The Satanic Mechanic (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

The next morning, Jessie and I worked at our desks while Hattie was at the bank. I was getting through my pile of letters.

Dear Tannie Maria
,

My boyfriend wants to have sex with me, but I don't know if I'm ready. I am seventeen, and I really like him. It's just that emotionally I don't think I'm ready. But I am scared he will leave me if I don't
.

What should I do?

Janine

I didn't feel ready to answer that letter, so I picked up the next one. I hadn't seen Henk since Saturday. He was busy with work, he said. I helped myself to another rusk and offered the tin to Jessie.

‘He's coming here,' said Jessie, taking a rusk and brushing crumbs off her desk. ‘Slimkat. He said he and his cousin were dropping someone off nearby. They're going to pop in.'

We heard a car backfiring as it parked in Eland Street.

‘That's probably them now.' She got up and stood at the door, and I put on the kettle.

I heard Slimkat before I saw him, his voice quiet but strong as he spoke to Jessie. She led him into the office, and he introduced his cousin, Ystervark. Porcupine. Then he shook my hand.

‘This is my colleague, Tannie Maria,' said Jessie. ‘She does the “Love Advice and Recipe Column”.'

His hand was warm and dry, but I hardly felt it, because it was his
eyes that filled me with feeling. They were big and black, like a kudu's, and they looked right into me. It was very strange . . . I felt like he could see me. Really see me. Not only my body but all of me. It was as if my eyes were windows without curtains, and he could just look inside. He saw everything. Including the things I kept hidden, even from myself.

I looked away.

‘Coffee?' I offered, fiddling with the cups.

‘Rooibos tea?' he asked.

I nodded.

‘Black,' he said, ‘but with lots of sugar for Yster.'

Ystervark was looking at all the pouches on Jessie's belt and frowning. Like Slimkat, he was a small man, but while Slimkat was relaxed, Yster's whole body was tense. His hands were tight fists, and I recognised him from the newspaper photograph. Ready to fight. Ready to kill, maybe. He looked at Slimkat, then at Jessie's belt and at Slimkat again.

‘Sorry,' said Slimkat. ‘We don't mean to be rude. But could you show us what you are carrying on your belt? We've had some . . . incidents, and Ystervark likes to be careful.'

‘Sure,' said Jessie, and emptied all the things from her pouches onto her desk. They made quite a pile and included her camera, notebook, pen, phone, torch, string, knife and pepper spray.

Ystervark grabbed the spray and the knife and looked at Slimkat as if to say, ‘I told you so.'

‘Sorry,' Slimkat said again. ‘He'll give them back when we go. We can't stay long.'

Jessie set up two chairs for the visitors, but Ystervark stood at the office door. Then he walked towards the street and back again, with the knife and the pepper spray in his hands. He put them in his pockets when I handed him his tea and rusk. I gave the others their hot drinks and beskuit too.

‘Would you like me to go?' I asked Jessie.

‘No,' said Slimkat. ‘Stay,' and he fixed me with those eyes again.

I spilt my coffee on my desk. I rescued the letters, but the coffee got all over last week's
Gazette
.

Jessie picked up her notebook. ‘I know you don't like to sing your own praises,' she said, ‘but you must be feeling good about the victory over big business. Diamond miners and agribusiness are used to getting their way. Yet you won the fight.'

‘I am sad,' said Slimkat. ‘It was not right to fight.'

‘What do you mean?' said Jessie. ‘It belongs to you, that land. Your ancestors have lived there for tens of thousands of years. You could not just let the companies steal it from you.'

‘No,' said Slimkat. ‘You are wrong. The land does not belong to us. We belong to the land.'

Jessie blinked, and her mouth opened and closed. It was not often that I saw Jessie without words.

She found them again. ‘But surely,' she said, ‘if you do not fight, then injustice will be done. Again and again.'

‘That is true,' he said. ‘Some people like to fight.' He took a sip of his tea and glanced at his cousin, who stood at the door with his back to us. ‘I do not. Fighting can make you bitter. But sometimes it must be done. If you have to fight, then you must do so with soft hands and a heart full of forgiveness.'

He dipped his rusk into his tea and took a bite. Then he smiled and looked at me.

