kagablog

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

“Please be so good as to join me.” Henry indicated the vacated seat and after a slight hesitation the man sat down and considered with disdainful interest the bedraggled countenance, as if he were examining the contents of his handkerchief after coughing up phlegm. “Yes, well actually I must say I find myself in unusual circumstances. This time two nights ago I was preparing for bed in my nasty little chamber in Kalk Bay with the sound of the winter elements raging upon mountain and sea. And now, forty-eight hours later, after two days of unprecedented excitement and adventure I discover myself in this stale hotel dining room. The last besieged outpost in the African night, talking to a wild Nubian cook who has advised the bwanas to resort to the heinous custom of sating the pangs of hunger by scatophagous means should they find the meagre repast placed before them not to their liking. And to add an exotic spiciness to an already piquant melange it is brought to my attention that the Nubian cook answers not to the name of Sambo, or Dingaan, or Themba, or Kummojo, or Chagwe, or Vuzi, or Ziko, or Hambalapakhaya, or… No, none of your common or garden variety of cookboy appellation but the noble Caledonian eponym Angus. Och, Angus! Here in the heart of darkness my thoughts fly to the banks and braes o’ bonny doon, my heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, my love’s beside me, like a red red rose, my wee tumescent caber is tossing aboot beneath ma swirling kilt and as Tammie glowers, amazed and curious, the mirth and fun grow fast and furious. Aye, Angus, my heart’s in the Highlands but as the wan moon sets behind the white wave I am back to reality where I sit, broken-hearted. Spent a penny and… Angus, I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind your remarkable name.”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I’m interested.”

“Just because you’re interested you expect me to…”

“Let me put it another way. As a member of the white tribe…”

“It’s an adopted name. But why should I share my history with a dronklap like you?” He asked it as if he wanted to know and expected an answer that stood a chance of acceptance.

“Because I’m interested. Because you’re the first educated Black I’ve met, and because you have shown me the light of hope by telling me to go eat my own shit.”

“Alright, maybe you’re not such rubbish as you look. My mother was the maid to a Scottish engineer by the name of John Robison. She became the mother of his children. Like many other white men he partook of black meat, but unlike many other white men he accepted the consequences. He not only supported my mother and their children but also me and my sister from another father. He treated me like a son and gave me a Western education. But he never tried to cut me off from my African roots. In fact he encouraged me to learn the ways of my people and keep contact with my father and other blood relatives. So, to cut the story short, I am an African with a degree in political science from Edinburgh University and I work as a cookboy in a one star hotel. My name is Angus Robison and Zumangwe Ramadela.”

“Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A perfect candidate for schizophrenia. Is your self torn asunder, are you tormented by doubt and indecision, are you threatened by shadows and whispers, do you see strange patterns and numbers on the wall, does the anguish in you gnaw at your entrails, do you pace your cage, back and forth, back and forth, jaw clenched, muscles jerking? Are you a psychiatric wreck?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. But then one of the essential ingredients is missing. Guilt. I feel very little guilt. Angus and Zumangwe are good friends. They are brothers and they don’t fight, they help each other.”

“And frustration and boredom. How do you handle working in a jerkwater dump like this? This is almost as mindless an existence as my own.”

“Speak for yourself. You don’t seriously think I am here for the love of cooking? This hotel is a headquarters, the kitchen is the operations room. This hotel was carefully selected for its strategic position, for its usefulness to the Struggle.”

“And the owners? The Van Schalkwyks?” Henry was incredulous. “Surely they aren’t part of the Struggle?”

“And why not? But no, they are too troubled in their own personal lives to know or care. He is sick with hatred and guilt and alcoholism. It’s the combination of two tragedies - the German and the Afrikaans. He has all the worst characteristics of both nations and few of their better traits. The beast that he is is rarely sober enough to know the day of the week.”

“And his wife? Birkin describes her as a ‘tasty’ looking piece.” Angus was silent. A cloud had passed across his face.

“Yes, a tasty piece.” Sadness, or some such pain-inflicting emotion was in his voice and then he shrugged. “I use her. For the Struggle and for my own satisfaction and on that count I stand guilty. I am human.”

“Homo sum.”

“Exactly. You like it too? Humani nil a me alienum puto. We seem to have more in common than at first met the eye.” It obviously amused him to have discovered anything worthwhile beneath Henry’s rough exterior.

“So this woman is your weakness?”

“If I were a hypocrite I would claim to be helping her with psychosexual therapy, helping her to cope with her fear and her loneliness. But enough of Sannie. Maybe I will show you later. You are an admirer of Robbie Burns?”

“Now there was a man bursting with compassion! Take ‘To a Mouse’ as an example.”

“Yes yes.” Angus’s eyes were alight with enthusiasm. “I’m truly sorry man’s dominion has broken nature’s social union and justifies that ill opinion. You know my father taught me to recite the whole of it as well as Tam O’Shanter. For several years we celebrated Burns night on the farm. Can you imagine it, a house full of people, only one white face present and everybody spouting Robbie Burns and eating warm reekin’ Haggis?” He laughed at the bizarre memory and then sobered. “It is such a pity. A stupid, stupid pity.” A note of angry bitterness had crept into his voice. “The stupidity of racism. This could be such a great country if only people were left alone to make their own choices. This system must be smashed and the white man must embrace Africa, he must start to learn and understand what is African and forget about the old version, the parody based on bigotry and ignorance and greed. What does the European know about his fellow African? What do you know about me?”

“Well, I can see that you’ve had a western education and that you are very un-African. Apart from your colour and the negroid aspects of your facial structure, that is.”

“Yes, yes.” He was impatient, giving Henry a look of contempt. “You see, you only look at the surface. Your mind is closed.” Shit, Henry thought to himself, here we go again. Somebody else going to open my mind for me. Aloud he said,

“Okay, convert me. Open my mind. Meanwhile how about another drink?” The cookboy spoke rapidly in Xhosa and the waiter left the room. “Please go ahead. For the sake of auld lang syne.”

“You are a drunkard but maybe there is hope for you. Alright. If a Black man wishes to study, get some understanding of the White man, he must learn to read English. Then for five, even ten years, he must consume a whole library. He must read history, philosophy, religion, the classics - Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Plato. He must sample the great literature - Shakespeare, Hardy, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Mann. He must read everything - Enid Blyton, Voltaire, Peter Cheyney, Captain Johns, Dr Johnson, Melville, Solszhenitsyn, Superman, Conan Doyle, William Burroughs, Tintin and Asterix, Billy Bunter, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Phllip Roth… The list is unending. Poetry. Lots of poetry. The magazines, the newspapers, the comics, Mills and Boon. Then the biographies of Henry Ford, Hitler, Hemingway, Caruso, Freud and Jung and Frazer. Read about the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution. The Great American Dream. And follow sport and the drive to win. Exploration, travel, humour. And music and theatre and film. Ten years is too short. After ten years the Black man must have started to understand the White man.” The waiter came with Henry’s drink and a Coke for the chef.

“And there are many who have gone to these lengths to understand the White man’s culture. But they don’t make the laws. The people who make the laws do not want to learn about Africa and its people and the African ethos. There is no understanding or empathy from their side, no similar effort made, no synergy is permitted to develop and we are all poorer for it.” He drank from his glass and Henry noted the long sensitive fingers of the big hands.

“Hey, you know something?” Henry was chuckling at himself. “You know all the kak people talk about other races? Well, one of the things I grew up half believing was that Blacks didn’t possess lunules. It was one of those characteristics which was supposed to prove that Kaffirs weren’t quite human.” Angus snorted.

“Yes. Like nonsense about thickness of skull and even viscosity of blood. Anything to deny a man’s humanity and justify treating him as a lesser being undeserving of compassion.”

“Yah. Well, I see your half moons are more distinct than mine, if that signifies anything.”

“Hah. It doesn’t.” He glanced at Henry’s grimy hands and looked away embarrassed by the dirt under the nails. “Have you ever heard of Ubuntu?”

“Umm, yes, I think I have. Yes, that’s a Chinese dish, isn’t it? The African version of course. Sweet-and-sour. Instead of cubes of pork you chaps use White settler meat, don’t you?”

“Ha, ha. You whoreson fool, that’s Uhuru. It means human-heartedness or compassion. It is sympathy for your fellow man, it is brotherhood and caring. Robbie Burns had ubuntu. John Robison had ubuntu.”

“Talking of John Robison. Your father wasn’t by any chance descended from the great Scottish inventor was he?”

“Hoots, mon! You amaze me. You’ve heard of his inventions? He was my father’s great grandfather and my father was named after him.”

“Yes I’m particularly interested in the siren.”

“Ah but that wasn’t his most important creation. He was obsessed with time and spent most of his life devising a clock that measured the quality of time. In fact I have a copy of the blue prints.”

“You mean…” Just then there was a scream and a shout and in rushed Birkin, wild-eyed and hysterical, penis protruding from open fly.

“Oh my Christ, these fuckin’ coons have killed him! The bastards have murdered him. I swear to God! He’s out there, lying outside, dead. Christ and I’ve pissed on his dead body.” He became aware of his indecent exposure and scowled at them and hastily rearranged his clothing.

“What happened?” Henry was partly annoyed at the interruption and partly curious to discover what new and wondrous entertainment fate was dropping at his feet. “Who’s dead? What the fuck you talking about?”

“It’s Van Schalkwyk. The phones didn’t work, the whole fucking place is dark. I couldn’t find the toilet so I went outside and there I am pissing away, half a gallon, and then my foot touches this thing and I skrik. Christ but I skrik! I lights a match and there he is, all covered in fresh piss, lying there dead. You fuckin’ communist savage, you!” He had turned to face Angus who towered over him, a look of sardonic amusement on his face. He spoke to the waiter:

“Torch.”

The waiter soon returned and they moved into the passage and through the dark lobby to the entrance. The door stood open in the light of the torch and Birkin led the way. The night air was cold and smelt of dust. A few paces to the right the torch showed the body, lying in a heap, slightly turned to one side.

“Here he is,” Birkin announced unnecessarily. Angus bent over and pinched an ear lobe between thumb and forefinger, pincer-like. There was a loud groan and an arm flailed out. He straightened up.

“Dead? Dead drunk, yes. Alright, help me to get him in.” He picked up the legs like the handles of a wheelbarrow and Henry and Birkin took an arm each. The man was large and the drunks struggled with the dead weight, tripping and falling against each other. The head trailed back and when they tried to negotiate the single step it struck with a dull thud against the concrete riser. Birkin lost his grip and they both fell to their knees, half on top of the hotel owner. Then, struggling and cursing, they helped to manhandle the body down a corridor. Henry became aware of the rhythmic thumping that he had previously thought to be radio music. It was much louder and seemed to emanate from the darkness ahead of them.

They stopped and let go of arms and legs. The waiter shone the torch on a door and Angus turned the handle and they dragged their cumbersome load into the room. Then with great effort they hoisted up the two-hundred-and-forty-pound carcass and dumped it onto the bed. The four of them stood looking down like relatives grouped about a sickbed. The waiter directed the beam onto the ghastly visage. The great football head, massive and menacing even in stupor, close set eyes, close cropped hair, flabby jowls about a thin mouth, now slack and gaping, a trickle of blood forming a jagged scar down to behind an ear.

“Yissus!” murmured Henry. “A nasty piece of work. There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in this face.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Macbeth. Not my favourite. Did you ever try Troilus and Cressida? Now there’s a certain…”

“Hey, what’s this poefte rubbish? I’m not standing here listening to you talking crap to these coons. I’m going man. And as soon’s I get to Keetmanshoop I’m going straight to the cops, struse god. You, mampara, shine the torch for me.” In the corridor Birkin turned left and stalked away towards the entrance.

“What’s that noise?” Henry asked. “Sounds like an African drum.” The waiter trained the torch in the other direction and three doors down a figure was seen seated on a stool. Between his knees was a wooden drum held at an angle away from him. The hands thumped slowly in a monotonous beat upon the taut hide. “What the hell’s he doing there in the dark?” His voice was pitched high in surprise.

“Sannie. She’s in that room. This brute’s wife. Ah poor Sannie!”

“But why the drums?”

“Well, I told you I am helping her to…” He hesitated then hurried on impatient to complete the explanation. “To come to terms with her fears. To live them out. When it grew dark I dragged her in there and cut off her clothes and tied her to the bed with her husband’s old rugby socks. For three, four hours she has lain there in the dark, listening to the drum and waiting. When I am ready I will go to the door and slowly open it. She will sense my presence. I will…” Just then there were several loud bangs from the front of the hotel. As they ran to the entrance Birkin’s car roared into life and then backfired again.

“Hey, the poes has got my valuable luggage in his boot. Hey! Hey!” As the car started with its cacophony of bangs there was a huge and brilliant flash of light out in the darkness accompanied by a deafening explosion. Flames were leaping high into the night and Birkin screamed. “The station, the station! For fucks sake they’ve blown up the station!”

Henry jumped in as the car began to jerk backwards in reverse, popping and spluttering and banging. In the headlamps and the light of the fire there was no sigh of the cook or the waiter. Then Birkin had crunched into first and they were leaping forward in a skidding sweep of dust away from the hotel.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

The sun was down and Birkin switched on his headlights as they pulled out into the road. The onset of dusk seemed rapid, more so than in Cape Town. They were traversing a plain. Open and flat, its boundaries dwindling into the murky middle distance, without feature except in the west, where the last pallor in the sky provided a backdrop to the occasional silhouette - a weirdly shaped hillock, a low jagged ridge like some rough beast slouching towards… Within half an hour all light was gone save from the corridor ahead of them, into which they rushed, with reckless disregard for the harsh land outside. The broken white line was sucked in towards them and it seemed to Henry that they were being drawn into some unknown and hostile place where the road would betray their confidence, leading them to calamity in an ambush of fateful circumstance. Neurotic delusions!

Just before eight a signboard showed up. Grunau to the right.

“We can stop here for something to eat. I know this hotel. Strange place - just a hotel and the railway. Really in the gammadoelas. Nice people though. The owner’s a bit of a pisscat but his wife’s a tasty piece. Last time she was giving me the eye and… Here’s the turning.”

They took the turnoff and drove a kilometre or two. “Their power must be off, or something.” Then there was a faint glimmer to the left and he swung off the tar. Across an expanse of smooth bare earth the squat building was revealed in the headlamps. A puff of air lifted fine dust into the beam and then dropped it. For a moment they sat looking at the entrance in the bright light from the car. Birkin switched off and the hotel disappeared into blackness until they began to make out the dim glow from somewhere further to the back.

“Yiss, but it’s only dark out here.” He put the parks on and they got out into the cool air that felt cold after the warmth of the car. He tried the hotel door but it was locked and he banged loudly and called “Dolf, Dolf! Hey open up man! You call this a hotel?” He rattled the door impatiently. “Van Schalkwyk! Wat maak jy daar? Is jy alreeds besig met jou vrou?” A key turned and the door was opened half way by a man in the black trousers and red jacket of a waiter.

“Hotel it is closed. No power. Niks krag.” The door began to close but Birkin pushed forward.

“Don’t talk shit to me, boy. Waar’s jou baas? Roep hom. Maak gou.”

“Die baas, he not here. He gone Upington.”

“What? Upington? Alright call the miesies.”

“Miesies also gone Upington.”

“Fuck it! Ons is dors, ons is honger.” He turned to Henry. “Well, too bad, but I’m bloody hungry. This bimbo can bring us a drink and they can knock us up something in the kitchen.” He led the way through towards the light. It came from the dining room where a Cadac lamp stood on one of the tables, shedding its white incandescence over a narrow circle of white tablecloths. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness. They sat down, one table away from the lamp.

“Now listen, waiter. You bring us two big Windhoeks, cold, cold, cold. Also you bring one double rum and Coke and one double brandy and Coke. You got that?” The black face was surly, the eyes averted. “Then when you come back you get us food - hamba tata nyama. Okay, tshetsha, tshetsha.”

The room was warm and airless. They could hear African voices rising and falling in conversation somewhere beyond the swing-doors to the kitchen and a rhythmic thud came faintly to their ears, possibly from music playing on a radio, the higher notes lost on the way.

When the waiter returned Birkin continued in his nagging way. “What took you so long, Philemon? You go to Windhoek to fetch the beer? And I said COLD. You call this cold? This shushu, not makaza.”

“I tell you no power. All day no power. No power, no fridge, no fokall.”

“Yissis, this is a taste of things to come. Probably Swapo’s work. Hey, Alfred, why Nujoma make trouble? Why Nujoma skelm muntu?” For an instant the eyes flickered, a naked flame burnt up and then subsided. Sullenly he stood waiting.

“Alright, now what’s on the menu, my black brother? Let’s see, I’ll start with tomato soup with a spoonful of cream and a nice crisp French roll with butter. Then I’ll have kingklip with a small portion Greek salad, hot chips and plenty tartar sauce. And of course to drink I will have a bottle of Nederburg Paarl Riesling, nicely chilled and served from an ice bucket, if you please. After that you can bring me, if you will be so good, Comrade, the speciality of the house - kudu cutlets, with smash potato well creamed and hot, not cold, you understand, and green peas in sweet mint sauce, pumpkin and cauliflower. With the meat I will have English mustard. And remember this, Joseph, I like the kudu rare and it must fall off the bone. I don’t want to have to tear at it like a hyena. I shall drink a six year old Baksberg Cabernet Sauvignon with the main course. And you?” He turned to Henry, who had finished his beer and was starting on the brandy and Coke.

“Ag, er, same as you. Make it two, waiter.” For a few seconds the man stood holding his tray, napkin over arm, looking from one to the other. He leant forward, flicked some salt off the tablecloth, turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the swing-doors.

“No other guests, I see.” Henry was making conversation. “An out-of-the-way place. The ‘gammadoelas’ you called it. That’s an interesting term. I presume it’s of Nguni origin and something to do with hills. An approximately similar expression might be ‘back of beyond’ or, in Australian parlance, ‘never-never country.’ ” As he spoke he looked at Mike Birkin and saw him for the first time. The past six or seven hours had put flesh on the skeleton and he was relaxed and alert enough in this setting to look with clear eyes at his fellow traveller. The nervous strain about the eyes, the slack mouth that betrayed weakness and debauchery, the pathetic rough bravado of the bully and the bombast. Beneath this surface there must be… The swing-doors clapped and swung, clapped and swung.

The waiter placed in the centre of the table a plate containing half a loaf of sliced bread and a dish of butter balls. Before them each he laid a plate of cold sausage, several rashers of processed ham and sliced tomato. In addition there was a bottle of mayonnaise.

“Wragtig, is this the best you can do?”

“The chef, he say…” The waiter hesitated, embarrassed yet with a sly smirk playing on his lips. “Angus, he say, ‘dronk boer, hy honger, hy vreet sy eie kak.’”

The implications of the insult vibrated about the room, shaking the walls, rocking the foundations. Birkin’s eyes became rounder and rounder and his mouth worked noiselessly. Henry began to splutter and laugh.

“Jesus, this is good. This is only good. You say the chef’s name is Angus? And Angus says if we’re hungry enough we’ll eat our own shit? That’s real humour for you. Oh my God! Tell Angus thank you for the very nice meal. Mooshy stellek. Much better than kak. And can you bring some red wine and more brandy and rum? And coke?” The waiter went off, somewhat disappointed. Henry buttered two slices of bread and made a ham, sausage and tomato burger, with lashings of mayonnaise, and began to wolf down the food. “This Angus ou is right. If you’re hungry enough you’ll eat anything.” He began to laugh again and nearly choked. “Angus is a real philosopher. Take it or leave it, white trash.”

Birkin came out of his state of shock, finished his drink to raise blood sugar level and began buttering bread.

“But you realise this fuckin’ coon has insulted us?”

“Of course. I’ve never been so insulted by a kaffir in all my life. It feels great. Oh, thank you waiter. So good of you. Sorry to put you to the trouble.” Birkin examined the label on the wine bottle and looked coldly at the waiter.

“This is not what I ordered. This is Tassenberg dry red. It doesn’t even have a cork. You expect me to drink this rubbish screw top wine? Don’t you understand English? Afrikaans? Must I speak to you in your own language? Wena makulu mampara. Mina hayikona puza lo pis. Hamba tata lo Nederburg Cabernet.”

“Hey, not so fast. What’s wrong with Tass? I’ve drunk gallons and gallons of this stuff. Nothing wrong with it.” Henry unscrewed the cap and poured a glass, sniffed it appreciatively and sipped. “Ahh! Lovely stuff. Goes well with the meal. Allow me.” And he filled Birkin’s glass.” Let’s not antagonise the population.”

The waiter withdrew to the edge of the pool of light and hovered in the shadows. The food and wine were resuscitating Birkin’s spirits and the light of battle was kindling in his eye.

“You know, there’s something bloody funny going on here. How can the Van Schalkwyks just sommer leave the hotel in the hands of this monkey and the cookboy. In these times? It doesn’t make sense.” Just then the voices in the kitchen were raised and there was a burst of loud laughter. He called to the waiter.

