49

STRANGE THINGS

STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN WHEN COMMUNITIES are disrupted and people are diverted along unusual paths. Crocodile Flats would never be the same after the day of the first arrivals. The prophet’s previous gatherings had drawn large numbers of the Correctly Baptised, but nothing like the throngs who arrived over that extraordinary weekend and the weeks to follow.

Hendrik Ossewa would have been horrified if he’d known that his wife, Magdalena, was sitting on a banquette in the Outspan bar between her friend Petro and an ageing Catholic priest. Father Liam had slipped away with Mother Esmé from the besieged ex-garage through a back door, leaving Sweetness fast asleep and the nuns preparing for bed. After squiring the old nun to her bedroom in the manager’s suite, he had found the two women hovering in the lobby and invited them into the bar with an offer of a glass of red wine. It seemed appropriate to honour that momentous day with the last of his Meerlust Rubicon ’86.

Petro was quite taken with his rugged looks above the black cassock, though she protested, ‘We can’t go into a bar.’

‘Why not? This is a night that calls for celebration.’

‘But all those men drinking—’ And blacks too, she wanted to say but didn’t, knowing that priests were mostly liberals.

‘Hennie wouldn’t like it,’ Magdalena said.

After hours of trudging about the dusty, crowded village looking for signs of the vision, her turquoise silk two piece was smudged with fingermarks from people reaching out to feel its expensive sheen. She and Petro had gone into the Outspan wondering if they could find a room for the night before returning home to face the wrath of their husbands in the morning.

‘Hennie bein’—?’

‘My hubby. He said I mustn’t come because it’s a bad place full of poor people living in shacks, though I wouldn’t listen. Me and Petro came anyway. But he was right. There’s nothing here, nothing. Only hundreds of people milling round. It’s a nightmare.’ She was close to tears at finding her brave rebellion unrewarded.

‘Ah.’ Father Liam was thirsty and needed a buffer against prying questions in the pub. He said, ‘It’s no nightmare, dear lady, and I’ll tell you why if you’ll both step inside for a glass of God’s own comfort. I have this past hour been sittin’ with the girl who believes she saw the Holy Mother.’ And he ushered them inside.

By the time he escorted them back to Petro’s car for the long drive home through the night, they had been given such a detailed account of the Ma-Jesu vision and its consequences – fuelled by Father Liam’s soft heart for women in distress – that they could outdo Rapport’s double-page spread of Rod Greyling’s syndicated feature. At first both husbands were outraged to hear that their wives had been consorting with a Catholic priest (in a bar! in a black spot!), but they were soon mollified by the advantageous inside information. Hendrik Ossewa was able to meet his furious minister at the airport in full possession of bang-up-to-date facts about Crocodile Flats, which included the observation that the vision would be a good thing for South African tourism and should be encouraged.

‘If people start spending big money there, it won’t be a black spot much longer,’ he said, thereby ensuring his pension and Dr Qaphela’s continued existence in the Cabinet.

The police reinforcements were formed into shifts to operate throughout Saturday night. Things got a bit tense when both the café and the Outspan bar closed at ten and people began to look for somewhere to sleep. For those who could not bed down in their cars and vans, Captain Ngobese requisitioned the Outspan garages and asked Girlie Ming to open the Beijing Bazaar for an hour to source blankets and candles.

Tex, Khanya and the butcher were notified that they should be ready to open early the next morning to cater for the growing crowds. Tex promised ongoing batches of bread. When the Vanderlindeans drifted home and Tannie Charmaine heard of the food crisis, she phoned the captain to say, ‘We can offer free meals. Just give us till nine o’clock tomorrow.’

‘It’s very good of you, Mrs van der Linde.’

‘Tannie Charmaine, please. Everybody calls me that.’ Her voice held the warmth of a freshly baked melktert. ‘We have plenty of food because of the stockpiling: everything from aartappels to the waterblommetjie-bredie in the freezers. They’ll go off if we store them for too long.’

An offer of aid from Vanderlindea – wonders would never cease. The captain said, ‘That’s extremely generous. Will you need extra help? I could send round some of my men.’

‘No need. I have two daughters and plenty of kids who’ve been cooped up for too long. We’ll load the farm trailer.’ She knew only too well how Swart Barend would react if a squad of black policemen came quick-marching through the gate. After the independence gemors he’d need extensive reconditioning.

‘This is the true spirit of ubuntu. Welcome back, Tannie Charmaine.’

‘Thank you, Captain,’ she said, not adding, The Boers practise it too, you know.

Emergency sanitation was the next urgent issue to be identified. A police detail was sent to the Jabula mansion to requisition the portable toilets delivered for the gathering, though Violet refused at first.

‘No way. We ordered them for our congregation.’

