Blind Date at a Funeral (2 page)

She phoned me for comfort and poured her heart out about how my brother had dropped her.

I'm no fool. All it took was a sympathetic ear and lots of tissues, and before I knew it, I had replaced my brother.

I should have read more into his raised eyebrows and wry smile when I told him what was happening. But she was exceptionally pretty and he had shared stories about his visits to her boudoir, which had got my attention.

The physical part of my short-lived relationship with her was great and I was in hog heaven while it lasted. But when she got insecure and the bottle came out, things went south very quickly.

And so, there we were, having a candlelit soiree in her flat.

I wanted nothing more than to head to the bedroom for dessert. She, with bottle in hand, wanted answers that I could not readily provide.

She asked me again. ‘Seriously. Why do you like me?'

Before I could answer, all hell broke loose.

There was a violent hammering on the door and a man's voice yelled, ‘Open the door!'

To say that I got the fright of my life is an understatement.

Her eyes widened and panic spread across her face. She stood up quickly, knocking plates in every direction, not quite sure what to do.

‘Wha—' I began.

‘Oh Jesus,' she interrupted, putting her finger to her lips.

I held my breath.

The silence was deafening.

Then the hammering started again.

‘Oh my God,' she said, covering her face in her hands. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.'

She looked through the peephole in the door.

‘Who is it?' I whispered.

‘He's going to kill you,' she said.

‘What?'

‘He's going to kill you,' she whispered urgently.

‘Who's going to kill me?' I said.

‘Vick!' she mouthed, pointing to the door.

‘Vick, like THE Vick?' I said in shock.

‘Yes, THE Vick. Shhhh,' she urged.

Vick was her former husband. From the pictures I had seen and the stories she had shared with both my brother and myself, I was indeed going to be killed.

Vick was a rough and tough and renowned hooligan in the south of Johannesburg. He was a barroom brawler, a ruffian, and he was rugby-player big and brawny.

Probably because of my ego, I may have neglected to mention that I am not the biggest guy around and not particularly strong or brave. I may even go as far as to say a bit wimpy. The fact that she found me attractive and desired a physical connection with me was a miracle and one of the main reasons I endured her crazy side.

‘You have to go!'

‘Go where?' I whispered.

‘Out,' she whispered, loudly. ‘Out!'

Her flat was on the first floor. There was no ‘out', unless I was to head through the front door and into the lion's den, which meant a good chance of permanent injury.

‘He still loves me,' she said, half smiling. ‘But he is so jealous. We may get back together.'

I did not have a chance to process what she had just said, because Vick started kicking the door.

Her eyes widened even more.

‘Go,' she yelled, propelling me towards the balcony.

She opened the balcony door and pushed me out. I looked over the railing at the flower bed below.

‘Jump,' she urged, pushing me.

I climbed over the railing and dangled above the hydrangeas. It was only one storey up, but one storey is not as low as one might imagine.

She rushed back inside and I heard her yelling.

‘Don't break my bloody door again, Vick. I'm coming, for God's sake. Sissie was here for supper and she went home upset. I was just speaking to her on the phone in my room.'

The banging stopped.

‘My God, Vick, have you been drinking again?'

‘Errr, ja,' said a very deep, sheepish voice.

I heard the front door opening and I let go, dropping into the bushes.

The flowers broke my fall and I only received minor cuts and scrapes during my escape, mainly from trying to climb over the fence to get to the street.

I only saw her once again, at a club in Hillbrow. She was with a brawny, rough-looking guy, who was rugby-player big. It may have been Vick.

He did not notice me glancing in her direction. As she walked past, without breaking her stride, she slipped me the slightest of smiles.

(Soundtrack: ‘Rocky Mountain High' by John Denver)

It happened a long time ago. A time when people actually did what they said they were going to do.

I was driving along a dirt road in the Drakensberg in South Africa with my girlfriend.

In the distance, I noticed a speck on the horizon. A speck that would teach me about something that, until then, I did not know even existed.

Integrity.

I know it's a big word and hard to explain, but I will try nonetheless.

You see, that speck on the horizon was a very old, toothless, African man with a white beard, riding an old bicycle.

I slowed down so that I didn't spew dust all over the poor old guy.

I waved at him and he waved back as we passed. His smile was wonderfully warm and friendly. He looked about eighty and way too old to be riding a bicycle.

I watched him in my rear view and then looked up to see a bakkie coming towards me at full speed. It was moving very quickly. There was a dust cloud billowing behind it.

As the truck passed me, I saw three young guys in the front seat. One of them had a Lion Lager in his hand. I'm embarrassed to say that I could spot a Lion Lager beer from a mile away. That's something I learned in the army.

I glanced at my rear view and my heart almost stopped. The driver of the bakkie was heading straight for the old man on the bicycle. I saw the old guy look nervously over his shoulder as the vehicle came up from behind.

I closed my eyes because I knew that they were going to try to dislodge him from his bicycle.