“Wena. Sandela, Sandela!” The waiter slowly advanced, wary of the drunken white men. “Biza lo cookboy. Tell that cheeky bastard to come here, I want to talk to him.” The waiter stood where he was, impassive and mute. “Hamba. Tshetsha!’

“Chef, he busy.”

“Busy? Busy, jou moer! You go tell that mampara to come here or I come and thrash him right there in the kitchen.” He was working himself up, pounding the table with his fist and making the drinks slop. The waiter disappeared and they waited. Henry had finished his meal and was feeling decidedly cheerful, if a little unsteady.

“So you’re going to sort this fellow out? I must just warn you that I wish to have no part in the violent suppression of the subject races, regardless of their impudent recalcitrance. I appeal to you to treat the miscreant with restraint and compassion. A verbal lashing must suffice. Physical abuse is…”

Henry’s back was to the kitchen and Birkin was looking past him and his face had drained of colour. Henry turned as the largest black man he had ever seen strode up to the table. He was at least six foot six and built like Cassius Marcellus Clay in peak form. He was all in white, tee shirt about to burst at the seams, short sleeves stretched tight above biceps. Slim hips encased in cotton that remained puckered atop thighs of racehorse flesh. Large head on bull neck, skull recently shaven, high sweep of forehead above direct, alert gaze, cut of cheekbones, nose, mouth, chin all finer and more sensitive than expected on such a hulk.

“Yebo, oh great white chiefs? I stand before you.”

“Ah, right. You must be the chef with the Scottish connection. Most interesting combination. Right, now we’ve been led to believe that you delivered a message, via your plenipotentiary here, indicating the parlous state of the pantry and couched in phrases so direct as to be construed as down right insulting. This being the case my travelling companion here would like to remonstrate with you, probably in order to extract an apology form your own fleshy lips. I must warn you that his pride has been pricked and his sense of what is decent and correct has been affronted, and the accepted servility of the broad racial grouping known as Kaffirs, munts and coons has been overstepped. Over to you, Mike.”

Standing with legs apart and hands on hips in what seemed a very un-African stance the giant turned his gaze from Henry to Birkin, who cleared his throat nervously and tried to sit up straight and sound commanding. When he did speak his voice came out hoarse and slurred. The bully had run into his victim’s older brother.

“If you think… If you reckon you can just… You know if I was to repeat your behaviour to your master I’m sure Mr Van Schalkwyk would give you the sjambok and fire you. You can’t talk to a white man like that, as if he’s, he’s…”

“As if he’s a Kaffir,” Henry helped out, savouring the situation with relish.

“I mean, I could even report you to the police. That fuckin’ surly waiter says they’ve gone to Upington. I don’t believe it. I’m going to phone the police right away and…” He pushed his chair back and the waiter stepped forward, grinning all over his face.

“No phone. No power, no phone, no fokall.”

“Tula, jou fokken mampara! Wena hayikona manga! Satanyoka! Ipi lo telefono?” He was on his feet and shouting. The waiter stepped back but showed no fear. Only derision. The chef spoke.

“He tells the truth. Swapo have been working hard. But satisfy yourself. There is an oil lamp burning in Ladies Bar. Phone is on the counter.” Birkin reeled out of the room, striking his shoulder against the doorjamb and cursing.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

At the bottle store they stocked up on brandy and rum and a dozen cans of Coke. Then chicken pies from a café and they were on their noisy way in the mid afternoon heat. The rocky hills gave way to a plain almost bare of vegetation and Henry’s eyes became heavy and his head nodded and jerked spasmodically until he gave up trying to stay awake and put his head back and dozed in open mouthed abandon.

He was brought back from sleep with rude abruptness when the car began to bump and shake over gravel and was savagely wrenched to the left. Yissis! The arsehole! He’d been driving on the verge, HIS side of the road! What if there’d been oncoming traffic? How long had he been…? They agreed to change places and pulled up just past the Steinkopf and Port Nolloth turnoff. Birkin lay down in the back and after mixing himself a weak brandy and coke in the can Henry headed the car for the Orange River, eighty-seven kilometres away.

The plains were dotted with rocky hillocks and nothing much else. He sipped from the still cold can, his right thumb hooked over the steering wheel, travelling at a steady hundred and ten. No rush. He wasn’t really going anywhere. The warm air blew in through the rolled down window and he felt alone and relaxed. The sun was dropping to the left and he wondered if the night would be cold. It was only August, the worst of winter in Cape Town. Ahead of him was looming a mass of broken hills. He thought idly of his situation. Here he was, walk on, walk on. To sit in the lotus position under a banyan tree for forty-nine days and then pronounce to the expectant disciples those two words… Make it brief enough and it takes on all sorts of deeper meaning. What if he had opened his mouth and said Up yours, up yours? Or how about, Brandy and Coke, brandy and Coke? Would it have meant the same? Made any difference? In the Dockyard he sat on his arse, here he was walking on. The celluloid would come to the end of a reel. This road wouldn’t lead anywhere, of that he was fairly certain, but the motion made him feel better. More alive, that’s for sure. And of course, he was supposed to be on an important mission. Fully paid.

The road had begun a slow descent through black brown cliffs and huge heaps of boulders. The noise of the engine began to reverberate and developed into a great battle of clattering machine guns. He put the clutch in and revved in long hard bursts.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Birkin was sitting up looking befuddled with sleep and alarm.

“Keep your head down, troepie!” shouted Henry, pumping the petrol and blowing the hooter. “It’s the total onslaught. The biggest communist impi you ever seen. Ten thousand AK 47’s firing, ten thousand pangas dripping blood, ten thousand black cocks, nine inches dribbling for white meat. This is the end! This is the end!” He let up the clutch and accelerated into a bend, tyres screaming. Faster they went. On the next corner the back began to swing out toward the wall of rock and then the car pulled them through and out into the open light. They were onto the bridge, the river below them, Namibia ahead.

“Stop at the motel. For God’s sake, are you fuckin’ mad?” In the rear view mirror he was white and shaking.

“Okay, okay. Just a bit of a thrill. Better than a five rand fuck, hey? And it was free.”

At the motel they sat outside and ordered beers. The air was warm and still and the sun was almost down. On the south bank of the river the line of cliffs was lit up in spectacular colour and they watched the shadow moving and the light changing. The second round was brought and then, unannounced, there sailed onstage a ship of the desert. Henry was so surprised he burst out laughing.

“Ja, man. Didn’t you know they got camels here? Camel safaris, and all that crap. Jislaaik but they’re bloody ugly things. Look at that nose. And the lips! Yuk!”

The creature had come to a halt directly in front of them, sideways on and not a yard from the table. It inclined its head and regarded Birkin with an unblinking stare.

“Hey, it heard you.”

The bristling nostrils quivered and dilated. Then the floodgate was opened and a stream of foul smelling water was released in a vertical torrent that must have lasted a good minute. It quickly formed a muddy puddle and splashed up on their shoes and against their trousers. Birkin sprang to his feet.

“Hey! Hey! Bloody filthy brute! Voetsek! Fuck off! Hey you, boy. Chase this fuckin’ thing away. Christ, if I had my gun I’d shoot it. Call the manager!” Then he picked up one of the plastic patio chairs and threw it at the animal, striking it on its hump. It did a clumsy quickstep sideways, let out a braying bellow and lumbered off with undignified haste. The manager arrived and apologised, laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of his Hotnot employee, promising to use a sjambok in the disciplining of him. Furthermore he ordered them a drink on the house. To make amends.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

He had a three-litre Cressida, almost new, and when he touched the accelerator it leapt forward, heavy and powerful. As they headed out of town towards the highway they passed two women walking beside the road. He steered over to the side and reversed. “Hey I know this doedie. How about a quickie?” They got in the back and Mike Birkin drove off slowly, talking in an oily voice half over his shoulder and leering at them in the mirror. “Now what you girlies doing walking about in the hot sun? Hey? Looking for some nice white ous to just come along and ask you to a party? Ha ha ha.” He pulled off onto a dirt road that began to curve back around the north side of the hill.

Henry turned to look at them. They were dressed similarly in pastel green and white gingham housecoats with white doeks on their heads. Quite young with smooth yellow brown colouring, high cheekbones and slightly negroid nose and mouth. They could have been sisters. Maybe they were. It was the younger, livelier one that Birkin knew. They smiled boldly and giggled but there was a wariness in their eyes, a conspiratorial hostility that puzzled him because he thought he recognized something in it.

Birkin stopped and reversed off the dirt road into some dusty grey bush no higher than a man’s head. Twenty yards in the car was hidden from the road and there was a level clearing. They all got out and the master of ceremonies opened the boot, took out a neatly folded green tarpaulin and spread it out. With folded arms he leant against the side of the car with Henry, glanced at his watch and said “Okay, my skatties. Laat waai.”

It was understood that they should keep their hair covered but otherwise they undressed completely. Standing naked in the bright sunlight, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the men to make a move, they again tugged at something in Henry’s memory and it came to him suddenly. The two Gaughin women with peach blossoms, resigned yet resenting. The toiletry sales representative removed his trousers, underpants and shoes and began slobbering on the younger girl’s nipples and inserting two fingers. Jesus, he couldn’t just stand and watch. What the hell! He was supposed to be letting things happen. Follow the path, drift with the current.

The fuckeration was fully underway. Henry could feel the sun hot on his back, buttocks and balls. The three b’s. Manfully he thrust and parried, sweat standing out on his forehead, sweat mingling between belly and body, pubis and pubis. The girl was passive. He pomped desperately, grunting, panting. Jesus, this is like fucking a tropical fruit, a pawpaw. Soft and unresponsive and yielding. Damn it! His cock was losing its rigidity. Christ! It was actually bending. He ceased his efforts.

Beside him Mike Birkin lay on his back and the little poesie was bouncing up and down doing all the work and even enjoying it. She began to gasp and hiss and cried out an urgent warning, “Ek kom, my baas! Ek kom!” Then a moaning scream.

“Wragtig, jou fokken hoor!” Angrily he pushed her off him, slapping her face with a double-action, open- and back-handed blow. “Moenie in my oor skreeu nie! Het jy geen respek vir ‘n wit man?”

They all dressed hastily. Henry got his jeans on and threw the rest of his clothes onto the passenger seat and delved in his pack for the Bols. Number one priority right at that moment, he thought, as Birkin shook the dust off the canvas and folded it back into the boot, all the while muttering indignantly. The women stood sullenly watching, the younger one dabbing at tears mingling with the blood on her cheek where the ring had caught her. He slammed the boot shut and took from his pocket two five rand notes, crumpled them and threw them at the girls. As if at the push of a button, the flick of a switch, they began to shriek their hatred in a string of apt curses. Henry had found the bottle and closed his door just as the car roared into life and bumped and scraped up onto the dirt road. The wheels spun and the back slid this way and that as the V6 screamed in frustration trying to get a purchase on the road. Then the rear skidded beyond a right angle to the direction of the road and kept swinging so that the car slid through three hundred and sixty degrees, shot off the road into low bush, ricocheted off a boulder and graunched through a shallow ditch back onto the road with a great clattering of trailing metal undercarriage. The silencer was gone and the one year old Cressida, Toyota’s flagship, sounded like a clapped out stock car. Henry was laughing and shouting with excitement.

“Put your foot down, ou pellie! Fucking fantastic! You’re going like a Boeing! Aieee!”

He looked back but could see no sign of the women through the tumbled brown cloud of dust and pebbles. They squealed onto the tarmac, and soon the national road was swinging north. The last of the scrap metal had fallen off and they were roaring along at a hundred and fifty. Henry took a big swig from the bottle and coughed and choked.

“Bitch!” Birkin was still angry. Seething with injured pride, outraged sense of propriety. “Fuckin’ bitch! Who she thinks fucking who?” He hit the steering wheel and the car nearly left the road.

“Hey, maybe SHE should’ve paid YOU. Want a dop?”

They were cutting through high granite hills. The Nababeep turnoff flashed by and then they were slowing for Okiep. At the petrol station they circled the car and got down on their knees to inspect underneath. The superficial damage was considerable. On Henry’s side the back door was badly dented and wouldn’t open, the front bumper was twisted and skew and the number plate was gone; both sides were deeply scratched the full length of the vehicle, and the exhaust system was no more. And the whole car had a thick coating of Namaqualand dust. But there were no oil leaks and the suspension had survived.

“I’ll get it fixed in Windhoek. The insurance will pay. Company car, anyway.” Birkin was offhand about it.

“Won’t they ask you how it happened? Might not look too good on the claim form.”

“Ag man, you don’t think I’d be so fuckin’ stupid as to tell them the truth? No. I’ll cut a hole in the spare and say I had a blow-out.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

True, he was in charge of this expedition. But, on account of the fact that he had no one to lead, he felt unencumbered by responsibility. Not having to set an example, he was free to act as well or as badly as he chose. It occurred to him that in twenty-five years he had never once felt obliged to set anyone an example and, accordingly, it was fortunate that this enterprise did not require of him a skill that he did not possess.

The first thing he did was to miss his train. His response to this blunder was to curse horribly and nonsensically and to vandalise a litter bin by delivering an almighty kick to its nethers, sending it on a trajectory terminating on the mainline track, where it lay helplessly awaiting its fate. His curses were blasphemous, sanguinary, perversely sexual, racist, deeply philosophical and entirely illogical. They enabled him to cope with his disappointment and quickly shrug off the temporary setback. Over a cup of coffee and two slices of anchovy toast in the empty cafeteria he devised an alternative plan of action. His road map showed the roundabout route the railway line took to Namibia. By road he should be able to intercept the train at Grunau or Keetmanshoop.

At the ticket office an Afrikaner male who did not appear to possess a forehead sold him a first class, Whites Only single to Piketberg. On learning of Henry’s Namibian destination he offered some cautionary advice. “Pas op vir die Swapo terroriste. Hulle is fokken sleg. Heelwat slegter as ons eie Kaffers.”

It was late afternoon when the bus reached Piketberg. This dorp was well into the countryside in the midst of the Swartland grainlands. He knew the area from his ’student days’, when he and his Bedford Street mates had made weekend sorties into the Cedarberg. He booked into the hotel where they had often stopped for a drink in the bar prior to pressing on up the pass and into the mountains.

In the morning, after an early breakfast, he shouldered his backpack and headed for the national road. On a short leash Lady Provider, his shiny technologically advanced titanium suitcase, trundled at his heel like a well-trained dog.

He did not have to stand for long in the cold morning air. The clouds paled and lifted as the day roused itself and he smelt the cold clear air and felt the old enthusiasms stirring. A big truck with red cab, ‘Jowells Transport’ on the door, pulled up and he lifted his luggage and climbed into the warmth. It was going to Okiep, just north of Springbok. About five hundred kilometres. Should be there by lunchtime. The driver’s English was as bad as Henry’s Afrikaans and they had to shout above the noise of the engine. He tried to find out what was being transported but they misunderstood each other, grinned and nodded foolishly as if this were not so, as if Henry had received a satisfactory answer, and then gave up further conversation.

There was blue ahead and soon they were coming out from under the cloud and moving into sunlight. The plain rolled beneath them and all around lay the vivid green of wheat and oats and barley. The mountains approached and up the Piekenierskloof the truck wound slower and slower until they were over and into the valley of the Olifants River. This was the familiar land of the Cedarberg, jumbled blue mountains across the river and the citrus groves to the right. At the far end of the valley was Clanwilliam and then the scene changed, becoming harsher and flatter as they moved north in the brittle sunlight.

At Vanrhynsdorp the driver turned off the National road into the town and pulled up at a garage for diesel. Warm air in a quiet dorp, the usual church steeple down the road. Henry crossed the width of empty street to a bottle store and bought a litre bottle of Bols. The driver was checking tyre pressure. Henry bought two Cokes and gave him one and said “Ek gaan gou pee. Alright?” In the toilet he relieved himself and drank half the can and topped it up with brandy.

The day was hotting up as they moved onto the huge plain of slowly undulating rock and scrub. A black smudge of hills marked the far eastern horizon and to the north the heat lay in a low heap. After an hour the terrain began to change and became more rugged and then they were passing through broken granite hills with aloe and kokerboom silhouettes against the blue sky. Bitterfontein, Garies, Kamieskroon - the road dipped, turned, twisted, climbed through the harsh country, brown and grey and black.

“Dis nou Springbok.” It was one o’clock and like an oven in the cab. He needed a cold beer and asked the driver to let him off at the turning. The truck drove away with its engine roaring angrily through the gears and he shouldered his pack and walked sweating into the dusty town. It lay in a bowl amongst brown hills that seemed too close and overbearing, as if they were herding the buildings into a flock before chasing them out of the valley.

In the bar it was cooler than outside and he had two fast Lions well chilled. Then he sat on a stool and looked about the room. Dartboard one end with black scoreboard, a Mainstay poster with palms and coral beach and invisible blue sea, a clock. An overhead fan that wasn’t working. The barman and two locals were listening to a rep telling jokes. He had to be a rep - thirties, pot belly, hair grown forward to disguise baldness, suit pants too tight on his fat arse, lounge shirt open three buttons, sleeves flapping below elbows, big gold ring like a knuckle-duster, flash of silver incisor right of centre, Red Heart rum and Coke. One about a Kaffir, a Jew, a Greek, a Porro, a Pom and Van der Merwe. He concluded with the punch line and broke into a loud phlegmy laugh of appreciation. The audience of three looked at him in sullen silence. Henry sniggered. The two Van der Merwes muttered something to the barman and left.

“Yissis, but these ous have got no sense of humour! You ever known an Afrikaner can laugh at himself?” He was addressing Henry as he picked up his drink, cigarettes and lighter and moved down the counter. “You look as if you’re heading somewhere. North? Windhoek? Mike Birkin’s the name.” He ordered another rum and a beer for Henry and after ten minutes had painted the picture of his life, imparting all manner of personal information both trivial and sordid. His line was toiletries, his route was Cape Town to Windhoek with detours, he had been on it for three years and had a fiancée in eight of the twenty three towns he serviced. From his pocket he drew a small black plastic case, snapped it open and displayed an engagement ring with flashy stone. “A low investment with a high return. Talk of love, promise of marriage, and hey presto! Free food, booze and a fuck. So you’re going north? Well, I can give you a lift to Keetmanshoop, my next stop. Got a lekker piece of poes there!”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

rom The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

By the end of 1974 Harry Bergson and his enthusiastic Dockyard assistants had reached an advanced stage in the initial preparatory work. One mild December morning he summoned Henry to his office and bade him take the by now familiar seat opposite his chief. The big sliding window was open to its full extent and the harbour smells and sounds were rising lazily on the summer air. After an exchange of pleasantries Bergson stood up and moved to the big map.

“As you can see, we have now almost completed our survey of the planet. There are vents distributed across all continents, and many islands too. In fact, our most powerful readings are coming from a point out in the remote South Atlantic where the charts show there to be nothing but a great expanse of empty ocean.”

“That’s strange.” Henry liked looking at this map. There was no obvious pattern to all the interlacing lines but he had the feeling, as did Bergson, that one day one of them would shout “Eureka!” as something fell into place and unlocked the intention behind the design. “Well, I suppose you’ll get to the bottom of it eventually. By the time you’re a hundred and twenty.”

“Oh no, much sooner than that, I hope,” and he laughed. “You know, I’m convinced, more than ever, that these tunnels are communication conduits which have fallen into disuse. I believe we possess a faculty that we have neglected for so long that we are now unable to make use of it. A long time ago, when we were closer to the rawness of life and believed in magic we were aware of all sorts of things that only weirdoes and outcasts have any inkling of nowadays. We need to get these tunnels buzzing again. The Oxyaston has to be re-energized. You know, I’ve had a vision. Let’s rather call it a dream in order not to sound too deranged, a dream in which I imagined more and more of the ducts flowing with energy until it was bursting forth in streams from an underground labyrinth to streak through the ether, invisible yet palpable, before plunging underground again. And in the dream it gradually became possible to think oneself into this seamless, unending flow of energy and begin to experience a different dimension of time and space as we know it now. Perception and awareness became infinitely sharper and deeper, and consciousness lifted up to soar above the stolid pilgrims plodding the long and featureless road to nowhere.”

“Ah, I like that. That’s a nice metaphor. The awakened consciousness is to the unawakened one as a soaring bird is to a stolid pilgrim plodding to nowhere. And the master metaphor behind it is, existing is to living as plodding is to soaring. With this skilful figure of speech you have communicated some of your aspirations, preferences and crackpot ideas on this and that. Very good.”

“Thank you, Henry.” Bergson smoothed his French moustache with both hands and gave the ends a brief twirl. Taking up his lecturer’s wooden pointer he gestured towards an area on the southwest coast of the continent of Africa. “There’s something very interesting going on here and I’m going to be asking you to get involved and undertake a journey of exploration. You see these markers?” He was pointing to a concentration of minor vents stretching in a narrow band along the coast of Namibia. “We’ve come across nothing like this anywhere in the world. They appear to be minor vents and yet the signals are strong. As I see it, there are two possible explanations. Either they all connect into one of the major conduits or, and I favour this second hypothesis, their energy levels are high because they remained in use for longer than most other ducts. Remember, the Bushmen were active in this desert area right up until recent times.”

