PART III
I flew back to V.B. in a turbo prop. Julie and the kids came to fetch me from the airport. The first thing everybody commented on was my hairstyle. Greta said I looked like a boy. We went to the post office to collect my parcel. It came from Germany and was as big as 2 shoe boxes and quite heavy, and it made a funny sort of muffled metallic sound when I shook it. I had no idea what it could be.
“I want the stamps,” Joshua said.
“And I want some of what’s inside,” Greta said.
“Me too,” Lolo crowed.
“Children,” Julie sighed exasperatedly. “When you talk to people you don’t say ‘I want’, you ask ‘may I please’.”
“But Mathilda isn’t people,” Joshua said.
“Oh.” A slight grin unfolded on Julie’s face.
“No,” Joshua screamed. “She is our…big sister.” He nearly suffocated me with a big hug.
“Jaaa, our big sistaa,” Greta and Lolo yelled plastering my face and my neck with wet kisses.
Gosh, it’s good to be back.
In the Winters’ kitchen a new, young maid was washing the dishes. She was small and slender, except for an unbelievably big bum.
“This is Nohandbag,” Julie introduced her.
What a name!
Ludwig came in, covered in sawdust from working on the boat. He wrapped his arms around me and smiled: “Welcome back, my girlie.”
It was like coming home.
Ludwig poured drinks, leaving a trail of sawdust behind him, while I unwrapped my parcel.
“Wow,” Greta and Joshua exclaimed with one voice when the gift appeared.
“This is beautiful,” Julie said.
“You think there is a treasure inside?” Lolo asked.
“Treasures don’t come in the post,” Greta said.
I lifted up the metal box and showed it around. It was silver and had a medieval castle painted on its curved lid. I still didn’t have a clue of what could be inside it. I opened the lid.
“Yuk!” Greta pulled a face. “This looks like big squashed dog turds in plastic packets.”
Ludwig leaned over my shoulder. “It sure isn’t pleasing to the eye.”
I took one packet out and grinned. “It’s actually very nice. I dug out another packet that looked even more horrible and opened it. “These are my favourites.” The kids watched with eyes like saucers as I helped myself to a piece.
“Mathilda,” Lolo crinkled her nose in disgust, “You are not going to eat that?”
“Watch me.”
“I’d also like some,” Julie winked at me.
We each took a big bite and collapsed laughing.
“The temperature in the post office must have been phenomenal over Christmas,” Julie giggled when she got her breath back.
“What you see here,” I held up a packet, “is first class German ginger bread with chocolate and marzipan filling and divine thick chocolate coating. Unfortunately it lost its shape in the African heat.”
We finished half the contents of the box while exchanging the latest news. Nohandbag tried a piece and said: “Too nice.”
“How d’you think she got her name?” I asked when she had gone to do some ironing.
“I guess her mother just liked the word handbag,” Ludwig said.
“Ja, but why then call her Nohandbag? If you like a thing you don’t say no to it. She could have just called her Handbag.”
“This hasn’t got anything to do with the English word ‘no’,” Ludwig said. “They are Xhosas, you see, and in Xhosa girls’ names start with ‘No’. You get Nomonde and Nogu and so on. So to make a girl’s name out of handbag you’ve got to put a ‘No’ in front of it. With boys it’s different. I’ve known guys called Hygiene and one Isuzu. He got his name because he was born on the back of an Isuzu bakkie.
We spent a couple of days giving the final touches to the dinghy. Joshua wanted to call it Spray IV, but the rest of us voted for Dabula manzi, which in Xhosa means ‘tear apart the waters’.
On the morning of the launch the weather forecast on Calling all Farmers announced a fine day, no rain expected, maximum 30ºC and a South Easter blowing at 15 knots.
Alpheus helped to put the dinghy on Ludwig’s home made trailer. Joshua loaded the Spray II and III into the car, Lolo her Mrs Vleega and Greta a big bag in case there were any special rocks around.
The Bobbejaan River was about an hour’s drive away from V.B. Once we left the last suburb we were right in the African wilderness; bush covered hills as far as the eye could see, each rise revealing a view even more spectacular than the previous one. On the edge of a sandy riverbed, blue vervet monkeys were chasing each other and in a gorge, where trickles of water spun silvery threads down the rocks, baboons were sitting on sunny ledges. In the south morsels of dark blue sea cut into the green of the bush, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I taught everybody to sing Eene meene miste es rappelt in der Kiste and Julie taught us Un kilomètre a pied ça use les souliers… We were getting quite good at it when the Bobbejaan River appeared.
