They call me Liewe Heksie, but Lavinia is my name. I’m the cleverest witch that I know, and I’ve even been to the moon. That’s how I used to say hello to the children. It used to rhyme, too, when the nice uncles at the SAUK let me do my show in Afrikaans. That’s all gone now. I’m not complaining, though, you understand: my new place is small and the roof leaks, but I have my health, and they’re almost sure my pension has been delayed by an administrative error, and not something bad.
Yesterday I was in Blommeland and Blommie bought me a cappuccino and we were talking about the old days, before the children got so sophisticated, before they started saying terrible things about King Rosencrantz, things about his — that he was — that he was a girly-man. Then Blommie says to me, ”O Heksie” (he still uses an Afrikaans ”o”, which doesn’t have an ”h” after it and sounds much more fatalistic), ”O Heksie,” he says, ”have you seen this kak list of kamma Great South Africans?”
”Haai-o, Blommie,” I said, ”Dis nie mooi nie.” I hate it when Blommie uses swearwords, because whenever a kabouter says something ugly it makes a flower die. When they cancelled our show and took the straw out of Sarel Seemonster and Karel Kraai over on the Wielie Walie set to use in bricks for RDP houses, Blommie locked himself in his car with a case of schnapps, and half an hour later the windows were steamed up and all the flowers in Namaqualand were dead. (Bennie Boekwurm, you’ll remember, got an anonymous tip-off and went underground before the vans arrived, but they say he’s got emphysema and someone stepped on his glasses so now he spends his days alone, crying in the dark.)
Yes, it’s not nice to say unkind things about people, and when people say unkind things to me it makes my heart very sore. I don’t talk a lot because Blommie says if you don’t know much about something, don’t say anything about it, and I don’t know much of anything. But heerlikheid, mense, if a white-bread mullet in a puffer jacket and platform takkies like Steve Hofmeyer can get in ahead of Oom Sisulu and Oubaas Mbeki, then paint me black, give me a pielietjie and call me Tokolosh, because we’ve got our priorities opgevoeter.
A whole lot of flowers started dying when Blommie got on to talking about Jeremy Mansfield, but I told him he was being very unfair. ”Blommie,” I said, ”Oom Mansfield entertains a great many people.”
”So does Mandrax and hookers,” said Blommie, and King Rosencrantz’s prize pansy turned black and fell over. ”And they’re the same demographic.”
Blommie is just sore about this because Athol Fugard is his idol, and Oom Athol came in stone last, about 50 spots behind Oom Mansfield. ”Blommie,” I said, ”you know as well as I do that given the choice between Boesman and Lena and 100 Kak Jokes That Will Make Your Poephol Sting, most people will opt for the poephol. ‘Skuus dat ek so vloek.”
”Speaking of which,” said Blommie, ”I see we almost had a cheating, thieving, perjurer in the top 10.” I said I thought Winnie Mandela was in the top 10, and Blommie went very white. ”Jirre, bokdrolbrein, you can’t say stuff like that! I meant Hansie Cronje.”
”At least there are a couple of worthy sporting heroes, such as Josiah Thugwane.”
”No, he’s not in the top 10.”
”Well, such as Naas Botha then.”
”No.”
”Graeme Pollock? Basil d’Oliviera? Jake Tuli? Ezekiel ‘King Kong’ Dlamini?”
”No. But Gary Player’s in the top 10.” Blommie teed off at a tulip with a length of hosepipe. ”If you think about it, he’s the perfect guy to represent the last 300 years of South African sports: a rich white man strolling about on a manicured lawn, with skinny cattle staring longingly at the back nine rough, his heart firmly in the right place and his golfbag firmly in the hands of a klonkie. I suppose the idea is that if he’s handing you a nine-iron he can’t put a burning tyre around your neck.”
”Sies, Blommie,” I cried. ”Your cynicism goes too far! Oom Player is the Black Knight! Oom Player gives money to poor people!”
Then he said I was bitter because I wasn’t on the list while Eugene Terre’blanche was, and I turned him into a goitre, and now we’re not speaking.