He started yabbering, flailing his arms, snapping his fingers and tipping his smoke as he lay it all down for me.
‘Ek’s oppie pad Aggenuys toe,’ he says, 'I'm going to Aggenuys. /From there I'm going to Upington to offload, and from there, who knows?’
I learn that his friend is driving the
lorry behind, they’re in convoy, because that was his lorry in the past, and
there’s no way he’s going to let a kaffir drive his lorry, no way. Kaffirs
can’t look after their lorries, he tells me, and illustrates this with a prime
example: His friend bought a new fleet and he was the only white driver among
them. Within six months all the rest of the trucks were in for repairs, but his was still going strong.
‘Dis vir my n compliment,’ he says, ‘I take that as a compliment. A kaffir can't drive a lorry.'
This man tells me that he rides 2000km’s in
two days, every two days. He says that
he left his old lorry behind at 136 000km’s and that it took him only six
months to do that. He tells me that the
current one is already on 4899.
‘Do you talk to your friend behind?’ I ask.
‘No, only if we stop. I want to get a Kenwood walkie talkie. I can get it for R5000 and then we could chat.’
He tells me about the heat:
‘These valleys get hot,’ he says, ‘they get
fuckin hot. Last week I was riding here and it was 45°. You
can’t drive like that, my friend, not anything more than 50 k’s an hour. At 60
your wheels will burst. Although, okay.
If you’re empty you can go a bit faster, but with a load, with 35 ton,
then you fucked - Dans jy fucked.’
‘Dis nou my tweede vrag,’ he says, ‘this
is my second load. First I went to
Saldanha, and from there to Aggenuys. I
went from Black Rock to Saldanha. Do you
know Black Rock?’
‘No. Where’s that?’
‘It’s close to
Hotazel. You know that place? There they mine the black rock, the
manganese.’
‘Have you had
a tyre burst on you?’
He chuckles. ‘My maat - my friend. I’ve had many. But I look after my stuff carefully. Not like the kaffirs.’
‘What is it
with the kaffirs? What’s the problem there?’
‘Okay, I’ll tell you a story. The one day my boss phones me and he says, ‘my
God, Hertlas, you must help this guy. This
guy drives and he doesn’t even check his wheels.’
'In other words they just ornaments,’ says Hertlas. ‘I mean, you can mos see when there’s kak and then you pull off? That’s why I say kaffirs… no, Jesus, I’m very anti-kaffir. I hate the fuckers. That’s one thing that God did just to perplex us boers.’
'In other words they just ornaments,’ says Hertlas. ‘I mean, you can mos see when there’s kak and then you pull off? That’s why I say kaffirs… no, Jesus, I’m very anti-kaffir. I hate the fuckers. That’s one thing that God did just to perplex us boers.’
‘So you’ve never met a good kaffir?’
‘No, my friend, no.’
‘Not once?’
‘No. I like them not. It’s like the Bible says. He’s not crowned, hy’s ongekroon. You understand? It comes from the Bible. Us white
people have crowns. We can think. They can’t fuckin think. They like guppies that skit around in the water,
their heads work like that. Now you ask
him for a nineteen spanner, a thirteen, a twenty and a ten, Jesus he won’t know
what bloody side to go to, up and down and then he just ends up bringing the
whole fuckin tool box. No man!’
‘How do I get to Ceres through the Karoo?’
‘Well, this is Namakwaland. The Karoo is over
there, Beaufort West world,’ he says, pointing to the east, ‘if you want to go
down through there you should take the N1.
If you want to have a nice little journey around you should go down from
Upington, from there Groblershoop, Prieska, Carnarvon.’
‘You know,’ he says, after a bit, ‘the
other day I picked a lovely girl up.
That girl said to me that she had no idea that South Africa was so
fuckin lovely. She said that in the two
days that she was on the road they saw so fuckin much. They told me they were on their way to Durban
but I said that there’s no fucking way – daar’s
nie n vokken manier nie - that road is bad news. They were on the N2, now I know that road is poes dangerous and for a man and a woman,
no ways, no ways. So I say okay I have a proposal. Ride along with me, because I’m going that
way, but they say that they are actually going to Richards Bay. I am going that way but I’m going the long
way round, so I tell them it’s their choice.
So they say yes, they are just going to ride along with me. And then I organized nice work for both of
them.’
‘Oh.
Wow.’
‘Yes.
They ended up staying with me, I gave them money, everything, and I’m
not asking for it back my buddy, not a fuck.
I gave it to them and I said, go, do it.
So now she’s working at OK and her boyfriend is at a security firm.’
‘In Richards Bay?’
‘No. Stilfontein.’
‘Okay.’
‘The guy could find work, but then his father in law got involved. Now, look,
family business is a kak bloody
thing. So his father in law dropped him,
he said he smoked dagga. So I said, why don’t you go for tests? Fuck him! Show that poes! But he didn’t want
to, and in anyway the father in law didn’t want him to get work. They stayed with me for two days, three days,
and then my ex-wife organized them a job. And now the other day he phones me
and tells me things are going well over there, they’ve got a flat and
everything.’