Heidewitzka
I stopped clean in the middle of souliers. I had expected something like the Murmelfluss at home in Riedberg, but this here looked more like the Zambezi. The river was about half a kilometre wide, brownish water flowing between sandy banks. A long island sat in the last huge bend before the river mouth, where the waves of the Indian Ocean were rolling onto a big sand bank.
We wound our way down the hill on a narrow dirt road. The kids shrieked every time they saw monkeys. Greta wanted to take one home to replace Dodger.
“No ways,” Julie said. “Monkeys have teeth like daggers even worse than dassies.”
We found a gorgeous grassy spot near the bank. Some few 100 metres downstream some people played a ball game and still further on, the roofs of a few summer houses peeped out of the bush. I couldn’t believe how empty the place was in the middle of the holidays!
“You are in South Africa,” Julie grinned. “Wide open spaces, sunny skies and braaivleis, 10.000 km away from the civilized world.”
The dinghy wasn’t very heavy. Ludwig and I carried it from the trailer to the water’s edge, helped by Joshua, who couldn’t keep his fingers away from anything that had to do with boats. We put the mast up and tied the lateen sail to the yard; then Ludwig sent us ‘kids’ to get the anchor line, the anchor and the life jackets out of the car. Joshua fished the rope out of the boot but we couldn’t find any trace of the anchor.
“I and Mrs Vleega are not going in a boat without an anchor,” Lolo announced. “Not even with our life jackets on.”
“What’s taking so long?” Ludwig shouted from the shore.
“We can’t find the anchor,” Joshua shouted back.
Ludwig let fly a couple of swearwords and came to look for himself. “Bloody hell,” he grumbled after a thorough inspection of the car and of the trailer. “We left the damn thing at home.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Greta said.
“Are you crazy?” Joshua snorted. “Do you know what can happen if you go sailing without an anchor? Have you never heard that story of that Australian sailor who…”
“We just take a rock,” Greta said, “and use that as an anchor. There are some big rocks up there on that ledge.”
“That’s my girl,” Ludwig smiled. “Very good thinking.”
Greta beamed. “I’ll choose a nice one, Dad, you come with me to carry it.”
“Everybody ready for the baptizing ceremony?” Ludwig poured the last drop of sparkly into his plastic mug.
We all nodded.
“You know the procedure,” Ludwig carried on. “One schluck for you, the rest for the dinghy. Here we go.”
We raised our mugs. “Cheers. To the boat!”
Joshua produced a major whistle through the gap in his teeth. I saw Lolo pull a face when she swallowed and Greta take a second sip. Ludwig pushed the boat gently into the water. Julie held the rope. Joshua’s cheeks were burning with exci
tement. He stepped into the Bobbejaan River. “I herewith name you Dabula manzi. May you go strong for ever.”
We all yelled and chucked our remaining sparkly at the dinghy. It was an amazingly emotional moment.
“Looks like it floats,” Lolo observed after a couple of minutes.
“Ja, it does,” Ludwig said proudly. “Who is coming on the maiden voyage?”
“Meee,” Joshua, Greta and I shouted in unison.
“Mrs Vleega and I are going to watch,” Lolo said cautiously. “Mebbe we must come and rescue you.”
“Never”, Joshua shook his head. “Forget it.”
“I’ll be the coast guard,” Julie said.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “If you want to go Julie, I…”
“No no, jump in. I’m not only the coast guard but also the chief photographer of this memorable event. I’ll take some lekker shots from here.”
Ludwig set the sail he had made out of a bed sheet and it unfolded in all its burgundy red splendour. He and Greta sat down on the back seat and Joshua and I on the middle bench. The front seat was taken up by the rock-anchor. The wind blew into the sail and we set off. I had never sailed before, and I knew from the very first second, that this was something I would love for the rest of my life. I could feel the river all around the hull and yet we seemed to be flying, gliding like seabirds, just above the surface of the water. The breeze still felt cool and smelled of salt and of the bush and it carried the sound of African drums. The river reflected sparkles of silver into a world without bounds.
