The Satanic Mechanic (5 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The sosaties were fantastic. The kudu wasn't cut in the usual cubes but in small thin pieces, seared over hot coals. There were sweet sosaties made with pineapple and dried apricots. And savoury sosaties made with mushrooms and baby marrow. They were served with a choice of honey-mustard sauce or tomato-chilli sauce. I had a savoury sosatie with honey sauce followed by the sweet one with chilli sauce.

The chilli sauce was in a red plastic squeeze-bottle, like a tomato-sauce bottle, and the honey-mustard in a yellow one. But they tasted nothing like the usual stuff you get with hotdogs. They were both delicious homemade sauces, full of flavour.

And the kudu was tender, with that smoky fire taste. Kudu meat is quite subtle, not full of kick like springbuck.

The sosaties weren't very big, and I still felt hungry, and I got to wondering what the sweet one would taste like with the honey-mustard sauce and the savoury one with the chilli sauce. As a food writer, it was my duty to research this properly. I am glad I did, because it was the last sosatie I ate that had the best combination: The honey-mustard sauce with the sweet apricot sosatie.

I went up to the Kudu Stall and asked the young blonde girl who was serving if she would give me the recipe for the sauces.

‘Ag, sorry, Tannie,' she said, brushing some hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I already checked with my boss because another tannie also asked me, but he said, no, he won't share them.'

I was sorry about that. Recipes were made to be shared. I cheered up when I saw Hattie walking towards me.

‘There you are,' she said. ‘I do wish you'd carry a cell phone. The Pierneef talk was fabulous. There are some super little art galleries and second-hand bookstores. I can't resist a good bookstore. How was your afternoon? What did you get up to?'

‘Research,' I said. I wiped my mouth with a napkin, and threw it into a big green bin.

‘I could do with something to eat,' said Hattie. ‘I forgot to have breakfast. And lunch.'

I shook my head. How could someone do that?

‘Come with me to the Ostrich Club dinner,' I said.

‘Super,' she said, and we walked together out of the beer tent.

The sun was setting, and the pale-blue sky was smudged with red. A little tractor drove past us, pulling small carriages filled with children. As we strolled along the walkway between the stalls, the sounds around us got louder. Music from the Ferris wheel. A band starting up in the beer tent.

‘I wonder who is playing tonight,' said Hattie. She paused in the light of a buttermilk-pancake stall and looked at the programme. ‘It's Kurt Darren. That should be lively.'

We walked on to the Ostrich Supper Club. The stall was now decorated with big pink ostrich feathers, and a stove and pots were laid out on the trestle table where a man and a woman were chopping vegetables. He was roundish with a rough beard, and she was a skinny tannie with tight grey curls and a blue apron. Behind them, inside the stall with its canvas walls, was a dining table with a white cloth and candles. There were about six others standing and sitting here. They were dressed quite smartly, and I felt a bit shy in my veldskoene.

The woman with the little curls looked up at me and smiled. ‘We'll be having a cooking demonstration now-now,' she said. ‘We're making a sort of cottage pie with ostrich mince and sweet-potato topping. There are some ostrich recipe booklets here. They are free.'

Hattie and I each picked up one. It was a little black-and-white stapled booklet. On the back was a list of the sponsors, which included a few wine and ostrich farmers.

‘Look, here's a recipe of yours, Maria,' said Hattie, pointing to my name on the page. It was the cottage pie recipe.

‘Are you Tannie Maria?' asked the woman.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘and this is my friend Hattie.'

‘Ag, you came. That is so nice.' She called over her shoulder: ‘Annemarie, our guest of honour is here.'

‘Guest of honour?' said Hattie to me.

‘Ja, well, I sort of helped, with my letters, to introduce them to each other.'

‘Tannie Maria?' said a woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a pink dress that matched the feathers.

She was looking from me to Hattie. She had never seen a picture of me, and I had not seen her. Though I would have recognised her because she'd mentioned the scars. Her face was lined with white scars like the way mud cracks when there is a long drought.

Hattie pointed at me, and I offered her my hand, saying, ‘Annemarie.'

She did not shake my hand but took it in both of hers and pulled me to her and gave me a hug.

‘Thank you so much for coming,' she said.

‘This is Hattie,' I said, ‘the editor of the
Gazette
.'

She held Hattie's hand.

‘Come inside, come inside,' she said. ‘Let me introduce you.'

Ag, those people were so warm and friendly to me, they felt like the big family that I'd never had. What with no brothers and sisters, and my father gone so much, it was only when we visited with my cousins in the Free State that I really had a lekker nice big family like that. That little canvas stall was full of warm good food, delicious red wine, and talk and laughter. Annemarie was holding the hand of the round man with the beard, Stefaan, and sometimes I caught them looking at each other, and there was such happiness in their eyes.

There was just one man at the table who did not look happy. He sat very quietly, his hair and eyes shiny and dark, his face unshaven. He was long and thin, and his clothes were an olive-grey. He reminded
me of a black mamba. He didn't eat much of what was on his plate, even though the cottage pie was excellent. I couldn't have made it better myself.