I opened my eyes and saw them swerving towards him and missing him by inches. I could also see them gesticulating and shouting at the man as they drove past.

The old man wobbled on that bike and I saw him drive off the road and crash down a little ditch.

I slowed down and turned the car around.

I got to the old man and he was sitting down in the veld, rubbing his knee. The front wheel of his bike was buckled and bent.

The old man looked so sad. ‘Haai eh-eh,' he said, shaking his head. ‘What is wrong with those kids?'

‘Are you okay?' I asked.

‘Ja, basie,' he replied. ‘It is just my heart that is sore.'

He told us he was a gardener at the Champagne Castle Hotel and was on his way to work.

I put his bicycle in the boot of the car and we took him to the hotel, which was about five or six kilometres away. Apparently he rode his rattletrap bike to work every day, rain or shine.

As we were leaving, I gave the man about forty rand in cash from my wallet and a few rands from my girlfriend's purse. ‘It's to fix your bike,' I said.

‘Sorry, my kleinbaas,' he said, ‘I can't take your money.'

My girlfriend told him to take the money because I was just going to use it to buy drinks and get drunk anyway.

The old man chuckled and told me I had a wise girlfriend. ‘I will pay you back, my basie,' he said.

‘That's okay,' I said. ‘You don't have to.'

But he insisted that I give him my address and I did so, on a little scrap of paper, thinking that he would lose it in about ten seconds.

Needless to say, I had the resources to find more beer money. And my girlfriend and I had a great weekend in the Berg and I forgot about the old man.

The scuffed and wrinkled white envelope arrived at my little flat in Sandringham, Johannesburg, one month later.

In it was one rand, twenty-five cents!

Yes, the old man did what he said he was going to do.

I swear, at the end of every month, an envelope arrived with one rand and twenty-five cents in it. No note, no return address – just the money the old man had promised to pay me back.

I was in advertising in those days and a little over a year later, I went back to the Drakensberg to shoot a television commercial with Sarel van der Merwe, the rally driver. It was for Jurgens caravans and he was towing the caravan through the Berg, showing how rough and tough those caravans were.

The filming took place very close to where that old man had fallen off his bike and I decided to go and find him, to tell him that he didn't need to send me the money every month because I was doing fine.

I found out that he had retired from the hotel. They told me that he lived in the village near where I first saw him and they directed me to his place.

My art director and I went to the man's home. It was exactly what you'd imagine. A thatched mud hut with missing windowpanes covered in Spar plastic bags to keep the wind out.

An old African granny with grey hair answered the door. She had a doek on her head that was tied under her chin like people used to do in the olden days when they had toothache.

Inside the hut, the hardened mud floor was swept clean. There was a Primus stove, a galvanised tub with a bar of Sunlight soap in it, a rickety old table with a clean cloth on it, a little cupboard and a bed on bricks with white sheets.

That's all.

It was spotless.

The Sunlight soap was the only colourful thing in the entire place. I have such a clear vision of that bar of soap. I can see it in my mind when I close my eyes.

Other than those few items, the place was spare.

The woman was the old man's wife.

I asked whether he was around so I could tell him that he didn't have to pay the money back to me.

What she told me stopped me cold.

The old man had died six months before and she had continued paying his debt.

I was stunned. She had nothing. Absolutely NOTHING! Yet she was doing what she considered was the right thing. Paying their debt back as promised.

She kept his word. She continued sending me money every month, despite the fact that her husband had died and she was poor.

I told her I didn't need the money and gave her a little more from my pocket.

She was so grateful and would not stop hugging me.

(Soundtrack:
The Blue Danube
by Johann Strauss)

‘Count backwards from ten for me,' she said.

I closed my eyes as she placed an oxygen mask over my nose and patted me gently on the head. The doctor inserted the needle into my arm. I flinched a little when I felt the dull ache and slight burn of the anaesthetic entering my body.

Then everything went black.

I surfaced in the recovery room but went back to sleep almost immediately. I vaguely remember being transferred to my bed but I was so weary and lame I couldn't open my eyes.

I was in a pretty deep sleep until a strange and rather uncomfortable sound tickled the edges of my consciousness.

The sound scuttled around inside my brain, banging against the edges, irritating me more and more.

I opened one eye, then the other, and at the foot of my bed, saw a thin old man in flannel pyjamas, waltzing with a broom on the polished linoleum floor.

I thought I was dreaming or that perhaps the painkillers they had given me were making me hallucinate.

I shook my head in disbelief. Waves of post-operative nausea from my knee surgery washed over me. I could feel the pressure of the full plaster cast on my leg but there was no pain. I was still in some sort of twilight zone and my nineteen-year-old brain could not quite connect with what was happening around me.

The music accompanying the dancing man was coming from a small red transistor radio sitting on top of an empty hospital bed. The sound was tinny and hurt my head.

The music faded and the man took a bow.

‘That was practice for the party tonight,' said the man.

A round of applause broke out.

I looked around. There were six beds in the ward, including mine. All were filled with men of varying ages, except for the bed belonging to the dancer.