The gardener lifts the fork and turns the snake, like a piece of meat cooked over an open fire, and inspects the specimen.
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"I can only tell you things that happened as I saw them, and what the rest was about only Africa knows." – Oom Schalk Lourens
She was lying in bed. There was a drip in her arm. She seemed to be of average height—a shapeless mass under white sheets…
As a South African, how many koeksisters have you eaten in your lifetime? Tons, right? And if you’re not South African, well, it’s not your fault and you can make up for it by consuming titanic amounts of our favourite treat (and supporting the Springboks).
I am old now. The moments come to me frequently and infrequently, sometimes in a haze and other times as clear as day. Eons in the past or mere minutes ago. I can’t always tell who is who or when is when. But I know the smell, the sound, the sun, the soil. It lives in me.
How could something so brutal, so ugly, bring so much comfort? I breathe deeply. Alone. Inside the belly of the beast.
We were like a couple of hit men. But not the Vincent Vega type. More like the Joker, make-up included. Make-up especially. Luckily neither of us owned a weapon because if you messed with our schedule, you’d have died.
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He took his painting. The one that hung over the fireplace. The wrinkled face of the lady sitting behind a cooking pot on an open fire, alone in the veld. Eons of dirt. Of life. She had been staring back at me with watery eyes for as long as I can remember. She knew things.
Its essence captured in the trees – great Oaks with strong, angular arms reaching over the streets from opposite sides to clasp hands, and Jacarandas (one right outside our house) spilling purple rain in spring – lauding over the love, laughter, hurt and heedlessness of the century past, and preceding millennia.
It vaulted onto her face, its limbs clinging to her soft skin. One minute we were playing in the garden, the next Kate was shrieking blue murder. There was no way that I was going near those mandibles.
Hundreds of beaded eyes look up, reflecting the turquoise blue African sky with glassy indifference.