I mopped at the
Gazette
with a napkin. There was a brown stain over the pink advert offering relationship help.

‘I hear there have been death threats?' Jessie said.

Slimkat nodded and chewed on his rusk.

‘Who do you think is responsible?' she asked. ‘Agribeest cattle business? Hardcore diamond company?'

Slimkat waved his hand as if pushing smoke aside. ‘Maybe,' he said. ‘Or people who are jealous. It doesn't matter.'

‘What do you mean it doesn't matter? Surely it will matter if you are killed?'

Slimkat smiled. ‘Not really,' he said. ‘Yster wants me to hide away. He says that the buck that grazes in the shadows does not land on the coals. But I believe my time will come when it comes. I am not going to hide from the sun.'

Ystervark's back twitched. He put his cup down on the ground and took out the pepper spray.

‘My life is a very small thing,' said Slimkat. ‘It is not like the life of a river, or the earth, or the stars. It does not matter very much if I die.'

Maybe he was right, but I wanted to say to him, ‘Don't be crazy; of course it matters.' But it wasn't my place to say that. Instead I wrote down the phone number from the coffee-stained advert in the
Gazette
.

CHAPTER SIX

The interview was short, but it went far back in time. Slimkat told Jessie about the Bushmen's ancient and sacred relationship with the earth and the stars. And then he spoke of the many ways that people, animals and plants were being killed today.

‘We must leave this highway of death,' he said. ‘This road of hatred. We must return to the path of love.'

When they were finished, Jessie walked out with Slimkat and Ystervark, and I phoned that FAMSA number and made an appointment.

When Jessie came back to the office, she told me that Ystervark had not returned her knife.

‘It was weird,' she said. ‘He looked up and down the street as if someone might be following them, and he wouldn't let me near the car. There was someone in the back that I couldn't see properly, wearing a woman's scarf. I got my pepper spray back, but he shook his head when I asked for my knife.'

‘What did Slimkat say?'

‘I don't think he realised what was happening. We'd said goodbye, and he was getting in the car.'

I clicked my tongue. ‘It wasn't right to take your knife.'

‘Maybe he needs it more than I do,' said Jessie.

Later that morning, I sat in a soft orange armchair in a small room at the Ladismith hospital.

‘So . . .' said the counsellor from FAMSA. She also sat in an orange
armchair. She was young, with wide eyes, blonde curls and a matching blue top and skirt, just like a little doll. A poppie. She looked down at some paper on her clipboard. ‘First, I need to tell you that I am a counsellor in training, but I'm perfectly qualified to assist you.'

She looked up and gave me a bright smile, then clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher on the first day of school.

The room was clean, the walls lemon-yellow. There was an orange couch and a white plastic table, and in the corner, on the floor, a box of children's toys. High up was a long narrow window with white curtains that waved softly in the breeze. Between the curtains, I could see a grey-blue piece of the Swartberge and a section of sky.

‘So how can I help you, Mrs, um,' she looked down at her clipboard again, ‘van Harten.'

‘Ah,' I said.

‘English or Afrikaans?' asked the poppie.

‘Um . . .'

Her questions seemed so difficult. I looked at the window.

‘Are you cold? Shall I close the window?'

‘No,' I said. ‘No, thank you. I like fresh air.'

I struggled to sit up straight in the armchair; it seemed to be swallowing me. She was perched on the edge of hers, her head tilted to the side, like a bird. Her birdie-poppie eyes were bright, but it did not feel like she could see me. How could I describe to her the dark things from my past that still live inside my head? And my very personal problems with Henk?

‘What's on your mind?' she asked.

I stared down at my hands.

‘How about,' she said, ‘just to get us warmed up, I'll give you some abstract pictures to look at, and you tell me what they remind you of.' She pulled some sheets from her clipboard and handed three of them to me. ‘Just look at the top one and tell me what it reminds you of.'

That was easy. ‘It's a pumpkin fritter with lots of syrup and butter.'

‘Okay. And how does that make you feel?'

‘Hungry.'

‘Okay. Let's have a look at the next picture, shall we? What can you see there?'

‘A group of people dancing around a fire. And on the fire is a potjie pot, with lamb potjie in it. And here, in the middle of the flames, are two big black eyes staring at me. They can see right into me.'

