skin. The child’s body morphing into a young woman. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this: her childhood ending.
Said, ‘You’re interrupting my breakfast.’
Heard Oumou say to Christa, poised on the edge of the swimming pool, ‘I must buy clay, cherie: you will come with me?’ Saw Christa nod and flash a smile before she plunged into the water. Slipping in like a dolphin, hardly a splash.
Oumou turned from watching Christa gliding through the water, raised her eyebrows at him: who’re you talking to?
Mace said, ‘Pylon.’
Pylon said, ‘I’m driving now, passing Century City. Great view of the mountain opening up. I can tell you I’ve been sitting for four hours.’
‘Some particular reason you’re out there instead of at home?’
Mace walked to where he could see the city clearly through a break in the trees. The cascade of the garden suburb down the bowl of the mountain into the concrete centre. The buildings clustered tall and white there, the sea a flat blue beyond.
‘Driving behind this brand new black Yengeni. Nice car the ML350.
‘You’re thinking of one?’
Pylon not into buying cars at all, happy to use the office Merc.
‘Too arriviste.’
Mace smiled, turning from the view to his house: the house Oumou’d wanted of concrete and glass and chrome. Something as far removed from the mud towns of her desert life as she could get.
‘I work with clay, Mace,’ she’d said. ‘In my pottery are my memories. We must live in something modern. Where no one has lived before.’
Once the house was built Mace couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. He glanced above the roof at Devil’s Peak, deep shadow still in the kloof.
‘So where’ve you been?’ Mace waved at Christa to keep swimming. To Pylon said, ‘Help me out, I’m pulling teeth here.’
Pylon laughed. ‘Outside Mr Chocho‘s.’
‘Doing what?’
‘A stakeout.’
‘We’ve registered as investigators? I didn’t notice.’
‘This’s private and confidential,’ said Pylon. ‘Got nothing to do with us, Complete Security. Got to do with us the property investors.’
‘The West Coast thing?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Mace. ‘Maybe you lend me something against the Cayman account. An IOU.’
‘We can talk about it,’ said Pylon. ‘Another time. You have to listen to this first.’
‘Perhaps turn the music down,’ said Mace. The driving sound of the Cowboy Junkies in the background.
‘So what do I see?’
‘I couldn’t guess. Tell me.’ Mace watched Oumou clearing the table, Cat2 pawing at her for titbits.
‘I see my comrade and consortium partner Popo Dlamini coming out of Mr Chocho’s house.’
‘And this is interesting?’
‘At six in the morning. Very interesting. What I wonder is, does Obed Chocho know? What I also wonder is, how would that brother feel about this brother looking after his wife while he’s doing prison?’
‘It’s nine o’clock,’ said Mace. ‘Why’re you only on the highway now?’
‘I told you,’ said Pylon. ‘Staking out. Had to be sure Mrs Chocho’d been playing hostess. She’s driving the Merc I’m following. Must have a date in the city.’
Mace dipped his toe in the water, Pylon’s machinations on the empowerment deal labyrinthine in their complexity. Thorough though.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘after you’re finished playing Easy Rawlins, I’m meeting a prospective client. You got time to be in on that? A judge. Name of Telman Visser.’ He heard a blare of hooters and Pylon swear. ‘We could talk afterwards.’
Mace said, ‘Hey, talk to me. You going to make it or what?’
‘Can’t,’ said Pylon. ‘Consortium meeting. I told you, there’s major shit on this deal. The seller holding out ‘cos he can see pay dirt. Young white couple wanting in on the act or major compensation.’ A pause, Pylon muttering in Xhosa, ‘We’re coming off the highway. Check you later.’
Mace disconnected, thinking Pylon was taking strain on this one. Putting in a lot of effort to get them sorted, get them access to the Cayman stash. He flipped closed the cellphone. If only there wasn’t the court case. If only. He closed his eyes, shook his head as if to shake out the thought.
With an hour and a half till he met the judge, he could join Christa in the pool for a dozen laps. Work down the two almond croissants. And the salami roll. He stripped off his t-shirt. Stood poised in his Speedo on the edge of the pool.
