Henry Fuckit’s First Expedition
PART FOUR OF SIX of THE LIFE OF HENRY FUCKIT 1950 – 1980
IAN MARTIN
HENRY FUCKIT’S FIRST EXPEDITION
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IAN MARTIN
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POP-Splat - http://www.pop-splat.co.za
Kikaffir: a Black Comedy - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34561
Copyright © Ian Martin 2011
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Contents
1 He misses his train, hitch-hikes to Springbok and meets Mike Berkin
10 He finds accommodation with Frau Klee
11 The Oxyaston ducts aren’t where they should be
13 Not a good place to read books
15 On the point of giving up he makes an important discovery
16 An archetypal piece of surrealism to be recalled much, much later
1 He misses his train, hitch-hikes to Springbok and meets Mike Berkin
True, he was in charge of this expedition. But, on account of the fact that he had no one to lead, he felt unencumbered by responsibility. Not having to set an example, he was free to act as well or as badly as he chose. It occurred to him that in twenty five years he had never once felt obliged to set anyone an example and, accordingly, it was fortunate that this enterprise did not require of him a skill which he did not possess.
The first thing he did was to miss his train. His response to this blunder was to curse horribly and nonsensically and to vandalize a litter bin by delivering an almighty kick to its nethers, sending it on a trajectory terminating on the mainline track, where it lay helplessly awaiting its fate. His curses were blasphemous, sanguinary, perversely sexual, racist, deeply philosophical and entirely illogical. They enabled him to cope with his disappointment and quickly shrug off the temporary setback. Over a cup of coffee and two slices of anchovy toast in the empty cafeteria he devised an alternative plan of action. His road map showed the roundabout route the railway line took to Namibia. By road he should be able to intercept the train at Grunau or Keetmanshoop.
At the ticket office an Afrikaner male who did not appear to possess a forehead sold him a first class, Whites Only single to Piketberg. On learning of Henry’s Namibian destination he offered some cautionary advice. “Pas op vir die Swapo terroriste. Hulle is fokken sleg. Heelwat slegter as ons eie Kaffers.”
It was late afternoon when the bus reached Piketberg. This dorp was well into the countryside in the midst of the Swartland grainlands. He knew the area from his ‘student days’, when he and his Bedford Street mates had made weekend sorties into the Cedarberg. He booked into the hotel where they had often stopped for a drink in the bar prior to pressing on up the pass and into the mountains.
In the morning, after an early breakfast, he shouldered his backpack and headed for the national road. On a short leash Lady Provider, his shiny technologically advanced titanium suitcase, trundled at his heel like a well-trained dog.
He did not have to stand for long in the cold morning air. The clouds paled and lifted as the day roused itself and he smelt the cold clear air and felt the old enthusiasms stirring. A big truck with red cab, ‘Jowells Transport’ on the door, pulled up and he lifted his luggage and climbed into the warmth. It was going to Okiep, just north of Springbok. About five hundred kilometres. Should be there by lunch time. The driver’s English was as bad as Henry’s Afrikaans and they had to shout above the noise of the engine. He tried to find out what was being transported but they misunderstood each other, grinned and nodded foolishly as if this were not so, as if Henry had received a satisfactory answer, and then gave up further conversation.
There was blue ahead and soon they were coming out from under the cloud and moving into sunlight. The plain rolled beneath them and all around lay the vivid green of wheat and oats and barley. The mountains approached and up the Piekenierskloof the truck wound slower and slower until they were over and into the valley of the Olifants River. This was the familiar land of the Cedarberg, jumbled blue mountains across the river and the citrus groves to the right. At the far end of the valley was Clanwilliam and then the scene changed, becoming harsher and flatter as they moved north in the brittle sunlight.
