Layout 1, page 12
He offers to carry her shopping bags but she will not
let him touch her stuff.
The drive home is much shorter because she does not
try her circuitous tricks.
10
SHE NEEDS SOME LOVING
An all-white congregation is singing an Afrikaans hymn.
This is an NG Kerk service in Roodekrans. An old balding
dominee is in the pulpit. In the pews, Kristin Uys is
singing from a hymnal while she keeps throwing nervous
glances at Don Mateza who is standing next to her
wearing a self-satisfied smirk. He is obviously enjoying
her discomfiture. He is in his bright and hip casual attire
and is out of place in this conservative-looking, dark-
suited congregation. There is general awkwardness
because no one seems to know what to make of the
stranger. At first there were whispers that were passed
from elder to elder until they reached Kristin’s ears. She
had no choice but to whisper back that the man was her
bodyguard, and the elders passed that message on to the
pastor. Only then did he seem to relax a bit and to preach
the gospel as if the stranger was no longer among them.
Today’s sermon is on charity and brotherly love. You
are your brother’s keeper, the dominee says. Don finds it
interesting that the gender-sensitive vocabulary of the
new non-racist and non-sexist South Africa has not yet
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permeated the ranks of the NG Kerk. Each one of us is our
brother’s keeper. Why, then, should we look away in
embarrassment when an Afrikaner woman is standing at
the traffic lights with a begging bowl and a board that
speaks of the pain of hungry children and betrayed
dreams? How have the volk come to this, they who were
chosen by God to lead the dark tribes into His light? Jesus
said the poor will always be with us, and we have always
looked after our own. But these are trying times for the
Afrikaner, even for those liberal ones among us who
accepted the changes with grace and who indeed voted for
the changes when F. W. de Klerk put the matter to a refer-
endum. Never before have we seen so many poor whites
begging in the streets of Johannesburg among young
black male vendors. Why do we look the other way? Is it
enough to feel their shame without extending a helping
hand? Shouldn’t we say that it is our duty as Christians to
ensure that there is no Afrikaner begging in the street?
Are we still our brother’s keeper, as the Bible commands,
or are we only concerned with our own individual selves?
The congregation responds to these questions with
another hymn. Although Don is not familiar with the
words, it is a well-known Protestant tune and he hums
along. He signals to Kristin to share her hymnal with him
but she ignores him. He takes her hand, the one that’s
holding the hymnal, and brings it closer so that he is able
to read. Then he sings like an opera basso, which attracts
the attention of all those round them. She remains frozen
in place until the end of the hymn.
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At the end of the service, the congregation trickles
out of the church. Kristin hurries out as if something is
chasing her and does not even stop to shake the extended
hand of the pastor who is at the door greeting people as
they leave. She almost runs down the steps. Don follows,
trying to catch up with her. She does not want him to
catch up—she does not want him here.
She gets into the Fiat Uno and drives away. Don gets
into his Saab and follows the Uno, which tears angrily
through Ontdekkers Road without regard to traffic. She
stops at a BP Garage and buys Afrikaans Sunday newspa-
pers, some meat pies and a litre of Coca-Cola. Don follows
her and buys himself the Sunday Times and City Press.
Once more she speeds to Weltevreden Park and he snaps
at her heels like a hound after quarry.
As soon as they have both parked outside the house
and jumped out of their cars, they face each other like
fighting cocks. She with an angry face, and he with
the continuing self-satisfied smirk which infuriates her
even more.
‘You embarrassed me,’ she says.
‘Serves you right. You see, if you were cooperating
with me, I would have changed into a nice black suit like
the volk in the church, and I would have stayed in the car
and waited until you came out. As long as you don’t coop-
erate with me, I’ll be wherever you are. And I mean every-
where. No more Mr Nice Guy.’
‘Mr Nice Guy?’
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She seems to find this funny and almost chuckles.
Almost.
‘ Ja, no more Mr Nice Guy,’ repeats Don, laughing now
and unlocking the security grille for her.
‘That’s stupid,’ she says, and walks into the house.
She goes straight into her bedroom with her news-
papers, meat pies and Coke. She remains there for the
rest of the day. Don spends the day reading his newspa-
pers. He daydreams of the Sunday lunch he would be
eating in Soweto and of the banter and political debates
he would be having with Fontyo and Bova at Wezile’s.
He orders a pizza from Debonair Pizza, who deliver
it in black tie, as is their style. He meets the delivery man
at the gate and tips him generously. He, too, is his
brother’s keeper, even if his brother wears a tuxedo.