I got up to help Annemarie with the pudding. We stood at the table, dishing warm brandy tart into little bowls.

‘It's so nice to see you happy,' I said.

‘Ja,' she said, ‘I am. And you helped me get here. When I first wrote to you, I was scared to go out of the house. And now I have this group of friends, and Stefaan. And it wouldn't have happened if your letters hadn't told us to go to the Agri to meet each other.'

She gave me the cream to spoon onto the plates. I swallowed a yawn. My sleepless night was catching up with me. We carried bowls to the table, two at a time.

The dark-eyed man turned down the brandy tart with cream. He looked at me with what seemed like anger, even hatred, when I offered it to him.

‘Is that guy okay?' I asked Annemarie, as she and I came back to the trestle table to dish up pudding for ourselves.

‘Nick? Ag, shame,' she said, covering the cream, so the little muggies didn't fly in. ‘He was in my therapy group, but it moved to Ladismith before he had time to sort himself out. The group's mainly for people with PTSD, but Nick, well, he's got special problems of his own. It helped me so much, that group. Stefaan and I were dating, but I was still all messed up, and we couldn't get . . . close, you know.'

‘Ja,' I said, knowing too well.

I took a mouthful of tart, and I closed my eyes and let the sweet warm brandy and cream sing down my throat to my belly.

‘Jirre,' I said. ‘This is delicious.'

‘It's my mother's recipe. I don't think Nick will work out here in the Supper Club. He needs a proper therapy group. His bad vibes can bring an evening down. Ag, shame. I wish I could help him.'

‘What's that therapy group you spoke about?'

‘Well, after my . . . accident . . . There's this guy, Ricus, who runs the group. He's actually a mechanic. They call him the satanic mechanic.' She laughed. ‘I don't know why. Maybe because he comes from Hotazel,
up north.' She pronounced it ‘hot-as-hell'. ‘I heard rumours about a woman there, a snake charmer. It's probably rubbish; you know how people talk. Anyway, he's not a satanist; he's a real healer. I don't know what I would have done without him, really.'

‘Can you give me the recipe for this brandy tart?' I said, as I polished off the sticky pudding in my bowl. ‘And the mechanic's details?'

‘Sure. Do you have people who write to you with post-traumatic stress disorder? You'll like his approach. He thinks part of the healing process involves eating lekker food.' Yummy food. ‘He's got his group going again, just outside Ladismith. Too far for me to travel, but I wish Nick would go and stay there a while. I know Ricus's number off by heart. Have you got a pen?'

So that's where I first heard of the man who was to turn my life the right way up and upside down: the satanic mechanic.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was an autumn chill in the air when Hattie and I left the Supper Club, but we felt all warm inside.

‘What a delightful evening,' said Hattie. ‘Let's go and check on Jessie, before we head to our guesthouse.'

‘She should have spoken to Slimkat by now,' I said.

As we walked back towards the beer tent, we could hear a band playing in the distance. Then there was the sound of live singing, chanting and stamping behind us.

‘Goodness,' said Hattie, gripping my arm. ‘A riot.'

It was a crowd of people toyi-toying in the darkness. A lead voice sang out in Xhosa, and the chorus chanted, ‘Hai! Hai!' You could feel the ground shake as the whole group lifted their knees high and stamped down on the earth. ‘Hai! Hai!'

We stepped back, beside a biltong stall, and I peeped out from behind the big jars of dried meat. The heart that was beating in my chest came from my father and my mother. My mother's heart felt the fear of the Swart Gevaar – the Black Danger – which approached us, fists raised high. My father's heart felt the excitement of the people taking power into their own hands. When he died, I learnt he had been an underground member of the ANC.

‘Hai! Hai, Hai!' called the crowd as they were almost upon us.

I wondered whether this was a protest against the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees itself. The KKNK was mainly a white Afrikaner event and might be seen as symbol of the old apartheid government.

The group was very tidy in the way it was toyi-toying, and they
wore berets and a camouflage uniform. ‘Hattie,' I said. ‘It's not a riot; it's the army.'

They paused a few steps beyond us and did an about-turn, to face us, and sang the national anthem. It starts with the ANC song ‘Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' (God Bless Africa) and ends with ‘Uit die Blou van Onse Hemel' (From the Blue of Our Heavens), which used to be the Afrikaner national anthem.

I have heard it many times before, but in the dark of the night, standing by that biltong stall, with my mother's and father's heart drumming inside me, it gave me goosebumps over my whole body and filled me with feelings I cannot name.

Then a conductor introduced the army choir, and they started on a beautiful Xhosa song. Some sang high, others low, with choruses answering each other. They moved in time to the music. The voices wove a hammock of sound that held me and rocked me. I found my body swaying, and then I was aware of Hattie beside me and felt embarrassed because I am no dancer.

‘Oh my,' said Hattie when the song was over. ‘How beautiful.'

We headed towards the thumping music of the tent. It was Kurt Darren singing, ‘Meisie meisie', and although there were a few old tannies sitting on the plastic chairs, most of the people were up and dancing.

