Dik Dun Thick Thin: Stories

By Nataniël

'n Splinternuwe, skitterende versameling kortverhale deur Nataniël. 20 in Afrikaans en 8 in Engels. Skreeusnaaks, aangrypend, wys, onvoorspelbaar en -- soos altyd -- hoogs vermaaklik.
Soos gewoonlik delf hy goud uit sy kinderjare -- oor sy ouers, sy ouma -- maar daar is ook fantastiese en fantasmagoriese verhale oor sy lewe as sanger op plattelandse dorpies, oor 'n vreemdeling wat hom een aand in sy huis help om sy vrese te besweer, en hoe 'n mens jou eerste reus oorwin . . . 

• Language: Afrikaans
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau
• Release date: Oct 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9780798181426

Nataniël

Nataniël is op Grahamstad gebore. Hy het skool gegaan aan die Laerskool Riebeeck-Kasteel en Hoërskool De Kuilen in Kuilsrivier. Na skool studeer hy musiek aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch. Hy het aanvanklik bekendheid verwerf as kabaretster en verhoogkunstenaar, maar sedert die 1990’s is hy veral gewild as skrywer en koskenner. Nataniël was born in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. He studied music at Stellenbosch University and first became popular as a cabaret and stage artist, but since the 1990’s has also built a reputation as a writer, columnist and celebrity chef. 150 Stories dominated the bestseller charts for weeks on end.

Book preview

9780624089810_FC

Human & Rousseau

Mannequin

I am the least brave being living in this world. I began to be fearful at the age of five. When I was four years and eleven months old, my parents told me they were going to take me swimming on my fifth birthday. I did not know what that meant, but I was really excited. On the day of my birthday they took me to a swimming pool where I discovered I was afraid of water. It was a most horrific day of screaming, crying, sinking and swallowing. I could not, in my little mind, comprehend such cruelty. If those you loved could rip off your clothes and throw you into something you’re supposed to drink, imagine what the rest of the world could do to you!

Then, when I was six, my parents took me to a school where I discovered I was afraid of children: horrid, noisy creatures that ran around and smelled awful when they stopped.

When I was seven, the species into which I had been born celebrated a historical event and my parents took me to a gathering where thousands of them were wearing traditional costumes, dancing traditional dances to traditional music. There I discovered I was afraid of crowds and petrified of ugly clothes.

During the next few years I also discovered my fear of neighbourhoods, small animals, travelling, newspapers, brown furniture, churches with anything yellow inside, females in sports jerseys, politics, dandruff and sandals.

By the time I turned fifty I was deeply unhappy, but through the years I had met a few beings with similar discomforts and with my motivation and leadership, we decided to disappear. We moved to a very remote part of the space my species called The Country. We lived false lives by day and real lives by night. We had to be extremely careful not to be noticed or identified, and I was always afraid that the others might relax too much and become – I have no other word – sloppy.

One day I returned from a small mission. It was time for an annual event of horror called the Matric Dance, I had been travelling to all nearby settlements, wearing my quiet coat, buying or stealing every available bow tie, trying to save all young men the pain I had to suffer wearing that propeller of conformity. I walked into the house with all the bow ties pinned to my coat and saw the others had left a mannequin with part of a secret gown in front of an open window and I knew there would be trouble, I would never rest again.

* * *

If you were to ask me if you could write a book about my life, I would want it to be a good book, I would therefore only tell you about the second part of my life.

What I did the first part of my life was not important or exciting, I was afraid and sick and constantly wondering if my existence had any purpose at all, it was like a very long menopause. I liked beautiful things and I tried several careers, none of them encouraged by the culture of my species. I painted, I designed sets for a theatre, I wrote a children’s book, I taught art at a night school and finally I became a tailor. I was good at many of these things and even ended up in a few magazines, but the tailoring was the best thing for me; no water, no children, no travelling, just a few clients and a few assistants. And some of those became my friends and we became dependent on each other and together we disappeared.

There were six of us.

There was Danna, the positive one who hated the world but loved life. She and her three sisters, Hanna, Sanna and Nanna, were raised by their mother, Anna, a woman who came into this world and left it without having a single thought. At first Danna could only do cleaning work, but I taught her how to sew. She was not the brightest female on earth, but was less fearful than the rest of us and very useful.

There was Henning. We could never call him that, that name was very common amongst our species and reminded us of everything we disliked. He was tall and strong and beautiful and every time he walked into the room somebody would just say, Thank you. And that became his name. Thank You fixed lights and built tables and moulded mannequins and spent so much time in the shop, he became our soldier. And when we decided to disappear, he said he was coming with and I explained to him he would never be able to get married and then he said we were all he needed and we all said, Thank you.

And then there was Mammion, a giant of a woman, kinder than a box of tissues, but a lesbian from the Stone Age. She was like a dog at a gate, reacting violently to anything unfamiliar. She could be as gentle as a wounded butterfly or she could break your neck and have your face for supper, whatever the situation required. I met her on a bus, I was on my way to the municipality. They had erected a new bus stop right in front of the shop, which was convenient if you needed a bus, but not for business. So I sighed. And Mammion leaned forward and said, You sighed. And I said, I don’t know how to get rid of the bus stop. And she said, Fuckin’ break it. So I took her to the shop and she broke the bus stop and the bus never stopped again and she never left.

