LITMIR.BIZ

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small and light.

      Then Kosie made a real racket, bleating like crazy. We heard another sound: a rough sawing call. Then the noise of chickens kicking up a big fuss.

      ‘Leopard,’ said Henk, lowering me onto the floor.

      I felt let down. But I loved my hens, and that hok might keep out a rooikat, a lynx, but it was no match for a leopard. Henk pulled on his jeans and headed for the door.

      ‘Take a weapon,’ I said, looking around for something, finding only my hairbrush.

      ‘Leopards are very shy.’

      ‘Not if you get between a leopard and her lamb.’

      ‘I have my gun,’ he said, patting the holster on his belt, but he took the hairbrush from me anyway.

      ‘Be careful, Henk,’ I said as he left, suddenly realising he meant more to me than my hens. Much more. Although I really loved those chickens.

      The lamb and the hens were still shouting for help. I leant out of my window into the darkness and shouted, ‘Go away, Leopard! Voetsek!’

      A beam of light lit up the wild camphor tree outside my window, and Henk ran past with his torch, gun and hairbrush.

      Soon Henk came back to the bedroom with a shivering lamb in his arms.

      ‘It’s okay, Kosie,’ he said, ‘it’s okay, lammetjie. The leopard’s gone.’

      ‘Did you see it? Are my hens okay?’

      ‘Ja. Its tracks were by the hok, but it didn’t get in. There was rustling in the bushes; I threw your hairbrush, then heard something disappear into the veld.’

      He laid Kosie’s blanket on the floor and tried to settle the lamb on it, but Kosie bleated hysterically when separated from Henk, so he picked him up again and held the shivering lammetjie in his arms. It nuzzled its head under his armpit. Henk sighed and sat down on the bed. I sat down next to him and leant my head on his shoulder.

      But Henk is not a man who gives up easily. He managed to slip Kosie off his lap and me onto it. Then I was lying on the bed, and Henk was slowly lowering himself onto me.

      He looked into my eyes and said, ‘My hartlam.’ My heart lamb.

      Then, suddenly, I saw Fanie on top of me and remembered things I didn’t want to remember. A wave of black nausea washed over me, and although the rest of my body disagreed, my arms pushed Henk away, and my mouth cried out.

      ‘What did you say?’ Henk asked. ‘Did I hurt you?’

      ‘I feel sick,’ I said, wriggling out from under him. I was shaking. ‘I am so sorry.’

      I rushed to the bathroom. The pictures I didn’t want to see, the secrets I didn’t want to tell, were bashing about in my head. I knelt down and threw up into the toilet. Until I felt completely empty.

      Henk was at the bathroom door, knocking.

      ‘Maria . . .’

      ‘Just leave me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

      The words I’d said, when I’d pushed him off me, were: ‘I’ll kill you.’

      When I was finished in the bathroom, Henk offered me a tot of brandy, and I shook my head. We lay down, and he held me tight against his chest. I was still shaking, and he pulled the blanket over me. After a while, he started snoring. The frogs were singing, but quieter now, like the party was over. I carefully climbed out from under his arm and made my way to the kitchen. I knew what I needed. It wasn’t brandy; it was Venus Cake.

      I took the lid off the tin and saw the cake glistening inside.

      ‘Jislaaik, you look good,’ I said.

      I ate until the bad taste was gone from my mouth. I ate until the shivering stopped. I ate until every corner of the emptiness was filled with peanut-butter coffee chocolate cake.

      But even though it was the most satisfying cake I had ever made, and I’d eaten almost half of it, I did not feel complete. I wanted something else. And then, there he was, standing in the kitchen – the man I wanted to love and make love with.

      ‘Maria . . .’ he said.

      He looked at me and at the cake. The tears started leaking from my eyes. I looked away; I didn’t want him to see me covered with icing and tears. But he touched my chin and turned my face towards him.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll try . . .’

      But I didn’t know what I could try.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Monday morning, I drove along the stretch of dirt road from my house to Route 62, and the ten minutes into Ladismith. My little Nissan pick-up is a sky-blue bakkie with a cloud-white canopy. We had been lucky with the rains this year. On the mountainside there were some patches of purple and yellow where the ericas and other fynbos were flowering, but mostly the veld was different shades of green. Grey-green of the sweet-smelling bushes, brown-green of the grass, deep green of the karee, gwarrie and boerboon trees, bright green of the spekbome – the bacon trees. There should be different names for each of these greens.

      The sky was pale turquoise, a kind autumn sky after the long hot summer. I could see it was a lovely day, but my heart was having trouble enjoying it.

      Outside the Klein Karoo Gazette office, I parked in the shade of a jacaranda tree, next to Jessie’s red scooter, which had her bike helmet clipped onto it. We kept a good distance from the back of Hattie’s white Toyota Etios, because her reversing was even worse than her forward driving.

      I walked along the path between the potted vetplantjies. The leaves of the little succulents were fat and silver-green. The building used to be a grand Victorian-style house; the Gazette now shares it with a small plant nursery and an art gallery. Like my farmhouse, it was built a hundred years ago and has mud-brick walls, and floors and ceilings of Oregon wood. But it’s a town house and bigger and fancier than mine. At the front of the building are pillars with broekie-lace ironwork and those ‘Ladismith eyes’ – round, patterned air vents. The Gazette office fits into one room at the side of the house. I heard Jessie and Hattie chatting as I walked between the plants towards the open door. I was carrying a fresh tin of buttermilk beskuit – one of my favourite kind of rusks – and a Tupperware with a few remaining slices of Venus Cake.

      ‘This is the guy I’m going to interview in Oudtshoorn,’ Jessie was saying, pointing to the front page of the Weekly Mail. The newspaper was on Hattie’s desk. ‘Slimkat Kabbo.’

      ‘“Slimkat” . . . makes a change from all the “fat cats”,’ said Hattie.

      ‘“Slim” means “clever”, not “thin”, Hattie. Anyway, I’ll interview him tomorrow if someone doesn’t kill him first. He’s had death threats.’

      ‘Goodness gracious,’ said Hattie. ‘Just up your alley, Jess. But can you link the story to your coverage of the arts festival? You said he was launching his book there.’

      ‘Ja. It’s about the Bushman struggle for land. My land, my siel. My land, my soul,’ She looked up at me. ‘Oh, hello, Tannie M!’

      Jessie’s a lot younger than me, so she usually calls me Tannie – Auntie. Her smile was wide in her brown face. It got wider as I handed her the Tupperware with the cake. She’s short like me (though not as round), and her dark hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore her usual black vest, jeans, and belt full of pouches with useful things in them.

      ‘Maria, darling,’ said Hattie. ‘We were discussing the KKNK.’ The Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees is the arts festival that happens in Oudtshoorn every year. ‘Will you be coming?’

      ‘I’m not sure—’ I said.

      ‘My, oh my, whatever happened to your hair?’

      Hattie

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