I have ditch the car a week maybe five days ago. I let it run over a cliff near Graaff-Reinet where there is plenty of clapped-out cars lying in the bottom of a kloof. I was hiding for a few days. Now I am riding in a bakkie. The owner of the bakkie is a farmer in the Karoo. He says, Jy stink vreeslik. You smell awful. Fuck him. He won’t say that if he knows I have a Beretta in my pants.
After a couple of hours I tell him, my ou maat, I need to piss.
Me too, says he.
Here’s a good place for a slash.
We stop by a picnic table behind some big rocks in the middle of fuck all. It can be the Hex River Pass, I don’t know. While he is pissing I get out my gun. He starts squealing when he sees the gun.
Don’t shoot me, please. I have children. Please.
I can shoot him and push him over the black-and-white stones what stops you driving off the road and into the bushes below, nobody is going to find him there never except maybe a hungry leopard. I tell him thanks for the ride now give me the keys. He’s so frightened he’s wet himself and he’s already had a piss.
Don’t go crying to the police. Just say someone stole your car while you was taking a leak. Unnerstan?
Yes thank you. Dankie.
The bakkie goes quite fast. Three hours to Cape Town more or less. It’s a Volkswagen. VW is always good engineered. First class, bakgat. I can see the wine lands now down there maybe near Wellington where Piet Retief was born. He should of stayed at home.
I am thinking what if Wynand is not dead and what if Elfrieda has gone to the cops and little Junie, how’s she. ‘Ring Of Fire’. It cheers me up but I can’t think right. I want to talk to Oom Frank. He’s clever. He’s slim. He can make a plan for sure. But I don’t know where my oom lives in Cape Town. I can’t ask nobody in case the cops comes after me. Then I have an idea maybe he is in the telephone book. Cape Town/Kaapstad. I ask a lady who has a café place at the top of the pass with fruit and sweets and biltong and dried sausage and magazines if she have the Cape Town phone book.
Are you all right? she says.
Tannie, it looks like I may have maybe killed someone who is fucking my wife but I am okay.
I don’t say this. I say, no fine, Tannie, thanks, and you?
No not bad can’t complain.
She gives me the phone book. There’s a hell of a lot of people in Cape Town.
In Potch the phone book only have about thirty pages. Can you believe it – F. D. J. McAllister, with address and phone number, is right there. Menemsha, 2 Beachfront Road. What is Menemsha? Maybe it’s Xhosa. I must get a map of Cape Town by the petrol station. Now I can see Table Mountain. Tafelberg. It does looks like a table. It’s very windy outside. There’s a sign to Strandfontein Beach and I go there and park the bakkie far away and then I have a dip because I am stinking for real. Shit, the water is cold. I duck my head under and it aches. I am the only person taking a dip. I dry myself extra quick with some paper. Two people is kite surfing. It’s beautiful when they fly over the waves very high. Maybe I can fly also. My underpants is black so that’s okay nobody can know it’s not a cozzie. Near Cape Town I see a sign We buy any car any condition no questions. It’s a place where they smash up cars for spares for sure. Chop it I tell them they gives me three thousand rand no receipt. These coloured guys talks very fast. For sure they knows the VW have been stolen and the sooner they chop it the better for everyone. It’s big business all over the country. The police knows what’s going on but they get money for going blind.
I walk into town past the docks. At the station I take a taxi-bus to Camps Bay. I buy a hamburger at Steers. Some of the chicks working there looks at me funny like I crawled out from under a rock. For sure I must get some new clothes. My beard is growing quick. It is black like my famous relative Piet Retief’s beard. Some people says he had a touch of the tar. I don’t know where to go. I must sleep on the mountain that is full with snakes. There’s people living up there smoking tik. They chase me away. I walk along the sea road to find Oom Frank’s house. Menemsha. It’s dark. I walk on the beach near some very big rocks. There’s a cave and I go inside to lie down.