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‘Hey, bitch, he’s out of bounds,’ says Tumi.
And they both laugh.
‘At last he found a home for that damn cat.’
‘Yeah! I can’t imagine sharing a man with a cat,’ says
Nomsa.
Once more they fall over each other laughing. But a
tinge of sadness lingers in Tumi. She will miss Maki. And
what about Don? He is in the bedroom packing more of
his clothes. When will this assignment end? She misses
him. She hopes he will be smart enough to leave his cat
at the magistrate’s when the time comes for him to come
back home. Otherwise there will be no peace.
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In Weltevreden Park, Kristin Uys is cooking at the
stove. Her cat is curled up in the corner. She has not
cooked for ages, not since Don Mateza invaded her space.
But today she just felt the urge to cook. And to cook a lot
of food too, so she can take some to her homeless people.
They must have missed her cooking and are sure to be
wondering what happened to her since she just stopped
going to the park without any warning.
She is not cooking anything elaborate—just chicken
curry. She suddenly feels inadequate when she remem-
bers the last cooked meal that she ate in this house. It was
the samp and beans cooked with mutton by Don, the day
that he left her with the potful that she had to deep-
freeze. She forgot all about it in her anger at his unex-
pected return and at his witnessing her secret dance.
She takes the food out of the freezer and warms it in
another pot. She is going to surprise him with his own
cooking. For the first time since he invaded her space—
and she will continue to see it as an invasion because she
no longer has her privacy and cannot relieve the tensions
of life with her secret dance as long as he is here—she will
invite him to sit down at the table with her. They will
break bread together in the form of chicken curry. She
will serve him his samp and beans, which he never got
to eat that night, and will pretend that she cooked it her-
self. She can’t wait to see if he knows enough about his
cooking to recognize it as his own dish.
Don enters with his snow-white Himalayan cat. The
magistrate is struck by its beauty.
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‘It’s a pedigreed cat!’ she says.
‘Of course it is pedigreed,’ says Don.
‘Are you trying to shame me or what?’ she asks jok-
ingly. ‘Mine is a stray mongrel.’
‘Only dogs are mongrels, not cats. Yours is beautiful
too, in its own way.’
‘Don’t patronize my cat,’ she says. ‘Any animal that’s
a result of interbreeding is a mongrel. My cat is proud of
its mongrelity.’
‘Mongrelity?’
They both laugh at this accidental invention.
He crawls on his knees to introduce his cat to the
magistrate’s.
‘Snowy, meet . . . I never got to know your cat’s name.’
‘I never got around to giving it a name,’ says the mag-
istrate.
‘Snowy,’ says Don ceremoniously, ‘meet Mr No-
Name. Or is it Ms No-Name?’
‘I have no idea,’ she says.
‘It has no name and you don’t know what sex it is?’
‘Well, I never checked. How do you know?’
‘The same way you know with people,’ says Don.
They both laugh. Don lifts the tail of the magistrate’s
cat and inspects it.
‘It’s a girl,’ he says. ‘I hope it’s spayed.’
‘Yours is a boy, is it?’ she asks.
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‘It’s a girl too. A spayed girl. They will make a great
lesbian couple.’
Once again they laugh.
There is a lot of laughter today.
15
SMART OKES USE PSYCHOLOGY
Diepkloof Prison. Shortie Visagie is waiting anxiously for
his brother. He knows he has heard already of his brave
act and he can’t wait to bathe in his praise. Stevo is rather
stingy with praise, especially when it comes to his
brother, but this time he will have no choice but to
admire Shortie’s resourcefulness. At last he will win
Stevo’s respect, even though his mother thinks it was a
dumb thing that he did, trying to kill the magistrate.
Stevo knows what is at stake here and will be highly
appreciative of Shortie’s final attempt at a solution. Much
more effective than just boiling a cat.
When Stevo is led into the visiting area, Shortie
observes that he is no longer in handcuffs and leg irons
as before. He is walking side by side with the warder and
they are chatting like old friends. Even though the warder
is a darkie. Stevo’s orange jumpsuit prison uniform is
well pressed and he looks fresh and clean-shaven. Prison
must be doing strange things to him because Stevo never
used to be fresh as long as Shortie has known him, which
is Shortie’s whole life. He was always in greasy jeans, just
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like Shortie. It was never the tradition of the Visagies to
be fresh and clean-shaven. And to smell of Old Spice
cologne. The Visagies are men’s men with prickly stub-
bles and manly scents emanating directly from their rich
sweat glands.
‘Hey, this place agrees with you, Stevo. You look so
beautiful I could have mistaken you for a girl,’ says
Shortie.
