Believe it or not, this barren place is recalled with affection. A portrait of poor-white life on the platteland near Pretoria, circa 1954, before Apartheid had fully sunk its teeth. This story is true, albeit fleshed out with characters to carry it. It was selected as one of the best five stories of the year and published in Narrative Magazine in 2015; the only one of my children to earn its keep.
Blerrie Fockin’ Beautiful
The duPreez farm had once been the only pondok on an unpaved road that carved a track through blue gums until, tired of promises, they lost hope and petered out, sighing that this was going nowhere. Free of complaint, the track pressed on, over corrugations and boulders, through saw grass and dried river beds until it bumped to a halt by the homestead. Homestead was just a word to use, instead of comfort or welcome, or a fire in the winters that blew razor winds unblunted by trees or hills.
In the corrugated iron shack with a lean-to stoep, a tractor shed, and barbed wire to keep out animals, generations of duPreez had scratched a living alongside their chickens. In braces and boots, they shrivelled like their apricots set on wire, planting mielies, digging irrigation ditches, and becoming insensible as the sun went down, with the aid of peach brandy on the stoep in summer, on the iron-framed beds in the winter. The rattle of cornstalks was their only music; not many birds found a reason to forage. The women who worked for them walked with basins on their heads from huts five miles distant, to milk the cow, to sweep with wattle brooms the linoleum kitchen, and to keep out of range of the missus, who berated them as she breathed, until they could load the basins and weave their path home through the low-lit grass of evening.
The only remarkable fact about the duPreez was the regularity of bearing sons. No girls, only boys, appeared in swaddling blankets in the rocking chair. Mavis, the wet nurse, was permitted to suckle on the stoep while her own umntwana with a runny nose crawled bare-bottomed in the dirt. Sometimes the sharp-featured missus would soften long enough to give a slice of bread and honey, for which Mavis curtsied in gratitude, making the most of maternal instincts that would freeze over as soon as the child refused the breast. A year later, she would be summoned again; the only synchrony between them was the regularity of birth.
Jacob, Mavis’s husband, collected the payments weekly, removing his hat and waiting bareheaded by the shed. Mostly, his children died before they reached two; their usurpers waxed strong, with stout little legs that could kick feathers off chickens, and close-cropped heads nicked by the cut-throat razor.
The duPreez boys, all eight of them, were good with engines. By the age of six, they were set to ploughing, bumping over the ridges, followed by a plume of rolling dust. On a distant threadbare canvas, a dozen raw-boned cows stamped cracks and shook their long-horned heads like crones at a wake. Down by the reservoir with its rusty mill blades, the older boys would smoke dagga and wait for the black girls fetching wood. The sport was a team game: two boys would hold down a girl, pushing her face into the mud, while the other boys took their turns, unshouldering their braces, undoing fly buttons. Afterwards, they washed the girl’s face almost tenderly and gave her penny sweets, saved from Saturdays.
If the Missus had continued to rule through her womb and her mouth, nothing might have changed. It was her womb that rebelled, developing a galloping cancer. Within three months, her coffin was carried out. She was buried with all the duPreez forefathers and stillborn children in the farm cemetery, close to the willow by the spruit. For a week or two, the boys picked mimosa for the grave. Then they returned to former sport, less reliably fed but free of meals with prayers and their father klopping their heads from across the table. Life lost its focus, not so much the mother who had ignored them, but the savour of disobedience from what she had expected.
Oubaas, as their father now insisted on being called, sat in the rocking chair, drinking straight from the bottle; nobody dared go near him. He was unsteady on his feet, which gave some protection from his rage, provided they kept clear. Two at a time, the boys sneaked in through the kitchen door and quickly pocketed whatever they could find, oranges from a string sack, bread sometimes, mielie porridge that they cooked by the reservoir over a fire, and peanut butter. The biltong was finished, so they shot for meat: dassies, rock rabbits, and wild guinea fowl. There was no lack of ammunition for the two-bore or the shotgun, which the oldest, Kleinpiet, made sure to bury where his father couldn’t find it. Kleinpiet had been named after Grootpiet, his older brother, who had died in infancy. Klein he was not, a bruise of a youth with thighs that might have crushed a young buffalo between them.