“And the Bushmen used to sniff Oxyaston?” Henry was wondering just what harebrained scheme was hatching in the rank fecundity of this man’s mind. “Well, I’m no Bushman, and I don’t relish the prospect of wandering about the Namib Desert in the searing heat snuffling under rocks for the scent of a disused duct. Besides, on what pretext would I be there?”

“Don’t concern yourself with such trifling details. There’ll be no searing heat as your expedition is planned for winter. And you wouldn’t be on official Naval business. I will book you off for a few weeks - sick leave to recuperate from some disease. Or a psychiatric disorder. Yes, that’d be more plausible. Over the next six months we should be able to pinpoint some of those ducts to within a hundred metres or so on a survey map.” Bergson’s eyes shone with enthusiasm, his voice rose an octave, and his hand movements became eloquent. “Just think of it, Henry! You’re probably the only man on earth to have experienced Oxyaston from two different sources. Your credentials, your qualifications, are impeccable. The miniaturised equipment you’ll be taking with you should enable us to make the first really meaningful contact. Who knows, we might even be fortunate enough to excite the flow of Oxyaston to such an extent that telepathic communication is possible. That’s my dream Henry, and you are a key figure in the drama that will turn dream into reality. I am convinced that with your help we are on the point of a major breakthrough.”

Henry felt a little flattered. He approved of Bergson: they shared an insurance background and a common revulsion for what had gone to make up their separate experiences. They were both undaunted by, if not totally oblivious to, the demands of convention. They were able to explore their own and each other’s imaginations with an easy self confidence. And they trusted their instincts implicitly, all the while aware of fallibility and the ironies of fate. No wonder Henry was pleased with what Bergson was saying. From his scout belt he unclipped the aluminium water bottle and slaked his thirst prior to lighting his pipe. (He had come upon the belt and bottle on one of his rambles up Kalk Bay Mountain and, perceiving their usefulness, adopted them as part of his everyday apparel. At the time he had assumed they had been discarded by a Baden-Powell acolyte whilst in the throes of being instructed in good citizenship, chivalrous behaviour and skill in various activity including outdoor sodomy.)

“Well, I suppose I might be prepared to consider it.” He flicked a spent match at the window and sniffed the fumes rising from his smouldering Turkish Delight. “Mmm. A little journey, a little sojourn in the wilderness, might do me a power of good. A change of scene, new faces, different climate - could be quite therapeutic.”

“That’s the attitude. I admire your positive approach to life.” There was only the faintest suggestion of mockery in Bergson’s tone. “Now we must start planning in earnest. This is a design sketch of the equipment package you’ll be taking with you. See what you think of it.” Henry took the drawing and examined what looked like a suitcase on wheels, and Bergson began to explain.

“It will be constructed from titanium alloy which is lightweight but very strong and corrosion resistant. A third of the space is taken up by miniaturised electronic equipment with two thirds left for your own personal luggage. You’ll have to travel light, I’m afraid. The power source and solar panel are built into the lid, and this is the telescopic antenna. The retractable wheels should make life easier for you.”

“Looks neat and compact. But what the hell’s this? Says ‘vagina’!?”

“Ah yes, that. That’s the brainchild of the mateys in the Pattern shop and Toolroom. They’re the ones responsible for the design and manufacture of the case. They thought you might appreciate this accessory. It’s a specially lined sleeve running diagonally through this top corner, and at the adjacent corner, here, are two handles that pull out so you may steady yourself. They were thinking of your convenience whilst journeying in remote, sparsely populated areas.”

“Humph! You can tell them to go and fuck themselves. Damned invasion of my privacy!” Henry was indignant, but not for long. “What I would appreciate though, is for them to make this contraption a few centimetres longer and build in a five litre reservoir with filler cap and concealed tap. I can’t be expected to go blundering off into darkest Africa without a supply of Vrotters to sustain me, can I?”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

Driven to distraction

In the winter months, when the sea turned dark and vicious, and the clouds came in low and the squalls of rain swooped down from the mountains and charged across the bay to attack the harbour, it was impossible to get out and about. Then, for the sake of physical exercise and to keep warm, Henry resorted to pacing the aisles of Central Store. He also did it to exercise his mind and hone his acting ability.

Running the length of the second floor were eight rows of high double-sided racks containing the multiplicity of stores needed in the running of a naval dockyard. Henry had been attracted immediately to the walkway provided by the nine aisles and had undertaken a thorough study of the layout. Armed with clipboard, paper, ruler and pencil, two labourers with measuring tape at his command, he spent many hours mapping the terrain. After a week he had produced a scale drawing with exact measurements and he was ready for his first full, uninterrupted tour. On the tennis-court-green concrete floor he had a labourer paint two yellow lines, one at the beginning and one at the end of the promenade. Standing to attention, toes just touching the first of the lines, he made a careful note of the time and set out at precisely 10:10 one morning, 380 minutes before the end of the day, hands clasped in the small of his back, head up, gazing into the gloom ahead. This was the start of a journey, he sensed, that would be as long as a piece of string.

Each day he strode the aisles, counting, measuring, calculating. He perfected the smooth left turn, the effortless right turn, the half pace at the end, the little tricks of the trade that would eventually culminate in mastery. Twenty-nine, left two, left. Twenty-nine, right two, right. Twenty-nine, left two, left. Sixty-six, right two, right. Sixty-six, left two, left. Sixty-six, right two, right. Sixty-six, left two, left. Sixty-six, right two, right. Sixty-six. And a final half pace to attention - that was the most difficult of all. Four hundred and ninety-nine steps. About turn to make the half kilometre. Three short aisles and six long aisles; six long aisles and three short aisles back. One kilometre. Fourteen minutes to the kilometre, four kilometres to the hour with a pause of one minute and twenty seconds between each kilometre. Each step in the kilometre acquired its own number, its exact position in space, and its exact position in time.

For many weeks he was content. Contrary to Whitehead’s assertion that he did not understand the crucial importance of time he had actually seen to the heart of the matter and devised a method of survival superior to anything the older man had dreamt of. Or so he thought. With a sense of calm assurance he was able to deal with every second of the day. Admittedly the Sirens gave their assistance and it was comforting to hear them and see them and know their infallibility ten times in the day. But what of the moments in between? And anyway, they spoke to all men who chose to listen. He was actually setting up his own system and acquiring a degree of independence. His pace was light and springy and he even hummed to himself or broke into a tuneless whistle. Until he met Schroder.

Ivan Schroder was Henry’s predecessor and had been driven out by Alf Whitehead on the pretext of an allergic reaction to the smell of Morgan’s Pomade, with which gunk Schroder was wont to plaster his greying hair in the hope of arresting depigmentation and alopecia. Henry encountered him one day whilst filing past the Atomic Clock where it lay radiating and pulsing in its glass sarcophagus.

“Aren’t you the imbecile Whitehead’s trying to dispose of?”

“That’s it. Henry Fuckit. You must be Schroder, the bloody idiot he got rid of before me. Howzit?”

They stood with bowed heads for a moment longer and then passed along the corridor and out into sunlight.

“I suppose he’s told you some of his crackpot theories. Drivel. Cracks himself up to be the greatest authority on the subject in the Dockyard. Got the intellectual acumen of a hospital porter.”

“Oh? Is that bad? I don’t know any hospital porters. What’s distinctive about a hospital porter?”

“You’ve never been to hospital? Consider yourself most fortunate. Two years ago I was in Groote Schuur for an appendectomy. Nearly gave me a hysterectomy their anatomy was so bad. Anyway I was wheeled about by porters and a porter was sent to shave my nether regions prior to surgery. First struck me a blow with a rubber mallet, then nearly amputated me and finally stole my comb. And blind drunk too. The lowest form of life on earth, these porters and orderlies, barely recognisable as human.”

“Lower than Stores Officers?”

“What! Far lower. That’s why I make the comparison with Whitehead, who I consider to be of subhuman intelligence when it comes to the heart of the matter. Can you believe this? He is of the opinion that time can be controlled by measuring it! I was at great pains, out of the goodness of my heart and in the interest of Truth, to explain to him the folly of his ways. To no avail. He has discovered an opium that soothes and calms but will eventually leave him a miserable husk of a man. Yes, the days may pass in a kind of slow oblivion to pain but in fifteen years, when he must retire, he will look back on the days and hours and find they have disappeared. His life will have disappeared. Now the moments linger, plump and full. But then… Then he will be a man without a memory. Twenty years of his life will have been shrivelled into nothing - a blankness.”

“You’re from a different school of thought?”

“I am. And when he manages to get rid of you, and if you come to be a Verification Officer, I shall educate in the correct management of Time and Existence. Until then, beware your soul.”

The conversation with Schroder had a strange effect on Henry. He began to make mistakes. He would suddenly find himself lost among the aisles, not knowing where he was or what time of day it was. Panic clutched at him and he had to rush blindly up and down the passageways until he reached a landmark and was able to orientate himself. Then, sweating with anxiety he hurried to the office, checked his watch with the clock and gazed out at the Sirens, desperate for their next call to reassure him that all was well.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

In those five years at the Dockyard Henry read a great deal. He was also able to pursue his interests in art, poetry, drama, philosophy and all manner of other subjects under the sun. He also engaged in lively conversation with the associates of what he called ‘The DY Academy of Piss Artists and Crackpots’. This Academy boasted a surprisingly large membership that included some exceptional artists, intellectuals and scientists. It was unfortunate that after some eighteen months of attrition Henry was no longer able to count Alf Whitehead as one of these highbrow comrades. They reached a point at which it was mutually agreed to refrain from further verbal intercourse, and although this was probably a wise decision it was something of a defeat. Happily, there was no such problem with Harry Bergson.

They only met for a chat every week or two but on these occasions they enjoyed a pleasant easy-going rapport, and Bergson gradually introduced Henry to the work he was engaged in. Directed by his vital impulses, his flashes of intuition, he had discovered a force hitherto unrecognised by modern science. A form of electromagnetic energy, it was only available to the discredited few. Psychics, mystics, spiritualists, lunatics, American Indians, Australian aborigines, Bushmen - from these ranks there could be found the odd individual capable of communicating via this force, which he had named Oxyrhynchal Astonishment, or Oxyaston, in recognition of the original stimulus.

“The first time I heard about this place my curiosity was aroused instantly.” They were walking towards the oldest store in Simonstown, situated just above high water mark at the far end of the West Yard. “It was originally just a deep cave amongst the rocks on the beach, used for hundreds, maybe thousands of years by the Hottentots and Bushmen who migrated up and down this coast. In those days the sea and the land were teeming with life.” They arrived at an iron gate set in a wall that had been heavily weathered over many years of rain and sand being thrown at it by the driving wind coming off the sea. Bergson unlocked the gate and they entered the dimly lit space beyond. The rough concrete floor seemed to climb gradually away from them and Henry could just make out the blackened surface of rock that formed the roof above. The repository was empty except for three stacks of old wooden railway sleepers to their right. “Never been a good place for a store - too damp, so close to the sea.” They proceeded for some forty paces until the roof dropped down to a mere two metres in height and they were confronted by the back wall. It was evident that the door facing them had been let into the brickwork in recent times. “When I stood here seven years ago I knew there had to be something special behind this wall.” He unlocked the door and fumbled inside for a switch. “Do you feel anything?”

“Well… not really.” Henry tried to be honest. “I mean, it’s certainly atmospheric, like out of some rather far-fetched tale of adventure. But beyond that… Well, I suppose…”

Bergson found the light switch and a narrow passage between the rocks was lit up ahead of them. A naked bulb hung from one of the timber supports. “I got them to break through the wall and then open up this tunnel. We had to do a lot of propping and bracing, as you can see.” The passage was narrow and low and now sloping downward and following a slow curve to the right. After twenty or thirty metres it suddenly opened up and Henry joined Bergson in a pear-shaped chamber formed in the solid rock. In the yellow electric light the walls looked exceptionally smooth and clean and light, as if coated with nacre. With a sudden shift of perception he imagined himself to be standing within a giant breast. The contours were soft and sensual and drew his eye toward the nipple. The nipple had penetrated the sheath of marble and left a neat circle of black. He fell to his knees and, like a hungry piglet, propelled himself forward. Flat on his stomach he thrust his head into the orifice and breathed deeply.

Harry Bergson had been hoping for some show of appreciation but was taken aback by such an extravagant display. It put him in mind of a scene from a poem by Michael Ondaatjie that had recently come to his attention. The poet described how, on the Colombo docks saying goodbye to a recently married couple, his father, jealous of his mother’s articulate emotion, had dived into the waters of the harbour and swum after the ship waving farewell. This behaviour was similarly over the top and he was contemplating taking hold of an ankle and dragging him back when, of his own volition, Henry reversed out and got to his feet. He was wildly excited.

“Jesus, Harry baby, I can’t believe it! Have you smelt it? I thought I could smell it the moment we came in here. It’s the same, that marvellous, subtle sweet-spiciness. Exactly the same as in the cave at Ingachini. I can never forget it.”

“Well, this is incredible. And yet I’m not really surprised. This is further confirmation.”

Bergson was becoming almost as animated as Henry. “Of course I’ve smelt it, that’s the scent of Oxyaston, there’s nothing else like it in all the world. Now we can pinpoint the Rhodesian Vent and fine-tune our measurements and calculations. Henry, this is a great leap forward.”

He turned away, bent down at the passage entrance and dragged what looked like a radar antenna toward the orifice. He positioned the instrument facing directly into the aperture, adjusted the cables snaking across the floor and stood up.

“Right, there we are. Our receivers and transmitters and other equipment are in the Radar and Electronic Shop. That’s where we do all the monitoring. Now we’re really going to make progress!”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za>/a>.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

It was clear from the outset that the relationship between Henry Fuckit and Alfred Whitehead was going to be similar to the relationship between a grit of sand and an oyster. The constant nagging irritation would result in a many-layered product greatly adding to the value of the sand but being of doubtful benefit to the shellfish. Innumerable conversations were to take place in that office on the second floor, most of them centred on the subject of Time, and The Passage of Time.

Alf Whitehead:
You do understand the theory of Relativity, don’t you?

Henry:
Of course. Both. My grandfather was doorman at the Savoy in London back in nineteen-voetsak and he opened a door for Albert Einstein. It was a momentous moment, not for my grandfather, who didn’t know a slide rule from an anal thermometer, but for Herr Egghead. Just imagine the implications if my grandfather had not opened that door.

AW:
Somebody else would have opened it. Or he would have opened it himself.

Henry:
Precisely. You come up with two possibilities without even thinking about it. If we accept the possibility of my grandfather not opening the door as he was required to then the ENTIRE HISTORY OF SCIENCE could have been altered. No. THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THAT MOMENT.

AW:
Oh for goodness sake! You’re trying to tie my testicles in a knot. You know perfectly well that once the moving finger has written etcetera, etcetera. I wish you wouldn’t introduce any of your degenerate relations into serious conversation.

Henry:
Yah, but haven’t you heard about South Africa’s secret space project? At this very moment a spaceship…

AW:
PLEASE!! (Shouts in a frantic whisper, face contorted in alarm. Puts finger to lips and goes to window. Leans out then quickly pulls back.) Just as I thought, you bloody fool. You know their rules about discussing secret projects. They’re always trying to catch terrorists and communists, and spies and rooinek traitors. Hand me that hook. (Henry hands him the six-foot window opener standing in corner of room. Leans out and pulls. A scream is heard simultaneously with a clattering and bumping sound.) That’ll teach them. Bloody Ape disguised as a Monkey window cleaner. Now where were we? Alright, but keep your voice down.

Henry:
They’ve launched a spaceship with one person on board: twenty year old Shadrach. His twin brother Meshach they’ve got in a cage at Apollofontein. The craft will progressively accelerate until it reaches a velocity of 372 000 miles per second. That’s really fucking fast. Initially they aimed at Alpha Crucis, the brightest star in Crux Australis, but then chickened out and are now headed for the middle of the Coalsack Nebula for fear of hitting something. The spaceship will travel for half a year and then do a U-turn and come back to earth. Obviously when it gets back after a year Meshach will celebrate his twenty-first birthday with a double helping of putu and five gallons of skokiaan. But Shadrach, South Africa’s first astronaut and the world’s first time traveller, will find that he’s only eleven years old. He will have shrunk in stature, his big manly voice will have turned again to childish treble and his foreskin will have regenerated to its undiminished proportion and elasticity. Our top scientists recently gained access to a special version of the Special Theory of Relativity and have come up with their own conclusion. They talk about contracting time. If this experiment is successful the world will sit up and realise that we’re not just a bunch of fascist shitheads with brains the size of peas.

AW:
I see. Mmm. Yes, it makes sense. The implications boggle the credulity. Our leaders could remain young forever. Just a little sabbatical, a time trip, and the years would fall away.

Henry:
For the select few it would mean immortality. Only one problem though.

AW:
What’s that?

Henry:
The K factor. Heard the one about the Englishman, the German, the Japanese and the Kaffir? They’re each given three iron balls and told to do something with them. I forget how it goes exactly… Anyway the other three do something or other each… I think the Englishman balances one on top of the other and the Jap copies him and the German… Anyway. But the Kaffir - this is where we get the K factor - the Kaffir loses one and breaks the other two.

AW:
Yes I’ve heard it several times, in different versions in both official languages and yours is far and away the poorest rendition. I don’t see any profit in trivializing a serious discussion with badly told jokes of dubious wit.

Henry:
Do you think humour and science are incompatible? I suppose you must, from the disapproving way you tighten your lips in imitation of a cat’s anus. The point is the South African astronaut is BLACK and brilliantly imaginative and with a sense of humour light years beyond the grasp of the bush professors on the ground at Appollofontein. ANYTHING MIGHT HAPPEN.

AW:
This might or might not be true. You know that I suspect you of being a bloody liar. A bloody wisecrack. Be that as it may. I can elevate myself above the slings and arrows of swinish pricks. My thoughts dwell in the realms of metaphysics and pure science. Let us resume the discussion having, in a spirit of magnanimity, wiped your filthy slate clean on the strict understanding that you refrain from all further attempts at levity or frivolity. I am your senior in years, position, wisdom and decency. Kindly refer to me as Mr Whitehead and not Alf, Alfred or Fred. Are we in agreement?

Henry:
Yah sure. Anything to make you feel good. Mr Whitehead. Sir. Just call me Fuckit.

AW:
Very well then. That seems to have cleared the air a bit. Now let us discuss The Measurement of Time, a subject of central importance to each and every member of civilian staff working in this Dockyard. Damn the imposition! (Annoyance at the phone ringing on his desk.) You answer it. If it’s anything to do with work tell them I’m in the midst of a total re-inventorization of screws, brass, self-tapping, and can’t possibly be disturbed.

(Henry picks up phone. Speaks slowly and clearly.)

Henry:
Central Store. Assistant Stores officer Henry Fuckit at your service. Good day. Sentrale Stoor. Assistent Stoor beampte Hendrik Fokdit op jou diens. Goeie dag… Oh, hello… Yes Madam. He’s just been in conference with the Admiral but I can see if he’s available… Yes… okay… I’ve got it. I’ll make sure he gets the message immediately. Thank you. Goodbye. (Replaces phone).

AW:
My wife?

Henry:
Yes. She says don’t forget to make the copies of her knitting patterns and also have you phoned your sister in Canada to find out whether they received the photographs.

AW:
Damn it! I’d clean forgotten the copies.

Henry:
She also said you have a head like a sieve. Mr Whitehead. Sir.

AW:
Ahem. Yes, well that’s… No damn business to… as we were saying. Thank you for the message. As we were saying, The Measurement of Time goes back to time immemorial. Our first thinking ancestors became aware that the sun comes up and the sun goes down, the sun comes up and the sun goes down, the sun comes up and the sun goes down. Yes, and it was the movement of the sun, or shall we say the APPARENT movement of the sun, for as you might know the sun does not move about the earth but the earth rotates on its axis and gives the false impression of the sun being in motion about us, east to west, when in fact it is we who are moving west to east. The appearance of the sun moving across the sky having made man aware of the passage of time. The first clock was the sun in the sky and days were regulated accordingly. Now we are at present talking in terms of SOLAR time which I will define in precise and cogent phraseology as time measured by the Earth’s daily rotation relative to the Sun resulting in Apparent Solar time which is the time indicated by a sundial marking the position of the Sun relative to the meridian upon which the sundial is located. So far so good and all reasonable and within the grasp of the meanest intelligence. Now the motion of the Sun relative to the stars is not uniform; neither is the orbit of the Earth truly circular but indeed elliptical, both of which factors having resulted in variations in Apparent Solar Time during the course of one year. To remove these damnably irritating little discrepancies we have devised Mean Solar Time which I will now endeavour to explain but require you to sharpen your concentration and to hang upon each and every word in order not to render the time and effort I am expending in elucidation totally null and void. (Henry slaps face and pinches ear lobes.) These variations are corrected by turning our gaze from the Sun to the stars in order to obtain Sidereal Time, Sidereal Time being measured again in accordance with the rotation of the Earth but this time relative to the stars and not the Sun. Unfortunately matters are complicated by the fact that a Sidereal Day is four minutes shorter than a Mean Solar Day and a mathematical formula beyond your grasp must be applied via Sidereal Time to Apparent Solar Time in order to arrive at Mean Solar Time. Yes?