A woman visiting a convict boyfriend overhears this
comment and remarks to another woman sitting next to
her that it is an insensitive joke to make to a man who is
in prison where some men do actually become girls.
‘And you don’t have your bracelets,’ adds Shortie.
‘They must be treating you nice here, my china.’
‘It’s no thanks to you, Shortie. It’s no thanks to you
at all, my china,’ says Stevo glaring at him. ‘I have to pay
for these comforts with hard cash, which has not been
coming from you lately. Do you know they will take my
microwave away if I don’t pop out some money? And my
TV? And all you and Ma ever do is complain that business
is slow and there’s no money coming in. The only thing
you and Ma know how to do is to kick a poor bushie
woman out of the house.’
Shortie did expect Stevo to bring up Aunt Magda at
some stage, seeing he has always been her favourite and
all. But he did not expect her to top the agenda. After all,
what he did for his brother surpasses Aunt Magda’s woes
by far.
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In any event discussing Aunt Magda is a futile exer-
cise. Ma Visagie lays down the law and the law is that
Aunt Magda is a nuisance who tried to control everyone’s
life with her cockamamie Society of Widows. Ma Visagie
wouldn’t have minded if she kept her busybody self to her
area of expertise, namely mass action. But when she tried
to run the Visagie home, giving orders on how Stevo’s
food that is sent to the prison whenever anyone visits him
should be cooked, as if she knew more about Stevo than
Stevo’s mother, that was the last straw for Ma Visagie.
There can only be one alpha female in the Visagie house-
hold and that is Ma Visagie herself. Not some coloured
woman from Cape Town. Not even Stevo can be an alpha
anything, though he fancies himself as some sort of boss.
‘You and Ma spend years without coming to see me,’
moans Stevo.
‘You’ve not been here for years, Stevo,’ Shortie says.
‘And do you know who comes to see me? Aunt
Magda. Do you know who gives me money to pay for my
TV and microwave? Aunt Magda. Do you know who
brings me Old Spice so I can smell good? Aunt Magda.
Do you know who will be with me at my side when I
become a big-time syndicate boss . . . who will be my
henchman . . . my sidekick, like they say in the movies?
Aunt Magda.’
‘What about me and Ma? We are family, Stevo. You
can’t leave us out of it all. Me, I’ve even done more than
Aunt Magda ever did. I almost killed the bitch for you.
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And you say fuck all about it. No thank you, no nothing.
All you want is to talk about Aunt Magda this and Aunt
Magda that. What about me, Stevo? What about what I’ve
done for you?’
Stevo smiles slyly at his brother and says, ‘ Jy’ s ‘ n skelm, my china. I didn’t know you had it in you.’
Ja, at last the man is coming to his senses! Shortie is
pleased with himself for being called a crook by his
brother and his face is beaming for all the world to see.
Praise doesn’t come easily from Stevo, especially towards
members of his family.
‘You didn’t think I could do it, hey, Stevo?’ says
Shortie. ‘You always thought I was a coward.’
He realizes too late that he is too loud and his excite-
ment has invited the attention of the other prisoners and
their visitors, and even of the solitary warder who is
pacing the floor pretending not to be interested in the
various conversations that are taking place, so he places
both hands on his mouth.
‘I didn’t think you could be so stupid, Shortie,’ says
Stevo.
‘I just got excited, Stevo. Sorry.’
Shortie hopes he is misreading the contempt in
Stevo’s smile.
‘I’m not talking about that, you dofkop. I am talking
about killing the bitch. That’s the dumbest thing you’ve
ever done in your life.’
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Shortie thinks that perhaps he did not hear his
brother well. He came here for accolades, not for this.
‘It’s a good thing she didn’t die—we’d all be in shit
now,’ adds Stevo.
‘What has become of you, Stevo? What has jail done
to you? You’ve become too soft, Stevo. It’s not like you to
talk like this.’
Maybe it’s not the jail at all. Maybe Stevo is just
becoming himself—his irrational and jealous self. Maybe
he is jealous because Shortie has done something great,
something he himself has never achieved—running a
magistrate off the road and almost killing her. Stevo has
always been jealous of him. It’s like the thing with Elsa
which Shortie can’t forget even though it happened many
years ago when they were primary-school boys. Stevo
fancied Elsa but was afraid to approach her because Elsa
was the most popular girl in the whole of Roodepoort. So
he asked his little brother, who was even then much
bigger than the older brother, to write her a letter on his
behalf expressing his feelings. Shortie was best suited for
this task because he was the more literate of the brothers
and his handwriting had big loops and curves that Stevo
reckoned would be very attractive to girls. When he didn’t
need Shortie’s help and wanted to piss him off he called
it girly handwriting.