Before his mother’s death, he had taken dominion over his brothers. His body strength that made physical challenges effortless had incubated an ambitious mind—a simple, straightforward mind that recognised that unless something was done, they would soon be no better than the blacks in the kloof. The dynasty of duPreez was doomed. While repairing the tractor or fixing the borehole pump, he plotted his program. It was made more urgent by the gradual trespass of other homesteads along the track. On his visits to town for supplies, in the bakkie with the dogs and one or another brother, he noticed the haphazard developments: foundations here, a stand of trees, a clapboard shack there, all inching toward the farm. A rudimentary shame engulfed him; his drunken father summoning the wet nurse for pleasure, the broken-down fencing, the pumpkins going to seed, all this he saw suddenly through other eyes. How could any of them hold up their heads?
It didn’t blerrie look good, and Kleinpiet was the only one who could save them, whatever it took. It was going to be his farm, and he would take care of it.
First, he would take care of his father. When the old man was out cold, he tied him up, roping his arms to his sides, tying his feet together, and taking off his shoes. He cut his hair. Together with Koos and Jaap, he dragged him to the bedroom, where they tied him to the iron bedstead, propping him on pillows.
“Ut’s called cold turkey. No messing. The bastard’s gotta come clean an ut’s the only way, and cos he’ll kill us, we’ave to rope him like a steer. By the time he’s sobered up, thus place will be wrecked, so we’s better watch out the winders.”
Together, they stripped planks off the back of the shed and hammered them to the window frames. The old man stirred but did not wake. He slumped. Koos and Jaap were astounded by Kleinpiet, their slow-speaking brother; the mule, they called him. Fear made of him an unexpected champion, and the frisson of courage it required of them was altogether new. Kleinpiet locked the door with the old iron key and shifted a chair, tilting it under the door handle outside. The key he hung around his neck.
“Nobody goes in. Nobody comes out. He’ll shit himself. He’ll shout. You’s takes no notice. Whatever. Okay?”
It was okay.
“For now, you say nothing to ennybody. Not even Danie or Kobus, specially not Roos. He’ll cry. So come.”
He led them out to the perimeter fence, where a new coiled bale of barbed wire gleamed like a patch of water in the light. He gave them the spring gun and a box of staples and set them to replacing the old looped and rusted fencing.
“Thus mus be finished before Ah let him out. Ah’m talking maybe a week. If a post has gone don’t blerrie tack the fence there. Leave ut out. Ah’ll put in a new with the driver. Meantime Ah’ll see to th’ouse.”
From the back of the bakkie, Kleinpiet removed the tarpaulin and unloaded new rolled flooring, a sledgehammer, and two large tins of paint. He returned for timber posts and a bundle of decorative turned balusters, creosote, brushes. He stacked them on the stoep, covering them with the tarpaulin, before looking for his klein boeties, the younger three who were playing touch rugby behind the shed.
“Come. Quick. Take this kos down to the dam. Make a fire, and have yussall a picnic. Not now. Later. Before ut’s ready, go fetch Jaap and Koos over bar the fence and Ah’ll join you later. Okay? But don’t come bothering me till Ah come. Okay?”
They ran off.
Kleinpiet surveyed the house, trying to see it through new eyes. The stoep sagged as though out of breath, on sticks that supported the corrugated iron. Jus like an old vrouw, he thought, on’er laas legs. He would brace her up first. Though she was in some ways the least important, she was what everybody saw. Anyway, while his father was out, it would be best to do the work closest to him. The house could wait until the uproar.
Kleinpiet had never done any carpentry, but he had watched the men at the builders’ merchant with pencils behind their ears, and sawing was like cutting bread. He set to, marking the posts above his head where they seemed to kiss the crossbeam, and allowing a bit for jacking up. A bit was difficult to estimate, but no different from changing a tractor when you had to make space for a new tire.
He watched himself thinking, as though discovering a new, unfamiliar country where thoughts depended on each other, interlocked. The thought he was handling would fit into the next one he had; he was driving. He had never driven thoughts before. They had come, wanted or unwanted. Now he was telling them where to go. He was a little frightened by the discovery that came unbidden and might disappear, but, shit, it was blerrie beautiful. He tried to protect his thoughts from himself, pretending he was ignoring them, letting them alone. So he took out the saw and let the saw speak, not pushing too hard. As the off-cuts fell into the dust below, they released the smell of new timber that was like spring, like the smell of new mielie cobs after stripping.