And finally there were the twins. Two young and attractive brothers. A blue ball and a red square could not have looked more different. So they came to us for identical suits. Twins are like vegetarians, they want the world to know. They had just finished their studies, one had studied law and one had studied medicine, the two practices of their family. They were nervous and intellectual, but they laughed at our jokes and ordered more suits than they could afford, because they liked being with us. And when I told them we were going to disappear, they returned the next day with their suitcases.

* * *

If you still want to write your book, I will tell you this:

When we moved here we knew it would not be easy, we would have to work hard to stay alive and even harder to live the lives we wanted. The place I chose was in the west of what was called The Country, it was an eight-hour drive from the city, a drive through a landscape so flat that those who had done it once could never do it again. Just a few weeks earlier a vehicle had been found next to the road, the door was open and a dead woman was lying in the road and in her hand was a note with two words, Too flat.

You could also take a flight on a tiny aircraft designed and operated by the devil. You would land at a place called U and drive for one hour towards a place called K. Twenty minutes before you reached K, you would enter a forgotten settlement called P, not as ugly as U and not as warm as K, just asleep and filled with trees you would not expect in such flatness. A group of nuns and a few of our species lived there, and that was where we went.

I found two run-down houses on a large property. There was also an extra little building that could be made into a workroom. There were huge trees growing out of an earth that was not kind to them and a wire fence that hung the way shoulders hung when broken by poverty.

Because of the heat, there were many, many farmers, mostly around K, they grew fruit and exported it to the rest of the world. They were very, very rich, they had built expensive schools for their children, gigantic houses for themselves and had become a community rooted in wealth, religious gestures and adultery of breathtaking proportions.

They had huge buildings on their farms, buildings our species called pakstore, these were filled with thousands of workers, workers who needed uniforms. And that was how we were going to make our living.

* * *

You ask why we came here? Let me explain something to you.

This was never the plan. But things changed. Long ago, with Adam and Eve. They discovered sin and were thrown out of Paradise. And they had to go into the world. And nobody has ever explained this, but somehow more people appeared, from where, I don’t know, but there were millions. And it was decided that the planet should be divided into different territories. Now if you look at a map you will see that this was done by a person with shaking sickness who, only at the end, found medication and drew one straight line, which is now called Namibia.

But from the very beginning people wanted freedom of movement and the power of possession. So they crossed borders and there were things like invasion and colonialism and occupation and genocide and war and dictatorship and oppression. And these things can take many years and when they end there is always a new generation of a species in the wrong place, in every country in the world there are descendants of the invaders. And they have nowhere to go, so they stay where they are not wanted. And clever people understand this, but clever people do not rule territories, they are busy. And kind people do not rule, they are busy. So the world is ruled by The Wolves. They do not like The Species. But they need their talent and their taxes, also those of The Clever and The Kind. To collect these, they send The Squad. So the members of The Species have to live by the rules of The Wolves and the violence of The Squad and survive by the skills of The Clever and the grace of The Kind. This is called life on earth. And many deal with this with a combination of denial, habit, alcohol and stupidity, but many cannot.

And that is why we came here, to heal our souls and hide our income, so we could make and wear the clothes we dreamt of and talk of the things we loved and forget that we were unwanted.

The twins and I moved into the house closest to the gate. Danna, Mammion and Thank You moved into the second house. The third building became the workshop.

I planted ivy. My grandmother always said ivy was one of God’s greatest gifts, from the ugliest house to the cruellest neighbourhood, ivy will make anything beautiful, it will hang from great heights and give us the protection that keeps us alive and the shadows that keep us young.

The twins put on their suits and went to find us work. They went to a fruit farm with a large house. There they found the wife of the farmer, she was wearing golden jewellery from a catalogue, she contained alcohol and was in heat. She had the first twin in the guest bathroom and the second one on her husband’s desk. They were very pale when they returned but they had an order for one hundred uniforms.

That night we celebrated. Thank You stood at the window and kept watch while we played music from the eighties and danced in outfits completely unsuited to a small settlement.

Then Mammion said, Be quiet, and tapped her foot.

Listen, she said, It’s hollow. There must be something underneath.

It’s like the deck of a ship, said Danna.

When were you on a ship? I asked.

My mother said I was made on one, she said.

There must be a cellar, said Thank You, There must be a trapdoor.

There is a square in the floor of the dining room, said one of the twins.

So we ran to the dining room. In the corner was a square that looked different from the rest of the floor.

Thank You tried to lift the square but it was stuck.

How do we open it? I said.

Fuckin’ break it, said Mammion. Then she broke the trapdoor and we all looked down. There was a dark room.

I will get the torch and the ladder, said Thank You.

And then, like Japanese, we all said, Thank you, Thank You.

There was a cellar the size of the entire house. We cleaned it, we put cutting tables in there, also carpets, couches, paintings and all our secret clothes. Only the uniforms were still made in the third building. Everything else happened in the cellar. Below deck. We called it the Ivy Boat.

* * *

And then I came home from my bow tie mission and somebody had brought a mannequin with a secret gown upstairs and left it in front of the window. And I knew we had problems. The others were becoming careless.

That night I screamed at them. The next day Mammion took Danna to U to buy fabric for uniforms and the twins were invited by another farmer’s wife and Thank You was sharpening all the scissors.

Then the twins returned. They were weak but had an order for two hundred uniforms. Then Mammion and Danna returned with a ton of bright pink fabric.

What is that? I said.

All the workers will look