Henry:
Two questions. First, if there’s a four-minute difference between the two systems what’s to stop them going completely out of synch after a few years; and second…

AW:
Enough! If you wish to ask questions you may submit them in writing. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Now the Mean Solar Day is divided as follows: one Mean Solar Day equals twenty four Mean Solar Hours; one Mean Solar Hour equals sixty Mean Solar Minutes; one Mean Solar Minute equals sixty Mean Solar Seconds and, ipso facto, one Mean Solar Day comprises 86 400 Mean Solar Seconds. The Mean Solar Day is reckoned to begin at midnight and run through twenty four hours, or to comprise two twelve hour portions, one from midnight to noon and the other from noon to midnight. In the twenty-four-hour system the hours and minutes are given as a four-digit number. For example 0028 means twenty-eight minutes past midnight and 1240 means forty minutes past noon. But, and here we encounter a problem of disastrous proportions, 2400 of September 30 is the same as 0000 of September 31. Now in the twelve-hour system…

Henry:
Excuse me.

AW:
Damn it! I said no questions.

Henry:
This isn’t a question, it’s a point of order. Thirty days hath September.

AW:
What? For God’s sake don’t be so bloody pedantic. The twelve-hour system has twelve hours from midnight to noon designated ante meridian, and twelve hours from noon to midnight designated post meridian. However an even more serious ambiguity arises. 12 AM and 12 PM are mutually indistinguishable unless one adds the word ‘noon’ or ‘midnight’ to 12. I shall now proceed to discuss in some detail Greenwich Mean Time, Ephemeris Time, Co-ordinated Universal Time, and the Rolls Royce in time, Atomic Time. Now GMT or Greenwich…

Henry:
Please! For Christ’s sake, this is INKRREDIBLY boring.

AW:
Boring? BORING? Understand me correctly: do I understand you correctly? Are you saying that you find the most important aspect of your life BORING? I can only put this down to subhuman intelligence. Also you are new here. You are immature, you have not learned. I pity you. You are defenceless. Arm yourself before it is too late. How are you to cope with the years of emptiness that lie ahead? You speak of boredom? Every day of every week of every month of every year will be a nightmare of choking black boredom. Addiction, insanity, suicide. That is what awaits the man not equipped to deal with time.

Henry:
Alright, alright. Tell me about Atomic Time.

AW:
Atomic Time? Very well then but heed my warning. I see danger in your path. There is something amoral and reckless about you. And you are coarse. Be that as it may, you have been warned. Atomic Time. Yes, now Atomic Time is pure and beautiful and the contemplation of its crisp precision never fails to uplift my spirits and help me place one foot in front of the other. Unlike Solar Time and Sidereal Time and Ephemeris Time, which are dynamical and involve the motion of bodies such as Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars and Satellites, Atomic Time is measured by cycles of electromagnetic radiation. There are some fifty-one Atomic Clocks scattered about the world and one of them right here in Simonstown Dockyard. They are all independent but regularly compare recordings and it is conservatively estimated that after a period of three thousand years between them there will be a combined difference in readings of less than one second. This is what makes life tolerable, knowing that every instant of our day is determined and there can be no doubt about the order of each individual succession, in the progress from seven thirty to four thirty, of thirty two thousand four hundred seconds. (Long pause in which they regard each other.)

Henry:
Boss?

AW:
Yes. And don’t call me ‘Boss’.

Henry:
Don’t take offence but can I ask you a personal question?

AW:
Certainly not. I don’t want any of your bloody insulting rubbish.

Henry:
It helps to pass some of those dreary seconds. Alright. How about showing me the Atomic Clock?

AW:
Not now. All in good time.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

The driver saw him from a long way off and had plenty of time to slow down and come to a halt where he stood beside the road in the stones and the dust. The three men in the cab were Portuguese.

“Where you go?”

“Windhoek.”

They were going back to Jo’burg with a load of fish in big insulated crates already dripping with condensation. For ten rand they would take him as far as Keetmanshoop. Shit! These Porro bastards. He glanced in the direction of Luderitz and in the distance saw a vehicle on the black ribbon of road.

“I’ve only got five.” He held up the note and they conversed in Portuguese. A hand reached out and took his money and he heaved up Lady Provider and clambered onto the back of the truck amongst the crates. They pulled away as he settled himself. He could see the long dark outline of the vehicle. The gap between it and him had been closing steadily but now was widening as it slowed and swung off the tar onto the rough track. He watched its progress, a cloud of dust trailing behind, and as it receded something inside him began to whimper.

—

This was how Henry’s first twenty-five years ended. It took five years in the Dockyard for him to become attuned, and for Bergson’s work to reach a sufficiently advanced stage. Only then, in 1975, was he able to undertake his expedition north and complete the first phase of his odyssey.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

He got up and went to the window and looked out to sea. “Looks like the weather’s changing, too,” he said. Henry got to his feet to look.

“Looks alright to me. How can you tell?”

“You see that high cirrus? The long thin streaks and swirls? There’s a cold front on the way; and look, the wind’s changed.”

Henry sat down. It was past eleven and his thoughts began to occupy themselves with the lighting up of his pipe and the opening of his bottom drawer. Bergson turned away from the window and resumed his seat.

“What was it that caused you to see the light, Mr Bergson?” Henry asked politely. “What prompted the Copernican Revolution? What transported you from the chill periphery to the radiant core? Your conversion, Sir. As a student of the varieties of metaphysical transformation I earnestly await the particulars of your metamorphosis. And I’m specifically interested in the catalyst that brought about transmutation from one state to the other. Proceed, if you will.”

“Thank you. If you’ll allow me, I’ll do just that. It happened in a very low-key, mundane sort of way. You’ll be disappointed if you’re hoping for something dramatic. It was a Saturday afternoon, about a year after my wife had left with the children and I was cleaning out drawers and cupboards. The house was sold and I was in the process of moving to a flat. I came across a pile of old birthday cards and Christmas cards and added them to the pile of useless junk that had been hoarded over the years. A card fell to the floor and when I stooped to pick it up I noticed there was a religious or sentimental verse printed inside. You know the type?”

“I do. Something on the lines of a nice little aphorism like, ‘A true gift comes from the heart and not the purse.’ Or a lovely heartfelt verse like,

‘One brilliant sun in a sky of blue
One perfect rose sparkling with dew,
One golden friendship - tried and true
Reminds me that there’s just one YOU!’

And there’s endless Roman good sense: ‘If you are wise you will mingle one thing with the other: not hoping without doubt, not doubting without hope.’ Of course, the Bible is an inexhaustible source for this kind of thing. Yes, I know the type of thing. What did your one say?”

Bergson paused awhile to allow Henry’s piffle to die away, dissipate, drift out of the window. “I picked it up and read the words. ‘Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there I am. Let not him who seeks cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished. Astonished he shall reach the Kingdom, and having reached the Kingdom, he shall rest.’”

“Aha!” Henry cried, snapping his fingers in the air. “I’d put my cock and both balls on a block that that’s one of the Oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus! I know it well. My uncle Aubrey Witherspoon was very fond of it.”

Surprise had proliferated all over Bergson’s face. “Well, I’m glad such a cultivated person as your uncle shares my appreciation. The moment I read these words I knew my life was changed. You know the expression, “The scales fell from my eyes”? That was how I suddenly saw the world that Saturday afternoon. I was astonished. Everything was so much simpler. It was all there, all I needed to do was use my eyes, my senses. Do I sound like a maniac?”

“No, no, no! Rest assured, you’re in good company. I myself have had several mystical experiences, usually whilst in a state of mild drunkenness. I take it you hadn’t been drinking? In concrete terms how did this altered state of consciousness affect your life? Did you immediately say ‘Fuck The Mutual’ and resign?”

“Yes. On the Monday I handed in my resignation and a huge weight fell from me.” He smiled, almost proudly, at the recollection of his bold and momentous step. “It was all so very strange and inexplicable. ‘Turn the stone, cleave the wood, and I am there.’ Just how those simple words could have triggered such a profound change remains a mystery to me. And since that time the voice has fallen silent, permanently, I hope.”

“Most interesting, I must say. But how did you make the transition from life insurance and pensions to naval dockyards? More inspiration?”

“In a way. After I resigned I didn’t know what I was going to do but I was largely unconcerned about the future. I was so happy to be free, you understand. Then one day in the week, the weather was perfect, I took a drive to Boulders - you know where that is? A mile or two beyond the Dockyard, just before Seaforth. I was pretty well oblivious of the Dockyard at that stage. I went for a swim, I’ve always been a keen swimmer, and then lay back in the hot sun on one of the huge brown boulders that slope into the water. It was around midday. An old Morris Minor pulled up in the little gravel car park above me and I saw two men jump out and come hurrying towards me. In their fifties, they were fit-looking and businesslike, wearing nothing but swimming briefs and with their diving goggles already strapped to their heads, ready to be pulled down over their eyes. Snorkels dangled from their head-straps. One man humped an inflated inner tube with a net, and of course they both carried flippers and screwdrivers. They greeted me cheerily and then, within two minutes of having arrived, they were kicking their way out into deeper water where the thick kelp lay. For ten minutes their flippers waved in the air and disappeared, time and again as they dived, and when they surfaced the perlemoen would splash into the net. I helped them carry the net to the car and as they stood at the boot drying themselves we chatted for five minutes, no more. Then they were off.”

“Dockyard mateys, I presume?” Henry liked the idea of going for a dive on a nice day and he resolved to apply his mind to finding a means to that end. “An efficient use of the lunch-break.”

“I thought so too. When they had gone it suddenly struck me that I had just received my second vital impulse. Those two artisans, in the course of a few minutes’ conversation, had created for me a picture of the Dockyard that appealed to my every fibre. I knew with unshakeable conviction that this was a place where I could never be bored and I would always feel free. I drove straight to East Gate and enquired of the guards where to apply for a job. Within two hours I had filled in forms, been interviewed, and was appointed to the position of Assistant Storeman. That was nine years ago.”

“And obviously this ‘impulse’, as you call it, this flash of intuition, proved worthy of your confidence. You never regretted your decision to recklessly embark on an entirely new career at the age of thirty-six?”

“Never.” Bergson was adamant. “I’ve never entertained a moment’s doubt or regret. And I hope that doesn’t make me an unimaginative bore.” He chuckled at the notion of Harry Bergson being an unimaginative bore. “No, Henry, I must say I enjoy myself here. And I’m a better person in my private life, too. No more bullshitting, for one thing. And I married again.”

“Mmm.” Henry looked disapproving. “Become a bit of a habit, has it? But it’s no concern of mine what another man chooses to do to keep his sexual apparatus in good working order. What interests me is the activity you engage in and orchestrate here in this Bosch-like landscape of bizarre fantasies.”

“Yes, I was coming to that. But, as I said, this is only an introduction, so I shall give you no more than the sketchiest of pictures. Over time we shall be able to enter into as much detail as you wish. Suffice it to say that my actions and interests are driven and motivated by my vital impulses - and, let it be said, there are many of them. Over the past nine years I have sought out and nurtured many kindred spirits here, and some fascinating work is under way in this dockyard. Fascinating.”

“I can well believe it.” Henry had risen to his feet and, standing at the window, was looking down with cinematographic dispassion upon the unfolding of a minor dramatic scene. An experiment was taking place on the edge of the Dry Dock. Four large meteorological balloons had been filled with hydrogen and were tugging at the ropes attached to a gondola. Two Malay painters were kneeling in prayer as a small crowd looked on. They rose to their feet, put on their shoes and climbed into the gondola. Bergson joined Henry at the window.

“Ah yes. See that chap in the brown dust-coat? That’s Eddie Robinson. He’s the Paint shop storeman. Forever coming up with ingenious inventions. This time he’s trying to perfect an APG. Could save a lot of time and money, making all that cumbersome scaffolding obsolete.”

“APG?”

“Airborne Paint Gondola. There they go. Seems to be working better now. Last time he used helium and some bungling fool let go the wrong rope and it required a major air and sea operation to rescue the painters.” They turned away and sat down again. “Robinson’s also a renowned expert on heraldry. You saw all those coats of arms painted above the waterline? Every ship that’s been into dry dock over the past forty years has its shield on the wall. There’s a small team of painters who do nothing but heraldry. If you were interested you could spend years making a study of medieval history, armorial design, heraldic nomenclature, the rules, regulations and guidelines set down by the International Academy of Heraldry. The conventional use of colours and tinctures in the decorative display of armorial paraphernalia could occupy your attention day in and day out. Like Robinson, if you so desired, you could immerse yourself in signs and symbols, seals, shields, standards and stamps. Not to mention mosaics, motifs, mottoes and monograms. And what of badges and banners, blazons, bars and bezants? The field is vast, festooned with flags and fesses and fleurs-de-lis, emblems, ensigns, escutcheons and escarbuncles.”

Bergson reined in his galloping lyricism and returned to the central theme of his introductory prologue. “Yes, fascinating. But there are any number of these diverse microcosms in the Dockyard. The Paint Shop is only one such engrossing world. What I have in mind for you is something quite different and far more important.”

Henry’s eyebrows shot up, his curiosity aroused. “Oh yes?”

Bergson gestured towards the huge map covering the wall. “This is my main work. This is my vocation. I am in the process of charting a subterranean network of tunnels that are capable of carrying psychic energy worldwide. Please. I must ask you to keep an open mind.” Henry’s face had twisted into a sceptical sneer. “Once you understand what it is we are dealing with I know you cannot fail to…”

He did not finish the sentence, for The Sirens had begun too moan and scream. When the sound had died away they both got to their feet and moved towards the door. “Henry, I’m convinced you’re the right material but it’s going to take time to become attuned to the vital work we are doing. Just be patient and enjoy yourself.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

“Hello Henry. Nice to meet you at last. Come in, take a seat. Hope I haven’t dragged you away from something important.”

So this was the man himself. Of average height he appeared fit and wiry, must be all that swimming. His dark brown hair was thick and wavy and had no trace of grey in it. A well-tended French moustache made him look slightly foreign and Henry judged him to be in his mid forties. He had an easy, even familiar manner and his humorous brown eyes looked with a disconcerting directness, as if they already knew the sight of Henry well.

Glancing about the office he realised it was directly above that of his and Whitehead’s. The wall facing the window was almost entirely covered by an enormous world map dotted with coloured pins and criss-crossed with interconnecting lines drawn in fluorescent pink. He was pleased to note the absence of that old arsehole the State President. The wall behind the Director’s desk was blank except for a framed reproduction that Henry recognised in a flash. An enthusiastic admirer of Paul Klee’s work he knew it well - the Mystical City Scene, from around 1920. On the opposite wall to the right of the door stood a large bookcase loaded with interesting looking reading matter - they certainly didn’t look like volumes on Stores Control.

“I thought we’d have a little chat and begin to get to know each other. Jack Ponchielli told me about you some time back, said you might want to join us. He told me quite a bit about you and you sounded ideal material. Jack’s a good sort. A fine musician, too.”

Henry liked the look of this man but knew how unreliable first impressions could be. And there were many questions that needed to be answered. A fog of mystery was preventing his uncompromisingly sceptical mind from finding the logic behind what was happening to him. Bergson detected caution in his reticence and continued.

“By way of an explanation, a kind of introductory prologue, I thought I’d give you some background information about myself. Then I’ll tell you about some of the things we get up to in this dockyard. I understand you once worked for an insurance company?”

The sudden unexpected mention of the two words elicited an involuntary response in Henry. His body jerked as if it had been subjected to a high voltage jolt, his face contorted in anguish, his pupils dilated and his pulse raced.

“Yes. It was the briefest of careers but it has affected me for life. You could say it was a formative experience that told me, quite unequivocally that Henry Fuckit and gainful employment are as incompatible as fire and water. But why do you mention this unpleasant topic?”

Bergson sat slightly askance to his desk, tipping comfortably in his chair and rocking almost imperceptibly. “Well, I mention it because I share this in common with you: I too used to be in the insurance world.” Henry was mildly surprised. This man didn’t look as if he had ever suffered brain damage. “Unlike yours, my career spanned several years. Sixteen years, in fact.”

“Holy shit!” Henry was horrified.

“Quite so. It was a terrible episode in my life. More than an episode. Sixteen years! I can give long and painful testimony to the degrading depths to which I sank before I was saved nine years ago.”

“Oh no!” The disappointment in Henry’s voice was obvious.

“What’s the matter? Oh! Ha, ha, ha.” He laughed fruitily and then cut his mirth short. “You think I might be a born-again Christian, do you? Bloody insulting! Don’t you look at people’s eyes? When you gaze into a born-again Christian’s eyes you encounter two layers: first the superficial sincerity and sweetness, then the intolerance and suspicion of a bigot. And behind that, nothing - a terrifying vacuum.”

“Well, actually… er, um.” Henry was embarrassed but relieved.

“Alright, forget it. I was telling you about my insurance career. The Old Mutual, the biggest life assurance and pension company in South Africa. I was at Head Office at Mutual Park in Pinelands. A vast double-storey box of a building set in extensive grounds with its own swimming pool, squash and tennis courts, rugby and hockey fields, athletics track, clubhouse. It had two restaurants and a recreation hall for dances and functions. Even its own railway station on the commuter line.”

“Sounds intimidatingly impersonal. There must have been hundreds of people working there.” Henry didn’t like the sound of this place.

“Thousands. But it wasn’t intended to be impersonal and dehumanising. If you became a Mutual Man it was supposed to be for life. You joined the family and every aspect of your life was catered for. I joined The Mutual when I came out of the army at twenty, and I was there for sixteen years. I was ambitious, I did well, and everybody thought I was top management material. But from the very outset there was a small voice in my head asking subversive questions.”

“I can well imagine. You know, I’ve thought about this on many occasions and come to the conclusion that most people never hear that voice, or if they do it’s in a foreign tongue and they’re unable to translate the questions.” Henry was beginning to relax, and when he was relaxed he became generous with his own perceptions and insights. “But of those who do understand what’s being said the majority are driven to throttle the voice immediately, silencing it forever. Only…”

“Yes, I see you know what I’m talking about.” Bergson also saw the danger of letting Henry get carried away with a subject that was dear to his heart. “The small voice asked me whether I really wanted to devote my life to The Old Mutual. I began to engage in a dialogue. What else? What was wrong with becoming an efficient cog in a big machine? What was wrong with earning a good salary and becoming a respected member of the family? What was wrong with securing a good pension and safeguarding my old age? The voice would sneer at me, chastising me for not having the courage to get out and experience life more fully whilst I was still young. I had some friends in those days, good friends, maybe the best friends I’ve ever had, who were heeding their voices and urging me to do the same. But did I follow their advice? No. Not then.” It was clear from his expression that these recollections were strongly coloured with regret. “I heard that voice every day of my life for sixteen years. I explained, I argued, I prevaricated. Whilst I still had them, I promised my friends I was biding my time before breaking loose. I pretended I was one of them, a free agent with an independent mind and a happy-go-lucky spirit. But it was a sham. My whole life became a sham. After a few years I had become a compulsive liar, a pathological confabulator. At first it started as humorous exaggeration, light-hearted tall stories told for the sake of entertainment. Then I began to see these creations in my mind as a way of impressing and manipulating. I began to lose track of what I had said to whom. I even began to believe some of my own embellishments and fabrications.”

“What kind of things did you lie about?” As an inveterate manipulator of reality himself Henry was curious to hear more about someone else’s ability to invent.

“Oh, at first, it was pretty harmless stuff. It was more like boastfulness than downright mendacity. My sporting and academic achievements, progress at work, sexual prowess - that sort of thing.”

Henry was not impressed. “Sounds as if you were a bullshitter. Plenty of those around. On a far more creative level is the teller of tall stories. You tell a story that is fantastic or exaggerated but almost plausible. The skill is in placing it just beyond the bounds of logic, so that an intelligent listener is able to pick up the clue that makes the story nonsense or an impossibility. The drawback comes when you have an audience too stupid to get it. You find yourself faced with an irritating dilemma - do you allow them to swallow the crap you’ve been dishing up, and thereby turn yourself into a cheap liar, or do you labour on, heaping one absurdity upon another until they finally see what you’re up to, and in the process turn subtlety and wit into coarse buffoonery?”

“Mmm. No choice, really.” To his surprise Bergson felt slightly piqued at having been described as an ex-bullshitter. Then he smiled ruefully. “Yes, I became a habitual bullshitter.” He laughed at the turn of phrase. “I was a Mutual Man trying to preserve a part of me which was supposed to be Bohemian - and true to my nature. It was a disastrous process. My friends became impatient, exasperated and disappointed. One by one they drifted away, avoiding me when they could, confining themselves to platitudes and frivolous banter when unable to elude me. And I went through two wives.”

“Wow! So you’ve been married three times, have you? That sounds a real mess. I’ve never even been married once and I reckon life’s complicated enough. Three times? Jesus! Any children?”