At Vanrhynsdorp the driver turned off the National road into the town and pulled up at a garage for diesel. Warm air in a quiet dorp, the usual church steeple down the road. Henry crossed the width of empty street to a bottle store and bought a litre bottle of Bols. The driver was checking tyre pressure. Henry bought two Cokes and gave him one and said “Ek gaan gou pee. Alright?” In the toilet he relieved himself and drank half the can and topped it up with brandy.
The day was hotting up as they moved onto the huge plain of slowly undulating rock and scrub. A black smudge of hills marked the far eastern horizon and to the north the heat lay in a low heap. After an hour the terrain began to change and became more rugged and then they were passing through broken granite hills with aloe and kokerboom silhouettes against the blue sky. Bitterfontein, Garies, Kamieskroon – the road dipped, turned, twisted, climbed through the harsh country, brown and grey and black.
“Dis nou Springbok.” It was one o’clock and like an oven in the cab. He needed a cold beer and asked the driver to let him off at the turning. The truck drove away with its engine roaring angrily through the gears and he shouldered his pack and walked sweating into the dusty town. It lay in a bowl amongst brown hills that seemed too close and overbearing, as if they were herding the buildings into a flock before chasing them out of the valley.
In the bar it was cooler than outside and he had two fast Lions well chilled. Then he sat on a stool and looked about the room. Dartboard one end with black scoreboard, a Mainstay poster with palms and coral beach and invisible blue sea, a clock. An overhead fan that wasn’t working. The barman and two locals were listening to a rep telling jokes. He had to be a rep – thirties, pot belly, hair grown forward to disguise baldness, suit pants too tight on his fat arse, lounge shirt open three buttons, sleeves flapping below elbows, big gold ring like a knuckle-duster, flash of silver incisor right of centre, Red Heart rum and Coke. One about a Kaffir, a Jew, a Greek, a Porro, a Pom and Van der Merwe. He concluded with the punchline and broke into a loud phlegmmy laugh of appreciation. The audience of three looked at him in sullen silence. Henry sniggered. The two Van der Merwes muttered something to the barman and left.
“Yissis, but these ous have got no sense of humour! You ever known an Afrikaner can laugh at himself?” He was addressing Henry as he picked up his drink, cigarettes and lighter and moved down the counter. “You look as if you’re heading somewhere. North? Windhoek? Mike Birkin’s the name.” He ordered another rum and a beer for Henry and after ten minutes had painted the picture of his life, imparting all manner of personal information both trivial and sordid. His line was toiletries, his route was Cape Town to Windhoek with detours, he had been on it for three years and had a fiancée in eight of the twenty three towns he serviced. From his pocket he drew a small black plastic case, snapped it open and displayed an engagement ring with flashy stone. “A low investment with a high return. Talk of love, promise of marriage, and hey presto! Free food, booze and a fuck. So you’re going north? Well, I can give you a lift to Keetmanshoop, my next stop. Got a lekker piece of poes there!”
He had a three litre Cressida, almost new, and when he touched the accelerator it leapt forward, heavy and powerful. As they headed out of town towards the highway they passed two women walking beside the road. He steered over to the side and reversed. “Hey I know this doedie. How about a quickie?” They got in the back and Mike Birkin drove off slowly, talking in an oily voice half over his shoulder and leering at them in the mirror. “Now what you girlies doing walking about in the hot sun? Hey? Looking for some nice white ous to just come along and ask you to a party? Ha ha ha.” He pulled off onto a dirt road that began to curve back around the north side of the hill.
Henry turned to look at them. They were dressed similarly in pastel green and white gingham housecoats with white doeks on their heads. Quite young with smooth yellow brown colouring, high cheekbones and slightly negroid nose and mouth. They could have been sisters. Maybe they were. It was the younger, livelier one that Birkin knew. They smiled boldly and giggled but there was a wariness in their eyes, a conspiratorial hostility that puzzled him because he thought he recognized something in it.