Oumou came up, rubbed a hand over his stomach. ‘A little bit round,’ she said.
* * * * * * * *
Killer Country is published by Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik
Anton Krueger, the noted playwright, has just come out with a first, slim work of fiction called Sunnyside Sal – which also counts as a rare work of prose from poet Robert Berold’s publishing outfit, Deep South.
The work is “a jauntily narrated novella set in the tumultuous early 1990s, when a whole generation was discovering that everything they’d been taught to believe was wrong”.
In the following excerpt, two fifteen year olds find themselves at the centre, first of the SAPF’s attention, and then of BOSS’s:
* * * * * * * *
Church Square, 1987
Later in Form III, Sal began to cultivate an interest in politics. I was fifteen, and although I suspected that there was something not altogether right with Apartheid, I didn’t really have any idea what was happening in South Africa at the time. Sal wanted me to accompany him to protest against an AWB rally which was going to be held on Church Square. I’d never heard of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and Sal couldn’t tell me much about them, except that they were a fascist faction and that their emblem was a Nazi swastika with three spokes instead of four.
This was during the second State of Emergency of the year, the townships were in uproar and the border war was raging on. The AWB were opposed to the reform movements which had begun, claiming that the government was becoming too liberal. Conservative? Liberal? Who knew what these meant. But since we had missed out on the 60s (and there was absolutely nothing that we could do about that now) we would have to make up for lost time by accosting the most convenient symbol of the establishment to hand. After thinking the situation through carefully, I decided to go along with Sal, provided that we could find suitably hippy clothes to wear.
So we rifled through a bag of old clothes Tracy’s parents had left over from the 70s. Sal found a bedraggled black wig, and I wore a dirty blonde. He put on a huge Hawaiian shirt with out-sized lapels and was soon clattering with cowry shell necklaces. I squeezed into an asphyxiating red number and a pair of large bronze bell-bottoms. And so we set off on my golden ten-speeder for the city centre.
Sal didn’t have a bike, so he had to sit across my handlebars, effectively impairing my vision almost completely. Our progress from his parents’ flat in Arcadia was further hampered every fifty-odd metres by my bell-bottoms flapping into the bicycle chain. We stopped en route to make ourselves protest banners from an old cardboard box we found in Queen Street and by the time we eventually got there, the rally itself was over; but the noisy aftermath of the event had yet to be cleared up. We saw a few scared white kids from the UDF wearing End Conscription Campaign T-shirts being bullied into police vans. A number of black ANC supporters had also showed up. It was illegal to wear a shirt with UDF, ANC or Mandela’s face on it, and everybody was being rounded up by baton-wielding policemen who surrounded the perimeter of the square. The air was filled with shouts and screams and the squeal of sirens as the dissidents were carted off.
With deliberate resolve, Sal tightened a red bandanna around his black wig and loosened the last of the buttons on his unreasonably orange sunflower shirt. Without another word, we hauled out the makeshift posters we’d made. On mine, I’d written “Is there intelligent life on earth?” while Sal had come up with the rather more obscure “Plight of the Pimpled Peruvians.” I didn’t ask.
In the atmosphere of mayhem which now prevailed around the dour statue of the last president of the Transvaal Republic, we moved towards the Square, holding our appeals aloft. While crossing the street which circles the square, our path was blocked by a policeman wearing a bullet-proof jacket, wielding an R4 rifle.
“Vat daai fiets hier weg en gaan huis toe,” was what he said to us. Sal and I looked at each other blankly. I tried to raise one eyebrow in mock consternation (a trick I’d been practising in front of the mirror for just such an occasion). “Ek’s ernstig!” The policeman was becoming increasingly agitated. “Fokof!”
We didn’t really know what to do, so we just sort of stood there aimlessly in the middle of the street, our placards limp in our hands. We watched the police vans going by, as they rounded up the occasional unruly mob which had been converging on the Square. We didn’t have to stand around for long, however, because suddenly, we were surrounded by uniforms as we were swept up in a bustle of burly blue. A few moments of complete confusion followed – as if we were caught up in a wave and were tumbling blindly in white foam – as they pummelled us into a yellow van.
