‘What’s he got to do with things?’ was all I could muster, perplexed by her mention of a chopper pilot colleague with whom I had a vague acquaintance.
‘Do you know Gary?’ she spat, snarled and hissed at me, all at the same time.
‘Barely,’ I replied. ‘Our bush tours overlapped for a week or two,’ I said truthfully, confusion etched on my face.
At that moment, I was willing to go to the ends of the earth to describe the gulf of distance between said Gary and me, if it could in any way rescue a situation that was rapidly slipping out of control.
‘YOU… you chopper bastards are all the same!’ she exploded.
Those were the last words she uttered directly to me as her friends and colleagues quickly gathered around her, like a laager of Voortrekker wagons, and escorted her from the venue. Try as I might over the next 24 hours, there was no piercing the impenetrable wall of steel thrown up around her and getting her to hear me out.
A day later she moved on to her next destination and I was left in a small Austrian resort town, devastated. All I was able to determine later on was that she came from Port Elizabeth, had encountered Gary, and didn’t ever send him Christmas cards.
The Netherlands was the final stop on the tour. At Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, after I had made my way through immigration and customs, I became aware of an insistent drumming on the glass partition coming from the side of the arrivals hall. When I looked up to see the source, I looked straight into the eyes of Atie.
Some quick rearrangements with the local tour operator ensued, and before I knew it, Atie whisked me off to her car, a sporty little Mercedes, and we were on the freeway heading for Rotterdam and her home, where I was to stay for the duration of the Dutch leg of my holiday. After meeting Atie’s mother, who lived with her, she and I went to a pub-restaurant to meet with a group of her friends.
Before leaving South Africa, I had been warned by colleagues, friends and even members of my own family to expect extreme hostility from almost everyone I would meet on my foreign travels. The prevailing opinion was that South Africa, and everything that was happening in the country, was completely misrepresented by the foreign media, and that the people I would encounter would almost certainly be aggressive, misinformed, judgemental and possibly even violent.
In fact, I was told, it was incomprehensible that anyone who loved South Africa would subject themselves to this type of punishment. I must be insane to fork out my hard-earned money to travel to these climes, where I would be under constant threat. I think the irony may have escaped them.
By the time I met Atie’s friends, I had not yet met anyone who wanted to take my head off or to charge me for my manifold sins at the International Court of Justice, which, incidentally, we drove past in Den Haag en route from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. From the moment I was introduced, Atie’s friends inundated me with questions, not a single one of which had even the slightest hint of enmity. Their interest in South Africa, its people, its natural beauty, its wildlife, its resources, its history and its future, was insatiable. They also seemed interested in me, and I got a hint of what it must be like to enjoy (mild) celebrity status.
At no point was the subject of apartheid directly raised, yet, in hindsight, it was the proverbial elephant in the room. In any event, I had never been stupid enough to try and defend it. I rationalised my involvement in the SADF as a necessary, even vital, stepping-stone to a career in the aviation industry, as my parents simply lacked the financial means to pay for me to become a commercial pilot.
As the evening wore on, the circle of friends shrunk until finally there were only four of us – Atie, me and a married couple called Kurt and Inge.
The conversation gradually turned to probing my short- and medium-term future. What plans did I have? Did I see my future in South Africa? What was a future South Africa going to look like? What role would I play, if any? What were the economic prospects for me, for the country and for the southern African region? Was I going to get married, have children? Where would I live? Was there even a future for me in South Africa?
I could not remember when last, if ever, I had taken the time or made the effort to explore these aspects of my existence. To my hosts, I must surely have appeared like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. They also wouldn’t let me simply dodge the myriad questions posed, as I had become quite expert at doing, and kept gently nudging me back into the discomfort that often results from self-reflection.
At some point the suggestion was made that I consider staying on in the Netherlands and not return to South Africa, as planned, a few days hence. I immediately dismissed the notion, citing the undeniable fact that my finances were dwindling rapidly. Babbling on, I told them that I did not relish the thought of enduring the Dutch winter on the streets, homeless, and that I also feared the repercussions for my family back home should I desert the SADF. As far as I knew, desertion was still a punishable offence and my parents and siblings would likely be the ones to feel the effects of my actions. My mother, who held quite a senior management position at the CSIR, would be particularly vulnerable to the consequences of the choices I made far from home.
They said that I should not consider lack of money to be a problem, as that could be taken care of, as could accommodation and employment. Their proposal was that I should seek asylum in the Netherlands. This response, I suspect with the wisdom of hindsight, was anything but impulsive, and the possibility should have occurred to me that a well-constructed and considered plan was being carefully played out. Their proposal was made just a little too quickly for it to have been a late-night, spur-of-the-moment thing.
But still, it got me thinking, and think I did.
The next day, Atie, playing the role of the world’s most attractive tour guide, took me all over the country, showing me the delights and consequences of the hard-won battle to reclaim the land from the North Sea. I became an instant fan of the Dutch people.
All day long I considered the previous evening’s proposal, and by the time we got back to Rotterdam, the outlines of a plan had started to take root. I told Atie that if I could cash my last traveller’s cheque and convert my return air ticket into cash, I would probably have enough to pay my way for the short while it would take for me to declare myself a refugee and be granted asylum by the Dutch government and finalise arrangements for gainful employment.
She seemed ecstatic with the direction of my thinking and we agreed to put the plan into action in Amsterdam the next day.
That night she took me to a Russian bar in the back streets of Rotterdam. It was rather a disconcerting environment for me, an innocent young fellow from Pretoria, who’d been raised with the notion that the Soviet Union was the epitome of all that was evil in the world.
After an ‘interesting’ meal consisting of numerous variations of red cabbage, accompanied by a fat-congealed conglomeration of protein of questionable origins, and washed down with miniature glasses of eye-poppingly potent vodka, the primary purpose of the visit to this little piece of the Soviet Union was revealed. I was introduced to an absolute giant of a man, whose name may have been Igor or Alexey or Ivan.
He sported a Paul Kruger-like beard that reached all the way to his navel and a leather jacket-and-shirt combo surely made from the hides of two mammoths. His hands could easily have crushed icebergs and were just as cold to the touch. An odd bearlike growl seemed to emanate straight out of the middle of this giant’s ample chest.
He sat down opposite me and just stared at me, unblinking, for a full two minutes. If his aim was to intimidate me, he succeeded. A fine film of perspiration oozed from every pore on my petrified face. His mouth opened, but only slightly, and he started speaking.