Birkin stopped and reversed off the dirt road into some dusty grey bush no higher than a man’s head. Twenty yards in the car was hidden from the road and there was a level clearing. They all got out and the master of ceremonies opened the boot, took out a neatly folded green tarpaulin and spread it out. With folded arms he leant against the side of the car with Henry, glanced at his watch and said “Okay, my skatties. Laat waai.”
It was understood that they should keep their hair covered but otherwise they undressed completely. Standing naked in the bright sunlight, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the men to make a move, they again tugged at something in Henry’s memory and it came to him suddenly. The two Gaughin women with peach blossoms, resigned yet resenting. The toiletry sales representative removed his trousers, underpants and shoes and began slobbering on the younger girl’s nipples and inserting two fingers. Jesus, he couldn’t just stand and watch. What the hell! He was supposed to be letting things happen. Follow the path, drift with the current.
The fuckeration was fully underway. Henry could feel the sun hot on his back, buttocks and balls. The three b’s. Manfully he thrust and parried, sweat standing out on his forehead, sweat mingling between belly and body, pubis and pubis. The girl was passive. He pomped desperately, grunting, panting. Jesus, this is like fucking a tropical fruit, a paw paw. Soft and unresponsive and yielding. Damn it! His cock was losing its rigidity. She’s got a cunt like an old takkie. Now he understood the barroom phrase. Christ! His cock was actually bending and with clownish alacrity a refrain came to him from a distant rugby song,
An engineer told me before he died
Ah-hum, ah-hum
He knew a woman with a cunt so wide
That she could never be satisfied
Ah-hum, ah-hum
and he ceased his efforts.
Beside him Mike Birkin lay on his back and the little poesie was bouncing up and down doing all the work and even enjoying it. She began to gasp and hiss and cried out an urgent warning, “Ek kom, my baas! Ek kom!” Then a moaning scream.
“Wragtig, jou fokken hoor!” Angrily he pushed her off him, slapping her face with a double-action, open- and back-handed blow. “Moenie in my oor skreeu nie! Het jy geen respek vir ‘n wit man?”
They all dressed hastily. Henry got his jeans on and threw the rest of his clothes onto the passenger seat and delved in his pack for the Bols. Number one priority right at that moment, he thought, as Birkin shook the dust off the canvas and folded it back into the boot, all the while muttering indignantly. The women stood sullenly watching, the younger one dabbing at tears mingling with the blood on her cheek where the ring had caught her. He slammed the boot shut and took from his pocket two five rand notes, crumpled them and threw them at the girls. As if at the push of a button, the flick of a switch, they began to shriek their hatred in a string of apt curses. Henry had found the bottle and closed his door just as the car roared into life and bumped and scraped up onto the dirt road. The wheels spun and the back slid this way and that as the V6 screamed in frustration trying to get a purchase on the road. Then the rear skidded beyond a right angle to the direction of the road and kept swinging so that the car slid through three hundred and sixty degrees, shot off the road into low bush, ricocheted off a boulder and graunched through a shallow ditch back onto the road with a great clattering of trailing metal undercarriage. The silencer was gone and the one year old Cressida, Toyota’s flagship, sounded like a clapped out stock car. Henry was laughing and shouting with excitement.
“Put your foot down, ou pellie! Fucking fantastic! You’re going like a Boeing! Aieee!”
He looked back but could see no sign of the women through the tumbled brown cloud of dust and pebbles. They squealed onto the tarmac, and soon the national road was swinging north. The last of the scrap metal had fallen off and they were roaring along at a hundred and fifty. Henry took a big swig from the bottle and coughed and choked.
“Bitch!” Birkin was still angry. Seething with injured pride, outraged sense of propriety. “Fuckin bitch! Who she thinks fucking who?” He hit the steering wheel and the car nearly left the road.
“Hey, maybe SHE should’ve paid YOU. Want a dop?”