“Haal af daai fokken pruike julle moffies!” one of the police insisted, as others stripped us of wigs and wallets the while. “Wat de fok dink julle maak julle?” another wanted to know as he locked the door of the van.
The policemen seemed rather excitable. This was their time to shine. One of them barked boisterously as he ripped the film from Sal’s camera and the others gave exuberant encouragement as they looked on. They howled, they whooped, they were having an excellent time of it.
We had to do our best to dodge the fingers poked at us when we got too close to the grating. As soon as there was a lull in the jeering we tried to apologise. We tried to explain to them that we had no political affiliations, that we were just trying to be silly. Really.
“Ja, julle is fokken dom,” said one, “Dis State of Emergency. Ons kan julle opsluit vir ses maande sonder ‘n trial.”
“But we’re only fifteen,” Sal said.
“Maak nie saak nie…ons het boys daar binne van dertien. Ons sluit julle op net so. Julle knapies moenie moeilikheid soek met ons nie. Julle sal dit kry!”
At this point Sal began to grow noticeably nervous. He grimly buttoned up his shirt as he stared through the bars of the van at the genuine protestors who were being manhandled off the Square. When they saw what had happened to us, they raised clenched fists in our direction. “Amandla!” they called out to us, “Amandla awethu! Be strong!” Little did they know that we had no idea who they were, what they stood for, nor what they were saying to us.
“Please,” we pleaded with the police, adopting distinctly whiny tones. “If you don’t like our clothes we can change them. We haven’t done anything wrong. Please.”
Just then a plainclothesman was brought onto the scene. After consulting with the others in muffled whispers and secretive gestures, he took us to change our clothes. The man led us to the public toilets on the Square, next to the booth where they used to sell bus tickets and timetables when the depot was still on Church Square. Luckily we’d brought along a kit-bag with ordinary jeans and T-shirts. As we were changing, an AWB supporter came in, clad in khaki from top to toe. He was sporting a sort of weird vierkleur nurse’s cap on his forehead and Sal was visibly startled. “Look at that!” he said, furtively pointing the man out to our captor. “Why don’t you ask him to change his funny clothes as well?”
Our man sighed as he stood at the urinals. With a long-suffering shake of his head he zipped up and – delivering a casual blow to the back of Sal’s head, almost as an afterthought – he told us “Julle verstaan niks nie.” Sal rubbed his head. “Julle weet nie wat hier aangaan nie.”
The man then lead us to his car. He was still convinced that we must be in cahoots with the forces of resistance, and he wanted to see where we lived. He’d also discovered a video in Sal’s kitbag, which he cared to view. So we left my golden ten-speeder locked up near the Square and drove with the man to Sal’s flat. As we were driving down Church Street, the man explained to us that nobody wanted to hurt the black man. With an expansive gesture he included all the African workers on the streets who were painting buildings, sweeping driveways and washing cars. “Ons wil net vriende met almal wees,” he said. Ja right, I thought, otherwise who else are you going to get to do your painting, sweeping, washing.
Sal’s parents were living in Lisbon at the time, and over weekends he stayed in a flat his father owned in Sunnyside. It was straight opposite the vast gardens of the Union Buildings, and we imagined that we could see State President P.W. Botha glowering out at us from his office. Neither Sal, myself, and least of all die Groot Krokodil himself could possibly have imagined that Nelson Mandela was to be inaugurated in those selfsame gardens in seven years’ time.
Before Sal would let the man into his flat he insisted on seeing some ID. Sal’s stance – palms firmly planted on the hips and with a well-rehearsed Sid Vicious sneer – looked more comical than threatening, and the man smiled indulgently as he produced his card. He let us know that he was part of BOSS, and he covered half of his card in order to protect his personal details. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was sporting a bronze badge announcing his name as Mannie Meintjies. “Julle kan my maar Jan Spies noem,” said Mannie.