‘What do they see?'

I shrugged.

‘Hmm,' she said. ‘What do you think of the third picture?'

I looked at that one for a while.

‘Arms and legs and blood,' I said. ‘There's a woman who's been torn in half, and a man who has been stabbed in the heart. See, here is the knife. And they have both been run over by a tractor; look at the tyre marks. They are all flat and squishy, like a pumpkin fritter.'

‘All right!' she said, sitting so far forward in her armchair I thought she would fall onto the carpet. ‘And how does that make you feel?'

‘Hungry?' I said. ‘It's nearly lunch time, isn't it?'

‘Hmm,' she said, and wrote something on her clipboard.

I swallowed. ‘My boyfriend . . .' I said. The word felt funny on my tongue, at my age.

‘Mm?'

‘Henk. He wanted me to get help. He thinks I'm traumatised after my kidnapping. There was a murderer . . .'

‘You were kidnapped?'

‘And locked in a freezer, but I escaped, although he nearly shot me, with his bow and arrow.'

‘Gosh,' said the poppie.

‘But it's not that, it's not that giving me the trouble.'

‘The trouble?'

‘Nightmares and shaking and that. Anyway, I haven't wanted to tell Henk, but I know my troubles are not about the murderer. He's dead and gone. My trouble is with him, Henk, coming in to my life. Getting close and all that,' I said.

‘You are finding intimacy with him difficult?'

‘No. Yes. What do you mean by intimacy? I really want it to work
out. But it's just getting worse. Getting close to him makes me worse. It brings up the trouble. Especially when we . . . if we . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Isn't our time up?' I said.

She glanced at her little silver watch. ‘No, we still have plenty of time.'

She looked at me, and I was quiet. She lifted her eyebrows to help me continue, but I held my mouth closed. It just wasn't right to tell this young girl about my private life. I looked at the window. The curtains were still now. Still and heavy.

‘Mrs van Harten,' she said. ‘Perhaps tell me about some of the difficult feelings you have. And anything you have noticed that makes your feelings better or worse.'

I sat thinking on what she said. A little breeze moved the curtains again. A Karoo robin caught my eye as it flew past the window.

‘That's an interesting question,' I said.

I tried again to sit up, but my feet didn't quite reach the floor and that armchair wasn't letting go, so I just leant back into it.

‘When I feel worried,' I said, ‘potato salad – with cream and mint – makes it a lot better. I still feel lonely sometimes, although it's a different kind of loneliness from the one I used to have, before Henk. In some ways it's worse, because he's right there, but . . . Anyway. Cake. Chocolate cake helps with loneliness. And with frustration, if it's a good cake, that is – a satisfying one. With peanut butter. Cakes help with lots of problems. And you get so many different flavours. But you know, now that I think about it, you have to be careful. If you are feeling guilty, for example, and you eat chocolate cake, it can make it worse. Of course, cakes are perfect for celebrating. But you asked about difficult feelings . . .'

I was excited now and waving my hands about. This was important stuff. And very helpful for my recipe advice column. I should make a chart of foods to go with each of the problem feelings.

‘Shame . . . and guilt – these are my most difficult feelings,' I said. ‘I can't sleep and I shake and I remember . . . things. I see things that happened long ago as if they are happening now in front of my eyes.'
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. ‘And I'm scared of what might happen, in the future.'

I paddled myself forward with my hands so that I was now on the front of my armchair, my feet back on the floor.

‘I must give it more thought . . . I've been eating chocolate cake for shame, and I don't think it's the right thing. I think maybe I need something lighter.' I looked at the orange chairs and yellow walls. ‘With citrus. Maybe a lemon meringue pie . . .'

‘Mrs van Harten . . .'

‘Call me Maria,' I said, feeling friendly now that the counselling was helping me so nicely. ‘Tannie Maria.'

‘Tannie Maria, do you maybe eat as a way of escaping your feelings?'

‘No . . .' I said. ‘I'm trying to help. To help my feelings. Trying to feel better.'

She looked down at her skinny legs and then up at me, her eyes running across my length and width.

‘Have you ever been on a diet, Tannie Maria?'