After Shortie wrote the letter, Stevo forced him to
deliver it to Elsa, even though he knew that Shortie was
dead scared of girls. He would rather have died but Stevo
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had such a stranglehold on him that he had no choice but
to obey. He just dropped it in her hands during recess and
ran for dear life. Elsa read the letter and then ran after the
scared boy to give him the reply, which was, of course,
yes, she would be honoured to be Stevo’s girlfriend.
But their thing didn’t last. Elsa wanted to follow
Stevo everywhere he went, which was rather annoying to
him. And she had this irritating habit of asking him if he
missed her even when she had only gone to the bathroom
for two minutes. He blamed Shortie for the whole irk-
some mess. If Shortie had not written the ill-fated letter,
he would not be in this predicament.
‘Writing that letter was the dumbest thing you’ve
ever done in your life,’ he said.
That was the irrational Stevo. Blame your mess on
someone else, especially if he is your little brother who
hero-worshipped you to the extent that he would follow
you down a precipice.
After Stevo had wriggled his way out of the relation-
ship with Elsa, she began to follow Shortie, if only to
make Stevo jealous. Shortie was just happy that a popular
girl like Elsa was interested in him for whatever reason,
and he in turn followed Elsa like a puppy. He didn’t mind
her annoying habits, and indeed, whenever she asked if
he missed her he answered quite positively that whenever
she was out of sight he found life quite unbearable. He in
turn asked her the same question, which in the long run
she found irritating.
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Elsa was his first girlfriend ever and he spoke about
her all the time to the annoyance of Stevo.
‘Falling for that girl is the dumbest thing you’ve ever
done in your life,’ said Stevo.
That was when Shortie knew that his big brother was
jealous of him.
Like now.
‘ Jy’ s ‘ n plank, Shortie,’ says Stevo.
Being called a plank, which means that he is an idiot,
finally makes him lose his patience with his ungrateful
brother.
‘You’re just jealous, Stevo, that’s all. You’re just jeal-
ous because you’ve never ever tried to kill a magistrate in
your life,’ he says.
‘I’ve never tried to kill nobody because I’m not ‘ n
brood,’ says Stevo. ‘If I wanted to kill her I would not have
bungled it like you did. She would be dead by now. But
we are the Visagies, man. We don’t kill nobody.’
Another insult! Being called bread. It means that he
is an imbecile, although no one has ever explained why
bread should be associated with that state of mind.
Shortie complains that he did not come here to be
called names and he would rather go back to his scrap-
yard if Stevo continues to be rude and ungrateful. But
Stevo tells him to calm down and listen why it was a lousy
idea to attempt to kill the magistrate. The police will find
the truck and will trace it back to the Visagies. Shortie
tells him that he was smart enough to take care of that.
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The police will never find the truck because Fingers
Matatu is hiding it in Soweto. He also reminds his brother
that he removed the number plates before committing
the act, and in any event the truck is not registered in
anyone’s name since it had been scrapped many years ago
and he never got to register it after rebuilding it.
‘So, you see, my broer, we are safe,’ he says, with the
knowing wink of someone who has covered all the bases.
But still this does not satisfy Stevo. He must find
another reason to be mad at him. He says that now he will
lose his truck. He will never be able to hire it out again
because the police will be looking high and low for it. He
won’t be able to sell it even after he has bribed traffic offi-
cials for new registration documents. The police will be
relentless. They stop at nothing to hunt down cop killers.
What more will they do for magistrate killers?
‘We’ll just strip it for parts,’ says Shortie.
‘Since when do you have an answer for everything,
my china?’
‘I always have an answer, Stevo, ’cause I’m smart. You
just don’t see it ’cause it’s me who’s smart this time and
not you.’
‘There’s nothing smart about spoiling my plan for
the bitch. I tell you, my china, you don’t punish nobody
by killing them. We don’t kill, we Visagies. We are smart
okes. We use psychology. You know what that is, Shortie?’
It seems that jail has taught Stevo some big words.
Big English words, nogal, instead of the good old homely
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Afrikaans. Maybe Stevo has been reading books in jail.
That can be the only reason. Maybe that’s why he’s all so
messed up and angry and clean-looking—it’s the books.
‘No, I don’t know no psychology, Stevo,’ says Shortie
resignedly.
‘It’s when you mess somebody’s brains up . . . mess
them up to nobody’s business.’
‘But that’s exactly what I was trying to do with the