He stood the first post alongside the rotten one, by the step in the middle. It seemed the new post would always stand proud and mark the moment when he decided to stand too. But the new post was longer than the old, and though he could hammer the new one in, he wasn’t satisfied. Suppose he put it underneath slantwise and then hammered the bottom. It would stand wedged, and jack the roof up as well. But then the roof might jump free, and the wind would take it like a dishcloth off a line. Ja, planning was part of the country of thoughts.
Exhilarated that his thoughts were staying with him, he tied them to the posts placed slantwise at regular intervals across the front. One at a time, he visited the posts, moving down the line, complimenting them with the hammer, the same for each. Not a thought was neglected, not a post shortchanged. He kept the thumping force even. Bit by bit, they straightened up under the crossbeam and raised the roof. Ja, man! The roof creaked in thanks. Two old posts fell into the dust below.
He jumped down the full flight of steps and gave himself the pleasure of taking several paces into the mielie field before turning round. The old vrouw stood proud. The other thought that rewarded him was that he had not had to hammer nails or wake his father. It was weight that did the job. Something bigger than he could grasp slid away like a grass snake.
He looked at the fancy balusters, like young girls at their first dance, all curves and waists and giggles. It seemed a shame to nail them. Women were supposed to like a firm but kind hand. He would make a handrail to hold them gently—a handrail he could wedge between the posts. Now he had to cut accurately so that the balusters would elbow the posts exactly. It was interesting, this question of thinking. The ideas he was getting were also the things themselves, and they were pleasing to his nose and his heart; girls and kindness and perfectly matching things. Where did that come from? He laid down the handrail against the posts on the ground and used the pencil to mark both sides. When he cut, he gave a little more to make for tightness, and again he hammered them evenly, inching them level. He couldn’t believe how easy it was.
He decided to wedge the balusters below the handrail before getting a view of progress. It was tempting to go after the first few, but he controlled himself. That was a second-level thought, not just telling thought where to go, but deciding what thought to have. He felt almost dizzy with it. Suddenly, he was a giant in the world that used to be so slapdash, so unpredictable.
When he turned round from the mielies, he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at. The sagging old vrou was now a blerrie bride, with lace petticoats that danced in the low sun, catching the light like honey, and he had made her. His manhood had made her. Okay, he knew he’d have to nail her down, otherwise she’d go sailing with the wind, and anyway, a man with a bride had rights to nail her down. But he must never forget her beauty, and take care of her. She was now his and his only. It was time for supper with his brothers down by the reservoir; by the time they got back, it would be dark. He and his new bride would sleep alone, at least for one night. Kleinpiet stacked the tools away and went for supper. He was blerrie hungry.
Before the sun had shaken off the night, he was up. He could hear the muffled struggles of his father thrashing the bed springs, so he swallowed a tin mug of water and went to inspect the fencing. Not bad. Koos had wound the wire around a sharpened post so they could rotate it before stapling, good and tight, straight as a fockin beam of light. Two strands ran their sharp teeth like railway lines to a new future. The third could be put in later. Not completely stupid, his brothers. He turned to survey his creation. From the fence, the mielie stalks got in the way of a clear view, blerrie boring mielies. They had no rights anymore. Mielies were for people without hope.
As the shafted sun fingered across the field, it lit the farm in a steadily growing vision. The stoep was only a start. Farming was no way to change a life. He would start by ploughing up some of the mielies and give his house room to breathe and reasons to be admired. Ja, she would beckon in those travellers from the road, and he would find a way to take money from them. The thought was the act. Before his brothers argued, he started up the tractor, hitched up the harrow, and was laying bare the red earth below the stoep, back and forth, turning with one hand on the steering wheel as sharp as any racing driver at Kyalami.
Before breakfast, there was a garden planted in his head. The garden seemed to be watered by thoughts and growing by the hour. He no longer feared his thrashing father, whose bellowing had scuttled his brothers out the back, cowering behind the water butt. He fetched bread and tea, and watched them eat like magpies at a carcass, ready to take flight. Jaap and Koos were dispatched back to the fencing, and the younger boeties were led to the desolate skeletal mielies.