Mannie was disappointed to discover that Sal’s video turned out to be of the Pink Floyd concert, Delicate Sound of Thunder, and not the illicit pornography he’d clearly been hoping it might be. “As dit blou was sou ek dit vir myself gehou het,” he explained, although he did make use of the opportunity to remark that he understood how we might have been led astray. “Ja,” he said, “nou verstaan ek hoekom julle so skeef is – as julle vir hierdie rubbish sit en luister.”
“Maar hou jy dan nie van musiek nie, Mannie?” asked Sal.
Mnr Meintjies’ eyes widened when Sal called him by his real name. Disconcerted, he asked for a glass of water. When Sal brought it, Mannie regarded it suspiciously. He sniffed at the glass warily, as if the water might be poisoned, which confirmed that he was probably paranoid enough to be working for the secret services after all.
After having searched the room for drugs or incriminating literature, Mannie was soon satisfied that we were not an immanent danger to the Republic. Nevertheless, I think he suspected that we might have been harbouring slightly leftist tendencies, so he made himself comfortable and began to hold forth. He told us that he could have left us with the police. They would have locked us up for a while just to give us a fright, but he’d taken pity on us because we were young, because we were white, and because he felt that there might be hope for us yet. Mannie wanted us to “see the light” and so he set about methodically explaining to us why we were superior to all the other races on God’s green earth. He said that this was purely a matter of genetics, and that we were, in fact, a completely different species to any other race. Mannie told us that the African was destined to always be a follower, and never a leader.
“What about Jesse Jackson?” Sal asked. (Jackson had run for U.S. president on the Democratic ticket in 1984, and he would run again in 1988.) Mannie Meintjies thought long and hard about Sal’s question as he made ready to leave. We could see the cogs turning over as he ruminated over this pressing dilemma. Finally, he paused and – turning at the door – fired off a final retort: “Ja, you boys listen probably also to his music as well.” Sadly shaking his head, Mannie closed the door behind him as we clapped hands to our mouths and collapsed with laughter.
We went over the episode again and again, savouring every detail of the escapade. Sal told me that he’d panicked when Mannie suspected there might have been something in the water. As it turned out, my friend had carefully spat in the glass and mixed in the spittle with his finger, before serving it up to Mannie Meintjies from the Bureau of State Security.
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Sunnyside Sal is published by Deep South and distributed by UKZN Press
Mixed Blood author Roger Smith is back with a new thriller that’s set to have readers riveted to their seats: Wake Up Dead. Here’s the blurb for the forthcoming US edition (the book will appear this Feb):
On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a choice that changes her life forever.
Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joe’s convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, won’t let her out of his sight because Joe owed him a chunk of money. And hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse “wife,” Disco.
As these desperate lives collide and old debts are settled in blood, Roxy is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport.
The author has released an excerpt from the book on his website. Enjoy, but beware: it’s quite a ride.
The night they were hijacked, Roxy Palmer and her husband, Joe, ate dinner with an African cannibal and his Ukrainian whore.
The African, languidly elegant in a hand- tailored silk suit, was blue- black with tribal scars on his cheeks. He spoke beautiful French-accented English, and he could have recited the Cape Town phone book and made it sound poetic. The whore had yellow braids, the dark roots cross- hatching her skull like sutures on a cadaver. She didn’t say much, spent most of the meal hating Roxy for her naturally blonde hair and perfect American teeth.
When the cannibal paused his monologue to eat or drink, Joe Palmer tried to fill in. After the francophone eloquence, South African Joe sounded like a truck driven without a clutch. They were at Blues in Camps Bay, overlooking the ocean, and even though they sat down to eat at nearly nine, the last of the golden light still washed the beach and the slopes of Table Mountain. Cape Town is twinned with Nice on the French Riviera, and on a night like this Roxy could see why.