‘Meisie meisie, prinses van die dansvloer,' he sang. Girl girl, princess of the dance floor.

We looked around for Jessie. Hattie, who is so much taller than me, spotted her. The tent was now thick with people, so we walked around the outside and then worked our way in towards her. She was sitting with Slimkat at one of the long tables that were on the other side of the tent, away from the stage. Slimkat's cousin, Ystervark, was beside him, glaring at a man who stood nearby and was wearing khaki shirt and shorts and muddy veldskoene. The man had a big belly and cross eyebrows and reminded me of someone. I also saw Warrant Officer Reghardt at the neighbouring table. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and sipping a Coke. He's a tall young man with beautiful eyes, dark and soft like a Karoo violet; his hair flopped over his eyebrows. He seemed to be ignoring his sweetheart, Jessie, but was looking around
as if waiting for someone. Then I saw Constable Piet Witbooi, who's also part of Kannemeyer's team. I had to blink twice to see him because he was standing so still. His body was relaxed, but I could tell he was taking everything in, like a mongoose on the lookout for a jackal in the veld. Piet's an ace tracker, with all the skills of his Bushman ancestors. I saw him make a small movement with two of his fingers, and soon after I felt a hand on my shoulder.

It was Kannemeyer. He stepped past me and in front of us, blocking our path between the long tables.

‘What are you doing here?' he said to me, his eyes grey-blue like a storm cloud. He was wearing jeans and a faded blue cotton shirt, the top buttons open.

‘Meisie meisie, ek sien jou, ek bewe,' sang Kurt Darren. Girl girl, I see you, I tremble.

‘I'm not following you,' I said, loudly, over the music. ‘We're meeting Jessie here.'

Hattie waved at Jessie, who'd now seen us and was calling us over.

‘Excuse me,' said Hattie, turning sideways so she could slip past Henk.

That sideways thing wouldn't work for me.

‘Excuse me,' I tried. But he didn't move.

‘It's dangerous,' he said.

‘It's a festival,' I said.

‘That man she is with . . .'

‘Slimkat's dangerous?'

‘You know him?'

‘Someone tried to kill him, didn't they? What happened?'

Henk shook his head. I saw movement behind him: that big man with the muddy veldskoene was walking towards Slimkat. Ystervark blocked his way.

‘That man!' I said. ‘The one in khaki with the cross face. I think I recognise him. From a photograph on the Supreme Court steps. He's a cattle farmer, angry with Slimkat for winning the land.'

Henk glanced behind him then looked back at me. ‘Stay out of it,' he said, his eyes now the colour of rain against the mountains. ‘Please, Maria.'

This time I didn't say excuse me, I just stepped forward. Henk moved out of the way; he is a gentleman after all. The man in khaki walked right past Ystervark and Slimkat towards a Windhoek Lager beer stall. Ystervark followed him.

Jessie grinned when she saw us. Slimkat stood up and shook hands.

‘Hand aan hand dans ons saam in die reën,' sang Kurt. Hand in hand we dance together in the rain.

When Slimkat looked at me, that window with no curtains thing happened again, so I studied the table. In front of Slimkat was a Styrofoam container with a used napkin and four clean sosatie sticks.

‘Delicious,' I said, pointing to the sticks and giving my fingers a kiss to show what I meant. We could hardly hear each other over the music, but we spoke with our hands. He nodded like a wagtail and made the spiral movement of kudu horns above his head.

‘What sauce did you like best?' I asked, making a squeezing movement as if I was holding one of those big plastic bottles.

‘Honey-mustard,' he said, showing the humming movement of a bee's wings with his fingers. He offered me and Hattie his seat, but Hattie told him that we were leaving. She mimed a sleep movement with her hands and head. We smiled and nodded our goodbyes, and Jessie walked with Hattie and me to the outside of the tent where it was a little quieter. Kurt was now singing ‘Kaptein', and the crowd was going crazy.

‘Kaptein, span die seile. Kaptein, sy is myne.' Captain, prepare the sails. Captain, she is mine.

‘It was his car brakes,' Jessie told us. ‘Someone cut them, right here at the festival. He nearly had a bad accident.'

‘Heavens above,' said Hattie. ‘You're sure it wasn't a mechanical failure?'

‘No, they were cut. With wire-cutters.'

‘Oh my,' said Hattie.

‘He's asked that I only print the story after the KKNK. The organisers don't want the crowds to panic.'

‘But what's he still doing here?' said Hattie. ‘Surely it's dangerous?'

‘He says he won't let fear make him run. He also thinks there's safety in numbers. And there are a troop of policemen watching out for him.'

The man in khaki was heading back now. Ystervark was close behind. I looked over at Henk, who stood not far from Slimkat. Henk's arms were crossed, and his gaze was doing a slow sweep of the beer tent.

‘Daar was 'n eiland vol meisies in bikinis,' sang Kurt. There was an island full of girls in bikinis.

The expression on Henk's face suddenly changed, his jaw dropped, and he started moving towards Slimkat.

Slimkat was bent over, clutching his stomach.