“Yes, two from the second marriage.” His voice had gone a bit flat and he spoke quickly, as if to hurry on, away from these painful memories. “My first wife never recovered and even now is in and out of Valkenberg. My second wife, despite being an intelligent woman, took refuge and comfort in a sect where they sing, clap, shout in tongues and then fall down laughing.”

“Shite man, that’s bad. And yet you seem to have been able to shrug off the burden of guilt. I mean, at least on the surface, you don’t appear to be eating your heart out with remorse.”

Bergson wasn’t happy with the way this part of the conversation was going and he was determined to move on to firmer ground. “You know, all those years I remained faithful to The Old Mutual I was systematically abusing my friends and loved ones. And of course I was destroying myself. I gradually lost the ability to discern the difference between reality and delusion, truth and falsehood, honesty and deceit, duty and self-interest. Because of this blurring of moral outlines, I was able to justify any action, no matter how base. But all the time the dialogue was continuing, and when my second wife finally walked out, and I was left isolated and estranged, the voice took on an identity separate to my own.”

“How were you coping at work?” Henry found this emerging picture of a man descending into psychological chaos particularly interesting, having had his own small share of the same experience. “Had the insidious and gradual reduction in your ability to engage in meaningful social relations followed a parallel course in the workplace? Surely your ability to call on inner resources had been progressively lessening. Your shallow and inappropriate emotional responses towards family and friends must have manifested themselves in some way towards your colleagues as well. Did you ever act in a hebephrenic fashion? Was your behaviour considered foolish or bizarre? Were you beginning to entertain false beliefs and false perceptions? Or, on the contrary, had you become catatonic, often assuming a statuesque position and remaining in a state of almost complete immobility for long periods. Mutism? Did you go for days without opening your mouth, not even saying good morning to your seniors? And possibly there were unpredictable episodes when you impulsively burst into excessive motor activity and excitement. Did you ever physically attack items of office furniture? Did you express yourself scatologically? I can well imagine your frightful condition, unable to engage in rational thought and swinging wildly from delusions of persecution one day, to delusions of grandeur the next. And all the time hallucinating like an acid freak on the third day of a pop festival. Was it like that?”

“No.” Harry Bergson sighed indulgently. He was a wise man, and with wisdom comes patience. “No Henry, not quite like that. It was only at work that I seemed able to function normally. I realised later that this was because there was a tacit understanding in place. No one ever spoke about it but it was acceptable, even expected of one, to be a bombastic fraud. I was alright at work. It was when I left work that the nightmare recommenced. I won’t trouble you with the painful details any more. You now have an idea of where I was at, after sixteen years working for The Old Mutual. And then one day my life changed.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za

Author of Pop-splat sells his book cover for $10 000

A South African author sets a new trend by selling the artwork for the cover of his novel

South African author Ian Martin is about to put up for auction the cover artwork for his novel Pop-splat. The starting price on Ebay will be set at $10 000.

The artwork consists of four splats illustrating the infamous ‘monkey scene’ in the book:

Rose also screamed from behind the glass.
“Matt, a baby! She’s got a baby!”
And so she did. The little thing was desperately trying to stay on its mother’s back, its arms about her neck. Matt grabbed its tail and yanked it off, and it instinctively sank its needle teeth into his thumb. More pain and damage to his person!
He punched its head away with his left fist and hurled the little devil against the cabin wall. Again he had it by the tail, swung it up high overhead and brought it down like cracking a whip, head first onto the concrete step. POP-SPLAT!

***

Martin explains how he produced the artwork for the cover:
“The designer needed a blood splat. I bought a toy monkey - very cute - soaked its head in red roof paint, held it by the tail, and whacked it down on a large sheet of paper as if I was trying to smash its skull. I did this four times and then the monkey’s tail broke off in my hand. The artistic process was complete, never to be repeated. I was overcome by feelings of horror and self-loathing, and my hands were shaking, as if I had indeed just killed a monkey.”

A signed first edition copy of the book will accompany the painting.

As sales of the book accelerate, Martin is confident the painting will rapidly increase in value and that bidding will exceed the $10 000 starting price. The unique nature of the work and the robustness of South African art in the international market will further serve to promote interest in this intriguing piece of pop art.

About the author:

Ian Martin is a South African writer. Pop-splat is his first published novel and is about a 21st century Hamlet who ends up murdering his mother and uncle. This social satire has been described as “shocking”, “offensive”, and “subversive”, but is proving to be a hit with the 18-30 set, especially students.

Interested readers can visit the Pop-splat website at http://www.pop-splat.co.za, where they can view the first chapter and browse excerpts. The novel is available from online bookstores, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, and from bookshops throughout South Africa.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

Thank you for your letter, which I received in the middle of the week. It’s Saturday morning and I am in the lounge of the St James Hotel. The weather is wintry - a cold wind blowing gusts of almost horizontal rain - so I’m grateful for the fire that’s been lit in the grate. I have the room to myself except for one old toppie reading a week-old Daily Telegraph. I have just ordered a second glass of stout and am feeling reasonably content.

It seems you are well on the way to recovery after your disastrous affair with that elderly horse doctor from Groote Schuur. I only hope you’ve learnt your lesson and will be more discerning in future. I’ve heard some pretty alarming stories about the profligate lack of restraint common amongst Israeli men, and trust you are taking precautions against being drawn into situations fraught with danger and depravity. Not that it’s any business of mine. As agreed, our friendship can only ever be platonic.

As for the Bedford Street rabble I don’t have much to report. The last I heard from Ivor, about three weeks ago, he appeared to have stepped back from the threshold. He says he enjoys the physical rigours of farm life and has no time to read nihilistic literature and philosophy any more, let alone sit around drinking, smoking and contemplating the futility of life. Reading between the lines I picked up an accusatory undertone, a hint of recrimination. I have no fresh news of Joe and am unable to confirm or deny the rumour that he has become a follower of Sun Myung Moon. When I saw Steve a week ago he looked tired and despondent. He declared himself ‘milked dry’ and now quite impotent. Mike has retired from the game of rugby and only plays golf. To everyone’s surprise he is still in the house at Dean Street and Guinevere says she caught him, not long ago, trying to read Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. So what’s going on in that tiny brain I can’t imagine.

My own frame of mind, in my opinion, is remarkably sound just of late. You will be staggered to hear that I have taken a job as an Assistant Storeman in the naval dockyard at Simonstown and have now been hard at work for a week. The work is demanding and the terms of employment rigid - I slave from 7.30 in the morning till 4.30 in the afternoon - but the environment is congenial and my colleagues comprise an interesting cross-section of humanity. Once I have settled in I might risk boring you with some details describing just what it is that I do to earn a living. But in the meantime I would rather discuss other matters concerning myself.

You might remember that in the last eighteen months first my Uncle Fritz and then my Aunt Lydia were struck down with the ultimate ailment. One cruel blow followed another. For more than six months I have heard nothing from my remaining uncles, despite repeated attempts on my part to contact them. I can only imagine they have packed up and returned to England, and will communicate in due course. This has left me naked and bereft, without a soul in the whole of Africa to turn to. In the past months my sense of loneliness has been acute and I descended into a slushy state of self-pity. Then the fire and its consequences also added to my isolation and I lapsed into such a slough of despond that my physical health was in danger of breaking down. I became careless of my personal hygiene, I was apathetic and listless, and I drank heavily. It’s hard to explain just what prompted me to rouse myself and apply for this job - it must have been some kind of instinctive urge to survive, a self-preservation reflex that was switched on when I reached a certain depth. At any rate, something caused me to get up off my back, and I am once again strutting about, full of bravado and defiance, acting as if I am fully in control of my own destiny.

This renewed enthusiasm for life has resulted in a burst of activity. I have cleaned up my room and decorated and finished it simply in a manner matching my lifestyle. This afternoon, if the rain lets up, I intend climbing the mountainside behind Kalk Bay in search of a secluded kloof with difficult access where I might begin cultivating my favourite medicinal herb. And tomorrow I am going through to Dean Street to toast a batch of muesli. I have promised not to set the house on fire - ha ha. I have been to the library, Thursday evening, in fact, and have discovered Jorge Luis Borges, a South American writer with a most surprising creative agility - I can heartily recommend, if you don’t know him already. And I have resolved to start keeping a diary, which must mean I value my own opinion - enough to put it down on paper and then sit admiring it. So you see, my wayward star is in the ascendant just now and I feel obliged to follow it whilst it continues to shine. What other course is there? You know my fatalism and my lack of ambition. Born a dabbler I must continue to dabble for dabbling’s sake - as long as I find life interesting and amusing.

I see the rain has stopped and the sun is coming out. I shall post this letter and then head up the mountain while the weather permits. Kaye, I hope you continue to fare well on your chosen course and look forward to hearing from you again. And please heed my warning - the Zionist schlong will seize the slightest opportunity.

Your fellow-traveller,

Henry

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

Henry had no intention of poisoning his system with commercially produced drugs if it wasn’t necessary. Kaye Goldblatt had willingly imparted much of her extensive knowledge of herbal remedies and he remembered well the unhesitating certitude with which she had recommended Zingiber Officinale, freshly grated and taken as an infusion. (Also he remembered what she had had to say about Cannabis sativa.) Accordingly, when he went into Basil’s Provisions that evening to buy a pint of milk and half a loaf of wholewheat bread, he was gratified to feel in his pocket the small but comforting weight of his Swiss Army knife, which Joe Thompson had so kindly presented to him more than a year ago on Dingaan’s Day. Or was it Republic Day?

To create a diversion he picked on the pyramid of canned baked beans and Basil’s imbecilic father. The beans were on special and had been stacked into an eye-catching formation that reminded him of Karl Friedrich Gauss’s number pattern as taught him by Herr Fritz Friedemann.

“Pass me a can of baked beans, please. Hey, look at this! Is this rust? Jesus, does your son wish to give me food poisoning? Botulism is fatal in sixty-five to seventy percent of cases; did you know that? And this can looks swollen. Even staphylococcal poisoning is far from funny. Vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, headache, fever, prostration. Try one lower down. Careful. CAREFUL!”

The ensuing commotion afforded him ample time to approach the vegetable racks and select a healthily thick and knotty specimen of ginger. He sniffed the distinctive aroma just to confirm that he had the right spice in his hand, and then, with the aid of his trusty knife sliced off a small piece of the tuberous root, enough for four or five mugs worth of infusion.

Whilst Whitehead paced up and down, waiting for his first coffee of the day, time and again glowering at the sheaf of notes in his hand, Henry grated a little pile of ginger onto his blotter. When Plaatjies came with the coffee and a jug of freshly boiled water he put a level spoon of the ginger into his mug and poured on the hot liquid. He sniffed the steam enthusiastically and made irritating comments like, “Ah, so soothing, so calming,” and “Just what the logical positivist ordered.”

“I shall preface my description of the general structure of the Dockyard with brief comments on its function as perceived from outside and within.” Whitehead was chafing to get on with his task that he considered to be an unwelcome but valid liability. “The world over there are specific features which characterise a naval dockyard. Societies see the expenditure as a requirement for the maintenance of military security. They are prepared to put up with the wholesale waste of taxpayers’ money because they cannot conceive of a more effective solution. How else do you maintain, service and repair a naval force if you don’t have the infrastructure? If the facilities and the skills aren’t…”

“You make sure you have politicians who are wily enough to talk their way out of trouble. You need a Foreign Minister who can make soft wheedling speeches rather than some belligerent old arsehole rattling his blunt sabre whilst farting in ill-concealed fear. Instead of…”

“Fuckit, Fuckit, Fuckit!” Whitehead managed to bring Henry to a halt. “It was a rhetorical question. I’m not interested in your opinion, I’m not asking you questions, I’m trying to give you some background so you can learn to survive.” Whitehead was hot under the collar, his eyes had a savage determination in them, and his top lip was arching its back and bristling ferociously. “The wholesale squandering of human, financial and material resources is condoned by the authorities as an unavoidable price to be paid in order to maintain a defensive capability. Should war break out, the facilities must be in place and the personnel must be there to man them. In the meantime, in the absence of war, nobody really expects us to do much more than keep up pretences. So, Fundamental Reality number one: very little is required of us.”

“That sounds not merely realistic but downright philanthropic.” Henry sipped his aromatic tea and sat back, well disposed towards hearing more of what seemed to him like good common sense. “What’s Fundamental Reality number two?”

“Fundamental Reality number two is that we are reluctant to perform even the barest minimum of work. The disparity between the expectations of the authorities and those of the workers gives rise to a certain dramatic tension without which the Dockyard would not be able to function at all.” He paused to finish his coffee and glance at his notes.

“How many Fundamental Realities are there?”

“Three. Fundamental Reality number three is that we all know exactly what’s going on. We know that they know that we know what’s going on. And…”

“And I suppose they know that we know that they know that we’re all a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing cocksuckers?”

Whitehead looked at him coldly, chose to ignore the interjection, and continued with his explanation. “This is the Fundamental Reality concerning the functioning of each and every worker in the Dockyard. Now for the structure of the Dockyard in general and the Stores Section in particular. You’d better pour yourself another cup of that stuff. I don’t want the office stinking of puke.”

Frequently referring to his notes he proceeded with his description, speaking in a rapid monotone as if he were reading from a technical manual on a subject which but little interested him. He began by stating the obvious: the Dockyard was designed to service, maintain, repair and refurbish the ships of the fleet, as well as to supply them and their crews with victuals, fuel, munitions and various specialised equipment. There was a breakwater and three quays upon which stood a total of five cranes, as well as four warehouses containing heavy equipment and bulk stores. There was a small lighthouse, a fuel storage depot and the Port Captain’s office. The Dry Dock lay at the heart of the Dockyard and on either side of it ran the two rows of workshops. He rattled them off, reading from the paper in his hand:

ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) Shop Heavy Plate Shop
Pattern Shop Light Plate Shop
Toolroom Masons and Builders
Machine Shop Carpenter Shop
Foundry Pipe Shop
Gun Shop Boiler Shop
Paint Shop Riggers
Sail Shop Electrical Shop
Tow-Target Shop Radar and Electronics Shop

“So far this has been quite interesting, I must say.” Henry was not trying to be sarcastic. “Could I ask you to run through all those workshops again and give me an idea of just what it is they do? I mean, the Paint Shop I can understand - ships need to be painted. But the Pattern Shop and the Riggers and ICE, totally incomprehensible to the uninitiated.” Whitehead glanced at the clock on the wall, consulted his watch and then looked out at The Sirens.

“Not enough time. I’m just giving you a brief introduction so you can orientate yourself. Let’s get on. We have the eighteen workshops either side of the Dry Dock. Over near the West Gate is a large garage housing MT Section. Motor Transport. There the vehicle fleet is serviced and repaired. Now, each and every workshop, as well as the four warehouses, has it’s own store run by a White Storeman assisted by two Coloured labourers. These stores are kept supplied by Central Store (that’s us), and the whole operation is overseen, co-ordinated and controlled by Stores Administration under the supreme command of The Director of Stores, Mr Harry Bergson.”

“When am I going to meet the honourable gentleman? I didn’t quite realise what a big-wig he was.” Henry was not a little mystified by this elusive figure.

“He’ll probably let you settle in for a week or two. Don’t worry, he’ll call for you when he’s ready. Now, as I was saying, all stores are drawn from us here at Central Store and the whole show is directed from Admin on the floor above us. When a workshop needs to replenish stock the Storeman must follow laid-down procedures. He must complete Requisition Form R.001, in quintuplicate. This form must bear the correct description of Item and Code Number, the Job Number, and the signatures of the Foreman and the Storeman himself. Special non-stock items must be requested on Requisition Form R.002. (We deal only with the R.001’s.) Is there something the matter?”

Henry’s demeanour had altered, like a sudden change in the weather, and his face had lost some of its colour. He gulped down the rest of his ginger infusion and took out pipe, tobacco and matches, placing them before him on the desk. “I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy. But carry on, I’ve got to hear it.”

Whitehead was mildly sympathetic. “Don’t worry. I know it sounds awful but in reality there’s nothing to it. The R.001’s are delivered to Admin where they undergo authorisation before arriving, three copies, on my desk here.” He indicated his IN tray, which was empty. I acquaint myself with their contents and then place them in my OUT tray.” It contained five or six of the documents under discussion and Henry eyed them with distaste and what could have been a rising sense of dread. “It’s your first task to take them from my OUT tray and place them in your IN Tray. Then you are to arrange them in numerical order. In the Register you will rule a line under the last entry, and then list the numbers in the left-hand column. You place the R.001’s in the Register, close it and place the Register in your OUT tray. Then you get up, go out a little way into the store, cup your hands about your mouth megaphonically, and call for the head monkey. That’s just about all you have to do. Is that too much to ask? Damn it, man! Do you have to smoke that filth? I’m not going to stand for it.”

(To ward off the rising waves of nausea Henry had hastily filled his pipe and lit it, sucking and blowing like some medieval dragon. During his time at the YMCA and that hateful place which he did not wish to remember, he had discovered Sturk’s Tobacconists on Greenmarket Square. With the assistance of the Zen Buddhist proprietor he had found the tobacco which most appealed to his taste - Oriental Special. Never a serious cigarette smoker, he nevertheless relished the smell of a Turkish cigarette sniffed at a safe distance. The Zen Buddhist identified the faintly acrid, gently tarry ingredient that so appealed to his palate. Superimposed upon a bland background of Burley and Virginia it was the musty strength of Latakia, grown in the foothills of the Balkans. Allowed to turn brown on the slopes and then mature on the floors of goat pens the leaves became impregnated with the urine of the odoriferous beasts, were trampled in the mud and the dust and the dung, and then hung up to dry in the searing wind from the plains. This was the tobacco that gave a Turkish blend its characteristic aroma. Henry was not normally a heavy smoker but enjoyed an occasional pipe and went through about 200g of Oriental Special every six weeks. He also enjoyed some of the effects of dagga. He welcomed the sense of well-being, the relaxation and the heightened awareness, but regretted having to fill his lungs with all that smoke and wake in the morning with a painful hacking cough. It was about the time he moved to Bedford Street that he began to mix marijuana with his Oriental special and found it to be efficacious in a mild sort of way. Two-thirds Oriental and one third dagga was found to be an acceptable mix and he named the blend Turkish Delight. It was Turkish Delight that he was now puffing on, only he had beefed up the proportion of dagga for this occasion. Kaye Goldblatt had enumerated for him the medicinal uses of Cannabis sativa: these included snake bite, malaria, blood poisoning, loss of appetite, glaucoma, asthma and depression. Most interesting to Henry was its ability to alleviate nausea in patients undergoing chemotherapy, and this was why he was now smoking his pipe.)

“I most sincerely regret the pollution but I’m afraid circumstances necessitate it. Just look at he condition I’m in. I really can’t see how I’ll be able to hold down a job that makes such demands on me. You don’t seem to understand my sensitivity.”

And he was in a state indeed! Perspiration was beaded on his brow, his hands trembled and his complexion had acquired a ghastly hue. The furrows of anguish creasing his face and the protuberance of his eyeballs indicated a degree of suffering equivalent to that of a man undergoing the slow insertion of a cooldrink bottle through his anus up into his rectum.

“Pull yourself together, man!” Whitehead was becoming alarmed. “This is the most undemanding job on earth. What is there to fear? What is there to dread?”

“You don’t understand. You just don’t comprehend, do you?” There was a pathetic desperation in Henry’s voice. “It’s those pieces of paper. Quintuplicates! R.001’s! Authorisations! Numerical Order! Those pieces of paper claw at me. They suck me into the system. Do you know what will happen to me if I allow myself to enter the system? I will tell you. I’ll be destroyed, totally and utterly. My spinal column will dismantle itself and fall in pieces upon the floor. My inflamed eyeballs will inflate and stand forth from my head before rupturing and collapsing back into their sockets. My liver will dissolve, my kidneys vitrify and my spleen will desiccate and crumble into dust. My poor heart will squawk and then shrivel to the size of a pea. My testicles will retract and putrefy with shame. My pride and joy will fall down dead, turn brown then black, and hang between my legs curing like a piece of biltong. My hair will turn white and fill my comb with tuft upon tuft. My tongue will thicken and become coated in lichen, choking my airway, blocking my gullet. My teeth will fall out with a clatter like ice into a bucket. My intestines will reverse the peristaltic flow and excrement will ooze from my nostrils. And my brain! The reaction of my brain to the terrible insult of having to deal with these bits of paper, these symbols of surrender, humiliation and defeat, will be truly cataclysmic. My brainstem, cerebellum and cerebrum will fuse together into a dense, lifeless mass like a golf ball. The process will be instantaneous and the resulting vacuum in the cranial cavity will suck in stirrups, anvils and hammers to strike my defunct brain and ricochet out through my tympanic membranes. My entire nervous system, central and peripheral, will burn out in a storm of electrochemical fireworks and I will fall to the ground. Destroyed. Totally fucked in my moer.”

“Come now. Aren’t you being a trifle melodramatic?” Worried, Whitehead paced back and forth while Henry sat slumped forward, his face in his hands. “I tell you what. I am prepared to place the R.001’s in the register. And Plaatjies can arrange them in order and write them up - he’s more than capable - before he and the other monkeys draw the items. We can offer him a few more perks. How about that? How does it sound?”