“An intricate Robert Altman–like narrative that, when the pieces finally connect, forms a terrifying portrait of the Cape Flats. [A] searing vision of characters trapped in a fetid purgatory.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[A] stellar thriller. Bad choices, not bad luck, drive human depravity in this brutal fable. One fundamental irony unforgettably lingers: that these characters, trapped in poverty, ignorance, and prejudice, have really had no choice at all.” — Publishers Weekly
Toring se baai is die eerste vollengteroman deur die befaamde kortverhaalskrywer, E Kotzé. Lees die volgende uittreksel:
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Die toringklip was van altyd af ’n landmerk vir skuite wat bo uit die Onderwêreld uit af Bobaai toe kom met vragte kreef. Op ’n stil dag, wanneer die see vol is, lyk die klipperige baai soos ’n versonke stad, trillend onder die water, met net die hoogste nokke wat bo uitsteek en die spits toring van ’n tempel.
Dis geen vriendelike hawe nie, daarvoor is die klein baaitjie wat met sy bek oop na die noord lê te onstuimig en onherbergsaam. As die see ’n skop in hom het, kan dit rof word.
Stormsee het deur die jare walle bloumosselskulp teen die duine opgehoop en mettertyd die klippe op die strand glad gerol. Tog is dit die plek waar Colbert sy fabriek kom staanmaak het: aan die verste punt van die witstrandjie, deur ’n skuins rotsplaat teen die aanslag van die westewind verskans. Soos ’n groot gaar kreef met sy voorlyf op die wal, die stert uitgeflap oor die jettie, staan die bousel van sink en plank. COLBERT CANNING COMPANY is in duidelike swart letters op die rooi dak geverf.
Van die fabriek en die paar buitegeboue lei ’n reguit swart steenkoolpad teen die steilte uit na ’n groep riffelsinkhuise omhein met doringdraad. Dis die sogenaamde Kamp, waar die fabriekswerkers ’n eenvoudige lewe lei.
Smal stoepies voor en agter hou die sand wat die oostewind oor die vlaktes aanwaai van die drumpels weg. Die skuifraamvensters is voorsien van houtluike, waarsonder die somers onhoudbaar sou wees. Voetpaadjies lei van die Kamp af tussen soutslaai en doringbosse deur in verskeie rigtings: na die skool en winkel en slaghuis op die hoogte bokant die baai. En links, meer na die suide, die vierkantige platdakhuise van die Bobaaiers, en mister Paulsen se bruinskool, en die Gaat waar die kreefvangers bly in hutte van sink. Op ’n bufferstrook tussen wit en bruin staan die enkele tweevertrek-sinkhok van Marija, die wasvrou.
Soos die derm van ’n huidjiehu kom ’n plaaspad veld se kant van die gehuggie verby, tot by die winkel waar dit wegdraai na die soutpanne aan die mond van die Rivier, vyf myl verder. Daarvandaan volg dit die oewer tot by die grootdorp en spoorwegstasie veel verder aan. Die plek is afgesonder en onbelangrik, nêrens aangeteken nie, skaars ’n kolletjie vliegmis op die landkaart. Die fabriek is die middelpunt van sy bestaan, kreef die lewensbron.
Sterftes kom voor wanneer ’n skuit vergaan en die bemanning verdrink. Of as maagkoors uitbreek en soos vuur deur die Gaat trek. Dan sterf hele families uit en lang begrafnisstoete beweeg soos miere agterom die bruinskool. ’n Gat word gegrawe, ’n lyk laat sak, die kis toegegooi, die vars hoop gelykgemaak met die aarde as die oostewind daaroor waai.
Dis die oostewind se nes daardie: ’n wind so reg uit ’n vuuroond, warm en droog en ongenadig. In die middel van die nag staan hy op uit die bossies, stoot sy asem ’n paar maal uit voor hy die vlak vat, stof opskep en saamvat, by oop deure en vensters inwaai en anderkant uit, dwarsdeur die fabriek tot op die skuite. Tot die water bleekgroen op die middag lê en smag na die lafenis van ’n koel kenter as die weer op noord draai.