They were cutting through high granite hills. The Nababeep turnoff flashed by and then they were slowing for Okiep. At the petrol station they circled the car and got down on their knees to inspect underneath. The superficial damage was considerable. On Henry’s side the back door was badly dented and wouldn’t open, the front bumper was twisted and skew and the number plate was gone; both sides were deeply scratched the full length of the vehicle, and the exhaust system was no more. And the whole car had a thick coating of Namaqualand dust. But there were no oil leaks and the suspension had survived.
“I’ll get it fixed in Windhoek. The insurance will pay. Company car, anyway.” Birkin was offhand about it.
“Won’t they ask you how it happened? Might not look too good on the claim form.”
“Ag man, you don’t think I’d be so fuckin stupid as to tell them the truth? No. I’ll cut a hole in the spare and say I had a blow-out.”
At the bottle store they stocked up on brandy and rum and a dozen cans of Coke. Then chicken pies from a café and they were on their noisy way in the mid afternoon heat. The rocky hills gave way to a plain almost bare of vegetation and Henry’s eyes became heavy and his head nodded and jerked spasmodically until he gave up trying to stay awake and put his head back and dozed in open mouthed abandon.
He was brought back from sleep with rude abruptness when the car began to bump and shake over gravel and was savagely wrenched to the left. Yissis! The arsehole! He’d been driving on the verge, HIS side of the road! What if there’d been oncoming traffic? How long had he been…? They agreed to change places and pulled up just past the Steinkopf and Port Nolloth turnoff. Birkin lay down in the back and after mixing himself a weak brandy and coke in the can Henry headed the car for the Orange River, eighty seven kilometres away.
The plains were dotted with rocky hillocks and nothing much else. He sipped from the still cold can, his right thumb hooked over the steering wheel, travelling at a steady hundred and ten. No rush. He wasn’t really going anywhere. The warm air blew in through the rolled down window and he felt alone and relaxed. The sun was dropping to the left and he wondered if the night would be cold. It was only August, the worst of winter in Cape Town. Ahead of him was looming a mass of broken hills. He thought idly of his situation. Here he was, walk on, walk on. To sit in the lotus position under a banyan tree for forty nine days and then pronounce to the expectant disciples those two words… Make it brief enough and it takes on all sorts of deeper meaning. What if he had opened his mouth and said Up yours, up yours? Or how about, Brandy and Coke, brandy and Coke? Would it have meant the same? Made any difference? In the Dockyard he sat on his arse, here he was walking on. The celluloid would come to the end of a reel. This road wouldn’t lead anywhere, of that he was fairly certain, but the motion made him feel better. More alive, that’s for sure. And of course, he was supposed to be on an important mission. Fully paid.
The road had begun a slow descent through black brown cliffs and huge heaps of boulders. The noise of the engine began to reverberate and developed into a great battle of clattering machine guns. He put the clutch in and revved in long hard bursts.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Birkin was siting up looking befuddled with sleep and alarm.
“Keep your head down, troepie!” shouted Henry, pumping the petrol and blowing the hooter. “It’s the total onslaught. The biggest communist impi you ever seen. Ten thousand AK 47’s firing, ten thousand pangas dripping blood, ten thousand black cocks, nine inches dribbling for white meat. This is the end! This is the end!” He let up the clutch and accelerated into a bend, tyres screaming. Faster they went. On the next corner the back began to swing out toward the wall of rock and then the car pulled them through and out into the open light. They were onto the bridge, the river below them, Namibia ahead.
“Stop at the motel. For God’s sake, are you fuckin mad?” In the rear view mirror he was white and shaking.
“Okay, okay. Just a bit of a thrill. Better than a five rand fuck, hey? And it was free.”
At the motel they sat outside and ordered beers. The air was warm and still and the sun was almost down. On the south bank of the river the line of cliffs was lit up in spectacular colour and they watched the shadow moving and the light changing. The second round was brought and then, unannounced, there sailed onstage a ship of the desert. Henry was so surprised he burst out laughing.