“Gather them together in pahls, and then Ah’ll bring the trailer and you can load the lot.”
“They isn’t ripe. Wot you cut them for?”
“They’re ripe enough. You’ll see.”
After securing the timber with nails, he started on the kitchen, happy to drive home to his father that his world was being destroyed. With every hammer blow, Kleinpiet rejoiced. Creative destruction was better, better even than tuning an engine, and that was all the sweetness he had known. Out came the filthy cupboards, collapsing and black rimmed, up came the linoleum like plaster off a wound. He was tempted to take the sledgehammer to the sink, but they would have to have something; a good cleaning might make it all right.
The fully loaded trailer was ready to roll.
“Where you’s going? Can us come?”
“Not today. You’s got work. Nowhere near Pa, okay?”
“Wot we’s sposed to do now?”
“Tike that pahl of rubbish by the kitchen and burn the lot. But drag it far off, not by th’ouse.” Kleinpiet set off, the trailer bumping and lurching; his brothers watched him until he turned into the road, perplexed by this stranger whose resolve seemed as tightfisted as their trussed-up father. But never mind; a fire, a blerrie big fire. Hell, man, that would be good, specially without Jaap, who thought he was the fockin fire expert.
By the time Kleinpiet returned without the trailer, the farm was choking under a blanket of smoke. The smell of burning rubber was a resinous pall that tickled his nostrils and made them all sneeze. The boeties were smeared with black-streaked faces through which runnels of sweat had sliced trails; their clean-shaven heads looked like charred logs, but they grinned as though invincible. Yus, lekker! Thus was more like it. Out beyond vision, Koos and Jaap were still at the fencing.
Kleinpiet offered no explanation about the absent trailer. When Jacob had sidled out of his hut in the village, swotting away sleep with the flies, Kleinpiet had been polite. He had brought the mielies for Jacob and Mavis, and anybody else who could weave baskets or pound grain.
“An how much you want, baas?”
“I don’t want money. I want work.”
“What kind work, baas?’
“Every kind. Cleaning, for Mavis. Different cleaning now, and construction for you. I feed you, you can bring your kids, and together we can move on. No more shouting, and the Oubaas, he’ll keep quiet. I’ll see to it, okay?”
Jacob was doubtful. Mavis scratched her nose with the back of her hand. In all the years, no duPreez had ever propositioned them, or offered any choice in any matter. Kleinpiet gave them a little time. Mavis pulled at her doek and shrugged.
“Look, Ah haven’t got money, but Ah wull’ave. You help me, we all get money. Ah’ve got land, and Ah’ll give you time and a bit to plant whatever you lark; squash, pumpkin, maybe potatoes. Meantime, Ah think about what next. Okay?”
The fact that he had admitted some area of uncertainty convinced them. They nodded, still shrugging. Kleinpiet left the trailer for them to unload in their own time, and he talked to Jacob about finding some saplings with roots.
“Now pretty trees, okay? Mimosa, and those red things, if you can find Jacaranda, even better, but no blerrie aloes or thorns. Thus is not for cattle, but to start a garden . . .”
“What’s a garden, baas?”
“A narse place to walk, or sut.” He left them, driving the tractor down through the kloof, watched by the village women sidling out to lean against the mud walls.
It took almost a week to get through to the bellowing bull. On the second day, Kleinpiet took in a jug of water, poured a glass, which Oubaas spat in his face. The rest was thrown over him. On the third day, the stench was worse than the outhouse they were used to, but he swallowed some milk, looking up with villainous bloodshot eyes at Kleinpiet’s square jaw. He tried to gesture toward his stained trousers with his chin.
“No point cleaning you, Pa. By the tahm we’re through, this bed’ll be burnt.”
