Читать книгу Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and Other Stories - Jolyn Phillips - Страница 5

God became a ghost when I came to work on the boats in Gansbaai. Boet Haas got me a job as a cook on Marlene. Marlene was the most beautiful boat I had ever seen. She lay next to Blougans and Kolgans in the Ou Hawe.

The sea is a strange thing. If I wade in the water, she feels light, like nothing. When we were on sea it was a different thing. When we cast our nets she became rammetjie-uitnek. Marlene had to bore through the sea like a drill machine.

She sank the other day and I knew Marlene was tired of her beatings. We were on standby a lot those days because of the strong wind. I think the sea sank us on purpose to show us wie’s Baas en wie’s Klaas. But I’m very glad the sea took her. I would not have wanted to bury her anywhere else. I came walking down Gousblom Street, my heart just as heavy as my wet clothes. Sophia was leaning over the door. She looked at me as if I make her sick. I’d almost died and she only had bitter words to spare.

‘Now can you see, Fraans? God is talking with you. It’s because that skipper is Lucifer himself that the boat sank. You work, work, work, but we are still poor and we are still hungry. You are drinking our lives away, gemors. Wapie can’t eat bread and coffee, people will talk, hy is kla so min en dun.’

My thoughts quieted down her scolding. Why, God, are you punishing me like this? Every job I find I lose. Everything I touch dies. Once I tasted that bitter sweet wine it controlled me, but my Sophia doesn’t understand, my brother Japie doesn’t understand, and his children are too dead to understand. I killed them with Japie’s car. It is my fault. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? I am tired. Well God, if you’re not listening, then I am glad to die with the devil in my heart. It would not make a difference anyways.

‘Dit help nie jy kyk in my bek nie, lafaard,’ Sophia said.

‘Man, fok jou en jou God, Sophia! Fo–’

She pushed me out and locked the door. I fell backwards, my head spinning for a while, a deep anger burning in my chest. Lying there, I felt like I could lift that house from its roots and kill her with my bare hands. But I was too tired so I got up silently and left her.

Just like the day Pêreberg turned its back on me and I walked that orange muddy road like a dog with its tail between its legs. Standing next to the road, hoping for a lift, the air was clean and potblou and not a single cloud in sight. It will be a cold night, I thought, holding onto my papsak. A bakkie stopped. ‘Klim op,’ the driver said. I smelled the air again. It smelled of the fish maize Kallie-them made at the factory. It was a familiar smell that clung to our lives. It was the smell we endured to put bread on the table.

The bakkie stopped at Stanford’s Cross. I got off and the bak­kie drove towards Hermanus. I turned right towards Pêreberg. My vroutjie Sophia is the moer in with me, I thought while I walked Paardenberg’s road. How could I tell this stubborn woman of mine that I loved her? She’d become so hard. The soft voice that I fell in love with in church choir had changed into a thunderstorm. I had never cheated on her. But then when she smiled it reminded me of our wedding. It had been a simple one. Antie Loesie had lent her wedding dress and Ragel had made her a veil of one of her finest curtains and had needled some pink sewejaartjies onto it to make it nice. The Ingelse call the sewejaartjie flowers ‘everlastings’. Sophia is a sewejaartjie. I remembered the church stoep. It looked so beautiful that year, the grapevines wrapped around the afdakkie and the krismis flowers were in full bloom. There were blue ones and pink ones. It was the one moment I kept at hand for that just-in-case-out-of-the-blue sadness.

My head beat from the pain. Sophia had stabbed me with a butter knife in my head.

‘This earth will cartwheel before you lift your hands for me, Janwap. Isn’t it enough that you fok op our lives with your wine? I am tired,’ Sophia had sobbed. Her eyes were so empty that I couldn’t recognise my wife.

I hit klein Wapie so hard his little body was probably black and blue. I was so angry at the bogsnuiter calling me Oom. I grabbed him by the arm and showed him my veins. ‘You see this arm? This is Rooi blood running through these veins, running through your veins.’

‘My pa is by Jesus,’ the boy told me.

