5

VANDERLINDEA

ROOI BAREND VAN DER LINDE’S BAKKIE SLID TO a halt in the alley that led to the row of garages behind the Outspan. He skulked towards the corner of the building and peered round to check up and down the tarmac road and its gravel verges. There were no familiar vehicles or white faces in sight, just full buses and taxis and people heading for their shacks in the growing dusk.

He hurried into the hotel lobby and through the swing doors to the bar, calling, ‘Hey, Benny-boy! You got a cold Castle for me?’

Benjamin Feinbaum said in his mild way, ‘You’re in a hurry.’

‘Damn sure. I’m supposed to go straight to pick up the post and back, Pa’s orders. Plus the wife gives me stick if someone tells her I’ve been here. She’s like the pastor about the demon drink. But a few beers never did a ou any harm, hey?’

He lowered his khaki rump onto a bar stool and turned to survey the room. The few black patrons had left and only hard-core rugby fans sat hunched over their brandies and Coke, watching replays on the TV in the corner. Nudging the glass tankard across the counter, Benjamin thanked God for small mercies.

‘Jeez, I got a thirst on me.’

Benjamin watched the beer level plummet, mesmerised by the gulping Adam’s apple until its owner thumped down the empty tankard. ‘Jus’ one more and I’m outa here.’

‘That’ll be eighteen bucks, plus eighteen for last time,’ Benjamin warned. Rooi Barend had been platsak ever since Independence.

‘Daylight robbery.’ But he reached into the pocket of his shorts and fished out two twenty-rand notes, which he slapped on the counter, adding, ‘Keep the change. Big relief, man. It’s like the Dorsland Trek by our place.’

‘Thanks. Much appreciated.’

‘Don’t mensh, Benny-boy. Always pay my debts in the end, hey?’ Rooi Barend swept up the refilled tankard and after another series of mighty gulps, was gone with the swing doors banging behind him.

Two clans dominated Crocodile Flats: the amaPula, headed by Chief Mohlalipula, who owned the land to the east of the village, and the Van der Lindes, who owned the farm to the west and had been there longer than anyone else except the original inhabitants, now extinct.

The Van der Linde patriarchs were a breed of bulls alternating between pitch-black Nguni and the red-brown of an Afrikander. Rooi Barend’s father, Swart Barend, was a giant of a man with a foaming black beard, a legendary marksman who boasted that he could drop any beast with one shot. Until the day he winged a rhino that outran him, bellowing with rage, and repaid him with a savage thrust to the right buttock, leaving a crater like the Big Hole of Kimberley. Since then, walking had been painful and sitting down a martyrdom. His face bore the ravages of agony, as did his wife, Tannie Charmaine, four sons and two meek daughters.

Rooi Barend with his flaming hair and matching temperament was the only son cocky enough to stand up to him. One by one, the others were driven away, leaving their brother to inherit the farm, his mother and their sisters.

He took on the challenge by marrying a strapping boeremeisie who could handle the usual farm crises: breech births, bloating cattle, Newcastle disease, farmhands staggering up to the back door with wounds pouring blood. But he was not forewarned that Hester was pious and had a horror of sex. For health reasons, he was forced to resort to Queenie’s sultry niece, Salomie, in a back room of the motel where she worked, halfway to town where the gravel road dribbled onto the highway.

Then came Independence. The onset of democracy had been hard enough to bear. Democracy in eleven official languages with black economic empowerment became a nightmare that the Van der Linde elders swore on their family Bible fully warranted secession. In tandem with like-minded families on adjoining farms, they decided to seal themselves off from the rest of South Africa.

Within weeks the land to the west of Crocodile Flats was purged of farm labourers and their families, declared a volkstaat and ringed with a lofty security fence and razor wire. Round-the-clock guards with R1 rifles liberated from commando armouries were stationed at the floodlit main gate between two converted silos, linked to more silos at intervals along the perimeter by runways swarming with killer boerbuls.

The new volkstaat was proclaimed Vanderlindea. Swart Barend drew up a Constitution and designed a coat of arms (ox-wagons on a field vert, with crossed Mausers and ratels rampant). Tannie Charmaine ran up a flag on her electric Bernina that could do one hundred and twenty fancy stitches. Shotguns and side arms were checked and oiled, and ammunition replenished. All male citizens over twelve ran regular patrols inside the perimeter on a motley fleet of bicycles and buzzing Suzukis.

The womenfolk got busy making koeksisters, rusks, konfyt and pickles. Meat was ordered, cut up and packed for freezer storage: sides of beef, whole lambs, crates of mince and kilometres of boerewors. The farm storerooms were stocked with barrels of pickled pork and hung about with biltong and droëwors. There were trays of mebos and dried peaches; sacks of mealiemeal, flour, peanuts, braai charcoal and fowlfood; tinned goods purchased in bulk from the Hyperama in town; packets of yeast, dried soups and water-purifying tablets; bottles of Mrs Ball’s chutney, atchar, peri-peri and lemon cordial; medical supplies, including brandy, Van der Hum and a full range of Lennon’s and other boer remedies; diesel generators, paraffin and gas lamps, candles and matches. Stores of hay and lucerne were checked and enough bales ordered to stock the sheds to capacity. Diesel and gas tanks were topped up and tons of anthracite trucked in. Reject gum and wattle poles were bought from sawmills and cut up into a mountain of firewood with chainsaws that growled nonstop for a week.

As they settled into siege mode and geared up to do battle, the Vander-lindeans hadn’t had so much fun in years.

The only trouble was, everybody on the outside ignored them. No one tried to storm the gates or cut off the electricity. No court injunctions were served. Not even the newly integrated South African Army had tried to invade.

The anticlimax was beginning to tell on people’s nerves.

Only Rooi Barend was allowed out for emergency supplies, to fetch the post and when certain stocks were running low. Swart Barend grew hoarse from giving orders all day. Tannie Charmaine was suffering with her indigestion. Hester hankered after Pastor Nazaret Harmse’s sermons from the high pulpit in town; they didn’t sound the same when he delivered them from a bale in the cow shed. Rooi Barend hankered after Salomie.

To add to the misery, the Crocodile Flats kids had invented a new game: they wrote insulting messages on bits of paper, wrapped them round stones, secured them with rubber bands and shot them with catties over the security fence, howling with scornful laughter. Some days it rained paper-wrapped stones in Vanderlindea. The perimeter patrols and killer boerbuls were kept fully occupied dodging them.

On the evening of the sighting of Ma-Jesu, Swart Barend’s blood pressure was soaring to dangerous new heights, his daughters were snivelling with boredom, Hester was sweating over a giant pot of sousboontjies and Rooi Barend had a bad case of lover’s balls.