Henry sat up slowly, wiped his sweat-stained brow and his tear-streaked cheeks. “Well… …I don’t know. What would I be expected to do? It doesn’t sound as if there would be anything left for me.”

“Mmm.” Whitehead stood pondering this for a moment. “Well… Yes. Yes, it could be your job to call Plaatjies to come and collect the Register and the forms when we’re ready with them. Yes, that could be your function.”

“All I would have to do is call Plaatjies?” This certainly sounded a lot better and he began to brighten up. “So all that would be required of me is this: when you, not me, have put these revolting documents into that revolting book, and you have satisfied yourself, by means of eye contact and intuition, that the time is right, you instruct me to call Plaatjies. You will say something like, “Call Plaatjies,” or “Fuckit, call that bloody monkey, won’t you?” And I will reply by saying, “Okay,” or “Yes, Mr Whitehead,” or, if you prefer, “Yes, Your Excellency. Immediately, Your Excellency.” Like the underlings do in the fiction of Russian writers like Chekov, Gogol and Dostoevsky. I will then get to my feet, without haste, and go to the door, open it, step out into the store, and summon the minion in question. Is that it? Have I got the right end of the stick?”

“Yes yes, that’s all you have to do. Make up your mind, right here and now: are you capable of it?” Whitehead was becoming increasingly agitated. He was beginning to suspect that his new assistant was going to be of very little value to him.

“Alright. Well, that’s all settled then.” Henry pushed back his chair, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his head. “I do nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from calling Plaatjies.”

“For crying out loud!” Whitehead was approaching the end of his tether. “That’s the only work you have to do but it doesn’t stop there. You have to play your part. Are you so damned obtuse that you can’t accept there’s a role for you wherever you go, whatever you do? You’ve got to fit in here. You’re not an item of stock lying on a shelf. Over the weeks and months you will gain knowledge and understanding enabling you to become a valuable citizen of this Dockyard. You will eventually be able to move about freely, with an easy self-assurance, convinced of your own worth and the value of what you are engaged in. You will acquire an identity and be able to defend yourself against the danger of self-doubt. You will have the freedom to construct a fantastic world of intellectual challenge and high adventure - but, only if you work at it. That’s the real work here.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

At one past three, after the siren marking the end of the afternoon tea break, Henry rose to his feet and restlessly strode up and down in a state of nervous agitation before the window. Abruptly he came to a halt in front of Whitehead’s desk. The older man had just started Cities of the Plain, the seventh volume of Marcel Proust’s ‘In Remembrance of Things Past’. He looked up in mild irritation.

“It’s absolutely essential that we get some clarity on my position here. Right at the outset I must make my attitude quite clear and you must then tell me whether you think I can be accommodated.”

“Damn it! There’ll definitely be no room for accommodation if you persist in interrupting my concentration. This is an important document. I can always have you transferred, you know. Well, alright. What is it?”

Henry dragged up a chair and sat down before his senior, his folded arms on the desk in front of him, his knees bumping the other man’s. Rapidly Whitehead reversed about a foot or so. “I suffer from a debilitating disease.” He said it with such intensity that Whitehead felt compelled to press a button on the arm of his chair and go into a forty-five degree recline. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. It manifests itself as an allergic reaction and I experience increasingly acute bouts of nausea, sweating and panic attacks. The observable symptoms are somatic but the existentialist anguish is entirely psychological.”

“And do they know what causes this disease? What brings on this allergic reaction?” Whitehead had a healthy interest in diseases, especially in those of the mind.

“The aetiology has never been investigated and consequently the cause is unknown. However, evidence suggests a functional disturbance of hypothalamic equilibrium. As to what brings on the attacks themselves there can be no doubt whatsoever. It is the contemplation of a routine existence - the logic of which, once deciphered, is usually so banal as to induce in one a feeling of revulsion - it is this appalling prospect of passing one’s days, hours, seconds in the unending pursuit of a hollow inanity which gives rise to the horrible symptoms. Do I make myself clear? Do you understand? Do you realise that if you required me to do even half an hour’s work fiddling about with bits of paper relating to Naval Stores, waves of disgust and self-loathing would soon have me shaking like a leaf and vomiting on the floor? HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT?”

Henry shouted the last sentence angrily for Whitehead was staring at him in goggle-eyed astonishment.

“Yes, yes, yes. Understand? Do I understand?” He jerked upright from his reclining position and spurred his executive chair up to the desk. Leaning forward, his face was thrust aggressively towards Henry’s. “Haven’t you been listening, boy? Are you defective in sight and hearing as well as intellect? God, give me strength!” And with this prayer he sank back, his face flopping like a badly beaten sponge cake. Alarmed, Henry sprang to his feet and hastened to the bottom right hand drawer of his desk in search of emergency medical supplies. He had had the foresight to bring with him in the plastic carrier bag, along with his lunch, a two-litre Wittzenberg jar of Vrotters laced with brandy. It was still more than half full and after taking a long swig - what assistance could he render if he too were to fall down faint? - he splashed a small quantity of the life-giving liquid into the slack mouth behind the bushy moustache. Whitehead spluttered, gulped, coughed and then burped.

“What is that stuff? I’m going to stink like an old dronkie just crawled out of the gutter.” Henry took another swig, put the jar back and resumed his seat. “Don’t ever do this to me again; I haven’t the constitution for it. Now, I’m going to explain the way things work here, in plain and simple language, and then I never want to discuss it again. I’m surprised Mr Bergson didn’t make it quite clear to you.”

“I’ve never even spoken to the man. Let alone met him. Don’t really know who or what he is.”

“Well, goodness gracious me! We’ve both been labouring under a misapprehension. Can’t understand how this has happened, but at least it now makes sense.” Whitehead was visibly relieved and his manner towards his new assistant became far more affable.

“You see, us Dockyard Storemen are a rare breed. Mr Bergson, the Director of Stores, in collaboration with that pervert Captain Nelson, is very particular about the selection of suitable personnel. The wrong type of personality could cause mayhem. Imagine if you enjoyed doing a good job, were ambitious, hard-working, couldn’t abide slovenliness and sloth, believed in productivity and efficiency, and followed a strict moral code which forbade the squandering, misuse, destruction or misappropriation of Naval resources. The consequences would be disastrous for the rest of us. No, what caused the little misunderstanding between us was the fact that no one has explained that you are not expected to do any work. You mustn’t think of this as a job - rather, it’s an interesting pastime, a hobby. You are going to be paid, not very much, admittedly, but you are going to be paid a liveable salary nevertheless, and in return the only requirement is that you heed the call of The Sirens.”

Henry was still not quite convinced. “So you think I’m the right material, do you?”

“I most certainly do. Just look at you. You couldn’t care less about your appearance, for a start. Long matted hair, heavy shapeless beard. Shorts, T-shirt, sandals, and there’s a hole in your pullover - that’s your idea of dressing for work. You are intelligent, well-read, offensively curious about everything, highly imaginative and an easy liar. Your morals are loose, you are disrespectful and you are irreligious. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Spot on so far. You’re a good judge of character, I can see that. So I’m of suitable calibre, am I? But what worries me is the possibility of boredom. How is it possible to cultivate one’s intellect, one’s free spirit, cooped up in this little hok of an office day in and day out?”

Whitehead gestured in a wide arc towards the window, then got to his feet. He stood looking out, his hands behind his back, right hand clasping left thumb.

“Have you ever been on the bridge of a ship, Fuckit?”

“Actually, yes. About a year ago I applied for the position of first mate on an oil tanker that had docked in Cape Town. The incumbent officer had been admitted to hospital with liver failure.”

“First mate? I didn’t know you were in the Merchant Navy.”

“Neither did I. Anyway, the interview was conducted by the Captain up on the bridge. Very high up on an oil tanker - helluva good view. Didn’t get the post, of course. Started asking me all sorts of tricky questions. I could see he didn’t believe I had been second officer on the Queen Mary and began to get all technical, attempting to trip me up with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. He caught me on a trifling technicality: for the life of me I couldn’t remember the correct relationship between red lights and green lights, port and starboard, left and right. Ended up threatening to have me pumped ashore if I wasn’t off his filthy ship in two minutes. PUMPED ashore! Cheeky bastard.”

“Alright, be that as it may. So you have an idea of the commanding view one gets from the bridge. Well, when I stand here looking out, I often feel I’m on the bridge of a great ocean-going vessel. I can survey the entire Dockyard, all of Simon’s Bay, the sweep of mountains right round to Muizenberg and to the east a large expanse of False Bay. I mark the sun’s passage across the sky and the infinite variety of colour and light. I watch the seasons come and go, I never tire of the ever-changing weather. Sometimes in summer the wind drops away in the night and the morning is calm and the cool breath of the sea wafts up to me. The sun glistens on the ripples like on the scales of a fish and the smoke form Marine Oil Refinery rises straight up before gently drifting away. Then in winter I watch the dark clouds massing on the mountains and feel the mighty northwester begin to buffet the building. Whitecaps are everywhere, spray is in the air and the sea heaps up. The edges of waves break into spindrift and foam is driven in long streaks. I see the stone pines and the tall cypresses above Glencairn cemetery bending and buckling, seabirds are hurled past like scraps of paper and the air is filled with the roar of the wind.” Whitehead had straightened his shoulders, inflated his chest and was breathing deeply.

“Sounds like Force Nine or Ten on the Beaufort Scale.” Henry shared the man’s appreciation of the elements and was already looking forward to monitoring the weather from this vantage point. “It must be exhilarating up here in a storm. And then you’ve also got your telescope. I suppose you watch all the ships coming and going.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid there’s not much of that any more, now that the Royal Navy no longer calls here. Our tin-pot fleet can hardly be called a navy. I’ve seen some hilarious examples of bad seamanship though - really entertaining. No, I use the telescope mainly to study human behaviour. There are a lot of men working in this dockyard and there’s a lot of strange goings-on to be followed. I can spend hours at a time engrossed in the scurrying and scuttling, clambering, creeping and crawling of artisans and labourers, not to mention sailors and officers.” And so saying he fixed his eye on something taking place in the Dry Dock. The SAS Kruger had been brought in for a refit early that morning and the pumps had nearly completed their task of emptying out the dock. A sizeable crowd of men had gathered on the caisson and adjacent quaysides. All were looking downward in rapt concentration.

“Mr Fuckit, open the window, lean out and give one long and two short blasts on this whistle, will you?” Intrigued, Henry obliged. The crowd looked up and then all looked down again. Except for one man with a clipboard. He hastily wrote and then held up the message for Whitehead to read. “Ah, excellent! A shoal of mackerel - wonderful fish on the coals, if they’re freshly caught, in good condition. Let’s get down there chop-chop and get one of the monkeys to clean a few for me.”

“So you don’t have to stay in the store all day? You can go out if you want to?” They were in the Whites Only lift descending to ground level.

“Good God!” Whitehead couldn’t quite believe the extent of Henry’s ignorance. “Some days, many days, I don’t spend more than ten minutes in Central Store. The Dockyard consists of one hundred microcosms, each with a fascinating life of its own. I tell you, you’ll never be bored here.” They emerged from the building and strode briskly towards the far end of the Dry Dock. Already they could see the men in the shallow water beneath the buttressed, propped and stayed frigate. They were scooping up the flashing silver bodies into plastic crates and stacking them on the wide concrete step that ran round the bottom of the dock. As they approached the crowd at the quayside Whitehead spoke again. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to give you an introduction to the structure and function of a naval dockyard as well as a general outline of stores control and where you will fit into the system. I must warn you though that certain parts of my presentation will contain material likely to cause offence and induce emotional distress. I suggest you pop into a pharmacy on your way home tonight and get yourself an anti-emetic, something like Avomine or Stemetil, just to see you through the morning.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

In a slow hand, well-rounded and striding forward, Alf Whitehead wrote out the timetable for the day. For every day.

07:30 Start
09:30 Begin Tea
10:00 End Tea
12:45 Prepare for Lunch
13:00 Begin Lunch
13:30 End Lunch
14:30 Begin Tea
15:00 End Tea
16:15 Prepare to Finish
16:30 Finish

“There are nine intervals, either end of each being announced by The Sirens. That makes ten times a day that The Sirens sound.” He looked at his watch. “In about half an hour we’ll hear the 9.30 siren. That’s when we take a half hour tea break.”

Henry was puzzled. He was seated behind his new desk in the office that he was to share with Senior Stores Officer Mr Alf Whitehead. Mr Whitehead was standing at the window looking down on the Dockyard through the large expanse of glass.

“But we’ve been reading the paper, drinking coffee and chatting since I arrived this morning. I don’t understand, when do we start work?”

The storeman, a portly man in his early fifties with receding grey hair and an upper lip which, over the years, had been allowed to run wild and was now covered with a huge tangle of overgrown moustache, turned to look at Henry, his face suddenly rendered grim by a veil of non-comprehension. Then the light of understanding returned, he snorted and resumed his contemplation of the naval scene.

“You’re very new here. It’s quite natural that it will take you a little while to acquire our way of seeing the world. There’s a lot to learn. You see, to start with, it doesn’t matter what we actually do, it’s when we do it. Between 7.30 and 9.30 we work. If we choose to drink a cup of coffee in that interval, then it’s work.”

“But…” Henry remained nonplussed. “I mean, how do we justify it?”

“Good God, boy! Justify it?! If you can’t justify it there’s no hope for you. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be on the planet.” He paused, trying to control his impatience. “Look, if we are drinking coffee it’s because we’re testing a victual. Commander Wolfaart has complained about the freshness, or staleness, of the instant coffee. We are conducting tests on different batches of Nescafe to determine which one it is that fails to meet naval standards. We are consulting the newspaper in order to find out when that French freighter will be docking in Cape Town - you know how urgently the shipment of submarine parts is required. We are in conversation because I am briefing you on important matters concerning the efficient running of this store. Get it? Really, if you can’t justify your existence then you are bereft of imagination. But don’t worry, I’m sure you don’t fit into that pitiful category. You’ll soon pick it up and become adept in…”

A telescope on a tripod stood before the big window and he now began a slow sweep of the open sea beyond the harbour walls. “Ah, here he comes. Should be back in time for tea.”

“Who’s that?”

“Bergson. Mr Bergson is very fitness conscious. Goes for a two kilometre swim three times a week, come rain or shine, summer and winter.”

“Jeez, isn’t he worried about sharks?”

“He doesn’t swim from here, for Goodness sake!” He was appalled at the suggestion. “The harbour water’s filthy. No, he gets taken in a naval launch out into open waters and is accompanied all the time he is swimming!”

Henry was struggling to see how the Director of Stores was able to justify this activity but he decided to refrain from questioning Whitehead further.

“Come and take a dekko at The Sirens. The light’s catching them nicely. Yes, you’ll soon become adept in the appropriate use of your faculties.”

Henry got up and stooped before the telescope. >From behind the Heavy Plate Shop a steel tower soared two hundred feet into the air. He found the tower, focussed, and then followed the latticework upward to the clock-face.

“The siren’s inside the clock.”

Atop the timepiece was a platform on which stood the famous statuary. The two female forms, mythological mutants, half bird, half woman, were naked above their feathered tails and legs.

“Help!” Henry was enthusiastic. “I am being consumed by unclean thoughts. I cannot avert my eye. I am lost.” For several minutes he examined them in the minutest detail. “You know, there’s something familiar…”He straightened up and turned to his new boss.

Whitehead was standing with hands behind his back surveying the activity on the ground. He spoke a little absentmindedly: “They’re modelled partly on the 4th century BC Dipylon statues in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Also partly on Playmate of the Year for 1964 and 1967.”

“Of course! How could I forget?! I must’ve masturbated a hundred times to both centrefolds. Gee, I can’t wait to hear the siren sounding. Five minutes. Hope it’s not an anti-climax.”

“Yes, it’s an impressive sound. A pretty basic mechanical device - consists of a disc with evenly spaced holes around its periphery. Rotated at high speed it interrupts at regular intervals a jet of compressed air driven through an orifice, resulting in a succession of puffs of air. When the number of puffs per second, governed by the speed of the rotating disc, is sufficiently large to produce the required periodic sound wave, we experience the characteristic acoustical effect.” Henry sat on the corner of his desk, one sandalled foot swinging back and forth as he watched the minute hands of the clock move closer to 9.30. Whitehead’s voice had become matter-of-fact, almost apathetic. “You know, The Sirens have come to control our lives and without them our lives would be destroyed by Chaos. They are the tyrannical Keepers of Time and measure out our fate with exact precision. The precision with which they measure out our fate, so tyrannically, is absolutely essential and, essentially, there can be no doubt…” Henry was beginning to notice this manner he had of leaving his thoughts unfinished, then reboarding the train a little later and finishing the journey with a careless burst of speed. “Yes, the precision with which time is measured is of concern to all but no more so than to the likes of us. It could be said that we are students of time. Some of us are professors of time. Time can be said to flow like a river, a constant stream that is instantly beyond reach, and without recourse to… Good God! Don’t tell me that monkey has reversed our forklift into the dry dock!”

The Central Store was a large four-storey building situated in a line with East Gate and slightly elevated on a slope above the dry dock and the two rows of workshops which flanked it. Ground Floor received and distributed stores and often buzzed with activity. Heavy trucks arrived laden with crates, forklifts did the offloading, and parcels and packages were manhandled onto the DY Stores Van for delivery around the yard. A score of men scurried about under the supervisory glares and shouts of the Chief Receiving Officer and the Chief Despatch Officer. The building was serviced by a windowless concrete staircase and two lifts. The large heavy-duty cargo lift was for Stores and non-Whites while the smaller ‘Whites Only’ lift was for the exclusive use of the administrative staff who occupied the top floor. It was there on the Third Floor that tons of documentation (five carbon copies of everything) were processed each week. First Floor and Second Floor carried the bulk of stock items packed into endless miles of numbered racks and bins. The Senior Stores Officer, Central Store (Whitehead), and the Assistant Stores Officer, Central Store (Fuckit), occupied a wood and glass office at one end of the Second Floor. It was spacious enough for two desks, one large (Whitehead’s), one small (Fuckit’s), two office chairs - one fully-reclining executive (Whitehead’s), one standard clerical (Fuckit’s) - a steel filing cabinet, and a free-standing rack for stationery. On the far wall behind Whitehead’s desk hung a portrait of the State President - an aged farmer with brutish features photographed in his Sunday best. To the left of the President was a Goodyear Tyres calendar with all the weekends and public holidays ringed in red. To the right was a placard with a message in Skeletal Roman capitals:

TIME PRESENT AND TIME PAST
ARE BOTH PERHAPS PRESENT IN TIME FUTURE
AND TIME FUTURE CONTAINED IN TIME PAST.

Of course there was a clock. The expanse of glass before which Whitehead was standing faced out over the dry dock and the quays, the breakwater and the Eastern Mole, across the ruffled bay to the mountains. In the opposite corner of the Second Floor were toilets and a washroom. Nearby, hidden behind some racks, were six lockers and a trestle table with two benches: it was here that the labourers, four monkeys and two baboons, had their tea breaks and lunch.

“Good God! The bloody monkey must have been an inch short of the edge! Better not let that ape Kloppers see him.” Henry had already gleaned that, in Whitehead’s vocabulary, monkeys were Coloureds, apes were Afrikaners, baboons were Blacks, and all three were regarded with evenhanded disdain. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely distracted, time can be considered to flow like a river. Now, if we accept this analogy as a point of departure, we find ourselves faced with a conundrum. Are we afloat and moving with the current, or are we on the bank? To put it another way, is time a duration in which we experience life, or is time a succession of instants marked by the ticking of a clock?”

“Fucked if I know.” Henry, about to sit down again after jumping up to witness the disaster, was disappointed that the forklift hadn’t gone over the edge. “Hey, is that it? Jesus!” Again he was on his feet. It began with a moan and rose in strident overtones to a tormented screeching wail that sent shivers up and down his spine. Then it fell and died away with a despairing groan.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

Hi Aryan

Your description of how you were mugged (African Writing Online, no.6 – “Glock for Sale”) is a powerful piece of writing. I really wanted to know what happened and what effect the incident had on you. And the self-deprecating style adds authenticity to the story. Yes, reality – even the horrific variety – is decidedly comical, verging on the slapstick.

Having read the piece I know what happened to you, but I’m not so sure about how you’re affected, By selling your gun you might be making some sort of statement about non-violence. But where dies it leave you in practical terms? At least prior to the incident you were able to walk (swagger?) through a crowd with a false sense of invulnerability, feeling that weight strapped to your leg. Now what do you do? Avoid the streets? Only move about in a car?

And if you don’t have a firearm there’s the question of security at home. Razor wire and electric fencing are only a deterrent. There’s a limit to how high you can build the wall. And the security firm and the cops hardly inspire one with confidence, do they?

Maybe you’ve turned religious and decided to leave it in the hands of the Lord. Sit around the dinner table reading aloud from the Bible while the marauding inbreakers get smote with bolts of lightning. Unlikely. As with the rest of us (black and white), I suspect you’ve been wading through the next stage in the dreadful process of trying to save yourself: resignation and despair. There’s nothing one can do.

