Obadiah said: All our whites are demented in one way or another. It would indeed be interesting to come to America for the sole purpose of observing normal whites. This is not to say that our blacks are lacking in idiosyncrasies. Do you think it’s the sun?
Our closest neighbor, Krieger, we saw only behind the wheel of a speeding bakkie. When he drove across Goas, he scattered anything in his path; boys, goats, teachers. It happened twice a day. Krieger on his way to and from the dorp. Krieger’s truck wings around the church, rumbling across the ruts in the sandy road, then careens across the soccer field in the middle of a game. A fluffy-white-haired honking murderous Santa bellowing, Halloo! Halloo!
According to the principal, Krieger had a binding legal right to drive straight across the soccer field. Once, I spoke up about it during morning meeting. I usually kept quiet, but I felt the behavior of a white was something within my purview to comment on.
“Seems a little dangerous,” I said.
“He holds an easement,” the principal said. “I’ve seen the document, which was duly notarized in Windhoek.”
“He can’t drive around the field?”
“Why should he drive around when the document gives him the right?”
“To spare life and limb.”
“Did I not say the document was duly notarized?”
*
Soccer. A round-robin tournament. We’re holding a set of Pohamba’s betting forms. That wet mimeograph ink, that deep indigo you couldn’t wash off. It dyed your hands purple for weeks. Made you high if you sniffed it and we sniff it. The pool is set at fifteen rand with a double on the last match. It’s been nil-nil for as long as anybody can remember. We’re wilting in our seats like unwatered geraniums.
“Watched high soccer is a lot more interesting,” I say.
Pohamba shouts, “Can’t you get it right? Football. It’s an offense on our culture.”
I wave him away. I’ve discovered something else. If you watch the ones without the ball it’s even better. Their feet. How every move is a beautiful anticipation. The ball is only incidental to the dance. Which is the answer to the mystery. Not only isn’t it about scoring, it isn’t even about the ball. I sniff the betting forms, understanding soccer, proud, loving it, between being bored and sleepy, when suddenly from around the church comes Krieger, roaring, barreling, honking, hallooing. His white arm banging the outside of the door, his fury of white hair waving in the wind. “Run for your lives, boys!” And the boys do. They dive, they tumble. They think it’s hilarious. They think everything’s hilarious. Krieger drives on toward the C-32. Play resumes.
“One of these days that Nazi is going to kill an innocent,” I say.
Obadiah raises a Sherlockian brow. “Nazi?”
“Why not? He’s the right age.”
“Which doesn’t necessarily mean —”
“The Nazis here never even had to learn Spanish.”
“Is not a central tenet of your justice system the transcendent concept of innocent before proven guilty?”
“This isn’t a court. This is Goas.”
“That’s true,” Pohamba says. “No justice here.”
Mavala stands. “You’re all ridiculous.” She slaps twenty rand on Pohamba’s desk. “Put it on United Africa in the next round.”
We watch her walk up the road. Tomo remains. He’s digging a tunnel beneath Vilho’s chair.
I turn to Obadiah. “Look, I’m simply asking for a little empathy for another marginalized people.” (Residual phrase fortuitously recalled from Prof E. L. Cloyd’s Sociology 202, Bowling Green State, Larry Kaplanski’s final grade: C+)
“A little empathy?” Obadiah says. “If empathy was money —”
Score! Kanhala with the header.
Krieger’s other claim to fame is that he shoots zebra in the Erongos and donates the meat to the school. Zebra meat has a distinctive stink. It’s acrid and gamey at the same time. Only the most meat-hungry boys eat it. But it does make for good biltong. When it’s dried out, you can’t smell it as much. Very chewy. So chewy you could chew it like gum, for hours. My own Standard Six Jeremiah Puleni walks around in the late afternoons and hawks zebra biltong to us for small change or old eraserless pencils.