And it’s not long before Bushymouth gets up and comes to his table. Ponderously he approaches, a big, overweight guy with a T-shirt that doesn’t look particularly clean, till he’s standing next to Karl.
‘Do we know each other, friend?’ asks the man.
He’s wearing a two-tone shirt, a copper bracelet, his moustache takes no prisoners, a mole on his right cheek and his hair was surely blow-dried with care this morning.
The man extends his hand. ‘Ollie,’ says the man, ‘Ollie of Steynsrus.’ Karl hesitates a moment before shaking Ollie’s hand.
*
Ollie was born in Kroonstad. His father worked for the municipality. After school he went to an agricultural college in Pretoria. It was his ambition to farm. His grandfather had a farm in the Heilbron district, between the Klip and Wilge Rivers. In the last few months Ollie has been feeling stitches in his prostate when he walks, but he can’t very well stand in one place all the time. He inherited part of his grandfather’s farm; the rest was lost to a land claim. His neighbours on an adjoining farm were recently murdered. Now his wife no longer wants to live on the farm. She says she doesn’t want to be scorched with an iron and strangled with an electric cord. That after being raped and dragged all over the house by her hair. No thank you, she says, then she’d rather die of misery in town. In the early morning he sometimes dreams of other women. Their skins gleam like copper in an unnatural light — the light of alien heavenly bodies threatening to destroy the earth. Sometimes he feels dizzy when he suddenly stands up straight. Sometimes it feels as if there’s a little hair at the back of his tongue all day and in his mouth there’s a sweet, metallic taste. Eating meat helps, and drinking beer. A cousin of his was one of the guys who were murdered that time in Bophuthatswana, when the AWB invaded the country just before the elections. In primary school Ollie was a Voortrekker. In high school he played in the cadet band. Three years ago he joined the Orde Boeremag, and rose quickly through the ranks. Now he is one of the executive officials, but what he’s really aiming for is one of the top positions.
*
‘What brings you here?’ asks Ollie of Steynsrus.
‘I’m on my way to Cape Town,’ says Karl.
‘You look familiar to me, friend,’ says the man, ‘I’ve come across you somewhere. Come and drink something with us,’ he says, gesturing towards the corner table, where his three pals are gazing at them expectantly.
‘Sorry,’ says Karl, ‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Now I recognise you — you’re one of the chaps helping with the programme. You’re with subsection C, not so?!’ says Ollie.
Before Karl can reply in the negative, one of the others also comes up to his table (Sideburns).
‘This is one of the chaps from subsection C,’ Ollie says to him.
The other man also extends his hand. ‘Hercules of Senekal,’ he says, ‘pleased to meet you.’ He is big, his paunch precedes him, he has nose hairs and sideburns that would be the pride of any walrus. There’s a bit of food on his upper lip. It looks like egg, or chutney, it could also be bacon, or a bit of boerewors from the mixed grill. Or a piece of tomato, or toast, or onion, or a bit of kidney. Or liver. Minced liver fried with an onion. As children neither Karl not Iggy would put their mouths to liver. Hercules has a small mouth of which the upper lip has an unhealthy red tinge. His T-shirt reads ONS VIR JOU, we for you. To the left of the U there are three grease spots.
*
Hercules’s grandfather’s name was Hercules. He fought in the Anglo-Boer war and was seriously wounded at the battle of Senekalsdrift. His grandfather took him on his knee and told him about the war, and about the battle, and about all his comrades who fell in battle, and how they fell in battle, and about the pebbles and the blades of grass and the little footpaths and the sparse bushes and the low hills and the rock formations of the battlefield. Evidently it was all indelibly imprinted upon his grandfather’s memory. His grandfather said that the English were their arch-enemies and the blacks betrayed them. His father’s name was also Hercules. His eldest son’s name is Hercules. Hercules likes Karate Kallie’s videos. He likes Wild Life magazines. He likes liver and kidneys and tripe. Curry tripe. He likes meat potjie. He likes Kurt Darren. He has the hots for Patricia Lewis. He sometimes has filthy, filthy dreams. Sex with chickens and that kind of stuff. He likes large dams at sunset. The light on them is fucking awesome, especially when there are large trees on the opposite bank. Between three and four o’ clock in the afternoon is his worst time. Sometimes he thinks he’s going mad. He’s terrified that he’ll start hearing voices. The voices of women wanting to get filthy with him. He slips away from the office, he takes up position next to the wall behind the garage, and listens attentively. He can defecate only when he leans far back on the toilet; then sometimes he starts trembling inexplicably. His urine flows sluggishly. Sometimes at night his footsoles are sensitive and they itch, then he has to crawl to the toilet on his knees. Then he thinks: Now I’m an honest-to-God chicken-fucker.
*
Ollie brings his head up conspiratorially close, Karl edges back, on the man’s breath he smells beer and mixed grill. ‘Kleinfontein’s entrance is now also manned.’ He brings his head even closer. ‘You people are doing good work in the mobilisation section. Keep it up. Remember, our deliverance from uhuru will not depend on weapons and guns, but that doesn’t mean that we must not be fully deployed militarily.’
Behind Ollie of Steynsrus stands Hercules of Senekal. Rock-like. Is it Karl’s imagination, or is Hercules not quite as taken with him as Ollie? A bit mistrustful even.
A third chap, Chainman, has in the meantime got up and also come over to Karl’s table. (What’s going on here, is he being surrounded? What if they dragged him out of here and beat the shit out of him? Nobody would even know.)
‘Bertus of Holfontein,’ the man introduces himself. (Do these people have codenames or what?)
Bertus is likewise large of stature. Gold chain around the neck. (Isn’t that a bit ostentatious?) He’s wearing glasses with pink-tinted lenses (pink!) and the skin on his face has reddish blotches. His arms don’t look too great either — freckly and scabby. Skin must be exceptionally light-sensitive.
Behind Bertus stands a fourth chap. He’s the one who’s said least. He’s leaner than the others and his eyes in particular strike Karl — an unusual pale-green, and sorrowful, the saddest bloody eyes Karl has seen in a long time. The man extends his hand and says: Johan. The only one of the four who doesn’t have a crazy code name.
*
Johan’s father was a science teacher. He had something going with the PT teacher at school, she had bandy legs and blonde hair on her legs. His mother was always very merry, nothing bothered her, and then she had a stroke, must have been shock about his father and the PT teacher. After that she couldn’t talk or walk, his father had to care for her. She sat in a wheelchair, her puny legs were thin and hairy, she sometimes had a ribbon in her hair. Her pretty, tanned skin turned a pale yellowish-brown. So one Christmas she shot herself with the gun from the built-in cupboard in the guest room. He was twelve years old at the time. He always had a little fox terrier. He taught the dog tricks, like jumping through a hoop. The day his mother died, he knew that he would feel like an orphan for the rest of his life.