You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (5 page)

Then, unexpectedly, interrupting Father as he gave details of the visit, she turned on me. ‘And don't you think you'll get away with it, sitting under the table like a tame Griqua.'

But revenge did not hold her attention. A wry smile fluttered about her lips. She muttered. ‘Fowl, howl, scowl and not bowl.' She would check the pronunciation of every word she had taken for granted.

I knew that unlike the rest of us it would take her no time at all to say bowl like hole, smoothly, without stuttering.

J
AN
K
LINKIES

Perhaps Father's cousin, Jan Klinkies, was not so strange. He had after all prised off a length of wire from the roll to serve as a belt. Unless such a belt is still attached to the roll which then is dragged heavily along, it is unfair to typecast a man merely because he bunches his trousers generously with a length of wire. Or because he is neither a coffee nor a Rooibos tea-drinker or because he is keen on empty cans.

These things, however, constituted the sum total of what was said about him. There was no malicious gossip. No one said how thin his legs had grown, that his teeth once were white and regular, that he should do this or that. Jan Klinkies, I knew even before this visit, did not do things. He had once done things and references to his words or actions were always references to the past. For his past did not grow pot-bellied with time. Old stories about Jan Klinkies did not shrink to single images in order to make way for fresh ones. And fresh stories did not wrap around the old like coloured cellophane, covering here and there in a fold through which the old is dimmer, the cellophane doubly coloured. An event some two years before had sealed off the past and all that concerned Jan Klinkies now was in the present.

So he bunches his trousers, refuses to take coffee or tea with his relatives, is mad for empty tin cans.

Which presumably exempted him from such things as wrinkles, birthdays, the worry about a nest egg or the condition of his soul. He certainly did not go to church but spent Sundays in the comfort of his crusty corduroys, and no one complained. Not that he was neglected. Brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins regularly put their heads together on sad and windy afternoons. They tutted and shook their heads vigorously, saying, Blood is thicker than water.

So twice a year Father visited Jan Klinkies who remained stubbornly unconscious of the fundamental truth upon which these visits were based. He may have noticed that the visitors came in a particular order but it is doubtful whether he correlated the viscosity of blood with the frequency of these visits, for he snarled at all alike.

His eyes slid along the line of Father's raised arm and proffered hand. If he associated the posture with the shaking of hands, he dismissed the idea immediately. What he looked like, whether his face was toasted or cracked by the sun, his hair tangled or combed, can be of no interest without a knowledge of his appearance two years before. He wore a broad-rimmed hat pulled down over his ears and there were two broad strips of elastoplast on his left hand which confirmed Auntie Minnie as the previous visitor.

Jan Klinkies stood on the stoep and stared as we approached. Then, as Father extended a hand, he rushed down the steps and stubbed the toe of a veldskoen into the earth as if it were a meteorological device, for he then flung his face skyward and recited what could only be the SABC report of the wind for that day. Which suggested that he listened to the weather broadcast each morning even though the dust lay inches thick on the radio in the kitchen.

But if his wife could be relied on, Jan Klinkies was not above duplicity. She would not have been surprised if it were the only weather report he had ever heard, many years ago, and which he repeated in the knowledge that the family rota was so large that no one would remember from one visit to another. Besides, he spoke so indistinctly, a rattle in the throat as he reeled off the information, that one barely caught the gist. There was no time to check the details even if he repeated the report in the course of the day. Then the voice came so unexpectedly that you cocked an ear as the words whistled through his barely parted lips. He was either after an onomatopoeic rendering of the wind or it was a deliberate attempt to disguise the words. Whatever his reason, he was certainly successful at both.

Auntie Truida was admired by visiting children who sucked into brittle transparencies the boiled sweets that she stealthily passed to them from the tin on the sideboard. But not everyone had a high opinion of Truida, the wife. It was true that she was not given to lies. Some remembered her valour during the business of the loss of the land. How she submitted to the will of God and saw it as the blessing in disguise which is God's favourite method. How patiently she explained and interpreted the pages and pages of documents about the western strip of land and the Group Areas Act and found a dictionary to look up the word ‘expropriation,' for she was thorough in whatever she did. To all of which Jan Klinkies developed the irritating habit of saying
no
. But Truida made plans: they would better themselves, leave the mangey little farm and with the compensation money buy a house on the Cape Flats. And staring at her scaly grey hands she swore that she would burn the scrubbed oak table and have green marbled formica. There would be an indoor lavatory and the child
would learn English and Jan would earn a decent wage, perhaps learn a trade, attend evening classes . . . and here she stumbled as her eye alighted on a more serious than ever decline of his jaw. Still, she carried on, she'd be a shop assistant, make friends with town women in high heels, for she had seen the jaw drop before, and recover, and everyone thought, Very sensible, and told her so for praise must be given where praise is due.

Still this did not persuade the entire family to a high opinion of her. Truida, in spite of her light skin, came from a dark-complexioned family and there was certainly something nylonish about her hair. Not that anyone actually knew of the primus stove in the back room and the metal comb and the thick sweet smell of brilliantine welded to shafts of hair. The fashion of the french knot that Truida so foolishly adopted confirmed suspicions. There was no doubt that the little hairs in the nape of the neck were rolled up tightly like fronds unfurled by the cautious hot comb. Truida had in other words made a good marriage and Jan had regrettably married beneath him. The family ignored her father's spiteful comments about Jan's lower lip that sometimes drooped until a trickle of saliva brought him back, sometimes at as special and lively an occasion as a Christmas gathering.

