Zebra Horizon

  ***

  “The kids have been running around barefoot all afternoon,” Julie said to me. “Just make sure they scrub their feet when they are in the bath. And lights out at their usual times.”

  Julie and Ludwig were invited for dinner at some friends’ place. They left early. Nightlife in V.B. usually happened before 10 pm. After that the streets were deserted and only stray dogs, cats, windblown leaves and plastic packets moved through the town.

  “What’s for supper?” Joshua asked as soon as his parents were out of the door.

  “Kässpatzen.”

  “Case what?”

  “Kässpatzen.”

  “Case shbazzen.”

  “That’s right. Special noodles they make in Bavaria.”

  “Mrs Vleega loves noodles,” Lolo said. “‘Specially with cheese.”

  “I like cheese with noodles,” Greta said. “A heap of cheese and 3 noodles on top. That’s the best.”

  “Good show; Kässpatzen means something like cheese noodles. I’ll show you how to make them with a special machine I brought from Germany. But first I want to go to the loo and then have a shower.”

  In the toilet I grabbed the Condensed Xhosa Dictionary, which I kept there on a shelf that went from the floor up to the ceiling and housed a mighty lot of books. I tried to learn 2 Xhosa words every day. The school could have done something useful and teach us African languages – this was Africa after all – but the only ‘African’ language they taught at Protea High was Afrikaans, the language of the white African.

  “Manzi - water, indlu - house…”

  The toilet door opened slightly. In the Winters’ home no doors were ever locked and the toilet door didn’t even have a key. A bright green pipe appeared through the gap and then a yellow one, a little bit lower. The pipes turned slowly until they pointed at me.

  What the hell is…

  A squirt of blue liquid hit me in the face, followed by some green stuff on my feet. There were giggles behind the door and some more fluid on my T-shirt.

  Shit. I can’t possibly get up right now and these bloody brats know it.

  I let off a roar that the window panes rattled but the kids only laughed.

  I found them in the tree house. The rope ladder was pulled up.

  “Eh Mathilda, why’re you blue in the face?”

  “She was sitting on the loo and there was no poo, so she pushed til she was blue,” Joshua yelled.

  I suppressed a grin. “Who squirted this disgusting stuff at me?”

  “The goblins,” Lolo said. “Mrs Vleega saw them. They had a biiig water pistol…”

  “Shush man.” Greta knocked her sister in the ribs.

  “It was the tokolosh,” Joshua claimed.

  This isn’t going anywhere. Better make a fun thing of it.

  ”This is quite a nice green on my feet,” I said. “Anybody want to paint some flowers or something on it?”

  3 heads popped over the tree house railing.

  “You mean paint on your skin?” Greta asked.

  “Ja, if it’s any good you can go up to my knees.”

  “Mrs Vleega wants to know if you’re still cross with the goblins,” Lolo said.

  “No no, they’ve chosen my favourite blue for my face. Where did they get it from?”

  “Daddy’s ink,” Lolo said.

  “Shush man,” Joshua growled.

  “Ok guys, I’m going to wait for 5 minutes next to the swimming pool. Anybody who wants to paint bring their finger paints and I don’t want any mess ‘cause we’ll take photos when we’ve finished.”

  I ended up with flowers, beetles and an image of her favourite rock on my right leg by Greta; an octopus and sharks on my left leg by Joshua and stars and a red snowman on my left arm by Lolo. Then Greta wanted a rainbow on her face, Joshua a whale on his belly and Lolo a giraffe o her back. Schnappsi got a sun on his forehead but I stopped them from converting Dodger into the Pink Panther. By the time we had taken photos of everybody it was dark.

  “My auntie Mary has got a much bigger noodle machine than you,” Greta cast a critical eye on my Kässpatzenreibe, which consisted simply of a rectangular piece of metal with holes in it and a mobile container on top.

  “But auntie Mary never makes noodles,” Joshua said. “For her it’s too messy.”

  “You’ve got to live life even if it kills you, that’s your dad’s opinion,” I said. I filled some dough into the container and moved it to the left and to the right. Little finger-thick dough sausages dangled into boiling water in the Winters’ biggest pot. Lolo sat on a small plastic chair on the kitchen table and observed the process with great interest. “Looks like worms,” she said.

  “Before it looks like worms it looks like runny tummy crap,” Greta observed.

  “Ja, like albino runny tummy crap,” Joshua contributed. “What’s crap in German?”

  “Scheisse.”

  “Shy- za.”

  “No no. Scheisse. With an s like in sausage.”

  “Shy-ssa.”

  “That’s better.”

  By the time they mastered the pronunciation of Popo, Piesel, Pimmel and Scheide, I had fried the onions and grated a big heap of 3 brands of cheese I didn’t know. Greta insisted on the addition of her favourite cheese, some orangey sweetish stuff. “Otherwise it will taste like shy-ssa, you know.”

  I mixed the noodles, cheese and onions in the biggest dish I could find. There was about enough for a week. The estimation of quantities was one of my weak points, especially when it came to pasta.

  Mrs Vleega presided over our meal, seated in Lolo’s plastic chair on the kitchen table.

  “Your stuff looks more like the mieliepap the blacks eat than noodles,” Joshua observed.

  I grabbed a portion of noodlepap with 2 serving spoons. “Lolo first.” The kids watched, fascinated. I was quite surprised myself. Threads of cheese stretched from the big dish right across to Lolo’s plate.

  “It’s an example of cultural variation,” Joshua broke the silence.

  “Must be the mix of all these different brands of cheese,” I guessed.

  “Are you sure one can eat that?” Greta asked.

  “Watch me.” The threads extended from the plate to my mouth.

  “We’ll need scissors to eat that,” Greta said.

  Joshua pulled on a cheese string. “I wonder how far it stretches?”

  Interesting question.

  I walked backwards until I hit the kitchen door.

  It’s probably better to keep this stuff out of the rest of the house.

  I tied the string to the door handle.

  For once Joshua was impressed.” Reckon you’ve invented some new type of rubber, Mathilda?”

  “I also want to have a pull,” Lolo said.

  Du lieber Himmel.

  But it was too late. Nothing could stop them now. Some time later the kitchen looked like covered in a drunken spider’s web.

  “I think that is enough now,” I said. “The more you mess around the more we’ll have to clean up.”

  “I’m not going to clean up,” Joshua protested. “That’s Opheibia’s job.”

  His sisters agreed. I only got them into their beds by promising a packet of dragon sweets to the first one to be under the blankets.

  I decided on some more sustenance before the clean up and finished a bowl of Kässpatzen pepped up with chutney and chilli sauce. Then I called the dogs in but they didn’t show much enthusiasm for stringy cheese suspended between the furniture. I was in the process of luring Schnappsi with some whisky when the back door opened and my host parents walked in.

  Oy oy oy, now the shit is going to hit the fan!

  They stopped dead in their tracks. Ludwig whistled through his teeth. “You should apply for a job as a set builder at the theatre. There might be some future in surrealistic work.”

  Julie stared at my colourful limbs. “Look at that cute blue beetle,” she said to Ludwig. “And this extraordinary octopus.
Maybe we should send the kids to extra art classes.”