Ongeag die weer, werk die fabriek. In sy klam buik pols ’n enkele dieselmasjien wat ’n ingewikkelde stelsel van dryfasse en kruis-en-dwars-bande trek. ’n Stoomenjin maak gas vir die koelkamers. In die boilerkamer word die ketels gestook. Koekepanne ratel oor die smal spoortjies op die jettie.
Die skoorsteen rook en die fluitjie blaas. Vroue in wit oorjasse en waterstewels, geslypte mes in die hand, tou in die voetpad af en kom val by die paktafels in.
Soos gewoonlik hou Ockert Blankenberg, die voorman, dié dag toesig – van die aflaaiery op die punt van die jettie tot in die kreefhuis by die pakkers.
Slof met swaar houtsool-kalosies aan sy voete enkeldiep deur die water. “Toe, toe, opskud vir die Mariebiskit!” jaag hy die vroue aan en tik hulle speels op die boud met ’n hand soos ’n tennisspaan.
Hulle lag hiér uit. Dié mister Ockert darem! Hulle ken hom van destyds toe hulle saam in Stefan se fabriek gewerk het. En verder terug, van sy vulletjiedae op Langbaan se strand waar hulle in die vlak lagune watertjies gespeel en steentjies gebraai het. Agtermekaar jongkêrel gewees toe hy nog al sy hare en tande gehad het. ’n Reus van by die ses-voet-ses in sy sokkies, en sterk. Dra ’n bakkie manalleen op die strand uit. Mag nie slaan nie: die juts het gewaarsku. Hoewel hy wel sal slaan, as dit moet.
Onder die plankvloer van die kreefhuis spoel die gety op en trek met ’n grom van growwe sand en skulp terug, wat losgekarring is onder uit die seebodem. Dis volmaanspring. Die see is aan die kwaai word.
Die skuite het kort duskant Honneklip gevang toe die kreef se bekke begin skuim – ’n teken van onweer. Eietyd is die bakkies op dek gelaai en het hulle gemaak vir die huis, met die wind van agter. Een van die skuite het masjienmoeilikheid gekry en moes ingesleep word. Dis met moeite tot teenaan die jettie gebring, waar die aflaaiers nou halflyf in die ruim staan en die kreef met vurke in kiste gooi.
’n Gejaagdheid maak almal senuweeagtig. Sieber, die fabriekbestuurder, jaart die jettie met ongeduldige treë af. “Die skuite moet wegkom!” Hulle moes al weg gewees het as dit van hom afhang, om in die Bobaai te gaan skuil!
Almal blaas in Ockert se nek.
“Ja!” bulder hy harder as wat hy bedoel het, bo-oor die geraas van mense en koekepanne en die see. Hy is sommer die moer in. Sieber kon liewer in sy kantoor gebly het, of tee gaan drink by die huis. En die verdomde skippers moes hul verstand gebruik en by Honneklip gaan aflaai het. Hoewel dit daar ook maar goed gevaarlik kan wees in sulke weer. Maar dan het hy nie nou met die klomp kreef gesit nie.
Dit gee ’n gewerskaf af terwyl die skuite olie en water vat, kos en brood laai. Terwyl almal fletter om klaar te kry, is Smittie Steyn, algemene tegnikus en enjineer van Toring, teen die steil trapleertjie af na die masjienkamer van die stukkende skuit.
Hy spuug oorboord toe hy weer op dek kom. “Dis so vuil daar onder, jy wil naar word. Om te dink iemand slaap daar.”
Hy is geen seeman soos Ockert wat op die water grootgeword het nie. Hy stam uit ’n geslag van Agterbaaise boere, maar het vroeg reeds ’n aanleg vir meganika getoon en dit sy loopbaan gemaak. ’n Skraal, seningrige man met ’n smal gesig, hoë voorkop en mooi hande. “Daar’s niks verkeerd met die oliepomp nie,” sê hy vir Ockert. “Die filter was net geblok.”
Dit kon sommer op see vervang gewees het, maar al het die drywer ook geweet hoe, dra hulle nie onderdele saam nie. Voorraad is min en die gereedskap primitief, en die firma traag om aan te koop. ’n Geldtekort, is die verskoning. Tye is swaar; die kreefbedryf het nog altyd gewurg. Die afgelope tyd word die oorlog en die onverkrygbaarheid van materiaal ook voorgehou.
