*
“Does anybody have any ideas for the school fete?” Mrs Davies asked pulling a snow white hanky out of her pocket. Her sneeze was drowned by the clatter of the sash windows. A puff of cold wind invaded the room. The whole building shook and creaked. Big raindrops started to hit the windowpanes and reduced the visibility to about 10 metres. I could just make out the silhouettes of the blue gums shaking in a landscape of different shades of grey. “What weather, schrecklich, schrecklich,” Mrs Davies sighed folding her hanky neatly. “If it doesn’t stop soon there will be a Katastrophe.”
The gale had been howling for 2 days. The harbour and the airport were closed and some kids living out of town couldn’t come to school because the roads were washed away or blocked by fallen trees. A man had been killed by a flying marquee and a piece of corrugated iron from the roof of my host parents’ neighbour had landed between the swimming pool and Hannes’ aviary, missing the kitschy statues by the breadth of a salami skin.
Nobody came up with an idea for the school fete. Mrs Davies sighed again. “You must all think about it, zack zack, that we can organize everything in time”
In the afternoon occasional blue patches appeared in the sky and the wind eased. I found a young dove, the size of 3 matchboxes, waddling around under the big fig tree in the garden. It looked totally lost so I picked it up. It had big black eyes and a thin beak that seemed too long for it’s face. I put it in a box and went to the garage to get some of Hannes’ bird food. There were at least 10 big drums with different varieties of seeds. The only ones I recognized were sunflower and maize.
What on earth does a baby dove eat?
There were boxes and bags full of bird stuff and I had a good look around. Between 2 rolls of chicken wire and a cage covered by bundles of coconut fibre, I found a pile of Playboys!
Hohoho Hannes! First booze hidden away in the car and now a collection of sex mags. I wonder what the Dominee and Marieke would say to this?
Mr Perlman, the neighbour, came over with his garden boy to collect his sheet of corrugated iron. Mr Perlman was small, fat and freckled and had carefully combed, thinning red hair. “My post card collection got drenched because of that bloody hole in the roof,” he grumbled. “Hope I can get them back into good shape.” He lit a cigarette. “So Hannes has gone off to have a look at the ‘birds’ again?” He winked at me. “Quite a remarkable man for his age.”
Does he mean what I think he means?
Mr Perlman relished some deep puffs, winked again and left with the words: “Anyway young lady, if you need any help or anything just pop in and ask.”
Marieke came back from where ever she had been and I showed her the little dove.
“I don’t know much about birds Mathilda, but there is one thing Hannes has taught me. You must never put them into a box. They need to be able to look around and see what is going on. It’s just as important as sunlight and food for them. Go and ask Jacob for a cage. There are some in the garage.”
Jacob told me that in the township a couple of shacks, a shop and a school had been blown down in the storm, and that the tap at the street corner where he got his water didn’t work anymore. None of this had been mentioned in the local news but everybody who listened to the radio, knew that a dog had been swept out to sea.
I made a nest out of coconut fibre and grass and put the cage in front of my window with 2 pot plants on the sides so that the bird would be surrounded by familiar greenery. I felt quite guilty and a bit ridiculous spending my time and energy on a bird while there were people without a roof over their heads out there. But what could I do? Hannes had said that without a special permit from the police, a whitey couldn’t even go into the township. When I went into the kitchen to organize some breadcrumbs for the bird, Marieke said: “By the way, you’ll have to mouth feed that little dove of yours, otherwise it won’t eat.”
“How do you mean?”
“You put some bread in your mouth and chew it. When it is nice and soft you push it with your tongue between your lips and the bird eats it right from there.”
“Yuk, isn’t that unhygienic? Maybe it has got some illness.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll show you how to do it.”
She gave me a demonstration. After a minute or 2 the dove stuck it’s beak between her lips and eagerly swallowed bread mixed with Marieke’s spit. I was impressed. Old Marieke sure had some unexpected qualities.
Paulina was washing up dishes in the kitchen, listening to an early morning program on an African radio station. Every now and then she contributed an enthusiastic harmony to the tune. Jacob had started to fish leaves out of the swimming pool, but now the net with its long handle lay abandoned on the lawn and he jived elegantly with closed eyes in a world of his own to the music. Marieke was nowhere to be seen, probably still sleeping in her bedroom on the other side of the house. Normally she was the first to get up to make coffee. Since Hannes had left Paulina had taken over this task.
The sky shone a pristine blue. A flock of white pigeons circled above the garden, some invisible choreographer directing their flight. Their changing shapes gleamed orangey pink in the early light. A little breeze, still cool, but with the promise of a hot day, gently moved the trees and carried the flowery scent of a thousand blossoms.
