Читать книгу The Long Way Home - Dana Snyman - Страница 9

“Let’s be honest,” says Attie du Plooy as he pushes his can of Stoney ginger beer to one side on the table. “This country is buggered – completely buggered.”

I look at him but say nothing. I barely know him.

When I sat down at the table in the Central Café in De Doorns, on the N1 on the other side of Worcester, Attie was already there. He looks around sixty, perhaps a worn-out fifty. His mop of hair sits on his head like the thatched roof of a rondavel. He’s drinking a Stoney, and on the table in front of him are a handful of Lotto tickets and a Bic pen that’s been chewed white.

At first he wanted to know whether I was on my way to Cape Town, because he was looking for a lift to Kraaifontein. Then a little later, he leaned over and introduced himself: “By the way, I’m Attie.”

By then he’d already told me how he’d lost his job on a wine farm here in the Hex Valley, that the owner of the farm apparently owed him R5 000, that his wife and two little girls were with her sister in Rawsonville, and that the bearings on his Opel Kadett had seized.

He’d apparently also applied for a disability grant months ago – he has a leaky heart and trouble with his back – but he hasn’t yet heard a word from the Department of Social Development.

He doesn’t take his small eyes off me. “I have to beg the government for a pension when there are schoolchildren in the township who get money every month.” He drags the Stoney towards himself across the table. “Nice, hey? You make your first baby in standard 7 and the government pays … There’s a girl – a matric girl! – with three little ones.”

It seems the girl is here in De Doorns.

“Here, my friend. Here. In De Doorns East. Go and ask over there. I s’pose you know why they have so many children? To get more money from the government! Because the government pays per child.”

From the table at the Central Café I have a good view of De Doorns’s main street. I can see the Absa building and Pep Stores and a small brown building with a sign that reads Valley Funerals. Past it, further up the street, is the co-op.

Across the street, at the Central Garage, a petrol attendant is sitting on an upside-down cooldrink crate. He’s holding a cellphone and appears to be SMSing. A clapped-out Mazda bakkie stops in front of Valley Funerals, a man and two women in the cab. There are more people under the canopy in the back. The driver, a little old man wearing heavy black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, gets out and disappears into Valley Funerals. The others wait in the bakkie.

I can’t remember how long it’s been since I last sat at a table in a café like this, having a cooldrink and looking out over the street. Few cafés still have tables to sit at. A café isn’t a place to relax in any more.

This one looks like a relic from a bygone era. Outside, there’s a Coke sign on the gable, and inside, the greyish floor tiles are worn in places. Glass jars with sweets are lined up on the counter: Wilson’s toffees, liquorice, apricot sweets. A hand written sign has been stuck on the magazine rack: No reading.

The man behind the counter could be Portuguese. “One fish and chips!” he shouts towards the kitchen. “With plenty vinegar!”

At the table next to me, Attie starts getting up in his scuffed, black Bronx shoes. He folds the Lotto tickets in half and puts them in his breast pocket along with the pen. “It’s time for me to go. See you. Okay?” He walks off as if we’d never met.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. I’m headed in the opposite direction, north. In all the years I’ve travelled along the N1, I’ve never stopped at De Doorns before. This time I decided to stop, even if only for a cooldrink.

The old man comes out of the door at Valley Funerals. He’s holding a sheet of paper and looks at it intently as he walks to the bakkie. Could it be a quotation for a funeral? He stops behind the bakkie, lifts the canopy’s flap, and talks to the people in the back. Maybe they’re from a township or squatter camp nearby and someone close to them has died.

This is grape country, and each year, I hear, hundreds of people, poor and unemployed, come from as far as Zimbabwe to look for work here in the vineyards. Maybe those in the back of the bakkie are people like this, for it has an Eastern Cape number plate.

I’m tempted to ask the man what they’re doing here. What’s life like for people who go around in a bakkie like that?

Lately it feels as though there are too many things in our country, important things about how people live and die, that I know next to nothing about. I see tired old bakkies full of people, strugglers in scuffed shoes, beggars, queues outside government buildings, and I have no idea what these people’s lives are like. It’s making me feel like a stranger in my own country.

There are other reasons why the country feels unfamiliar: the murders, the robberies, the potholes in the road and the bullet holes in the road signs – the never-ending news reports of violence and anger and despair from the rural areas.

