You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town Read Free Page B

way that everyone found so potentially indecent.
    Father stumbled about with hammer and pliers repairing the fence, tapping at this and that in the awkward moments when Jan Klinkies popped up unexpectedly from behind a bush or a wall. I had an idea that we were not altogether welcome. Entry for me had been a humiliating business, an undignified scrambling over the fence laced with barbed wire. The gate was barricaded with a hillock of tarnished cans, and as further security the house refuse was heaped in front of it. Our host had stood on the stoep watching from beneath his broad-rimmed hat, as if the nature of our reception depended upon the method of mastering the obstacles. His trousers stayed up beautifully, not a suspicionof sagging as he stood with arms folded. Then he came to watch as Father dug a hole for the refuse with a spade that I passed over the fence. Father shovelled the mountain of cans away from the gate. A wondrous variety of cans: besides the tall cylindrical container of canned pilchards, there was the elliptical Fray Bentos can in two sizes, soft-cornered rectangles of sardine cans, squat condensed-milk cans and others of which you could only guess the spent contents, for all the cans were scrupulously stripped of their labels.
    There was no telling whether Jan Klinkies welcomed or resented this shovelling aside, whether he minded the discarded cans mounded in an obelisk on that particular spot. His face remained set. No tell-tale smile of approval played on his lips; he did not clench his teeth in anger. But I suspected that careful aesthetic considerations had been at play. The cans so callously shoved aside might have been placed one by one, interrupted by the stepping back to appraise from a distance and perhaps replace or reposition. There is the business of balance, for instance; the wrong shape could bring the lot toppling down and you’d have to tap sliding cans carefully back into place. And a starting pattern can gradually lose its regularity until a completely new one is formed. It is perhaps only the beginning, the first small mound that you step back from, that is totally pleasing. With such a great number and variety of cans the permutations of summit and slope must be endless. Perhaps it was precisely that consideration that made Jan Klinkies appear a detached observer.
    The entrance was briskly cleared. There was plenty to do. The potatoes had not been earthed up, the cabbage seedlings elbowed each other ruthlessly for breathing space, the goat lay listless in need of some or other drug. And allthe while Jan Klinkies shuffled about, heaping empty cans at the base of the tree where he carefully examined them for rust or dents or other blemishes. He also prowled about and spied on us from behind scant bushes through which his eyes shone like a jackal’s.
    Aha, hum, said Father, clearing his throat and forgetting himself when our host came upon us suddenly, ‘Ahum, a cup of Boeretroos would be just the thing now. A strong cup of coffee.’ Jan Klinkies turned very red and rattled, ‘Whatcomfortsaboerispoisontome.’ Four times and I had just stopped counting when it came again, tattered with use so that only the contraction Boerpoison came out.
    I was sent to make tea. I knew that he had given up Rooibos tea with its illustration of an ox wagon scaling the Drakensberg. The figures alongside the wagon were in Voortrekker dress, so Rooibos too offended him, in spite of his once-favourite sister Sissie’s pleading for its lack of tannin, its goodness for the urinary system. So I made Five Roses with the inoffensive label of a rosette of five on the silver wrapping suggesting nothing other than its name. The men drank their tea outside in the sun. I had mine in the kitchen which I scanned for irregularities, for clues. But the pots and pans like any others were heavy and black on the Jewel stove, and from a beam large enamel mugs hung at an angle at which mugs of that