“Ja, man. Didn’t you know they got camels here? Camel safaris, and all that crap. Jislaaik but they’re bloody ugly things. Look at that nose. And the lips! Yuk!”
The creature had come to a halt directly in front of them, sideways on and not a yard from the table. It inclined its head and regarded Birkin with an unblinking stare.
“Hey, it heard you.”
The bristling nostrils quivered and dilated. Then the flood gate was opened and a stream of foul smelling water was released in a vertical torrent that must have lasted a good minute. It quickly formed a muddy puddle and splashed up on their shoes and against their trousers. Birkin sprang to his feet.
“Hey! Hey! Bloody filthy brute! Footsack! Fuck off! Hey you, boy. Chase this fuckin thing away. Christ, if I had my gun I’d shoot it. Call the manager!” Then he picked up one of the plastic patio chairs and threw it at the animal, striking it on its hump. It did a clumsy quickstep sideways, let out a braying bellow and lumbered off with undignified haste. The manager arrived and apologised, laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of his Hotnot employee, promising to use a sjambok in the disciplining of him. Furthermore he ordered them a drink on the house. To make amends.
The sun was down and Birkin switched on his headlights as they pulled out into the road. The onset of dusk seemed rapid, more so than in Cape Town. They were traversing a plain. Open and flat, its boundaries dwindling into the murky middle distance, without feature except in the west, where the last pallor in the sky provided a backdrop to the occasional silhouette – a weirdly shaped hillock, a low jagged ridge like some rough beast slouching towards … Within half an hour all light was gone save from the corridor ahead of them, into which they rushed, with reckless disregard for the harsh land outside. The broken white line was sucked in towards them and it seemed to Henry that they were being drawn into some unknown and hostile place where the road would betray their confidence, leading them to calamity in an ambush of fateful circumstance. Neurotic delusions!
Just before eight a signboard showed up. Grunau to the right.
“We can stop here for something to eat. I know this hotel. Strange place – just a hotel and the railway. Really in the gammadoelas. Nice people though. The owner’s a bit of a pisscat but his wife’s a tasty piece. Last time she was giving me the eye and... Here’s the turning."
They took the turnoff and drove a kilometre or two. “Their power must be off, or something.” Then there was a faint glimmer to the left and he swung off the tar and across an expanse of smooth bare earth the squat building was revealed in the headlamps. A puff of air lifted fine dust into the beam and then dropped it. For a moment they sat looking at the entrance in the bright light from the car. Birkin switched off and the hotel disappeared into blackness until they began to make out the dim glow from somewhere further to the back.
“Yiss, but it’s only dark out here.” He put the parks on and they got out into the cool air which felt cold after the warmth of the car. He tried the hotel door but it was locked and he banged loudly and called “Dolf, Dolf! Hey open up man! You call this a hotel?” He rattled the door impatiently. “Van Schalkwyk! Wat maak jy daar? Is jy alreeds besig met jou vrou?” A key turned and the door was opened half way by a man in the black trousers and red jacket of a waiter.
“Hotel it is closed. No power. Niks krag.” The door began to close but Birkin pushed forward.
“Don’t talk shit to me, boy. Waar’s jou baas? Roep hom. Maak gou.”
“Die baas, he not here. He gone Upington.”
“What? Upington? Alright call the miesies.”
“Miesies also gone Upington.”
“Fuck it! Ons is dors, ons is honger.” He turned to Henry. “Well, too bad, but I’m bloody hungry. This bimbo can bring us a drink and they can knock us up something in the kitchen.” He led the way through towards the light. It came from the dining room where a Cadac lamp stood on one of the tables, shedding its white incandescence over a narrow circle of white tablecloths. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness. They sat down, one table away from the lamp.
“Now listen, waiter. You bring us two big Windhoeks, cold, cold, cold. Also you bring one double rum and Coke and one double brandy and Coke. You got that?” The black face was surly, the eyes averted. “Then when you come back you get us food – hamba tata nyama. Okay, tshetsha, tshetsha.”