I grabbed him by the neck. ‘You better call me Pa now or you vrek today, boetatjie!’

The child was so scared he pissed in his pants. Toe moer ek hom sommer daaroor ook. If Sophia didn’t come out of the house, he would’ve been dead. At least he would have died knowing Fraans Rooi was his Pa.

I had walked this orange road so many times. I could smell the fynbos air and the little kapstyl houses withering like old age in the distance. The one facing the laslappie fields were ours once. I walked to Stêword and got a lift on a sheep’s bakkie to Pêreberg. Here, Meteens didn’t look after the house any more. There was not a single pumpkin on the roof and the great fig tree didn’t carry fruit. I wouldn’t blame her; she was black with the burden and her earth rotten. As children, Japie and I always picked figs for Ketoet’s church bazaar fig jam. The tree was like a mother; there was always milk coming out of her branches when we picked the figs. They were Adam’s figs: big and purple and sweet. One day I decided to take a stick and write my name on her trunk and when I was finished it looked like it was bleeding. I tried to heal her with her milk that came out of her branches when we picked the figs. But my name Fraans is still there like those tronkvoël tattoos I saw some of the men wore working with me on the boats.

Life on the farm was slow but waited for no one. We woke up the same time the earth did. Sometimes before the rooster could yawn, even before the varkblomme opened their petals near the vlei. Since Oom died, the whole kroos went to go look for work in Stêword. The day I decided to draai stokkies, I walked the devil’s road willingly into his claws. ‘Satangs kinners,’ Ma Ragel would say. The pine cone trees were darem still here. If you stood on the stoep looking at the beautiful still life, it looks like art, God’s art.

The evening before I ran away from home, Dolf, Kallie en Oom Dui were sitting round the gêllie, busy to sit en verkoop nôsens. While we were laughing and chatting, I looked at the warm coals, the ones that still had pieces of red in them. My eyes stood still, looking deeper and deeper into the coal. I realised that the piece of red was actually a little flame trapped inside the already-dead coal. There was a knot in my throat and I almost cried. I was that little flame. I knew if I took my things and left, Oubaas Grobelaar would never allow me to visit my family again. I would have to pay him with money. Oubaas Grobelaar gave me my first job on the farm as a wine-marker. I was good at reading and writing. Every Friday I wrote everyone’s name on those two-litre bottles and filled them with black wine, ticked their names in the book as I paid everyone, paid myself. I would have to leave these thoughts here and start new ones elsewhere. Liela had also decided to work in town; we hadn’t seen her in years. I would have to leave the kaiings and skaappootjie we braaied as children in the Dover oven. Those memories didn’t belong to me alone. All I had was this book I picked up years ago. It is all I will take with me tomorrow, I thought.

My first book had no cover, not even a name. Then and there I decided I would make that book mine, because no one wanted it. I started reading the book with no name, my myne book. It was the best piece of rubbish that I picked up at the rubbish hole close to our house. I was so proud of it. I stuck it under my white school shirt. It smelled of cow dung, but it didn’t traak me because I’d never had something that was mine alone. That’s the day my love for words was born. I kept rhymes and stories in my mind that I would whisper to myself later when I was alone. Words were everywhere. In the morning when Klaasvakie’s sleeping dust was still in my eyes, our little huisie smelled like bakbrood and moerkoffie that simmered on the Dover stove and the BB tobacco smoke floating from Katoet’s pyp. All those smells I could spell. All those smells I could taste like the moerkoffie and the kaiings on my bread. It’s darem all that Meteens could not get a hold of. I drank Meteens out of my life ever since I left Pêreberg.

When we were still wet behind the ears, me and Japie were down by Sileja-them’s road playing with our spinning tops. We were arguing about whose spinning tops should be on the ground to get an ertjie when Meteens came staggering down the hill with a black stallion that he stole from Willowdale, a neighbouring farm. He asked us to look after the thing. We decided to take it for a gallop when Ounooi, the teefhond, ran under the horse’s legs. The horse had such a fright that he stood on his two hooves kicking with his front legs, neighing like a hysterical woman. Japie had already run away. I was the only one lying there, moaning on the ground. Meteens came to see why there was such a noise and he began to go mad when he saw the horse donner into the bos.