By the end of the week, Oubaas duPreez became cooperative, his bottom and thighs raw, his skin wrinkled like a nartjie from dehydration. Kleinpiet fed him from a spoon, bread in milk, and when he said thank you, he got custard. He still occasionally kicked out, and when he did, he was left alone. Round about him, the house was being reconstructed, banging went on, and behind the banging, Mavis swept and swilled from an iron pail. Following Mavis, Koos and Jaap were set to painting, bright whitewashed walls. Outside, Kleinpiet and Jacob were planting grass, tough kikuyu grass in regular clumps between the saplings that were watered after sundown. Jacob was bemused by all this attention to inedible vegetation, but knew better than to question. He was not going to prick Baas Kleinpiet, whose temper was surprisingly under control unless his brothers slacked off.
Nobody even asked where Kleinpiet had found the money that he eked out from his handkerchief for everything he couldn’t steal or purloin after dark, or swap for promises. Oubaas had no idea money had been involved, since he could see no evidence of it. If he had, his training would have taken longer.
On the tenth day, Kleinpiet, with some vestige of biblical memory, decided his father needed the revelation that would hasten his surrender. Together with Mavis, who knew more about Oubaas’s body than anyone, Kleinpiet unlocked the room. Mavis choked and put her apron to her face, gagging. With short lengths of new rope, Kleinpiet bound his father’s hands behind his back and retied his feet. He loosened the coils down the torso and, with his hunting knife, cut off the clothes. Oubaas glowered like a livid coal. When he saw Mavis witnessing his humiliation, he jerked away, whimpering. Kleinpiet kicked the pile of soiled clothes toward Mavis and, holding his father from behind, dragged him to the speckled wardrobe mirror.
“Koekma, Pa. Disgusting, huh? Thus is what you are, pissed yourself, raw with your own shit, and you think you’re the baas? Baas of what? Ah’m going to show you who’s baas.” Kleinpiet took out a rag from a pocket with one hand, and straddling his naked father against the bed, blindfolded him. Dragging him out, he told Mavis to get a rake and get rid of everything. “Don’t touch. Not even you must touch. Burn the mattress, burn everything, burn the past.”
He dragged his father down the steps of the stoep and tied him in the sun to the old horse hitch. Fetching the new hose, he directed the sharp jet at his father’s genitals first, then down the trembling old legs with their knotted veins, and back up his chest to his head. Oubaas was cursing, but not with any hope.
“If you don’t blerrie shut up, I’ll use sheep-dip.”
By the time Kleinpiet finished, Oubaas looked like a carcass marked for dismembering.
“You realize I could shoot you now,” shouted Kleinpiet.
“What do you want from me, son?” Oubaas whimpered.
“Ah want you to blerrie wake up. To look me in the ah, and to look better than you ever looked in your lahf.”
“But I cawn’t see.”
“You wull.”
When Oubaas was dried by the sun, Kleinpiet dressed him in clean clothes, a new thick checked shirt, a new pair of shorts and clean socks, and dragged him back onto the porch, where he tied him in the rocking chair. “Don’t try’n be funny, now.”
He went into the kitchen and asked Mavis to make koffee, which he set on a tray with a clean china mug, and mos-bolletjie rusks. His father never took milk or sugar. After waving the smell of fresh coffee under his father’s rigid head, he set down the tray and untied the blindfold.
“So, okay. Now look.”
Oubaas did not move his head, but his eyes roved over the new stoep and the embryo lawn. It was no more than a mist of green above the red earth, but the new trees stroked it with low branches of leaves whispering in apprehension. The sun flashed between the eucalyptus planted against the bright wire fence.
“What must Ah say?” asked Oubaas.
“You don’t say ennything.” Kleinpiet didn’t spare his father a glance, but spat out a chew of tobacco.
“So, how mus Ah drink?”
“Only with my say-so.” Kleinpiet untied his father’s hands but left his feet bound. When the old man tried to pour the coffee, his hand was shaking so much he slopped it past the mug. Kleinpiet removed the mug from his hand, poured, and handed it to him. He took it. After a moment, he took a rusk and dunked it in the coffee.
Second half next post.
Glossary:
bakkie: Small truck
boetie: younger brother
Dassie: rock rabbit
Kloof: ravine.
Klopp: sharp blow
Kyalami: A well-known car racing track
mos-bolletjie rusks made of fermented ‘mos’ grape juice
nartjie: tangerine
Kos: food
Koekma: But look
umntwana: Zulu for small child
vrou or vrouw; wife, old woman, old crone.
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