Kay kept on sleeping until nine o’clock, by which time I wasn’t going to get any sleep, or sex, unless I phoned the old man off, so I made us an English breakfast. She loved that and looked much fresher and even wanted to get a little lovey-dovey as I started getting ready to leave for the old man’s.
“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”
“That’s all right,” I lied. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I’ve got a study group,” she play-moaned.
“Some other time.”
“Did you make your ex-wife breakfast too?”
“I’d prefer not to talk about her.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Shall we have some coffee?”
“Good idea,” the old man said, standing at the wash line and ironing some hanging rags with his large brown hands, as if he were still out in the desert.
I was hanging on one arm of the silver pole’s crossbar and he asked me how many pull-ups I could do and I almost managed ten.
“Very good,” he said. “I used to be able to do a hundred in college.”
“Then came the war.”
“Ja. But I was very lucky.”
“How come?” I said for about the three-hundred-thousandth time, returning to terra firma.
“Well, out in the desert there was this thick line that ran through our camp, so I cut a piece out of it so that I could make a washing line, like this. Soon after I hear it’s the communication line to the front and someone’s cut it and there’s going to be hell to pay. So I quickly get rid of it, bury it.”
“What would have happened if they’d discovered it was you?” I said, propagating us towards the apron, the stoep and the kitchen.
“They would have shot me on the spot for treason!” he laughed, inviting me to share in his mischief, almond-coloured eyes sparkling as he poured the coffee.
“Let’s go outside,” I said.
So we took our coffee and Lemon Creams out into the autumn light, sat down and I asked him how his week had been. His sister from Empangeni had called to tell him what to eat and there was this man from the church who was worried about the old man’s soul, but he had told “the bastard” that he had a personal relationship with the Old Man and read the Good Book every day, and had I read the latest Reader’s Digest?
“No.”
A family had been stuck in a car on a muddy dirt road and, unbeknownst to them, a truck was hurtling towards them at full speed. It was night and its brakes had failed. But they prayed and tried one more time and drove out of that mud and took a turn-off just before the truck passed them. They would have been stone dead.
“Maybe they were just lucky. What happened to the truck?”
“Talking about trucks, the Stukas used to come flying over us and every time we’d have to jump off the back of those trucks and lie on the side of the road. But after a while I notice that the gaps between the rounds are so big that you can predict exactly where the next bullet will hit.”
“So?”
“I’m getting tired of jumping in and out of the trucks the whole time. So after a while I just stay on the truck and work out when I have to jump off, if at all, and when not.”
“What did the others say?”
“They thought I was mad,” he said, laughing.
“Wow.”
“But do you know what?”
“No, Dad. What?”
He reiterated that he must be the luckiest guy in the world.
“Why is that?” I asked, deciding that Kay was definitely playing some sort of game.
“Because I only fired five shots in the war, and that was to test my sights.”
“And then?”
“We were captured at Tobruk and had to smash those beautiful .303s.”