Daarom het Smittie Steyn sy eie gereedskap gekoop. Made in Sheffield. Hy werk nie met prulle nie. Hou sy goed by die huis, waarvandaan hy dit laat haal as hy iets nodig het. As dit ’n oponthoud veroorsaak soos nou weer, moet hulle maar wag.
Toe die laaste skuit weg is – ’n vloot seevoëls wat voor die noordewind uit dobber – staan die rook uit die onbewerkte kreef. Afgegaan. Maar dit kan nie weggegooi word nie. Eers vinnig deur die stoompotte, dan na die vroue wat skoonmaak, sterte afbreek, oopsny, dermpie uithaal. Na die baddens waar al die bederf afgewas word totdat die vleis spierwit is, waarna dit geblik word en deur die inmaakproses gaan.
Ockert beweeg tussen die pakkers en die stoompotte. Sy stem klim bo die stoomwalms uit; die spoeg spat.
Voor donker bring die kinders Ockert en Smittie se aandkos: brood toegedraai in kardoespapier en iets warms in ’n skotteltjie, ’n bottel tee wat vinnig afkoel. Gewoonlik kan hulle nog ’n bietjie vertoef, maar vanaand mag hulle nie. Dis onweer en die see is aan die kwaai word. Daar word dwarsdeur gewerk, die hele nag tot die volgende middag, voor die laaste kreef weg is.
Smittie se voete is nat. Hy dra nie stewels nie, maar velskoene met dun sole wat hy van Ebersohn af bestel. Al wat hom red, is die wolkouse wat Kittie, sy vrou, vir hom brei.
Almal is kapot toe die laaste blikkie deur die stoompotte is en stoor toe gevat word om af te koel. Die masjiene het tot stilstand gekom. Dis net die Tandy wat loop om ys te maak sodat die aas koud kan bly. Die stoomketels is afgesluit; die mure en tafels en vloer van die kreefhuis word skoon gespuit.
Ockert en Smittie wag buite op die jettie dat die skoonmakers klaarmaak.
Die weer bou op. Op die horison lê ’n massa blouswart wolke wat inme-kaar krul. Die wind is sterker.
“Hier kom ’n man aan, ou Smittie.”
Ockert trek sy kop tussen sy skouers in. Die donkerblou seemanstrui wat hy oor sy ketelpak dra, sit knap. In die was gekrimp. Die dungeslyte moue is ingestop, ’n sweer saamgetrek op elke elmboog. Hy vee met die agterkant van sy hand oor sy mond. “Jee-zus,” blaas hy soos ’n walvis, “wat ’n weer!”
Die see is skuimbek met ontblote haaitande wanneer die branders oor die rotse breek en in die skietgat onder die Toringklip opspat met ’n knal. Dit laat Ockert verlang na die kalm waters van die lagune waarop hy en sy broers in ’n seilbootjie uitgevaar en weer ingedryf het tot by die ankerplek vlak voor hulle huis.
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Toring se baai is uitgegee deur Kwela, ‘n druknaam van NB Uitgewers
Her notes on Fowler’s novel – which is set in Kalk Bay, among other Cape-y places, and comprises a “story of secrets, warped friendships and addiction, and how families guard their secrets to keep up appearances” – are certainly worth the click-through; but perhaps a taste of the text is called for first. Here’s chapter three in full, narrated by the main character, Lily:
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Every morning, the whole lot of us walk to school together. We live in Gran’s Kalk Bay house, but because she lives on the farm, we have the place all to ourselves. I’m in sub A and Beth is a year behind me in the pre-school class at Kalk Bay Primary, near where we live.
Mom pushes the pram, and it rattles over the cobblestones in the street. She has to hold on carefully or it will run down the hill, and that’s why we can’t hang onto her or hold her hand. Inside the pram is Gracie. Mom says it’s the last present Dad gave her before he went to heaven. I imagine Dad passing Gracie to Mom, with a big pink ribbon wrapped around her and a bow on her head.