Sometimes I even feel out of place because of who I am: a white Afrikaner who had a privileged small-town upbringing. I benefited from apartheid and don’t know how I should feel about the past. Some people say I should reflect on it, quietly and remorsefully. Others say I don’t have to feel so bad about what’s in the past, that there are valid reasons for the cruelties and the outrages.

And then there are those, even members of my family, who tell me: forget everything, pack up, put your things on the plane and come with us to Australia or Canada.

Everywhere I come across people, especially on TV and radio, in the newspapers and on the internet and in debating forums, who tell me how I should feel about the country’s past or its future. I listen and join in, but there’s a time for listening and a time for talking, I’ve decided, and a time for hitting the road, for heading into the country.

In my bakkie that’s parked in front of the café, I have the basics: clothes, a laptop, a camera, notebooks, and a can of pepper spray for self-defence. I want to experience again this country we talk and talk about so much. I want to try and understand for myself what’s making me feel like an unwelcome stranger here. I want to try and find out where I fit in.

I want to know if I still belong here.

It looks as if the man with the spectacles and the people in the bakkie outside Valley Funerals have reached a decision. He pushes the sheet of paper into his jacket pocket and slides into the driver’s seat. A dark cloud of petrol fumes erupts behind the bakkie when he starts it. I try to count the people in the back when it comes past me, but they’re packed too tightly. For a moment the smell of petrol lingers in the street, and then it too is gone.

I drive back towards the N1, which passes the town to the south. To the west the Matroosberg, with one of the highest mountain peaks in the area, is covered in a haze that looks like steam.

Back on the N1, I turn in the direction of Touws River. A little way along, I see the road sign indicating left: De Doorns East.

Only then, once I’ve taken the turn-off, do I realise what I’m about to do: I’m going to look for the matric girl with the three children Attie mentioned in the café. But what will I do when I find her?

De Doorns East isn’t a squatter camp. The brick houses are small and without stoeps, their front gardens bare. In one of the yards an old-fashioned bedpost leans against a wall, and a woman wearing a green headscarf is sitting on a kitchen chair in the front doorway. Perhaps she knows the girl. I pull up in front of the house. It doesn’t feel right to turn up at a stranger’s house like this to ask strange questions, but what else am I supposed to do?

I’ve heard that some people, especially antique dealers, often visit townships and go through people’s homes in search of furniture to buy. Perhaps I should start by pretending to be interested in the bedpost leaning against the wall.

The woman comes over in her blue slippers. Emily Stuurman. Behind her, on a wall unit in the sitting room, an empty Grünberger Stein bottle stands on display, like an ornament. Tannie Emily’s in the mood for a chat.

After we’ve discussed the bedpost and a few other things, she teaches me a new word: AllPay.

AllPay is an umbrella term for the various social grants paid by the government each month, for children up to fourteen, for people over sixty, and for people with disabilities.

But AllPay also refers to the day, usually at the beginning of the month, when these grants are paid. Then a whole procession of officials and security guards descend on the community hall, because most of the people who get the grants don’t have bank accounts. They come to wait in line for cash.

“AllPay is our life,” she says, “and AllPay is the cause of some people’s troubles.”

She was employed in Cape Town as a domestic worker for many years, and now depends on the R1 080 old-age pension she gets from the government each month. She doesn’t know of any matric girl with three children around here, but perhaps her sister will. She also lives here, Emily explains as she goes to call her from the Telkom phone in the bedroom.

I wait in the sitting room. On the wall unit below the empty Grünberger Stein bottle stands a television set and several other items: a ceramic dog, a head-and-shoulders photograph in a paper frame of a girl in a school uniform, a torch, a mug that says Grandma.

Next to the wall unit is a couch. Although it’s no longer new, the cushions are still covered in plastic, just like the day they left the shop.

I listen to tannie Emily’s voice coming from the room, and it occurs to me that it’s impossible to approach this country as if it’s a warm bath on a cold day. There’s no way you can prepare yourself for what’s coming. Its warm-heartedness is completely overwhelming. One minute you’re sitting in the Central Café, and the next you’re standing in a stranger’s house.

She returns from the bedroom. Her sister doesn’t know of a matric girl with three children either. “But she says you must go and ask in Touws River. Tomorrow is their AllPay day.”