Meteens is my eldest sister’s husband. He said he caught Ketoet with his watches. He is always dressed grênd with leather boots and five watches on each arm.

‘Jou gemors, why did you let the horse run wild? Djulle ga gemoer word vedag! Bleddie gedrogte!’

I could see Mêg run out of the house holding onto her dress. ‘Ag, leave the child, he is smaller than you.’

‘You tell me fokkol, jou dikgat, djou useless bitch. Loep help Sileja in the kitchen.’

Mêg didn’t give him any face. She was a kind meisiekint. ‘Is jy okay, klonkie, wat’s fout?’ she asked.

‘My foot, my toe,’ I moaned.

She tore a piece off from her dress and made it into a knot. ‘Dè,’ she said. ‘Bite on it.’

‘Huh, why–? Eina!’ I screamed.

She snapped my toe back to its position. ‘Ag, don’t be such a tjankbalie. It will heal soon.’

‘Siestog,’ Ouma Ragel always said, ‘she is a sagtehart-kint.’ I didn’t have a ma but Mêggie was a ma to me. She taught me how to iron a shirt in its naat and she was the one who forced her last R2 into my hand. It was still a lot of money then. She always told me, ‘Klonkie, you must never hide your tears. It’s the only thing that brings the heart a little bit of light.’ She greeted me, standing by the gate with her arms folded, ‘Mooi leer by die skool and carry God in your heart always.’

All these memories made my eyelids heavy, lullabying me into a deep sleep. It really felt okay to sleep on my brother’s lawn waiting for him to get home. I needed to say sorry …

‘Fraans! Fraans! Liewe Here, is it really you? What are you doing on Pêreberg? Jinne, man, look at you.’ I hear Japie’s words make my headache bigger. Japie spat on the grass because the stench coming from his brother made him nauseous. He had been away for two days to help Baas Fourie with the sow; she gave birth to seven piglets the day before. It was a difficult birth. And now he had to deal with his drunken brother who he last saw at the funeral eight years ago.

‘Boeta, I waited for you the Sunday afternoon,’ I said.

‘You’re gesuip, Fraans. It’s bleddie Tuesday.’

‘I’m sorry, Japie. Ekkiritie bedoelie. I lost control of the wheel, it was so misty and the road was muddy. I’m sorry sorry, my boeta.’

‘Bedaar! What are you talking about?’

‘Adrie and Korrietjie.’

Japie sat with me on the grass. His eyes were wet. He’d promised himself he’d never cry, but his heart became small when he saw his brother lying there drunk and helpless.

‘Boeta?’

‘Yes, Fraans.’

‘Do you still remember that rympie Juffrou Sheila taught us in school?’

‘Which one?’

‘Lamtietie damtietie doe-doe, my liefstetjie.’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Sing it with me, Japie.’

‘You should stop drinking, Fraansie. Oom Tas is driving you mad. This is pure dronkverdriet.’

‘Ag toe, man …’

‘Okay, then. You will have to start first.’

‘Lamtietie damtietie doe-doe, my liefstetjie,’ we both started.

  Moederhart rowertjie, dierbaarste diefstetjie

  Luister hoe fluister die wind deur die boompetjie

  Heen en weer wieg hy hom al oor die stroompetjie

 

  Doe-doe-doe blaretjie, slapenstyd nadertjie

  Doe-doe-doe blommetjie, nag is aan kommetjie

  So sing die windjie vir blaartjies en blommetjies.

Japie and I both started laughing. Japie took a deep breath. The tears made his heart lighter. ‘It’s in the past now,’ Japie said, talking to the sky, with a vague look in his eyes.

‘Please forgive me, Japie.’ I looked at my brother, smiling. I had not felt like this in years.

‘Forgive yourself first, Fraans,’ Japie said. ‘Forgive yourself.’