LITMIR.BIZ

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while Slimkat was relaxed, Yster’s whole body was tense. His hands were tight fists, and I recognised him from the newspaper photograph. Ready to fight. Ready to kill, maybe. He looked at Slimkat, then at Jessie’s belt and at Slimkat again.

      ‘Sorry,’ said Slimkat. ‘We don’t mean to be rude. But could you show us what you are carrying on your belt? We’ve had some . . . incidents, and Ystervark likes to be careful.’

      ‘Sure,’ said Jessie, and emptied all the things from her pouches onto her desk. They made quite a pile and included her camera, notebook, pen, phone, torch, string, knife and pepper spray.

      Ystervark grabbed the spray and the knife and looked at Slimkat as if to say, ‘I told you so.’

      ‘Sorry,’ Slimkat said again. ‘He’ll give them back when we go. We can’t stay long.’

      Jessie set up two chairs for the visitors, but Ystervark stood at the office door. Then he walked towards the street and back again, with the knife and the pepper spray in his hands. He put them in his pockets when I handed him his tea and rusk. I gave the others their hot drinks and beskuit too.

      ‘Would you like me to go?’ I asked Jessie.

      ‘No,’ said Slimkat. ‘Stay,’ and he fixed me with those eyes again.

      I spilt my coffee on my desk. I rescued the letters, but the coffee got all over last week’s Gazette.

      Jessie picked up her notebook. ‘I know you don’t like to sing your own praises,’ she said, ‘but you must be feeling good about the victory over big business. Diamond miners and agribusiness are used to getting their way. Yet you won the fight.’

      ‘I am sad,’ said Slimkat. ‘It was not right to fight.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Jessie. ‘It belongs to you, that land. Your ancestors have lived there for tens of thousands of years. You could not just let the companies steal it from you.’

      ‘No,’ said Slimkat. ‘You are wrong. The land does not belong to us. We belong to the land.’

      Jessie blinked, and her mouth opened and closed. It was not often that I saw Jessie without words.

      She found them again. ‘But surely,’ she said, ‘if you do not fight, then injustice will be done. Again and again.’

      ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘Some people like to fight.’ He took a sip of his tea and glanced at his cousin, who stood at the door with his back to us. ‘I do not. Fighting can make you bitter. But sometimes it must be done. If you have to fight, then you must do so with soft hands and a heart full of forgiveness.’

      He dipped his rusk into his tea and took a bite. Then he smiled and looked at me.

      I mopped at the Gazette with a napkin. There was a brown stain over the pink advert offering relationship help.

      ‘I hear there have been death threats?’ Jessie said.

      Slimkat nodded and chewed on his rusk.

      ‘Who do you think is responsible?’ she asked. ‘Agribeest cattle business? Hardcore diamond company?’

      Slimkat waved his hand as if pushing smoke aside. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or people who are jealous. It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Surely it will matter if you are killed?’

      Slimkat smiled. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Yster wants me to hide away. He says that the buck that grazes in the shadows does not land on the coals. But I believe my time will come when it comes. I am not going to hide from the sun.’

      Ystervark’s back twitched. He put his cup down on the ground and took out the pepper spray.

      ‘My life is a very small thing,’ said Slimkat. ‘It is not like the life of a river, or the earth, or the stars. It does not matter very much if I die.’

      Maybe he was right, but I wanted to say to him, ‘Don’t be crazy; of course it matters.’ But it wasn’t my place to say that. Instead I wrote down the phone number from the coffee-stained advert in the Gazette.

      CHAPTER SIX

      The interview was short, but it went far back in time. Slimkat told Jessie about the Bushmen’s ancient and sacred relationship with the earth and the stars. And then he spoke of the many ways that people, animals and plants were being killed today.

      ‘We must leave this highway of death,’ he said. ‘This road of hatred. We must return to the path of love.’

      When they were finished, Jessie walked out with Slimkat and Ystervark, and I phoned that FAMSA number and made an appointment.

      When Jessie came back to the office, she told me that Ystervark had not returned her knife.

      ‘It was weird,’ she said. ‘He looked up and down the street as if someone might be following them, and he wouldn’t let me near the car. There was someone in the back that I couldn’t see properly, wearing a woman’s scarf. I got my pepper spray back, but he shook his head when I asked for my knife.’

      ‘What did Slimkat say?’

      ‘I don’t think he realised what was happening. We’d said goodbye, and he was getting in the car.’

      I clicked my tongue. ‘It wasn’t right to take your knife.’

      ‘Maybe he needs it more than I do,’ said Jessie.

      Later that morning, I sat in a soft orange armchair in a small room at the Ladismith hospital.

      ‘So . . .’ said the counsellor from FAMSA. She also sat in an orange armchair. She was young, with wide eyes, blonde curls and a matching blue top and skirt, just like a little doll. A poppie. She looked down at some paper on her clipboard. ‘First, I need to tell you that I am a counsellor in training, but I’m perfectly qualified to assist you.’

      She looked up and gave me a bright smile, then clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher on the first day of school.

      The room was clean, the walls lemon-yellow. There was an orange couch and a white plastic table, and in the corner, on the floor, a box of children’s toys. High up was a long narrow window with white curtains that waved softly in the breeze. Between the curtains, I could see a grey-blue piece of the Swartberge and a section of sky.

      ‘So how can I help you, Mrs, um,’ she looked down at her clipboard again, ‘van Harten.’

      ‘Ah,’ I said.

      ‘English or Afrikaans?’ asked the poppie.

      ‘Um . . .’

      Her questions seemed so difficult. I looked at the window.

      ‘Are you cold? Shall I close the window?’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, thank you. I like fresh air.’

      I struggled to sit up straight in the armchair; it seemed to be swallowing me. She was perched on the edge of hers, her head tilted to the side, like a bird. Her birdie-poppie eyes were bright, but it did not feel like she could see me. How could I describe to her the dark things from my past that still live inside my head? And my very personal problems with Henk?

      ‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked.

      I stared down at my hands.

      ‘How about,’ she said, ‘just to get us warmed up, I’ll give you some abstract pictures to look at, and you tell me what they remind you of.’ She pulled some sheets from her clipboard and handed three of them to me. ‘Just look at the top one and tell me what it reminds you of.’

      That was easy. ‘It’s a pumpkin fritter with lots of syrup and butter.’

      ‘Okay. And how does that make you feel?’

      ‘Hungry.’

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