So opinion was divided. Father and others were not so sure whether even in the unfortunate circumstances . . . the trousers, the empty cans, the refusal to drink coffee, the desecration of her home . . . it was not immoral of her to leave a lawful husband. A double scandal seemed unnecessary, showed a heathenish disregard of the family. So that they were not prepared to believe everything Truida said.

Jan Klinkies wandered off after the weather recital,
tugging at the waist. Why was it that the trousers, khaki and far too wide, sagged at the waist in spite of the improvised wire belt? He clearly did not experiment, did not arrange equidistant little folds in the band before securing them with the wire. Or sew loops through which to thread the wire. Instead he haphazardly bunched the fabric together, drew the wire around his middle and twisted the ends. So that the wire ends shunted and bumped together as he walked and naturally people complained about this eternal tugging at the waist. Like people who sniff and sniff to prevent mucus from dribbling out of the nostrils, when from a jacket or trouser pocket or even a handbag, much to the surprise of those present, they produce a perfectly adequate handerchief upon which to drain the lot. Jan Klinkies was not altogether insensitive to the problem. He had discovered a flaw in the stitching around the waistband and so sensibly hooked a pinkie into the improvised pocket. But this did not alter matters much. He wandered off discreetly tugging at the waist with a crooked little finger hooked in the waistband in the way that everyone found so potentially indecent.

Father stumbled about with hammer and pliers repairing the fence, tapping at this and that in the awkward moments when Jan Klinkies popped up unexpectedly from behind a bush or a wall. I had an idea that we were not altogether welcome. Entry for me had been a humiliating business, an undignified scrambling over the fence laced with barbed wire. The gate was barricaded with a hillock of tarnished cans, and as further security the house refuse was heaped in front of it. Our host had stood on the stoep watching from beneath his broad-rimmed hat, as if the nature of our reception depended upon the method of mastering the obstacles. His trousers stayed up beautifully, not a suspicion
of sagging as he stood with arms folded. Then he came to watch as Father dug a hole for the refuse with a spade that I passed over the fence. Father shovelled the mountain of cans away from the gate. A wondrous variety of cans: besides the tall cylindrical container of canned pilchards, there was the elliptical Fray Bentos can in two sizes, soft-cornered rectangles of sardine cans, squat condensed-milk cans and others of which you could only guess the spent contents, for all the cans were scrupulously stripped of their labels.

There was no telling whether Jan Klinkies welcomed or resented this shovelling aside, whether he minded the discarded cans mounded in an obelisk on that particular spot. His face remained set. No tell-tale smile of approval played on his lips; he did not clench his teeth in anger. But I suspected that careful aesthetic considerations had been at play. The cans so callously shoved aside might have been placed one by one, interrupted by the stepping back to appraise from a distance and perhaps replace or reposition. There is the business of balance, for instance; the wrong shape could bring the lot toppling down and you'd have to tap sliding cans carefully back into place. And a starting pattern can gradually lose its regularity until a completely new one is formed. It is perhaps only the beginning, the first small mound that you step back from, that is totally pleasing. With such a great number and variety of cans the permutations of summit and slope must be endless. Perhaps it was precisely that consideration that made Jan Klinkies appear a detached observer.

The entrance was briskly cleared. There was plenty to do. The potatoes had not been earthed up, the cabbage seedlings elbowed each other ruthlessly for breathing space, the goat lay listless in need of some or other drug. And all
the while Jan Klinkies shuffled about, heaping empty cans at the base of the tree where he carefully examined them for rust or dents or other blemishes. He also prowled about and spied on us from behind scant bushes through which his eyes shone like a jackal's.

Aha, hum, said Father, clearing his throat and forgetting himself when our host came upon us suddenly, ‘Ahum, a cup of Boeretroos would be just the thing now. A strong cup of coffee.' Jan Klinkies turned very red and rattled, ‘Whatcomfortsaboerispoisontome.' Four times and I had just stopped counting when it came again, tattered with use so that only the contraction Boerpoison came out.

I was sent to make tea. I knew that he had given up Rooibos tea with its illustration of an ox wagon scaling the Drakensberg. The figures alongside the wagon were in Voortrekker dress, so Rooibos too offended him, in spite of his once-favourite sister Sissie's pleading for its lack of tannin, its goodness for the urinary system. So I made Five Roses with the inoffensive label of a rosette of five on the silver wrapping suggesting nothing other than its name. The men drank their tea outside in the sun. I had mine in the kitchen which I scanned for irregularities, for clues. But the pots and pans like any others were heavy and black on the Jewel stove, and from a beam large enamel mugs hung at an angle at which mugs of that size would. Two or three modest cobwebs clung to the beam. There was nothing of interest. Besides, the dust rose from the earth floor choking curiosity.

Through the window I watched them sitting in the sun on their haunches. Father beamed at the unexpected pleasure of taking tea together, observing the ritual of men breaking off from work. They slurped their tea noisily and in concert. The pauses were liberally interspersed with the one-sided conversation conducted by Father.

‘The potatoes don't look too bad this year. When did they go in?' Jan Klinkies held the tea in his mouth and stared at Father, who felt obliged to continue.

‘Last month, first week of last month, no later. I'd bet on it.' They slurped their tea comfortably in concert. Until Jan Klinkies was caught with the mug just poised at his lips.

‘Is there enough to last through the winter? I'd have thought the little patch by the chicken run could be used as well, chickens have used it for so long, it should be good soil, give a good yield.' A long silent savouring of tea. Then Father prefaced his remarks with gentle nodding.