When Don wakes up the next morning the magis-
trate has already left the house. She must have stolen
away at dawn in order to ensure that he does not follow
her.
Why bother? He goes back to bed and stays there
reading yesterday’s papers and masturbating to a fantasy
of Tumi. But the magistrate creeps into the fantasy. He
wonders how she would be in bed. There is an old adage
that a cat cannot stay in the same room as a saucer of milk
without lapping it up. But then, on second thoughts, he
does not imagine any right-thinking male would see her
as milk. Although he must admit that she is not bad
looking under that cloak of dowdiness, especially if you
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127
establish in your mind that she is the girl in Scope. But,
my, what a cold, distant bitch she has turned out to be.
He’d better not even think about her. She is not worth
wasting his imagination on. Tumi is the girl for him.
There is no place for anyone in his life but Tumi. Not that
he has never been unfaithful to her. Once or twice, he has
met a drunken girl at Wezile’s and has used Bova’s back-
yard shack as a stadium. But those were one-night stands
when Tumi was travelling overseas. They did not mean
anything. Tumi is for ever.
The whole masturbation exercise is futile, so he gives
it up, wakes up and takes a shower. He does not bother to
trim his moustache, which normally is his daily ritual.
Instead, he cleans the living room, kitchen and his bed-
room. And then he goes to the pool and tries to clean it
as well. The pump is faulty but he is able to fix it. One of
the pipes of the Kreepy Krauly has a hole, so he walks to
the pool store at Palm Court Shopping Centre, which is
just down the street on J. G. Strijdom Road. He also buys
chlorinators. Then he buys fried chicken and bread rolls
for lunch. He returns to clean the pool. It takes him
longer than he envisaged because it has not been cleaned
for a long time and the slime is thick on the walls. But the
Kreepy Krauly is still very powerful and after a while, it
has vacuumed most of the dirt.
He has his lunch by the pool and relaxes with a cold
drink. He will let the chemicals take effect before he takes
a dip. Maybe tomorrow it will be ready.
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He phones Tumi’s office but the secretary tells him
that she has not come to work yet. He tries her cellphone.
She is at Three Oaks, nursing the blues, as she puts it. She
feels let down because the television licence bid has
failed. Instead, the Independent Broadcasting Authority
selected a bid presented by a trust dominated by trade-
union leaders. All those meetings were in vain. All that
reading at the university library. All those hours she
would have used to market her models. Don tells her how
sorry he is that things did not work out as planned.
Things have been a bit slow on his side too. All he’s been
doing today is clean the house and the pool. She demands
to see him immediately; she is so depressed that she does
not feel like going to the model agency at all today. Don
suggests that they meet at the Cresta Shopping Centre.
In less than thirty minutes, they are both at the mall
having coffee and cakes at a delicatessen.
‘So, how’s the magistrate?’ asks Tumi.
‘She’s a cranky old fart, but I can handle her,’ says Don.
‘But cleaning her house? You are her bodyguard, not
her house servant.’
‘I stay there, Tumi, and you know that I can’t live in
a pigsty.’
‘How long is this assignment anyway? You’ve been
there a number of days and nothing has happened to her.’
He knows what is coming next, so he steers her away
from the subject by asking her about the television bid.
How did her partners take the sad news?
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‘We haven’t discussed it yet,’ she says. ‘We’re meeting
tomorrow night.’
But, for her part, she has decided to move on and
focus on her model agency. Although she had had great
hopes for the television station, which undoubtedly
would be a money spinner judging from the projections
that their consultants had made, there will be other
opportunities. Of course she would be lying if she told
anyone that the loss of the bid has not taken its toll on her
emotions. Everyone seemed so certain that they would
win it. No one expressed the slightest doubt. After all, the
Mabanjwa Trust is composed of people who made sacri-
fices for the country in the prisons of apartheid. And
some key government officials and cabinet ministers are
also members of the trust. How could they ever doubt
that they would be granted the only free-to-air licence
that will be allowed for a number of years to come?
She tells him how she and her two buddies, Nomsa
and Maki, were already plotting the role they would insist
on playing in the running of the station and how they were
already boasting to their colleagues, relatives and neigh-
bours that very soon they would be owners of a television
station. Now, how are they going to face these people?
‘You must come home, Don,’ she says all of a sudden.
‘I need you back home.’
