Stargazer. Jan van Tonder

forming shiny patches of colour on the water. Even a bottle cork. When you were fishing, you’d search in vain for a cork to make a float, but the minute your arm was in a cast and your fishing rod was at home . . . If I’d had a line in the water now, my bait would have been bobbing beneath my float. I knew fish liked moving bait. There were blacktails and pinkies and mullet in the water. The mullet never took the bait easily – you had to catch them with a jigger. To make a jigger you soldered three hooks together. You threw it in without a sinker and if you yanked the rod as you reeled in, the sharp points would lodge in the body of the fish and you could pull it out. But you had to watch out for the harbour police if you had a jigger on your line.

      The cork drifted faster than the other objects, because it floated on top of the water and the wind was helping it along. It was the same wind that blew the stench from the whaling station in our direction so that it was sometimes unbearable, whether you were at home, at school or in church.

      Behind the cork a submerged object was drifting in the water. It was long and transparent like a sausage casing, open on one side and with a teat at the closed end. A glassy had got stuck in the narrow end and was trapped inside the thing – it couldn’t move forward or backward. Now I was truly sorry I didn’t have my fishing rod. I would’ve fished out the casing and used the little fish for live bait. With live bait you might even catch a bonito or something. Or a barracuda, but for that you had to use a steel trace.

      “What’s so interesting in the water, Timus?” It was Hein’s voice. When I turned round, I saw he had a few of his friends with him. A cigarette was dangling from his lips. “Are you looking for a mermaid who likes lighties with their arm in a cast?” he asked. His friends laughed.

      I was about to get angry, but just in time I remembered the strange thing in the water, and I pointed at it.

      “What’s that?”

      They all looked at where I was pointing and burst out in peals of laughter. They were clutching at the railings not to fall into the water. Hein flicked his cigarette butt in the direction of the thing. “It’s an effie, man,” he said.

      “What’s an effie?”

      “Good Lord, can anyone be so stupid?”

      “It’s what the Japanese use when the whores service them on the ships.”

      I shook my head in bewilderment. I had no idea what they were talking about.

      Hein said: “Man, they pull it over their cocks when they fuck the whores. So that they don’t make babies. What use would a pregnant whore be?”

      “Do ordinary people use it too, or only whores and Japanese?”

      They didn’t answer at first. Just slapped each other on the back and began to laugh all over again.

      Then Hein said: “Now this is the lightie I told you about, the champion foam pisser of the railway camp.”

      They uttered a string of filthy things as they left. Now I was too scared to go on to the whaling station – what if I met them along the way?

      I waited until I could no longer see them. Then I ran along the harbour wall until I found the effie. The tiny fish was still trapped inside. It couldn’t be true. No willie could swell like that. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the Japanese on Hennie’s photo, but it was no use; the photo had been too small to be able to tell. No, Hein and his friends must have made up the story. How could an effie prevent babies anyway? If it was true, Rykie wouldn’t have a bun in the oven. And Juffrou Louw wouldn’t have had to speak to the class about overpopulation last week. And I wouldn’t have been in trouble. But then someone had to go and ask: “Why do poor people always have so many children, Juffrou?”

      Juffrou Louw shook her head. “An interesting question. Can anyone suggest an answer?”

      Everyone was just staring at her. Then she said: “I’m afraid I don’t understand it myself. You know, there’s a point, during a period of drought, for instance, when even the big apes like orang-utans know better than to continue breeding, yet people have one child after another, but are quick to complain about money for food and clothing.”

      Ma always said her children were her riches, but I wasn’t sure about that. I couldn’t help noticing that rich people didn’t have so many children. And rich people had cars. And the houses they lived in belonged to them, not to the Railways.

      I put up my hand.

      “Yes, Timus?”

      “Juffrou, I wonder if sometimes it couldn’t be . . .” Immediately I regretted having spoken.

      “Yes, Timus?”

      “Whether perhaps it could be that the Lord allows an extra few to be born. I mean –”

      “Timus!” Juffrou Louw turned a deep crimson colour.

      “I only mean, Juffrou –”

      “I know exactly what you mean, and I don’t think I want to pollute the minds of the rest of the class any further. Come, you may tell Meneer Gertenbach what you’re accusing God of!”

      Juffrou Louw knew all about us Rademans, how many children we were. She’d taught my brothers and sisters as well. Erika and Martina were still in her biology class. I thought she’d understand what I meant.

      My only hope lay with Meneer Gertenbach, but it was not like the fixed hope that Dominee Van den Berg was always preaching about.

      “What’s the problem today, Juffrou Louw?” Meneer Gertenbach asked. In a corner of his office there was a shelf for walking sticks, just like Oupa’s on the farm, but instead of walking sticks, his was stocked with canes.

      Juffrou Louw’s face was still bright red. “I don’t really know how to put it to you without making myself guilty of blasphemy, Meneer, but what Timus has just said in the classroom, in front of the other children . . .” She pressed her fist halfway into her mouth – something I should perhaps have done rather than speak out the way I always did.

      Meneer Gertenbach went over to the shelf of canes. “Carry on, Juffrou.”

      “I really don’t know how to put it, Meneer, but what the child said boiled down to the world’s overpopulation being God’s fault instead of man’s.”

      Meneer Gertenbach took out his hankie, a clean, white one that was still folded, and selected a cane. There were yellow ones, brown ones, thick ones, thin ones, some with which I’d been whipped before and new ones that he’d acquired in the meantime. I wanted to tell Meneer Gertenbach not to punish me because I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I held my tongue.

      He grasped one corner of the hankie and shook it. It looked like a big bird flapping its wings. His shoulders were hunched like Oupa’s one day on the farm when he’d been really furious. Braam and I had been playing in the dam. The two of us, and Hendrik and Frikkie and Herklaas. They belonged to Lena, who worked in the kitchen. We’d caught a Muscovy duck and pushed it underwater and held it for a while before letting it go. We knew a Muscovy duck never came up where you pushed it under; it always swam away from you first. We never knew where it was going to come up next, because the water was murky and a Muscovy duck could hold its breath for a long time. As soon as it surfaced, the closest one would grab it and push it under again. The Muscovy duck came up next to me and I must have held it underwater too long, for when I let it go, it surfaced immediately. Didn’t even lift its head out of the water.

      “Now you’re in trouble,” Braam said. While I was taking the lifeless duck to the side to hide it in the bushes, I heard Oupa’s voice: “Bring that duck here! Give it to me!” Oupa was very angry. In one hand he held his yellow walking stick, in the other the dead white duck.

      “Please don’t hit me, Oupa,” I said.

      “What?” It was Meneer Gertenbach’s voice. He was polishing the cane with his hankie. “What did you just say, Timus?”

      “I’m telling you, Meneer, the boy has no respect.”