Pip!
Roup!
Glanders!
Greasy heel!
Contagious abortion!
Waterpepper knotweed!
Who do I have other than you? Don’t go away from me! Don’t leave me! What would I ever do without you, with my words?
I’m looking for the suitcase!
Have mercy on me!
For thy Name’s sake.
Amen.
January ’84. You and Jak got a special invitation to attend the medal parade at Ysterplaat. The Air Force crest was thickly embossed on the card. The instruction was that the guests of honour should be formally dressed. Ladies requested to wear head-covering and gloves. After the ceremony a lunch with choral song in a hall and in the afternoon a military air show. Jakkie would sing and form part of a formation-flight squadron. He’d already informed you himself of the event just after returning from Operation Askari where they’d bombed the shit and toe-nails out of the Cubans, as Jak put it.
Jak came to press the card into your hand in the garden where you and Agaat were giving the roses a summer pruning.
First order, gold, Cross of Honour for outstanding service, leadership and bravery in specialised high-risk warfare, he read.
You passed the card to Agaat. Her mouth was set in a line, a flickering of eyelids. She said nothing.
You’d noticed, by then for more than a year, that Jakkie was no longer replying so regularly to her letters. You read her objections to this, she knew that her letters were now destined for your eyes as well. She taunted you in every intercepted letter.
I understand if you’re too busy to write back, Captain, in that case just send a card to say that you’re still alive, or make the phone ring three times to say you’re thinking of me, your mother and I will know it’s you.
To that there was in fact a reply, over Christmas, 1983 it was.
It was quite a thick letter delivered by hand by a fellow-pilot of Jakkie’s passing through on leave. On the front it said only Gaat. It had a blob of red sealing wax on the back. For Mr and Mrs J.C. de Wet there was an envelope with four photos with writing on the back, swift hard scribbles with a ballpoint pen. Over and over you switched the photos and read, over and over Agaat took them from you and read. What were the two of you supposed to do with it? Fierce was the writing: Rambo de Wet next to his Impala after he’d bombed FAPLA positions at Mulondo on 23 December ’83. Could see f-all of the cumulonimbus almost came a cropper. Sh-tting myself with the SAM’s left and right round my head, one Impala shot in the tail but landed safely at Ondongwa, your own little Rambo also hit by a SAM-7, had to land at Ongiva, fortunately they’d fixed the landing strip there a few weeks earlier otherwise he’d definitely have seen his arse.
On the second photo the pen had started to slip.
Schwarzenegger of the Overberg with infected eardrum (left, note the plug) with his Mirage F-I after the photo-recce of Cuvelai. Had to fly under the radar, just about heard the thorn bushes scraping his belly.
Photo three was damaged, so hard had he pressed on the pen. What could it mean, the references to himself in the third person? That’s not how you knew him.
de Wet after his sufficiently hard-arsed command of two Alouettes through ack-ack to cover the troops on the ground at Cuvelai. It’s the only position that really saw its arse. The FAPLA is as cosily as ever entrenched at Cahama, Mulondo and Caiundo. The SADF top brass are making a glorious b-lls-up. They think we’re bats with radar in our heads. Overhead the moon is beaming, ha!
Photo four was a group photo of pilots in front of their sleeping quarters, clearly reluctant to pose.
We now hear here that the Caiundo attack had never even been properly approved at Ops HQ. Hence the sulks. Military & national strategy are non-existent we scheme. Regional conflict my arse, it’s a full-on international f-ck-up! It could have been prevented. Pik & Magnus are sitting on their brains down there in Pretoria. Sorry, Pa, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Hope to see you at the survival parade in February!
You showed Jak the photos only at supper.
He took them away from you quickly.
You didn’t see them, he said, you don’t know anything about this. What else? was there a letter? I want to see it, now on the spot!
He held out his hand to Agaat.
Ash, in my fireplace, she said.
You went to buy yourself a new blue dress and a matching hat with a turn-up brim and a new handbag at De Jagers in town. The dress was too short and Agaat let out the hem for you.
It could be a long day, you said to Jak, I’m taking Gaat along for company.
Over my dead body, said Jak, in that Agatha Christie outfit of hers, it’s a gala occasion and we’re guests of honour of the Air Force, she won’t be allowed, we’re going to eat with the VIPs in the mess, what do you want to do with her then? There aren’t any amenities.
I’ll eat, Jak, and then I’ll excuse myself, it’ll have been a whole morning’s to-do and then I’ll want to rest, then I won’t want to look at a lot of aeroplanes.
You said it casually, so as not to upset him.
We can look for a shady tree, you said to Agaat, also as if it were the most ordinary thing on earth. Then we’ll be out of the crush, we can read magazines, you can pack a picnic for yourself, take the cool bag, I take my knitting, you pack your embroidery-basket, then at least we can make the afternoon worth our while for ourselves in our own way, I have no desire to get a crick in my neck from staring up into the air all the time.
Will I see him? Agaat asked.
You’ll see him in the air, you’ve always wanted to see what it looks like.
She glared at you.
You waited until Jak had pulled out the car, before you gave the signal. Agaat was ready, the house was locked. You opened the front and back doors simultaneously. You got in at the same time, Agaat with her baskets and tins, you with your cream-coloured handbag and the new shoes for which you’d had to stick plasters to your heels.
Jak was furious, he swore at everything ahead of him and overtook on double white lines up blind rises. In Swellendam he stopped with squealing tyres in front of the off-sales and bought a six-pack of beer, started drinking it immediately.
You didn’t even dare look back. You felt Agaat’s jaw jutting into your neck. Of all the summers of my life, you thought, this one is the ugliest. The hills were dry and dreadful, False Bay’s water flashed like steel when you crossed Sir Lowry’s Pass.
A curtain-raiser of lighter planes and gliders was in progress when you arrived. From far away you could already see the cars flashing in the sun, whole fields of them.
Can we please just try to find a little shade, you asked.
There was a separate entrance a long way further, a sandy road amongst the rooikrans bushes, the only greenery as far as the eye could see. You saw coloured people capering and dancing with bottles in the air when low-flying planes came by. You heard them holler, salacious comments for the helicopters that came and hovered on the spot in the air and double-decker Tiger Moths flying upside down. They were draped all over one another.
That’ll be the day that I’ll park my car for you amongst a crowd of drunken hotnots, Jak said, but we can drop her here so long, here amidst her family of the flats, then she can learn to speak a bit of Cape, will do her good, her sounding like the Farmer’s Weekly in an apron. Do you think one afternoon is enough for rehabilitation? If you could teach her, Milla, just imagine how quickly they’ll get on top of her.
That’s enough, you warned, but you knew it was in vain. This was Jak’s four-beer bravado.