‘I’ve got to stick it out for as long as it takes, Tumi.
Maybe after a week or two when they see nothing is hap-
pening, they will call it off.’
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‘A week or two? What about me, Don? What about
us?’
‘What about us? There’s nothing wrong with us.’
‘There’s nothing wrong when you have to spend all
your nights with her?’
‘With her?’ he asks disgustedly.
‘You know what I mean, Don,’ she says giggling. ‘At
her house. At her pigsty.’
‘You are the one who wants me to be a Black
Diamond, Tumi. And I’ll only become one if I pass this
test. So, let me stick with it.’
‘I need some loving, Don,’ she says. ‘I need lots and
lots of loving. You know I can’t do without it.’
This, of course, is enough to send the fires of hell
blazing through his body. Only this morning he was fan-
tasizing about her. Now here she is. In the flesh. And she
needs lots of loving. Without another word he goes to the
till and pays the bill.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I must be back before the magis-
trate returns from work.’
He almost lifts her to her feet and they hurry out of
the mall to the parking lot. They get into their different
cars and speed down Beyers Naudé Drive to their North
Riding townhouse.
They do not waste any time on niceties. They strip
naked as soon as they enter the door, almost tearing to
pieces those stubborn garments that want to cling to the
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body. In a situation like this, even a La Perla gets no
respect. If it insists on gentleness then it will be ripped
off without ceremony. The garments leave a trail that fol-
lows the man and the woman through the living room to
the bedroom. Their bodies are glued to each other as they
kiss passionately. She assists him into his trusty Rough
Rider. Even in this giddy haste they never forget that they
are not ready to deal with either a baby or a devastating
disease. He kisses her ears, her neck and lingers on her
breasts as he suckles on the nipples like a hungry baby.
She begs him not to waste time—she is wet and ready.
Even here on the bed there is no gentleness, which is
exactly how she wants it today. Some nights she pleads,
‘Be gentle, Don. Please, be gentle.’ But not today. She
urges him to move faster and with more vigour. He does
not need any encouragement in that direction, he has
been too hungry for her for too long. And when it’s her
turn to be on top she rides him so roughly that he sobs
like a child who is being spanked for getting into some
mischief. Her long smooth thighs hold his waist in a tight
grip. He dances to the rhythm of her soft moans. She
dances to the rhythm of his dance. They both scream as
they come at the same time, not giving a shit if the thin
walls carry the sounds to the rest of Three Oaks.
They are utterly exhausted and both fall into a deep
sleep in each other’s arms.
It is dusk and the street lights are shining through
the window when they are startled by the Dave Brubeck
Take Five ringtone of Don’s cellphone.
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‘You should have switched your damn cellphone off,
Don,’ says Tumi as he reaches for it.
‘I knew you would bail out on me sooner or later,’
says the voice of the magistrate.
‘Who says I have bailed out?’
‘Where were you when this happened?’
This worries Don. What if something terrible has
happened and he was not there? The magistrate would
not be calling him for nothing—not when she has been
trying to get rid of him all this time.
‘When what happened?’
‘You were supposed to be here, looking after my
house.’
‘I just came to my apartment to check on a few
things. I took a nap and overslept. That’s all. What
happened?’
Tumi is tickling him naughtily. She whispers in his
ear while biting it, ‘Why lie to the old fogey? Why not tell
her you came home for a good fuck.’
He jumps out of bed. He is still on his cellphone.
‘What the hell happened there?’ he asks. ‘Are you OK?’
But she has hung up. He dresses quickly. As soon as
he opens the bedroom door his cat rushes in meowing. It
follows him into the kitchenette. He gets some cat food
from the cupboard and feeds it.
‘You’ve not been feeding Snowy properly, Tumi,’ he
says. ‘She’s lost some weight.’
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‘As a matter of fact I’ve been looking around for an
animal shelter that will take it,’ says Tumi from the bed-
room. She is very unhappy that he has to leave and he
knows that she’ll take it out on the cat. Sending it to an
animal shelter is not just an empty threat. She will cer-
tainly do it. Sooner or later she will do it. He must find a
way of saving his Snowy.
North Riding is only fifteen minutes away from
Weltevreden Park. Or ten if you are racing on the highway
like a lunatic, which is what Don is doing. As soon as he
enters the gate he sees the writing on the front wall. Big,
ugly, red letters dripping like blood sprayed above the
door— Death to the Bitch! More spraying on the cast-iron
security grille and on the steps. On the double doors of