I climbed the fig tree, something I could only do when Marieke was not around. She had warned me not to engage in any un-ladylike activities like wearing tiny shorts, sitting Indian tailor style and climbing trees while the garden boy was around, because that would lead him into temptation, as sure as God made little apples. I didn’t know if her apprehension was justified but I thought I would rather live without servants and run around naked if I wanted to. What had mankind invented washing machines, vacuum cleaners and electric hedge cutters for? But in South Africa just about everything was done by hand. “We have to give work to the blacks,” Hannes had said one day. “It’s true that machines are more reliable, don’t steal and don’t consume a kilogram of sugar per week, but just imagine millions of unemployed blacks not able to buy warm clothes when it is cold, and their children dying of hunger.”
So whitey only has servants to keep the blacks alive and happy? The propaganda department has probably also worked out why blacks just love to live in ‘locations’ and are delighted to go to jail when they are caught without a passbook.
It was one of those blissful days when everybody seems to be happy. At school even Miss Pembleton smiled at me and Mrs Davies looked as if she wanted to kiss me, when I suggested a Bavarian Biergarten for the school fete.
“We can’t serve beer. That is verboten,” she said.” But German cakes would be sehr gut, sehr gut.”
I nearly had a fit of laughter every time I heard her accent. I was also German, but I didn’t speak like that, or did I?
“I can make Linzer Torte and Käsekuchen.”
“Cheesecake! Lekker, lekker, my girl. We’ll ask Mrs Koekemoer if we can use the school kitchen. You can teach the girls, ja ja. I’ll have to find some other occupation for the boys, natürlich.”
Of course, when it comes to preparing food, males can only be chefs in restaurants and braaivleis bosses.
“I could also do the decoration,” I suggested. “Paint the beer garden and do some Bauernmalerei – that was to skip some of those boring biology and history lessons.
“What a brilliant idea, sehr gut, sehr gut. With that some boys could give you a hand, ja ja.”
I was sitting on the carpet tailor fashion, and the little bird was nibbling between my lips when Mr Perlman came to check if Marieke and I were still all right. He always wore impeccable suits and today’s tie had neat little black and yellow squares on it. He observed the feeding with considerable interest.
“May I sit down, young lady?”
“Mhmmm,” I nodded with my mouth full of bread.
He drew up a chair, sat down and lit a cigarette. “So how is life without a man in the house?” He winked.
“M
hmmm.”
“Lucky animal, to be able to feed from those lovely lips.” He winked again. Little beads of sweat appeared on his half bald head.
Why is he sweating? It’s not that hot.
The dove kept on pecking between my lips. Mr Perlman moistened the end of his cigarette. “By the way, my name is Roderick.” Wink. “People who are very close to me call me Roddy.” Wink.
What’s this guy winking for all the time? Looks like a nervous tick. He should take some Baldrian to calm himself down – mebbe that would also stop his eyes jumping from my lips to my lap.
Mr Perlman Roderick Roddy took a deep draw from his wet cigarette, swallowed and announced: “I’ve always liked…”
At that moment Marieke walked in. “Good afternoon Roderick, isn’t it a beautiful day?”
She shot a murderous look at me – sitting in tailor fashion – and said with a sugary voice: “Won’t you get me that big red book from the top shelf, my girl?”
You old witch, now I have to get up.
Mr Perlman left shortly afterwards, reminding us that we just had to knock at his door if we needed help – or anything. Wink.
“I wonder if Roderick thinks I’m getting too old to look after myself,” Marieke remarked. “Sometimes we don’t see him for 6 months at a time and now he comes over every day, just because Hannes is not here.”
Kim, Peggy the non leg shaver, Jason the maths genius and Brian the prefect had been chosen to help me decorate the gymnasium for the school fete. The ambiance was great because we had already missed Mr Brown’s boring history lesson and half of Mr Cuthbert’s maths revision.
“During the last Christmas holidays my folks and I went to my uncle’s game farm in the Klaserie,” Jason was saying while cutting a long piece of wallpaper off a big roll. “One afternoon the game ranger, old Tony, came along and told us to be careful because there were some cheeky young lions roaming around.”
“What, there are real wild lions on that farm?” I asked, helping Kim to hang up some garlands.
“Ja,” Jason said. “You get the Big Five there.”
“The Big Five! What’s that?”
Peggy gave me a pitiful look from the height of the chair, where she was putting prestik on the wall. “I guess in Germany you don’t get many wild animals, in any case not the same ones as we do here. The Big Five are: lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo.”
“Wow,” I was impressed.
Brian climbed down from a ladder and said:”A cousin of mine is a game ranger in Kenya. You should see him. The guy knows all the spoore. He can tell by the look of a footprint how long ago which animal walked past at what speed and what it had to eat…”
“For that you have to check the dung,” Kim interrupted. “Come and help me move that bench, Brian, we need to stick up some more paper in that corner there.”
“You know that they found a piece of mammoth crap in the arctic or somewhere not so long ago,” Peggy contributed. “Now they are analysing what those mammoths lived on. Imagine, after all those thousands of years.”
