And lo and behold, as they start moving forward from the rabbit hutches, the shy Lucinda also puts in an appearance. She looks less formidable than what Jakobus described: younger, smaller, with a narrow head and face. To Maria she hardly looks like the woman who according to Jakobus shamelessly solicited him one evening — worldly-wise and brazen. Not a young woman Maria would notice in the street. The baby looks a lot like her. She’s wearing a shortish, tight-fitting skirt and sheepskin boots.
Maria tells her she’s heard that she used to live in Johannesburg. Lucinda says yes, as a young girl she was attacked there by a group of men and gang-raped. That’s where her ear was injured, and she turns her head to show a small, mutilated right ear — hardly more than half an ear. Maria doesn’t quite know how to react to this information — so out of the blue. (Taken aback. Whence the sudden openness and confidentiality of the woman?) Your children are pretty, she says. Thank you, says Lucinda, turns on her heel, and gone again. Fleet-footed as a buck on broken ground. The formidable Lucinda Hlobo.
The little group shrinks again, as the younger children return one by one to their respective dwellings. Maria and Jakobus carry on up higher on the circular road, past Uncle George’s kombi. He is sitting in the door, basking in the sunshine, this is his home. Maria doesn’t want to stare, but she’s curious to know how the kombi is appointed inside. Uncle George is German. The road up the hill curves to the right, and on the penultimate level they now reach the main attraction — the five chambers.
Jakobus unlocks an iron gate, they walk through a wide, dark passage (connecting all five chambers), filled with sculptures and other objects (junk?), to reach his living quarters. Maria has not expected anything like this, even though Jakobus has described it to her. The front two-thirds of the space is chock-a-block with a plethora of objects, her eye just picks up something here and there, because there are too many and the objects are too varied to be distinguished at first sight.
More or less in the back third is where Jakobus lives. His bed is to one side, on the ground, up against piles of yellowed magazines — a virtual wall of piled-up magazines. His bed on one side, his sculptures on the other, and a few garden chairs, logs serving as seats, crates as work surfaces. On one of these crates is an ancient computer. The large room — hall — is crepuscular, because apart from two little windows at eye level against the back wall (more like loopholes) and a feeble electric light, there is no other source of light. The back wall is taken up with a large mural by Josias Brandt, something that half-resembles the Last Judgement, quite psychedelic in approach.
Jakobus takes her to see the other chambers. Like the first, the second chamber is filled from top to bottom with objects. Difficult to take in everything at first sight. Building materials, theatre props, broken furniture, tools, charred books, a pile of 1972 Personality magazines, wooden planks, kitchen equipment, sculptures, carvings, rusty nails, containers, tin trunks, lampshades. A table with containers of rusty nails of different sizes, screws, door locks, padlocks, hinges. A milk crate with jawbones of animals. Baskets, cake tins, paint tins, slats, staves, stacks of planks, empty aerosol cans, empty bottles, rolled-up paper, green milk crates piled ceiling-high, shelves with plastic basins, books, broken toys, cardboard boxes, baboon skulls, whale vertebrae, vials of poster paint, bottles with unidentifiable objects floating in them, chemical jars, horns, ceramic statuettes, sharks’ teeth, a mounted frog skeleton, chains, mops, brooms. Empty wine containers. A collection of old suitcases (at least fourteen, on Maria’s swift count). A fair number of empty Klipdrift boxes. Garden furniture, garden tools. Baby baths with things in them. Rolled-up lengths of canvas. On the wall photos of Boer generals, a saccharine picture of the Virgin Mary, green underpants on a hanger, a reel of red string, a broken clock. Black-and-white depictions (drawings) of dead people, apparently (presumably murdered, mutilated), captioned: The Heavenly Choirs. Several paintings and other pictures. Everything the worse for wear, not a single object seems still functional.
She admires Jakobus for finding a place to rest his head here, she couldn’t have done it in this place.
In this second chamber, more or less in its furthest quarter, behind a partition, painted to resemble a brick wall (Josias is an experienced maker of theatre props), lives Lizeka. The one Jakobus refers to as his neighbour, the one he encounters on a corner in Kloof Street, dressed in her black track suit with white stripes up the legs, cell phone pressed to the ear. The one whose son in Bloemfontein has a heart that aches when the weather is thundery. Lizeka’s bed is on a high perch, one of the supports formed by a tree trunk with branches, accessible by means of a little ladder. This partitioned-off area is not large. This space, too, differs radically from what would normally pass for a bedroom. The branches of the trunk are utilised for hanging clothes. Maria looks around her, but there’s not much to be gleaned from the room about the girl who lives here.
They proceed to the third chamber. The wall to the left of the door is covered with crosses of all shapes and dimensions. To the right of the door there are bookshelves against the wall, filled with fire-blackened books. A burnt-out library. Close to the far end of the room, propped up on a pile of planks, is a pig’s head with a ruff around its neck.
‘The pope,’ says Jakobus. ‘Josias calls it the pope.’
Maria inspects it more closely. But one glance into the dead eye, half-concealed behind rigid, white eyelashes, and she turns decisively on her heel. Seen enough. Thank you, she says to Jakobus, that’s about as much as I can take in in one day.
In one of the front rooms lives Dustin, father of the child of Josias B’s eldest daughter, Celia.
‘And where does Josias himself live?’ asks Maria.
‘He has a studio right at the top, on the highest level,’ says Jakobus.
To the right of them, a little distance away, there is another structure, not very big. Maria wants to know if there’s somebody living there as well.
‘A man lived there till a few days ago,’ says Jakobus, ‘But Josias had him taken away. He left cursing Josias all the way.’
‘Who came to take him away?’ asks Maria.
‘The police,’ says Jakobus.
‘Why?’
‘You know, I couldn’t say exactly. He and Josias no longer saw eye-to-eye. To put it mildly. I don’t know what went awry between them. He had started acting strangely. Wore women’s clothing and threatened Josias with a stick.’ Jakobus laughs. ‘I shouldn’t laugh,’ he says, ‘but it was funny, seeing Josias being threatened with a stick on his own turf. The man was actually quite out of control. He wasn’t playing games. From the top of his roof he called down profanities and dark visions upon Josias.’
‘The poor man,’ says Maria, ‘to be taken away like that against his will.’
‘Josias is a formidable opponent,’ says Jakobus, ‘and in his own backyard he’s the commander, the sirdar. He doesn’t put up with being cursed by anybody. And besides, he fancies himself in the role of prophet. He’s not the calibre of man who’s going to say politely, with respect, it’s a pity if that’s how you see things; now do come down from the roof, we’ll try to settle the matter amicably. When challenged, he girds himself for retribution — for war, if need be.’