Somewhere, among all of this, almost like a cry for help, is a photocopy of Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd …
Across the street, a man is leaning against the door frame of a small restaurant that is nameless. He introduces himself as Parker. “Everybody here calls me that.” The plastic tables inside are covered with red-and-white tablecloths, and I can hear Abba’s “Dancing Queen” playing somewhere in the back.
“Ag no, man, you’re a day late,” he says. “We had AllPay yesterday. I think it’s Laingsburg’s turn tomorrow. It’s a whole roadshow, you know.” He whistles. “You should have been here yesterday. It was chaos as usual.” He motions in the direction of the Trans-Karoo Bottle Store further down the road. “They sat there the whole day, drinking.”
Parker goes to sit at one of the tables. These conversations usually start off with something specific – the chaos of AllPay day – before drifting off into the doldrums with corrupt politicians and the death penalty that should be reinstated. All the while, you join in the talk, you agree and tell about the time your house was burgled, and as you talk, you know you’re repeating hundreds of conversations just like this one, but still you listen and you rage against the government, and, since you’re at it, against Julius Malema and his R250 000 Breitling watch.
Parker doesn’t know of a matric girl with three children in Touws River. But he does know of a young woman with six children – six welfare children!
“How old is she?”
“I guess about 22, maybe 23.”
But he doesn’t want to say where her house is. “Find her yourself. I don’t want trouble.”
The Trans-Karoo was a passenger train that ran between Johannesburg and Cape Town for years, stopping at Touws River on the way. The name of the train has now been changed to the Shosholoza Meyl – but it rarely stops here.
The Trans-Karoo Bottle Store has remained, though, a sad reminder of the train with the same name. There’s a notice on the wall:
NO drunk persons allowed!!!
NO alcohol on credit!!!
NO sitting on the tables!!!
NO alcohol in the toilets!!!
The door is locked. Maybe they’re counting their money today.
On the corner, near the pharmacy, there’s a low white building with two doors. Above the one, a sign announces in black letters: Take Aways. Above the other: Joepie Fourie Funeral Parlour. Quality service and fair prices. Inside, an interleading door connects the two.
Maybe Joepie Fourie will know where to find the young mother of six that Parker mentioned. If anyone knows what’s what in town, it has to be the undertaker-cum-takeaway owner.
There’s no one behind the counter in the half that is the funeral parlour, but there’s a certificate on the wall next to the entrance: New Business Retention 2005. Awarded to Mr J. Fourie. An old issue of Men’s Health lies on the desk in the corner.
“Hello!” says a man’s voice. “Good mo-o-orning.”
A woman comes in from the takeaway side. “Have you been helped?”
“Hello. Good mo-o-orning.”
Only then do I spot the African Grey in a cage near the door.
Joepie Fourie isn’t here. He died a month ago. On a shelf behind the counter stands a wooden box with his ashes. “Mevrou keeps it there. I guess it’ll stay there till she dies, then they’ll put it in the coffin with her.”
“Hello,” says Joepie Fourie’s voice. “Good mo-o-orning.”
I ask at the office of the ACVV, the Afrikaans Christian women’s association, next to the railway line, but Hester Stander, who is in charge today, doesn’t know Parker’s young woman with the six children.
The ACVV employs a full-time social worker for Touws River, but she’s not at the office right now.
“Six children?” Hester asks in disbelief. “I don’t know about that.”
Schoolgirls with one baby, perhaps two, are another matter. In the Western Cape alone about seven thousand girls between twelve and eighteen fell pregnant in 2010.
The more I ask around town, the more improbable Parker’s story sounds. But there’s talk of a guy who pretended to have some mental disorder or other, and now gets a disability pension.
Some of the people I ask say they’ve heard of the young woman with six children, but then refer me to someone else who may be able to tell me exactly who she is and where she lives. Then they, those people who may know, refer me to others who may know. Eventually this brings me to oom Jan Stassen’s house in De Beer Street. I’ve been told he knows everything there is to know in Touws River, but even oom Jan just rests his heavy hands – hands that have punched tickets on the trains for over thirty years – on his silver garden gate and says: “Hell, no, my friend. This is the first I’ve heard of her.”
Oom Jan was a train conductor until the railways forced him to go on early retirement. He looks down the street. “They say you only cry twice here in Touws River,” he says, as if that will explain everything. “The day you arrive and the day you leave.”
It’s dark by the time I leave for Laingsburg – oom Jan agrees that tomorrow is their AllPay day. He knows because his brother-in-law lives there and he gets a disability grant.
3.
From a distance, the Lord Milner Hotel looks like a passenger liner that has docked for the evening at Matjiesfontein, on the stretch of N1 between Touws River and Laingsburg.
It’s dark by the time I pull up in the parking area outside the hotel. A uniformed porter comes to help me take my things from the bakkie. Yes, he confirms, it’s AllPay day in Laingsburg tomorrow. When I ask how he can be sure, he’s almost indignant: “They come past here every month, Meneer.”
In my room there’s a brass bed, and on the bed, two lollipops, one red and one pink. I empty everything I’ve accumulated in the course of the day from my trouser pockets and put it all on the dressing table: coins, till slips, the wrapper of a Snacker bar. When I’m on the road, more so than when I’m at home, it’s a grim battle against chaos, in my head and even in my pockets and luggage.
In my shirt pocket I discover a serviette from Parker’s restaurant in Touws River. On it I’d written: No gathering. No sitting. I’d seen the words written on the window of one of the shops in the town.
I throw the serviette and the slips in one of Ma’s old Tupperware containers – she’d written her name on the lid with pink nail varnish – which I’d brought with me. Then I switch on my laptop and search the internet for statistics on government grants, listening to the whooshing of car and truck tyres on the N1. It sounds like the sea on a stormy night.
The hotel has a shop with a shelf full of second-hand Afrikaans books: Etienne Leroux, Abraham H. de Vries, Opperman, Krog, Toeks Blignault, Kannemeyer. There’s one I’d completely forgotten about: F.A. Venter’s Werfjoernaal.
In January 1960 my wife, Herman, Elizabeth and I left Johannesburg in a second-hand green Chevy and drove to a farm on the border between Kenhardt and Carnavon to go and live there. The last time I read those words I was at school. With us, we had Patch, a half-breed cocker spaniel, Pootjies, a half-breed-I-don’t-know-what, and Vaaljan, a purebred Siamese.
I seem to remember seeing an old copy of this book on Pa’s bookshelf in Ventersdorp, but I buy it anyway.