I live in a little seaside place that’s barely big enough to be called a dorp. It’s dead quiet – far from the war zones of Cape Town and Joburg – but things are changing here, too. In the settlement over the hill there are now far more black faces then coloured. There’s virtually no employment in the area, so economic activity centres around perlemoen, drugs and stolen goods. The poachers and the gangsters come and go in the night, sometimes pursued by the police. Recently a dealer was shot dead by rivals, and now and again a wet-suited body gets washed up on the beach. Certainly the times are changing.

I got up one morning a few weeks ago to find that the “fokken bastards” had been in the night. There was the car standing on blocks, minus three of its wheels. Probably sold for tik, the cop said with finality. He didn’t even take down my name.

I’ve had to put a steel gate on the carport and I’m installing some security lights. Maybe I’ll get a dog. But where does it end? What happens in the city eventually reaches the countryside, they say. Resignation and despair set in. There’s no way to stop this tide, there’s nothing one can do.

Thankfully, I soon snapped out of that melancholic mood and turned my back on those defeatist thoughts. I began to devise a grand scheme, roughly along these lines: set up a community co-op, rich whites helping poor blacks to access services, cheap food and goods; establish food gardens; mentor school kids. Poor blacks help rich whites by informing on criminals, driving out the baddies; erect a 24/7 roadblock at the town entrance to keep the place clean. Live in crime-free, prosperous harmony.

It was a beautiful plan but I soon realised it would take all my time and energy to get it off the ground and ensure its long-term success. I’d have to forget about what really interests me – the creative process of writing, and shooting up on ideas and art. Hell no, I thought. This is for the social engineers and the politicians. They can take my master plan and develop it. I must be free to produce fiction from the stimuli that come my way. Like you’ve done, Aryan, with this mugging story. We must put resignation and despair behind us, leave saving the world to the likes of Obama, and get on with what really matters.

Like writing a story around the thoroughly abhorrent but fascinating idea that killing, like the sexual act, is cognition. You can only know it if you do it. Killing is natural. It’s part of the human condition, and once you have killed you become more completely human, more aware of the human condition. To be brave enough to kill is to be brave enough to accept the condition.

It’s a pretty revolting idea but worth exploring, I think. Shakespeare played about with it a lot. Lady Macbeth demands murder from her husband as proof of his manhood.

Such I account thy love
…………………………..
When you durst do it, then you were a man.

Maybe I can adapt Macbeth like I did Hamlet. I’ll have to see what my muse makes of this.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot: how much do you want for that Glock?

Ian

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

“The dockyard is a very weird and fascinating place, just right for you.” These words, uttered by Jack Ponchielli nearly three years ago when he was suffering his nauseating torment at the Commercial Union Assurance Company, were what had prompted Henry to apply for the position of Assistant Storeman. If he really was forced to take up employment again then this might well be tolerable for a short period. A feeling of excitement at the prospect of another adventure ahead of him began to grow and he resolved to clean up his lousy stinking little room at the Olympia. It had not been cleaned for months, even years, and smelt like the back of the truck that collected the rubbish. A combination of mouldy scraps of food, unwashed bedding and clothing, sweat-soaked old takkies, unspeakable balls of scrunched up toilet paper under the bed, bottles and bottles with sour dregs, all covered in a thick coating of dust and grime, had given rise to this foulness. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday he toiled at the task.

First he took all the empties to the bottle store and with the money bought a dustpan, brush and broom. Then he went to the public toilets down the road and approached the fat old woman with the blue doek and green gingham housecoat. A deal was struck whereby he would pay her an extravagant sum to wash everything, twice over, and then a modest sum each week to do his regular laundry. He also borrowed from her, or should we say, from the Municipality for whom she worked, a mop, a scrubbing brush and an iron bucket with half a cup of Jeyes Fluid in it. Next he moved all the furniture onto the balcony and swept out the room. He wiped down the walls and on hands and knees scrubbed the floor and mopped it and then left the doors wide open for the southwester, which had sprung up cold after the previous day’s rain.

On Friday he bought five litres of PVA, mixed by the grumbling shopkeeper to the desired hue, brightness and saturation that was not quite blue or grey or pink or purple but a subtle blend of all four. He traded half a bottle of Virginia for a paintbrush from a Council worker painting lampposts and gave two coats to the walls and ceiling. Nowhere in Kalk Bay could he find beeswax for the floorboards, so he was obliged to buy a tin of Cobra wax polish and picked up several splinters to palms and knees applying and buffing the old-fashioned coating. That night he slept with the balcony door open for fear of asphyxiation from paint and polish fumes.

Saturday was a perfect winter’s day, the wind having gone to the southeast and then having dropped away to nothing. The sea was quiet and silky and a deep blue glittering with shards of silver. Standing on the balcony he breathed deep, taking in the cold iodine essence of weed and fish mingled with clear sunlight.

The iron bed and mattress, and the chest of drawers and carpet he took to the Antique Shoppe that dealt in second hand junk and swapped them for a small oak table and two pine chairs that were perfect in their crude simplicity. The wardrobe didn’t feature in the picture but because he wanted to keep it he positioned it against the near wall. Later he would paint it imitation deal yellow. The room was beginning to take on a passing resemblance to Van Gogh’s Room at Arles. But the bed was a problem. Where would he find what was arguably the central feature?

On his way to the Majestic for his usual Saturday lunch of beer with fish cakes and chips he happened to glance up Windsor Lane. Furniture was being loaded onto a bakkie. When he drew nearer to investigate he found the cobbler in the process of moving out. The boere had told him that if he wasn’t out by Monday morning they would come and throw him, his tools, his sewing machine, his lasts, his furniture, his four kids, his wife and his old mother out into the street. Their patience was at an end. They had been sending him letters for a year now and he still hadn’t moved to his own area.

“I lives here all my life. My wife live here, Kalk Bay, all her life. My father come here when he was jus’ a lighty. And these animals tell me I mus’ go live in my own area? We mus’ go live in a little pondok already falling down, it’s so bad built. With one bedroom for all of us, out on the Flats, in the middle of the Gammadoelas where the sand blows all year. No buses, no trains, you got to walk miles to get anywhere. And what about shops? What about school, church, hospital, everything? Why is the White man so fokken mad? Why is he so greedy? So cruel? And you. You blerrie white rubbish, come like a white vulture sniffing about here. Take it! I leave it. We got no room anyway. No, I don’t take your white rubbish money. Go, los my!”

Henry tried pleading, to no avail, so he got down on all fours and began to follow the family in and out of the front door, whining and barking and terrifying the children. Finally the cobbler screamed at him, ‘Voetsek, jou fokken brak!’ He kicked him and then struck him repeatedly with a broom. The wife threw a bucket of water over him and he made his way, still on all fours, back down to the Main Road.

Late in the afternoon, when they had departed for the last time, Henry went to collect the bed. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. It was an even better replica than he had expected from his initial impression. Fashioned from heavy structural pine, the high head and foot boards were scratched and chipped along their curved edges. Old and battered, it looked like a peasant’s bed salvaged from some rustic hovel. And it even came with its own lumpy coir mattress. He stood the back legs in two tin cans like shoes and, lifting the front, dragged the bed noisily down Windsor Lane and along the pavement to the Olympia. Now, to get it up the stairs single-handedly was out of the question, even for a man of his brute strength. Henry lay down for a few moments, trusting in some kind passerby or his faculty for ingenious improvisation to come to the rescue.

Ah! Basil’s three-tonner was parked below Henry’s section of balcony. It was a relatively easy matter hoisting it into the loadbox. Far more difficult was dragging it up onto the roof of the cab. Eventually, after much heaving and straining, he had it balanced on its headboard, the foot resting against the balcony parapet. With a supreme effort he lifted and slid the bed up and over. However, the angles and distances involved were not entirely in agreement with his intention and he was left with upstretched arms, the heavy piece of furniture balancing in limbo. He was unable to let go.

“Help, help! Somebody help me!” His hoarse shouts eventually attracted the attention of Basil and he came bustling along the pavement, a black-browed ball of fury.

“Fuckin bastard! Ya fuckin sheet, get offa ma lorry! I keel ya. Ya theenk ya Batman? I take a knife and I cut off ya balls. Ya break ma lorry!”

“Ah, fuck off Basil. Go up and help me. If I let it go now it’ll land on the cab. QUICK!!”

Shrewd businessman that he was Basil saw where his interests lay and, puffing and swearing, he hastened up the stinking staircase to the landing. He threw open the first door he came to, bursting in on a scene of foul bestiality. The muzzled animal cowered in a corner, the deviant, festooned with military regalia, strutted up and down.

“Aieee! Fuckin peeg!” SLAM!! Rushing past Henry’s room he kicked open the next wrong door. A would-be suicide was practising his ultimate goodbye. Standing on a chair adjusting the rope about his neck, a note pinned neatly to his pressed shirtfront, he looked determined and sure of the impression he wished to leave.

“Hey! Where ma money, ya corksucker? First I wanna ma money. Three month I want. No more credit!” He aimed a wild kick at the chair before running out into the corridor and at last blundering into Henry’s room. Out on the balcony he was just in time to grab Van Gogh’s bed and haul it up to safety. Henry flopped down in the back of the truck. Muscles in his arms, neck, shoulders and back were aflame from the excessive demands that had just been made on them. He looked up at the angry face.

“What took you so long?”

“Looka ma lorry. Like a fuckin’ eggbox. I keel you - slow, slow, slow.”

“Ah, come on Basil. It’s only a little dent. That’s the trouble with you rich and powerful people: you’ve been corrupted and now you prize money and material goods above the joy of helping your fellow man. But thanks anyway.”

On Sunday morning he awoke refreshed, if a little stiff, after a sound night’s sleep. He lay thinking about the order he was inflicting on his life. It was strange how the mundane activity of the past three days had occupied his thoughts so fully. He had been diverted by the simple task of cleaning up his own filth. But was this what he wanted? And this job he was about to start. That he, Henry Fuckit, dilettante at large, was to join the ranks of the zombies and actually submit himself to the indignity of ROUTINE EXISTENCE! In spite of his former disastrous excursion into this realm. Notwithstanding the solemn vows he had made never to be so stupid ever again. And here he was, on the verge of becoming an Assistant Storeman! What he was about to do amounted to a metaphysical conversion equivalent to the spiritual conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. Would his soul cease to breathe murderous threats against the disciples of Conformity? Was he about to castrate himself? Verily, he kneweth not but somehow he doubted it. Jack Ponchielli had assured him the Dockyard would be a sympathetic environment. Maybe he should try phoning this Bergson oke.

At midday he walked up the road to Kalk Bay Station and made his phone call.

“Hello, Louise speaking.”

“Hello, could I speak to Mr Bergson please?”

“I’m afraid he’s still fast asleep. He was up all night waiting for a vital impulse and I wouldn’t like to wake him just yet. Is that Mr Effit?”

“I’m Henry Fuckit.”

“Yes. He said you might call. Let’s see, there was a message…Yes. HAVE NO QUALMS. THE FREEDOM OF YOUR SPIRIT IS VOUCHSAFED. Does that make sense?”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

From Observatory Station he caught an empty mid-afternoon train to Kalk Bay. It stopped at every station on the way: Mowbray, Rosebank, Rondebosch, Newlands, Claremont, Harfield Road, Kenilworth, Wynberg, Wittebome, Plumstead, Steurhof, Diep River, Retreat, Steenberg, Lakeside, False Bay, Muizenberg, St James. No one got on and no one got off, but at each station the conductor called out all the remaining stops right through to Simonstown. He seemed to enjoy his job and shouted in a loud unhurried voice. When he came to clip Henry’s ticket he did it with enthusiasm, causing the punched-out little cardboard snippet to fly into the air. Henry marvelled at the way people were able to make something out of nothing. And they couldn’t all be dismissed as idiots. Take Jack Ponchielli.

Kalk Bay harbour looked deserted and a chill wind blew off the sea. Funnelling through the subway under the railway line it smelt of sea spray and human piss. He climbed the stairs to his room in the Olympia Residentia. These stairs were dirty and smelt of fish and chips and cat’s piss. In the room it was already dusk and as he lay down on the bed it was as if he was sinking into desolation and squalor. The narrow cramped room opened by way of French doors onto the east-facing covered balcony that ran the length of the building. By early afternoon the sun dropped behind the mountain and Kalk Bay lay in shadow. This is going to be a cold cheerless room, he thought as he kicked off his sandals and pulled a blanket over himself. This is going to be a terrible place. He lay with his eyes closed, listening to the wind bumping doors, the southbound evening traffic in the road below, the rattling commuter trains filled with stupefied catatonics. It depressed him to think of all those people going home. How dreary their lives were, and yet they were trapped, without any acceptable alternative. And what of his own situation? What options lay open to him? If he didn’t find some money soon he would be chased from this miserable hole out into the street to scavenge in the dustbins, to fight over bottles and cardboard. To beg and to steal. Not nice to contemplate. The horrible reality was beginning to haunt him. What a disgrace it would be if he was forced to become a Common Man and join the rest of humanity!

“Jesus fucking Christ, what am I to DO?!”

As if in answer to this prayer he heard a stealthy scratching at the door and then silence.

Huh! Bloody cat, or rats. Shit, I cry unto the Lord and He sends a rat to tell me to get fucked.

Faintly amused Henry relaxed and fell into a doze. The events of the past weeks drifted in and out of his consciousness in a blur of disjointed scenes. Although his pigeon loft had been spared from the flames that nasty, unforgiving landlord had refused to allow him to stay on. To their horror, he denied all culpability and, worse still, laid the blame for the fire squarely upon the shoulders of his suffering tenants. Luckily this room had come vacant at the Olympia, Ivor’s old digs, and Henry had taken it as a temporary measure until he could arrange something more befitting. On account of the metaphysical torment he was experiencing Ivor had decided to take a sabbatical and accepted the position of Assistant Farm Manager on his uncle’s maize and cattle farm in the Eastern Cape. Just for a year. Steve had quickly fallen into the butter by meeting a thirty-six year old divorcee, of independent means and a secluded mountainside property at Constantia Neck. Of robust good health and with a hearty appetite, she was quick to distract the young student from the tribulations that had befallen him of late. Mike had surprised everyone by moving in with Guinevere, WB O’Keefe the librarian, Marie-Lou, sister to Guinevere, and the shaven-headed paroled convict, Joe Thompson. From Tel Aviv had come Kaye’s letter entrusting anything salvageable to Henry. Her letter had left him sick at heart. She was a self-centred bitch. He resolved to forget about her. The arguments with the landlord, the packing and unpacking, the transporting of sundry items to Kalk Bay, the storing of books and clothing, had all merged into an unpleasant jumble of experiences.

When he awoke he felt cold and fretful. There was a foul taste in his mouth and his eyes burned. What am I to do? Damn it! I must stir myself, get up, put on the light, go down the dark corridor to the toilet, piss, go to the bathroom, if it’s free, wash my face. Go out and buy something to eat. A pie and chips? A drink? Maybe walk through to the Robin Gordon.

He got up in the dark and switched on the light, screwing up his eyes against the dingy forty-watt bulb. With a sneer he spied the letter that had been pushed under the door. So much for rats. His prayer had been answered by post, distributed by the shadowy shuffling figure of the janitor.

Admiral VD Cockburn RN (rtd)
Room 13
Olympia Residentia
Main Road
Kalk Bay

It was addressed to the old alc who had occupied the room before him. Henry had met him once, soon after moving in, when he had knocked on the door and introduced himself. He was in search of his spare arm and they had found it, covered in dust and fly droppings, on top of the wardrobe. The old man had insisted on relating an unlikely tale of heroism and sacrifice culminating in an amputation. The story was extravagantly romantic but too garbled to be really entertaining. You get gifted liars and you get atrocious liars and you get pathetic liars. Admiral Cockburn fell into the third category. When he left he touched Henry for a two rand donation in support of Muldersvlei Farm, the Salvation Army rehabilitation centre for alcoholics where he was doing voluntary work to keep himself out of mischief. From the balcony Henry had watched him hurry straight to the New Kings Bottle Store, still clutching the note in his good hand.

Henry slit open the envelope with the Swiss Army knife Joe had given him for Kruger Day. (What a generous good nature, forever coming home laden with gifts for everyone! Alas, those days were gone). The letter was from the South African Navy, Simonstown, and was dated the 29th day of July 1971. That was only three days ago. Fresh.

Dear Sir

We thank you for your letter of 3 April 1971 applying for the position of Admiral, and wish to apologize for the excessive length of time it has taken us to reply.

We must regretfully advise that there are at present no vacancies in the rank of Admiral. This is indeed unfortunate as your qualifications fit you ideally for the position. We further wish to reassure you that under no circumstances would we discriminate against you on the grounds of your advanced age, your physical disability, your history of mental illness and your criminal record. The South African Navy prides itself on its modern and progressive approach to the selection and promotion of personnel.

However, should you be interested in the position of Assistant Storeman (White), we have two such vacancies at present and you are invited to present yourself for a personal interview at 08h00 on 5 August 1971, Room 10 A, Administrative Headquarters, McFarlane Street, Simonstown.

Yours faithfully,

Captain Horace Nelson
Senior Personnel Officer (Civilian Branch)

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

Later he thought of them as his ’student years’. They were mostly carefree and full of fun. But towards the end of the two years a dark cloud drifted in towards them, blowing in from the future, or overtaking them from the past, they couldn’t tell. Joe was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for stealing the British ambassador’s Rolls Royce Silver Turd parked outside the Nico Malan Opera House. Aided and abetted by drink-crazed friends and screaming chicks he had raced out to Noordhoek over Chapman’s Peak Drive and hit the hard sand at low tide as the moon reached its zenith. It was probably the vehicle’s inherent lack of seaworthiness that led to his downfall. Guinevere left Steve for WB O’Keefe, moving in with the student librarian at his fixed abode in Dean Street. Ivor’s insomnia became debilitating and he was prescribed tranquillisers and anti-depressants. Mike received a particularly brutish putting in of the rugby boot that resulted in what was referred to as a ’severe groin injury’ from which it was doubtful if he would recover fully. Kaye’s brief entanglement with a forty-year-old neurosurgeon ended abruptly and she announced her intention to continue her studies in Israel. The cloud darkened and settled lower.

Rain lashed the house and the August storm roared from the northwest and rattled the windows. In the kitchen, which abutted upon the main edifice and had a separate lean-to roof, water dripped steadily into a strategically placed bucket. The night was advanced, the Vrotters was low, the three men, Ivor, Henry and Steve, had lapsed into gloomy reverie. Henry got up from the table.

“Anyone for toasted cheese? A man must eat to keep up his strength and withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I see Mike came back this afternoon with a nice big piece of ripe cheddar from Wellington’s. Tried to hide it at the back. Parsimonious eunuch.” He was rummaging in the fridge. “Steve, cut the bread and I’ll do the rest.”

He set the six slices of wholewheat bread with their thick cheese covering beneath the grill in the electric stove. The oven door was left ajar for him to peep at the progress. “Damn thing takes forever to heat up. Probably needs a new element. Cheer up, O miserable ones, sustenance is at hand.”

“Last night I had another vision.” Ivor’s face was gaunt, his eyes were red from too much dagga and not enough sleep. He stared fixedly in two directions. “Heard the door open and saw a faint light. Sat up. Cold. Shaking with terrible numbing cold. Choking on cold, foetid stench. Before me I could see this glow. Fuzzy at first and then definition. It was a woman.”

“Jesus Ivor, a woman. You were dreaming about a fucking woman.” Steve didn’t like these symptoms of insanity. “Fuck it, man. Snap out of this kak. We all dream about women. Fucking bitches!”

Ivor wasn’t listening. His voice was flat and monotonous. “She moved towards me and stopped. She was wearing a long nightdress, old fashioned, from a bygone era. She stood there and I realised she was floating. She had no feet. My God. And when I looked at her again I realised she had no head either. God it was horrible, and then she just disappeared. How am I going to sleep tonight?”

Steve and Henry stared at him aghast and then exchanged looks of alarm and dismay. The poor bugger was having a breakdown.

“The toast is burning.” Ivor made the statement in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone.

“Shit!!” Henry leapt up. Thick smoke was curling up from the oven door. He wrenched it open and the rush of air resulted in instant ignition. Flames leapt forth. He cast about for something with which to extinguish them.

“Shut the fucking door!” screamed Steve.

“The toast is burning,” repeated Ivor.

Henry grabbed up the bucket and dashed its contents in at the tongues of fire. There was a loud bang and all the lights went out.

“That Jewish poes of a landlord.”