Captain Ngobese went in person to explain the position. ‘This is an official order. There are crowds of people who need toilets now. You only require them tomorrow, by which time we’ll have organised more.’

She folded her arms. ‘You won’t get any out of Mashonisa. He’ll be in Gold Reef City playing the tables.’

‘How do we contact his staff, then?’

‘They’re here, sleeping in the pantechnicon so they can dismantle everything on Monday morning and take it away. Hiring costs money.’

‘Please. This is a real crisis.’

‘We can’t help, Captain. We have our own people to consider.’

But the Prophet Hallelujah was advancing with his arms spread wide saying, ‘To what do we owe this honour? I trust it’s not my followers causing the ruckus in the village.’

Captain Ngobese bit back the playful reply, No, it’s the opposition, and said, ‘Your followers aren’t the problem. There are increasing numbers of journalists and pilgrims who’ve heard rumours about the vision. They need toilets, which is why I’m here to borrow yours.’

The prophet’s smile faded. ‘The village must make its own arrangements.’

‘Nobody expected a sudden invasion. We don’t have the facilities. I’d appreciate a helping hand …’ What did one call a prophet? Your worthiness? Your farsightedness? He mumbled, ‘brother. Mfowethu.’

‘A long row of guys with picks and shovels might be more useful.’ The prophet was elated at having finished his speech for the gathering: a humdinger to counteract the Catholic vision that was attracting such crowds.

‘We are planning a temporary construction. But it’ll take all night.’

Violet said, ‘I make extensive preparations to accommodate our congregation—’

‘The tried and trusted faithful, beloved of our Church,’ the prophet picked up smoothly. ‘We go out of our way to look after their needs. Others are not our concern.’

‘These people flocking into the village are strangers, I know. But they’re tired and hungry and need toilets.’ Seeing that he was making no headway, the captain fished out a sentence from the Bible that had been quoted often at school during the apartheid years to cheer everyone up. ‘What about “Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden”?’

‘Ah, the pertinent quote. You’ve got us there,’ the prophet admitted. ‘Okay, you can have the toilets till tomorrow morning nine o’clock. Then we’ll need them back.’

‘Nine sharp!’ Violet emphasised.

‘Understood. Thanks.’ Behind his big smile of relief the captain was thinking, And what if we can’t finish our structure in time?

Which is why he only got home to Thulazi and their warm bed well after midnight again, having spent the previous few hours helping to mark out and supervise the digging of the long trench behind the bus and taxi terminus. On top would go a makeshift ten-holer, to be clad in corrugated iron early the next morning by shack builders.

Captain Godwin Ngobese knew as well as the Boers how to make a plan.

Benjamin closed the doors of the empty Outspan bar that night and leaned forward to gaze out the window at the many people still wandering along the tarmac and gravel verges.

‘Look at them,’ he said. ‘This is the miracle. Yesterday morning I thought I was finished, and thanks to a schoolgirl who thinks she saw a saint—’

‘The saint,’ Raylene interjected.

‘Well, your saint,’ he agreed. ‘Thanks to that, the hotel’s full and the bar takings will carry me through for at least two months, even if I get no more visitors. Thanks to you too, of course,’ he added. ‘You’ve been fantastic, helping me so much.’

‘So have you. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard except my ma and pa.’ She went closer to him, beads clashing at the ends of her plaits, and took his hands. ‘Even if Father Liam doesn’t trust me, I know you do.’

‘Oh, I do,’ he breathed. ‘I promise I do, Raylene.’ It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.

‘Cross your heart?’

‘All the way up to heaven.’

‘Do Jews believe in heaven?’

‘I do. I’m in it now. The whole world has changed and you’re an angel, walking in when you did.’

Her swamp eyes looked at him for a long moment and he couldn’t believe he’d said something so soppy. So extravagant. So unlike his usual clumsy compliments that made his mother cringe. Raylene was a teacher who had been to college. She’d think he was trying to butter her up; that he had ulterior motives.

‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,’ she said.

When he beamed with relief his face lit up and his arms went round her in a grateful hug, not feeling like asparagus at all. Nor did it seem to matter that he was still wearing the Fair Isle v-neck with a dishcloth hanging out of his pocket. He was kind and nice and honest, attributes that had been in short supply in the men in her life.

She could get used to being seen as an angel. Even by a guy who had seemed like the ultimate nerd only last night.

Queenie the shebeen queen and Baptist Jolobe the teetotalling taxi driver had a bumper Saturday night business-wise. Both on a high, yet stone-cold sober, they celebrated in her empty yard with a duet – perhaps the strangest occurrence that night. Mad Zizwe, walking up the alley with his dogs, saw them dancing together and crooning, ‘Shine on, shine on harvest moon up in the sky’, as the just-waning moon swam like a bloated goldfish on the western horizon. ‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ he muttered, heading for his lair in the football ground.