The room was warm and airless. They could hear African voices rising and falling in conversation somewhere beyond the swing doors to the kitchen and a rhythmic thud came faintly to their ears, possibly from music playing on a radio, the higher notes lost on the way.
When the waiter returned Birkin continued in his nagging way. “What took you so long, Philemon? You go to Windhoek to fetch the beer? And I said COLD. You call this cold? This shushu, not makaza.”
“I tell you no power. All day no power. No power, no fridge, no fokall.”
“Yissis, this is a taste of things to come. Probably Swapo’s work. Hey, Alfred, why Nujoma make trouble? Why Nujoma skelm muntu?” For an instant the eyes flickered, a naked flame burnt up and then subsided. Sullenly he stood waiting.
“Alright, now what’s on the menu, my black brother? Let’s see, I’ll start with tomato soup with a spoonful of cream and a nice crisp French roll with butter. Then I’ll have kingklip with a small portion Greek salad, hot chips and plenty tartar sauce. And of course to drink I will have a bottle of Nederburg Paarl Riesling, nicely chilled and served from an ice bucket, if you please. After that you can bring me, if you will be so good, Comrade, the speciality of the house – kudu cutlets, with smash potato well creamed and hot, not cold, you understand, and green peas in sweet mint sauce, pumpkin and cauliflower. With the meat I will have English mustard. And remember this, Joseph, I like the kudu rare and it must fall off the bone. I don’t want to have to tear at it like a hyena. I shall drink a six year old Baksberg Cabernet Sauvignon with the main course. And you?” He turned to Henry, who had finished his beer and was starting on the brandy and Coke.
“Ag, er, same as you. Make it two, waiter.” For a few seconds the man stood holding his tray, napkin over arm, looking from one to the other. He leant forward, flicked some salt off the tablecloth, turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the swingdoors.
“No other guests, I see.” Henry was making conversation. “An out-of-the-way place. The ‘gammadoelas’ you called it. That’s an interesting term. I presume it’s of Nguni origin and something to do with hills. An approximately similar expression might be ‘back of beyond’ or, in Australian parlance, ‘never-never country.’ ” As he spoke he looked at Mike Birkin and saw him for the first time. The past six or seven hours had put flesh on the skeleton and he was relaxed and alert enough in this setting to look with clear eyes at his fellow traveller. The nervous strain about the eyes, the slack mouth that betrayed weakness and debauchery, the pathetic rough bravado of the bully and the bombast. Beneath this surface there must be… The swing doors clapped and swung, clapped and swung.
The waiter placed in the centre of the table a plate containing half a loaf of sliced bread and a dish of butter balls. Before them each he laid a plate of cold sausage, several rashers of processed ham and sliced tomato. In addition there was a bottle of mayonnaise.
“Wragtig, is this the best you can do?”
“The chef, he say…” The waiter hesitated, embarrassed yet with a sly smirk playing on his lips. “Angus, he say, ‘dronk boer, hy honger, hy vreet sy eie kak.’ ”
The implications of the insult vibrated about the room, shaking the walls, rocking the foundations. Birkin’s eyes became rounder and rounder and his mouth worked noiselessly. Henry began to splutter and laugh.
“Jesus, this is good. This is only good. You say the chef’s name is Angus? And Angus says if we’re hungry enough we’ll eat our own shit? That’s real humour for you. Oh my God! Tell Angus thank you for the very nice meal. Mooshy stellek. Much better than kak. And can you bring some red wine and more brandy and rum? And coke?” The waiter went off, somewhat disappointed. Henry buttered two slices of bread and made a ham, sausage and tomato burger, with lashings of mayonnaise, and began to wolf down the food. “This Angus ou is right. If you’re hungry enough you’ll eat anything.” He began to laugh again and nearly choked. “Angus is a real philosopher. Take it or leave it, white trash.”