When we walk to school in the morning, blanketed in the salty air, I watch Mom’s steps. Gran says Mom and I have the same walk. She says we should have both tried ballet. It would have fixed the walk and some other things too. Long, slow, tiger legs – that’s Mom’s walk. Her legs are short, like mine, but the way she stretches them out and forwards makes them longer. We move along slowly, and I look at everything. I see Mom does the same. Her head swivels and wanders.
Gran says I am my mother’s child because we’re both quiet. You can never know what secrets are brewing in a head like that. Gran isn’t a fan of Mom’s head in any way. She says it looks like a bird’s nest, and, what’s more, it’s the muisneste that got us where we are today. I think it means that Mom has something funny inside her head. And plus, Gran says Mom and I like the same trash music, and that’s another thing that makes us deurmekaar.
Gran doesn’t hate all music. She likes what Mom plays on the piano. She’ll sit and listen, with her back straight and her knobbly hand gripping her walking stick. She takes this walking stick everywhere. I’ve seen her without it, and she does fine. But she needs it to show people she’s an old lady, because old ladies deserve respect. Also, it’s a good way to get our attention when she’s cross. She bangs it on the floor twice, and then you know you must listen.
The music Gran doesn’t like is called Queen and The Doors. There’s also Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull. And Abba, which is the only thing that makes Mom sing along, and then Beth and I join in, but Gran says it’s sentimental candyfloss. She says Simon and Garfunkel is a little better, because at least they can carry a tune, but you can’t trust those folksy hippies, they smoke dagga all the time, and plus they’re revolutionary, and look what that Paul Simon has gone and done now, singing all this native music with that black lot from Ladysmith.
Mom plays less of this music these days, because since Dad died and Gracie was finished getting born, Mom had to start working to put food in our mouths. So now she’s tired all the time, and has to lie down a lot. Before the tiredness, Mom used to dance with us sometimes. She’d put on a record and turn it up. We’d all get turns to choose the music, but Beth and I weren’t allowed to touch the records because they can get scratched and then you’re done for. Dancing meant holding hands and spinning around in a circle, which Beth called a rallentando. At the end, you all fall down, same as in Ring-a-Rosie. There were other dances that meant jumping up and down. Mom was never much of a jumper, but she laughed at us doing it. You could see her little pearl teeth shine.
*
It’s my special job to carry the house keys every morning. If the tlinka-tlinka sound stops, Mom stops in her tracks, and then looks at my hands.
Sometimes the sound stops because I want to see if I can make it stop, and other times because I’m holding the keys up to the light, turning them slowly to watch the metal gleam. Then Mom asks me why I’m not moving, and she gives me a little push. But most of the time we just walk, and Beth and Mom ask each other lots of questions.
Sometimes I stop listening, because the hush of the sea swims into my ears and whirls around my brain. It gets chopped up by cars roaring past on the main road. Kalk Bay is a quiet place, but it’s morning, and everyone has somewhere to go.
This morning, I notice a tiny pink flower sprouting from a green frill that has poured out from the crack between the tarred pavement and a stone wall. It stops my breath for just a second. I can’t believe this beautiful thing in between all the hardness and greyness. It’s a miracle, so I grab at it and pull it out of its home. I feel bad about this immediately, but I must have it.
I trot to catch up to Mom and Beth. They never even noticed I was gone. Mom is sighing because she has to answer so many questions, and I know she doesn’t really like to talk. Just like me. I sniff my flower, and it’s my turn to sigh. No smell. I was expecting a thick, deep perfume to come out of this little flower, but no such luck. Still, I’ll keep it and press it in the phone book.
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The Elephant in the Room is published by Kwela, an imprint of the NB group
The past two weeks have brought the happy news that both Kopano Matlwa and Rosamund Kendal – pictured together at left – have returned to the SA Lit scene, with follow-up novels to their very well received Coconut and The Karma Suture, respectively. (And they’re staying in the Jacana stable to boot.)
