How shall I put this, while driving to Pretoria? I could blame age, Ruth, drink or pornography, but the short of it was that I couldn’t get an erection. Obviously Kay had said that was all right, making as if it (the situation) was charming and asked whether she could sleep over. I’d been too slow and embarrassed to say that I still felt as if I was violating The Ex and my space, so I resorted to my old trick and soon had her laughing about my Independent Member of Parliament, which did just what it liked, when it liked, if it liked.
“So do you call him your IMP?”
“Exactly. But right now he’s an impi, isn’t he?”
“That depends.”
“My God, I’ll still make a sub out of you,” I said, impressed that she could see the rich possibilities of talking in the bellicose sense if she meant it in isiZulu, or the diminutive sense of it in Afrikaans, if that’s what she meant at all.
“Maybe he’s just an impimpi,” I continued.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you remember how township informers used to be doused in petrol and set alight in the mid-Eighties?”
“I was born in the Eighties.”
“Sorry. I forgot. Well, those kinds of township informers were called impimpi.”
“Tell me a story.”
“What?”
“Tell me a story. I love it when you tell stories.”
“Just like that?”
“Ja.”
“I always blank out when someone says tell me a story or a joke. What kind of story do you want to hear?”
“I don’t know. How about a love story?”
“Okay … Once upon a time I was sitting in the office and I saw a very beautiful woman walk by …”
“What did you think of her?”
“I thought she was very sexy.”
“So why did you do so little to pursue her?”
“What do you mean? I married her.”
“You shit!” she laughed, not entirely convincingly.
“Sorry. The reason why I didn’t pursue the woman was because a) she was much younger than me and therefore I didn’t think she’d be interested, and b) I’d just come out of a divorce. I didn’t think I could have any more relationships,” I said, leaving the option open in case one was developing here, if only sexually.
“So there’s no one in your life now.”
“No, apart from the master/servant thing with my domestic worker – ‘my’ domestic worker – and a different kind with my father.”
“Is the maid pretty?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Have you ever thought of – you know.”
“Fucking her? Yes, once or twice.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Because it would disturb the local economy. She’s got standard three. I’ve got a bad degree. What would we talk about?”
“I thought that sort of thing wasn’t important for men.”
“Well, it is for me.”
That seemed to impress her.
“And what kind of relationship do you have with your father?”
“Difficult. We don’t have much in common. I mean, his reading matter consists of the Bible, the Reader’s Digest and Dennis the Menace.
“That’s so sweet.”
I probably grunted.
“You seem angry with him.”
I probably grunted again.
“Why?”
“Long story.”
“I don’t mind long stories.”
So I started telling her about my resentment towards him over my mother and the past and was just getting into my stride when I realised she was fast asleep and – hello – the IMP wasn’t. Story of my life. And so I spent the rest of the night wrestling sheets and now – hungry, hungover, horny – wondered about my “failure” to perform at the given time. The more I thought about it the more I became convinced that the main reason for it was that I’d felt pursued, hunted. I’d had a similar feeling when entering the Skyline in Hillbrow with a friend back in the gay Eighties, finding myself – ha! – making a fine study of a large contingent of straight-looking men’s Hush Puppies. Was this how women felt most of the time? Perused, pursued, visually pawed?
The old man, with his body of a gymnast, had also been perved during his police college days, he’d once told me, but he’d been emphatic about not indulging that angle whatsoever, whereas I’d been more tolerant; a bit of a tease, even. Now he was standing in his HPs at the gate with his silver hair and I wondered, if his father had hit the living daylights out of him, why had he never lifted his hand to me – not once. It didn’t make sense: usually those who were abused became abusers in turn, but he hadn’t and I had certainly given him plenty of reasons to give me a deserved thrashing.
“What’s that?”
“It’s coffee, Dad.”
“But I’ve got coffee.”
“Ja, but this is better coffee,” I said, having come to the end of my tether in those stakes. I, a real coffee snob, usually only drank strong and foreign filter coffee, but from now on I was only prepared to have Nescafé, a mild improvement on his Ricoffy, even if it, too, was instant.
“You should have told me,” he said. “I would have got you some.”
“You don’t have to buy me anything anymore, Dad.”
“But I want to,” he said.
So I gave him my hand, which he proceeded to demolish and I accepted. Why? Because my mother had always complained about how painful her arthritic hands were and I’d always scornfully dismissed such things, following his lead, so this was payback time. This was my deserved punishment, I thought, asking him how he was.
“What?”
“Shall we have some coffee?” I said, somewhat aggressively.
“Good idea,” he said. “But you know, I’ve just had some oats. I’ve probably eaten oats every day of my life since the war – and before.”
“That’s probably another reason why you’re so healthy.”
“Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and I’m starving, so I make myself some Jungle Oats.”
“Goo-ood,” I said, insinuating us towards the kitchen, where he told me about his bargain buy and how everyone chose the mug with the circles and would I like to take a packet of Lemon Creams home?
“What are you cooking?” I asked, to migrate from one boring subject to another.
“I’m making my usual stew with some boerewors, two small cabbages, carrots, potatoes and onions.”
“Smells good.”
“But you know, I never eat chicken.”
“Why not,” I said for about the five-hundred-thousandth time.
“Because when I was a child I had to chop off its neck and it would go running around the yard, headless. Blood all over the place.”
“You used to make chicken for your dog.”
I might as well have punched him in the stomach.
“Don’t even mention her.”
“Why not?” I said a little cruelly, seeing his and Ma’s dachshund in my mind’s eye. The poor thing had become so overfed that her guts had dragged on the ground and she’d died of kidney failure, because the old man had always poured the last of his sweet, insipid coffee into a saucer, broken half a Lemon Cream into it and then given it to the dog.
“I still dream of her,” he said.
“And Ma. Do you dream of her?”
“Um, no,” he said, a little taken aback. “But I think of her. All the time.”
“Shall we go and sit outside?” I said, feeling unexpectedly emotional.
“Ja. Good idea,” he said, relieved.
So we went out through the bottom door, as such, down the sunny steps and sat on the wire chairs, the table needing adjusting again. We watched a Boeing fly overhead and spoke about his kind sister in Eshowe and the bossy, beautiful one in Empangeni. Once the coffee and Lemon Creams were finished, the mugs had to be washed and dried immediately, and then in a particular way. First they had to be scrubbed in warm, soapy Sunlight and then rinsed in cooler, soap-less water. After that they had to be given a cursory wipe with a damp rag and then with a dry-as-bone dish cloth. They also had to be packed away, there and then.
“You know,” he said, “my father often shot food for the pot. We often ate venison. But one day I went out hunting with him in the Amatikulu valley. The trees formed a kind of canopy, so you could see for miles under them. And there in the distance stood a kudu. It was a male, and it had huge curly horns. My father told me to be quiet and went down on his knee, taking aim. He was going to kill that beautiful animal …”
“So what happened?”
“I was standing behind him …”
“Ja?”
“So I waved my arms.”
“Then it skedaddled,” I said, thinking of Kay’s full breasts. “What did your father do?”
“He asked me whether I’d frightened the buck off.”
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘yes, I did’, shitting myself.”
“And then?”
“He said, ‘Let’s go home’ and never hunted again.”