“Take the sheet,” Ludwig passed me a rope, “and just keep her like she is.”
The rope was fixed to the back corner of the sail and it pulled gently in my hand.
“Our course is towards these 3 African huts on the hill there,” Ludwig shouted handling the rudder. “Like that we’ll stay clear of the island.”
“Can’t we go and explore it?” Joshua wanted to know.
“Ja Dad, let’s have a look, mebbe we’ll find a treasure,” Greta said.
“I don’t think so,” Ludwig replied. “This whole island is one big swamp. Let’s go past its point and tack.” He explained what everybody had to do. My job would be to handle the sail.
The point was a tangle of greenery, with white birds sitting on low branches and herons stalking, their long beaks submerged. The beating of the drums on the hill was accompanied by singing now, and the sun shone hot from an immaculate sky.
“Everybody ready to tack?” Ludwig shouted.
“Aye,” Joshua yelled.
“Aye,” Greta and I echoed.
Just as we turned it happened. The rock-anchor fell from the front seat and hit a hole in the hull. Brownish water gurgled into the dinghy at an amazing speed. Greta sat speechless, staring with enormous eyes. Joshua jumped around screaming: “Leak! Leak! We are going under.”
Ludwig growled: “Bloody hell,” and something incomprehensible. He told Joshua to sit still, positioned the rudder and the sail and said: “Mathilda, put your bum on that hole.”
“What?”
“Put your bum on that hole and do it fast, otherwise we’ll sink.”
The water in the dinghy was already more than 10 cm high. When your life may be at stake you don’t ask too many questions. I got down to the bottom of the dinghy. One cheek of my bum was just big enough to cover the leak.
“Joshua, take that beaker and bail out.”
Joshua grabbed the mug that had half an hour ago contained some sparkly baptizing-wine and got down to the job. I sat there, feeling my pulse rate going up to about 300. Greta still hadn’t moved; her eyes got bigger by the second. Joshua bailed as if he had never done anything else in his life. Ludwig, stern faced, kept the boat on course. I tried to remember all the life saving manoeuvres they had taught us at the Waldsee swimming club. They sure hadn’t told us how much energy a real emergency takes out of a person’s system. An eternity passed while I was sitting there with the Bobbejaan River tugging at my bum. I was just wondering how far sharks swim up into rivers, when Ludwig’s face split into a grin. “I think we are all right now.”
Joshua had bailed nearly all the water out, nobody had panicked and the shore was getting close. Looked like we were going to survive after all.
Ludwig turned to me. “Mathilda, now you know where that Scandinavian legend why women have cold bums comes from. The lady involved was very much in the same situation as you are now.”
“It’s not fair,” Greta whined. “Everybody has a TV set and tonight everybody is going to watch the first ever TV shown in South Africa, and we have to sit here with your boring grown up friends and have a braai.”
“The mere fact that some of our boring grown up friends are going to join us tonight already shows you that not everybody is going to watch TV tonight,” Julie said.
“And not everybody has got a TV set because South Africa is amongst the countries with the highest TV prices in the world,” Ludwig said. “Lots of people just can’t afford one.”
“In my class they’ve all got TV, or they know someone who’s got one, and when school starts again I’ll look like an idiot ‘cause I’ll be the only guy who’s never watched TV,” Joshua moaned. “And Auntie Mary said tonight is a historical event and she would not miss it for the life of her.”
“Ja, you’re depriving us of our education,” Greta said. “If Auntie Mary didn’t live so far away we could go and watch at her place.”
“Mary has got sparrow brains and she only bought a box because the Joneses have also got one,” Ludwig said. “Let me tell you something. I’ve lived for more than 40 years without a box and I’ll be damned if I get one now, to watch a stuffed Afrikaans rabbit. And the Nats are going to use it for propaganda anyway, same as the radio”
For the next few weeks everybody was imitating the voice of Haas Das, the stuffed Afrikaans rabbit, South Africa’s first TV star. Kim told me that she had watched the country’s first broadcast at her cousin’s place. There had been 18 people altogether and it had been great, except for Prime Minister Vorster’s boring speech. Auntie Mary phoned and said that TV was fantastic. She watched everything from the test pattern to the end of transmission when they played the national anthem and waved the South African flag. What a pity that there was no broadcast on Sundays.