Steve wasn’t particularly anti-Semitic. In fact, it could be said that he was pretty even-handed when it came to racist invective of the stereotypical kind. The landlord happened to be Jewish, so of course he was a mean, grasping, hook-nosed old Jewboy. And it so happened that not three nights ago Steve had been obliged to sit through a performance of The Merchant of Venice at Maynardsville. The third-year English student he was pursuing with carnal intentions had insisted upon it. Now he began to rant at the darkness. “Why should we pay rent to that thieving motherfucker? Just because he’s filthy rich and we’re indigent goyish nobodies. He laughs at our troubles. He mocks our poverty. He scorns us just because we’re poor and we are gentiles. Just because we haven’t had our cocks mutilated. He thwarts us at every turn, taking our hard-earned money and giving us what in return? Nothing but blackouts, burst pipes, blocked drains and a leaking roof. And what’s his reason? Because we’re not Jews. If we were Jews he would have sympathy. Would he cut off the power? Would he turn off the water? Just because we couldn’t pay the rent? No. If we were Jewish he would only threaten and cry and plead. But we aren’t Jewish. Have we not eyes? Have we not hands, organs, senses, affections, passions? Do we not eat, shit, copulate like a Jew? Do we not sicken from lack of proper nutrition? Do we not get cold in winter, living in this dilapidated hovel? Prick us and we bleed, just like a Jew. Tickle us and we laugh, just like a Jew. Kick us in the balls and we scream, just like a Jew. Poison us and we die, just like a Jew. Oh yes! Treat us like dog shit and we seek revenge just like a Jew. Just let me get hold of that cocksucking, high-and-mighty, sneering, avaricious, heartless… What the fuck’s that noise?”

There was a staccato popping and banging coming from upstairs.

“Great arcs of leaping electrical current!” Henry was shouting excitedly as he blundered towards the door. “I’ve heard it before. Eight thousand degrees of searing heat! Frikkie’s arsehole father did it at Ingachini once. Nearly burnt the shit out of us all. Imbecile! Christ, I smell smoke. Call the fire brigade. Phone Slick and tell him to increase his Sum Insured. Where’s Mike. Mike! Mike!”

He found him leaning out the window at the top of the stairs.

“Stand back, Fickit! Women and children first.” He had knotted sheets and blankets together to form a rope.

“There aren’t any women and children and you don’t need to climb out the window. Come downstairs, you stupid cunt.”

“This is something. Kaye should have been here to see this. And Joe.” Henry stood in the street with Ivor and Steve and Mike, watching the fire fill the house with more and more light until it was full and the flames began to overflow in bursts and leaps, reaching through the shattered windows, groping upward.

“I’m going to sue that fucking Jew.” Steve was already at work compiling in his head an inventory of all the valuable items he didn’t possess but would be claiming from the landlord’s insurers. “Hey, here comes the fire brigade. Jesus, the driver must be drunk! This is going to be a slapstick spectacle straight out of Charlie Chaplin. Look at that monkey with the axe.” A fireman was hacking down the wooden gate in the low picket fence. “All he needed to do was use the thumb latch.”

“This makes such a mind-blowing picture. If only I were an artist, or a really good photographer! Driving rain, roaring wind, shooting flames in a stormy night, the building ablaze, the shadows rushing in and being beaten back - this is a grand statement.” Ivor’s condition was improving with all the excitement.

“Mike, do me a favour old boy. That chap over there, the one who thinks he’s running the show; keeps shouting “Mind the flames!” and “Pas op vir die hitte!” Give him a hand, won’t you? You know how to talk to these wallahs.” Henry’s lips were brushing Mike’s left ear. “Be a brick and get them into some kind of respectable order. Direct operations, if you don’t mind. You know how to give orders, marshal forces, put the show together. Tell that pumpkin to douse me outbuilding. I’ve some very valuable books and clothing worth preserving from the flames. The house is a gonner. It needs somebody like you to exercise a bit of judgement. Preserve what’s left. Oh, Mike, and please make it clear to that clown I don’t want any water damage. Thanks old chap.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from

He set the six slices of wholewheat bread with their thick cheese covering beneath the grill in the electric stove. The oven door was left ajar for him to peep at the progress. "Damn thing takes forever to heat up. Probably needs a new element. Cheer up, O miserable ones, sustenance is at hand."

Ian Martin's controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za">http://www.pop-splat.co.za

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

“Heeave. This is worse than Vaaljapie. What is it? It tastes completely vrot.”

Mike de Jongh’s pronouncement on their blended beverage gave rise to the name “Vrotters”. Vrotters was a mixture of cheap white wine, preferably on the dry side, and cheap fortified red wine, like Old Brown Sherry or Jerepigo or Muscadel. The mix was approximately three quarters white to a quarter red, depending on the need.

“This is poison. This stuff will destroy your brain and your liver. All this drinking and dagga rooking, it’s pointless. I mean, where’s your self-respect? Where’s this going to get you?”

“Sometimes we add a shot of brandy too. You should try it; gives it a nice kick, blurs the vision, kills the pain. Mr Fuckit, tell Mr de Jongh about the pain and the search for euphoria.”

“Glad to oblige. Anything to dispel darkness, enlighten the ignorant.” Henry pushed back his kitchen chair, stretched his legs straight before him, crossed his ankles and folded his arms. “My dear Michael, allow me to begin by asking you a question. Have you, in the course of your training in the pulling and stopping of teeth, have you come across the term “pain threshold”? Ah, I hear no verbal response but I detect from the sullen glower that has replaced your customary expression of vapid earnestness that you are indeed familiar with this concept and that you wish me to get on with it. Very well. Some people are more sensitive to pain than others. The pain with which you deal in your trade is the physical, neurological type produced when pathologic disintegration and dissolution of tooth enamel and dentine take place, eventually causing inflammation of the dental pulp. The dental pulp contains vascular, connective and nervous tissue, as you are well aware, and when this pulp becomes inflamed you know all about it in the form of raging toothache. It can be intermittent, sharp, throbbing and shooting, or it can be gnawing and continuous. Whichever, whatever, it’s fucking painful and it’s caused by caries. But please remember this, Dr de Jongh, and when I say ‘doctor’ I see you standing above me, instruments gleaming, so smart and clinical in your crisp white jacket, surgical mask protecting you from my stinking halitosis. Doctor, I wish you the best of luck in a lucrative career, but please remember that the pain caused by caries, upon which you will found your material wellbeing, is not like the pain which causes the likes of Hopper and me to drink this rotgut. No, no, no.”

At this juncture Kaye Goldblatt entered the kitchen intent on making herself a cup of coffee. Mike half rose to his feet and then sank back despondently. In one hand she carried the library book she was reading. She was barefoot and wore only the brightly coloured T-shirt Henry had given her by way of a peace offering after being caught harvesting one of her Cannabis sativa plants. (For a whole week he had toiled under the critical gaze of Guinevere, the volatile art student friend of Steve, transforming his thirty plain white T-shirts into many-hued garments of tie-dyed splendour.) Henry’s eyes went first to the book, Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point, then to her breasts, then her legs, and back to her breasts. Ivor’s eyes started at her ankles and travelled slowly up her legs to the hem of her shirt where they tarried longingly, flicked to the book, and came to rest on her breasts. Mike’s eyes darted about the room in panic and then fixed themselves on the three-year old calendar on the far wall. All three men gave some attention to the conjecture that she was not wearing panties. Henry sat up and pulled his chair in to the table, Ivor sighed and crossed his legs, and Mike blushed the lovely deep pink of an Empire rose and broke into a sweat.

“Good morning, Kaye. Good book?” Henry paused but briefly, well aware that she would ignore such small talk, and continued with his description of mental pain. “Well yes, quite so, could’ve written better, yourself, no doubt. Yes. I was just explaining to our dental friend here the difference between physical pain and the pain of consciousness. It’s a difficult concept for him, having been trained from an early age to ignore the possibility of such unpleasant aspects of the human experience. But please, I fully understand your ennui, having explored this area already and come to your own conclusions. Feel free to read your book until the kettle boils and ignore my simple-minded drivel. Now, as I was saying, Michael…” and once more he turned his attention to the student of teeth. Kaye put a spoon of coffee in her mug and leaned back against the sink unit as the kettle murmured into life. Her bust rested comfortably on her folded arms and she appeared content to observe Henry’s antics while she waited. Strangely, he felt both pleased and abashed at the same time.

“The pain of consciousness I am referring to, and the need to assuage it, have been dealt with by the Afrikaans morphine addict Eugene Marais in his book ‘The Soul of the Ape’. You might be surprised to learn that even baboons are capable of experiencing this selfsame depression, this existential melancholy, this gnawing sadness and despair that I am alluding to. It’s a combination of futility, boredom and hopelessness. It can be dispelled by music, poetry, good literature, art - which requires intellectual effort. It can also be chased into the shadows by engaging in sexual activity, which, if it involves a partner, can be messy and complicated. It’s far easier to find euphoria and oblivion through alcohol and opium. This is why we sit here drinking this rotten wine, smoking our foul pipes. Let me be quite unequivocal about this - our intention and our desire is drunkenness. Sobriety is too much to bear for more than an hour or two at a time.”

“Bloody spineless lack of self-discipline, if you ask me.” Mike de Jongh got to his feet. “Make an effort and keep busy. Sport, hard physical exercise: just as good as drink and drugs. Just as effective against the misery of being human. A marvellous way to overcome loneliness and longing and emptiness. And thoroughly healthy too.”

This parting statement left the three remaining occupants of the kitchen somewhat taken aback. Henry’s thick lopsided eyebrows were arched in surprise. He stroked his beard contemplatively. “Well, I suppose if a baboon is capable of feeling dejected we shouldn’t be too astonished when a trainee dentist evinces familiarity with the spiritual anguish which afflicts us who are of more refined sensibility. After all, he is a human being.”

“I told you he wasn’t a total shithead.” Ivor turned to Kaye who was now pouring hot water into her mug. “I bet you’re as surprised as Henry is. You’ve always considered him a numbskull, haven’t you?”

“I admit it.” She topped up with milk from the fridge, stirred, and started towards the doorway. “I still think he’s a moron. But I can see I was wrong to be so completely dismissive.” Before leaving the kitchen she said to Henry, “Marais wasn’t much of a scientist and he didn’t get very far with his analysis of souls. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard - they’re worth reading.”

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za

This is the story of a cynically ironic bulldozer (traveling at high speed), a road called South Africa, and an ingredient called inevitable. The setting is the morgue. The architecture is a maze. The characters along the road are squashed flat, ironed out, bloody and tacky, with not a quality to redeem them! It is done relentlessly, and if not gleefully, then with a sentiment very close to it.

The characters are totally out of control. Everybody thinks they have the answers. Poor Horowitz is a lone voice that nobody hears. Who cares?. None have a shred of human dignity left in them. They are all in it for themselves - loose cannons on a trip to hell. A law unto themselves. An anarchy that seeks only one conclusion: death. This is the dark underbelly of the peculiarly South African psyche. Undeniably bred by apartheid it now runs rampant in the ‘new’ South Africa. It is a monster that bedevils any attempt at our ability to grasp our collective humanity and call a truce. It is also the insanity that we see in the Middle East, in America, in any crime riddled capital of the world, echoes of the Kebble hijacking…..

I found this tale screamingly funny while being devastatingly tragic. This is because the characters are so perceptively and shrewdly accurate, yet irreverently drawn. It becomes the literary equivalent of a cartoonists satirical notebook, page after page.

A front page article appeared in the daily paper while I was reading this book. It was about a man who was giving a farewell party in Durban North, because he was emigrating to Australia. Car-guards stormed the place, raped guests and took whatever they wanted. There was a shootout of sorts. I was shocked. The reporter described the events almost word for word to a scenario I had just read in this novel.

!t was an astonishing moment of deja vu.

Ian Martin has used Shakespeare’s Hamlet to create a trellis upon which he has constructed POP-splat: murder, intrigue, filial hatred, hijackings, student stupor, luxury, revenge, envy, back-stabbing. It is this framework that keeps the narrative grounded and the reader focused, for while the story runs riot, the reader knows the boundaries. Personally I found this psychologically rewarding, for it allowed me to follow the insanity, the intrigue of the events with the confidence of knowing that it could never spin out of control. The twists in the tale are inventive, unapologetically uncivil to the Bard (if this is even an issue) and infected with Martin’s sharp wit. The language is harsh and contemporary, almost staccato at times, so don’t expect POP-splat to be recommended for text book status.

Certainly not for the purists, it even invents sacred cows to burn (Philip Glass being one of them) just in case there is some ascetic searching for a redeeming message within the deconstructed and redefined narrative. And with a name like Ophabia, you just know this lady is going to fall apart.

Yet I found that because the tale is so desolate and irredeemable at any level, and which demands it as such, that this had a reverse psychological effect on me. And I found that refreshing.

The book is written with a contempt that is a scream for:

Sanity.

Intelligence.

Common sense.

Humanity.

Love.

Justice.

All the ingredients that make living noble.

Now just imagine if everybody read this book!

ISBN 978-0-620-41612-2

You may order your copy directly from ian@pop-splat.co.za

R120 plus packaging and postage.

from The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015
by Ian Martin

Henry never ceased to be surprised at Mike de Jongh. He was bourgeois in almost every respect and he entertained the most boring aspirations. And yet he chose to live on in a house that was an anarchic hotbed of dangerous ideas, irreverence for convention and authority, immoral sexual practices, noisy revelry and, worst of all, unhygienic disorder. The son of a well-to-do General Practitioner from Upper Newlands he had attended, without a murmur, the Diocesan College (colloquially known as ‘Bishops’). This was a school based on the British model as exemplified by the Seven Public Schools, Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse and Shrewsbury. The boys attending this school were specially trained to feel superior. It went without saying that they were superior to people of colour and Jews, and of course they needed little encouragement in feeling superior to females. Where the special training came in was in the teaching of ‘The English Social Class System’. Twice a week for twelve years it had been drummed into Mike that the powerful and the wealthy are genetically superior to the weak and the poor, and now it seemed that he believed in this without reservation.

“Look,” he said to Henry one day, “You don’t seem to understand the simple facts. Since the beginning of human history there have been the haves and the have-nots, the leaders and the followers. That’s just how it is. You know, it’s been proven that if you were to take all the wealth of the Upper Class and distribute it equally amongst them and the Lower Classes, after ten years the situation would be back to square one. You have to accept that most people just don’t have the ability.”

Henry looked at him blankly for a moment and then laughed loudly and unpleasantly. “Ex labia majora veritas dixit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ex labia majora veritas dixit. Didn’t they teach you the Classics at that school you went to? It’s a Latin tag: Spoken like a true cunt.”

“Listen here, Fackit…” Mike de Jongh flushed hotly and half rose to his feet, aware that such an insult had to be dealt with without delay, or things would soon be getting out of control. If only he could lay his hand on a bull’s pizzle, or something. But Henry hastened to make amends.

“No, no, no. Please. I apologize unconditionally. It won’t happen again, I promise you. You can kick my arse if it does. You shouldn’t take umbrage at my silly attempts at facetiousness.”

Apart from having been educated to be superior, Mike had also received intensive training in weird and archaic forms of behaviour like Chivalry, Etiquette, Ballroom Dancing, Speech, Drama, Elocution and Public Speaking. As a result he was forever restlessly opening doors, standing aside and giving up his seat for women of suitable race and class. Although a non-smoker he carried a gold Ronson lighter and was lightning quick on the draw the moment any of the company produced a cigarette. He always spoke in an unusually loud voice, standing very erect, thrusting forth his freshly shaven jaw, trying to catch someone’s eye in order to demonstrate the directness of his gaze, and flexing his right hand in anticipation of finding an opportunity to practise his firm and manly handshake. Most bizarre of all was his pathological obsession with the three noble sports, rugby, golf and cricket. On analysis Henry and Ivor concluded that this was a clear manifestation of latent homosexuality.

“Have you noticed how he and his buddies talk about women? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Schoolboy smut and nauseating innuendo. I’m sure they’d far rather jerk themselves off in front of a mirror than have some uninhibited girl bouncing up and down on them in ecstasy!”

Henry nodded. “I believe they thoroughly enjoy the showers after a hard physical game of rugger.”

“It must be dreadful living in such a confined world.” Ivor was better informed on this subject than Henry, having a cousin who had boarded at Michaelhouse in Natal, a similar institution to Bishop’s. “To be raised as a gentleman in order to be part of the control clique is to grow up in a mental and emotional straitjacket. They’re brought up cut off from the rest of the world, living by a book of rules that doesn’t apply to most of human experience. That’s why they prefer to herd together in clubs and boardrooms and residential enclaves. They even go on holiday together. Cold, alienated individuals unable to sympathize with riff-raff like you and me.”

“So it seems. But what puzzles me is why Mike should persist in staying in the midst of us degenerates in this pestiferous slum. It’s as if he is gripped by a morbid fascination.”

“Ah, that’s definitely the most perspicacious thing you’ve said today. I believe he hasn’t lost his soul entirely. He isn’t able to articulate it but he somehow senses there might be more to life than what’s talked about at the golf club. I think it worth the irritation to help him get a proper education.” Ivor scratched his balls thoughtfully. “And of course there’s the Cedarberg.”

“And he’s got a car.”

Ivor was referring to the De Jongh holiday farm in the Krom River Valley at the foot of Engelsmans Kloof, pathway to the magical mountains. Henry was referring to Mike’s newish 1500cc white Volkswagen Beetle, capable, at a squeeze, of transporting five young men plus hiking paraphernalia unto said Cedarberg.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

When Henry was packing up his possessions before vacating his room at the YMCA he came across a grimy envelope serving as a bookmark. It jutted from the Gideons Bible that he had found in the drawer of the bedside table when he first moved in. In the past few months he had often browsed, especially through the Old Testament, and made cryptic notes on both sides of the envelope. On the back were Harry Bergson’s name and phone number circled in pencil, forming an island in the sea of scribbles. He remembered his strange dream and thought, I must really give this man a call one day. He replaced the bookmark in Jonah, at the point where the reluctant emissary tells God, for the second time, he doesn’t want to be involved in His petty squabble with the recalcitrant breekers down at Ninevah. Thoughtfully he weighed the book in his hand and then packed it away. He needed a Bible and the idea of stealing one appealed to him.

It would be inaccurate to say he moved into the Bedford Street house in Observatory because Ivor arranged for him to lodge not within the ramshackle double-storey residence itself but in a disused pigeon loft above the outbuilding at the back of the property.

“Now that the summer heat is safely behind us I am sure you’ll be very comfortable up here.” Solicitous of his manservant’s welfare he helped Henry to sweep out the cobwebs, dust, droppings and feathers before hoisting a mattress through the trapdoor. “I envy you your snug privacy here. You might have difficulty enticing female guests up this ladder but feel free to wank as much as you like. Did you know it was the Egyptians who first domesticated the pigeon four and a half thousand years ago? Discovered the homing instinct and put it to use. Fascinating. Release a pigeon in the middle of nowhere and up it flies to a suitable height, circles about and somehow orientates itself, and then heads straight for home at a steady seventy or eighty miles an hour. And remember, never forget to extinguish candle or lamp before drifting into sweet slumber.”

Henry was to receive free board and lodging at the student house and in return was to prepare breakfast and dinner when required, and to wash Ivor’s dirty linen in an aged twin tub washing machine. They both agreed that ironing, like shaving, was an idiotic waste of energy and time. In addition to these domestic duties he was to accompany the undergraduate to lectures, carrying his books, taking notes and assisting him with research and the writing of essays. He did not view any of this as “work”, having to prepare food and do washing for himself anyway, and being insatiable in his eclectic desire for knowledge. For more than two years it proved a most satisfactory arrangement.

*

There were five bedrooms, all spacious and well-proportioned with high ceilings, tall sash windows and creaking timber floors. The dining room contained a long table with eight chairs and a sideboard against one wall. There was an open fireplace in the sitting room and there were two divans and a battered green lounge suite of advanced age which could seat seven in varying degrees of comfort, and discomfort, depending on one’s ability to avoid the broken springs. The kitchen and scullery were mean and cramped, having been designed for the use of servants. The plumbing was inadequate and the electrical wiring was antiquated and overloaded, resulting in frequent blowing of fuses. On such occasions when the house was plunged into sudden stygian silence the brief cessation of sound was always followed by loud shouts of rage and streams of anti-Semitic invective directed at the landlord. (At a later stage Mr Isodore Slick was to pay dearly for having caused his tenants this recurrent inconvenience.)

The Thompson brothers, who each had a room upstairs, were in no hurry to graduate and leave behind a life of happy-go-lucky simplicity. Joe, the elder, was in his sixth year of study, having successfully completed three years of a four-year Geology degree. Steve was three years younger. He had passed his first year after only two years study and was making cautious headway into the second year of a five-year degree in Architecture.

Mike de Jongh was in his third year of Dentistry. A diligent student, tall and athletic, he played first team rugby, showered and shaved a lot, and was thoroughly unBohemian in behaviour and appearance. He had the room at the top of the stair opposite that of the only female resident.

Kaye Goldblatt instilled fear in most men. Of average height her body was shapely - nice ass, nice tits, flat belly. But she made no effort to show it off, wearing dowdily functional clothes, and fixing her long black hair in a tight bun at the back of her head. Her spectacles were black-rimmed and thick-lensed so it was not easy to read emotion in her dark eyes. She had the sallow complexion of a heavy smoker and because her features were in an almost habitual state of reflective repose her general demeanour was perceived as saturnine. She was reputed to be a genius, having completed in two years a four-year honours degree in English and Philosophy. She was now in her second year at Medical School, achieving excellent marks with minimal effort, disdaining attendance of most lectures.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.