“I wonder how big that droll is,” Brian said. “Mammoths were humongous beasts.” He rolled out some more wallpaper on the floor. “Just pass me the scissors please, Mathilda. The biggest heap of shit I’ve ever seen came out of an elephant and that was already quite impressive.”
“Ja, Mathilda,” Jason grinned. “Do yourself a favour and visit a game reserve. You can’t leave this country without having seen a nice, fat elephant droll.”
A good part of the gymnasium walls was covered with beigeish paper by now.
“I reckon this is enough,” Kim said.
“Ja, let’s start painting,” Peggy suggested. “What does one need for a German beer garden atmosphere, Mathilda?”
“Some chestnut trees with coloured light bulbs… mebbe we can also use some real light bulbs…Mrs Davies said beer is out of the question for the school fete, but we can paint some Masskrüge, that’s 1 litre beer mugs…”
“…and a Bavarian barmaid with big boobs carrying them,” Brian suggested.
“Hells bells, do you never stop talking about shit and boobs?” I asked.
“I thought you Germans were so liberated,” Brian answered.
“I guess we are – and that’s why we get over our anal phase when we are 4, and after that we can concentrate on other things.”
“Like sex?” Jason asked.
Phhhhhhh
Mr Perlman came before I even had time to take my school uniform off. His carroty hair was extra carefully arranged across his head and he wore an orange tie with blue and yellow stripes.
“How is your little bird?”
“All right.”
“It should be thriving on the special treatment it gets.” Wink.
Here we go again. He definitely needs some Baldrian, but what is Baldrian in English?
”Do you know any German, Mr Perlman?”
“Oh ja, ich liebe dich.” Wink.
Phhhh, very original.
Mr Perlman lit a cigarette. “Ja, I learned some German at school when I was still young” – wink – “and strong, hahaha… But as they say: use it or loose it.” Wink, wink. He eyed me from my head to my toes. “In my day the girls’ school skirts covered their knees”
“Female fashion has come a long way since your day, Mr Perlman.”
He pulled on his wet cigarette. “Yes my dear, but certain things don’t change. The essence of a school gym for example.” Wink. Little drops of sweat rolled along the few strands of his hair. “There is this unique blossoming with the promise of the fruit. And the desire to be the first one to pick it.” Wink. Wink.
That’s enough!
”I have to do my homework now, Mr Perlman.”
“Maybe I can help you?” Wink.
“I doubt it. I’ve got to make 4 button holes by hand with 4 different stitches.”
“Oh, I see. You’ll be a good little wife to a lucky husband one day.” Wink. “If there is anything I can do for you” – wink – “you must be quite lonely… all by yourself in a foreign country.” Wink.
“I’m okay Mr Perlman.”
He extended a limp hand. “Don’t forget, Roddy is always available to help a pretty girl.” Wink.
“Bye, Mr Perlman. By the way, seeing that you are so much into fruit, we’ve got a whole basket full of fresh oranges. Please do take one. They are lovely. Full of vitamins.”
Marieke arrived with a new hairstyle, shorter and much better although far too artificial for my taste, but Afrikaaner women seemed to love to carry heaps of perm on their heads. She told Paulina to get the groceries out of the car and poured herself some Wincarnis. Since Hannes had left the Wincarnis bottle was never far away from my host mother. She said it was a fortifying medicine for elderly ladies. I had tried one schluck and noticed it was quite potent stuff.
“I got us some warmbrakke for supper,” Marieke announced. “Of course I would never do that if Hannes was here, because there is nothing like a good, hearty meal to keep a man happy. So when you are married, Mathilda, don’t expect your husband to live on warmbrakke.”
“What’s that, warrrmbrrakke ?”
Marieke swallowed some Wincarnis. “It’s about time you started to learn some Afrikaans, my girl. Warrrm is warm and a brrrak is a dog, plural brrrakke, so warrrmbrrrakke are hot dogs.”
Gee, sounds as if she is gargling.
After the warmbrakke Marieke said she needed an early night and went straight to bed. I read the ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’, the book the violet eyed lady had given me on the bus. It was full of stories and poems by black writers telling about life of black people in South Africa:
men leaving their families to work on the mines, living in hostels, 20 guys in a dormitory, sleeping on concrete bunks, sweating their souls out 200 meters under ground;
women pounding mielies in the kraal, drums thudding through the bush, herd boys looking after the cattle;
police raids in the t
ownships in the middle of the night;
the song of the village praise singer;
THE STRUGGLE, exile, Robben Island;
the spirits of the ancestors, helping the living or destroying them;
detribalized people in Soweto and other townships, struggling along, trying to keep their dignity…
Each word written with blood hope and tears.
It was midnight when I switched the lights off, having touched the shadows of a universe unknown to me, right here in my host country.