‘That’s what I do,’ he says, ‘I try to help
people. But then you get those guys that
you’ll never help, they just want to ride along. Many guys give lifts but then they’re looking
for money. I’m not looking for
that. The man upstairs gives me
everything quadruple and double again.
Ah, man, I’ve done it a lot. Take
me as is.’
‘What about violence,’ I say. ‘You ever
been hijacked? I got a lift with a lorry out of PE once. The driver told me he had a Magnum .45 set up
in his door, pointing at the passenger seat, with a button under the steering
wheel to fire it. He said he’s had his
legs shot out by an AK47 before, so now the bottom of the door is
bulletproofed.’
He twists the wheel, the tuck jumps just a
little to the right. Hertlas grins.
‘Jesus man that guy just ran that way,’ he
waves to his right, swatting a fly. ‘By then the cops are already on their way
but I just went. When I hit the BMW it
burst.’
He nods.
He’s happy with that.
‘No, chomma, I don’t stop for no one. Jesus.
There’s no way. This truck is
fucking big. That was the only time I’ve
had an experience like that.’
Outside the country’s changing. It’s always changing. It’s getting drier, there’s more sand and
less plants. Less hills and kopjes
too. The place is flattening out,
starting to burn, all green evaporating.
‘Okay,’ says Hertlas, thinking about it
properly, ‘they did steal my tyres once.
I was sleeping in Vereeniging, in the town! I’m sleeping, it’s the kind of thing you
don’t expect so I left the window open and I was sleeping lekker, just a crack open for some fresh air. I woke at five o’clock, walked around and
checked that everything was lekker on
the lorry. So I go sleep some more. Then I wake up at seven with a huge
headache. God, what now? I check the
lorry. Jesus. They took my trefaf tyres, these first ones behind here, they just took them
off.’
‘Why did you have a headache?’
‘They take a CD and burn it! They hold it in here so the smoke comes
inside. It gives off a certain chemical that puts you out.’
‘Shit.’
‘Ja’
‘I didn’t know about that!’
‘Now you know.’
‘So now when I sleep I keep the windows
closed.’
We drive. Hertlas is tiring. I have to keep looking at him, it causes a
real crick in the neck, but it’s great being up high up here, watching the
world rolling by down there, even if we are going slow. What’s slow?
‘The best, for me, is Windhoek. There you can leave your windows wide open
and no one worries you. Even Botswana.
No problems. You will never have one
problem. Okay, it is a kaffir world up
there, but they don’t steal your stuff.’
‘I hear Botswana is very nice?’ I ask.
Hertlas goes quiet for a moment, marshaling
his thoughts. ‘Let me put it like this,’ he says, ‘I’m going to propose this to
you my friend, the end of the world is coming poes quickly. It’s happening now.
All these earthquakes? Those men, what do you call them, Siener vanRensburg. I don’t know if you know of
him, Siener van Rensburg? Do you
yourself a favour and go to a library and ask for a book called Siener van
Rensburg. They must have it because
Jesus that guy knew everything. The
murders on September 11? His prophecy
was that a bird would fly into a thing, like the building. He was a boer. All this that’s happening now? He predicted it too, the tsunamis and
everything else.’
‘Are you afraid of dying?’
‘Broer,
no. If I go then I go. If the Lord needs me then I’m gone. I mean,
I’ve only been borrowed. I have to make
a success of the little bit of life that I’ve been given. A person should live well, live lekker.’
He checks me out suddenly, bright eyes.
‘You wouldn’t say I’m 42, hey?’
I don’t really know what age he is. I guess
I’d say about 40.
‘I don’t look like it, hey? I’ll take two jaggerbombs, drive straight
through from Cape Town and when I get home at about ten o’clock, eleven o’clock
then you would think I would go to bed, but no, my buddy, I’ll go party till
three or four o’clock the next morning.’
‘Do you drink Plays, or what?’
I said why.
He says, ‘because you’ve just driven two days straight without sleep.’
He says, ‘because you’ve just driven two days straight without sleep.’
I say don’t worry, I’m great.
I drink water, I tell him.’
‘One day five years ago I picked three
girls up,’ says Hertlas, ‘we rode everywhere together. You meet many people. Today, still, if I stop off in Windhoek then she’ll
come pick me up, one of these girls, doesn’t matter where I am she’ll come in
one of these new Mercedes Benzes. I
phone her, and, let’s say for example I’m in Ovamboland, or Oshakati, then she
gets in that car and comes to fetch me.’
‘Have you got children?’
‘Ja.
Two. But the love I had with my
wife, she and my best friend fucked.’
We drive. He’s thinking about it, staring
off into the distance. He does this day
in day out, every day, staring off into the distance.
‘I caught her red, red handed. She told me that I would never catch her, so
I said, ‘oh?’ and then I caught her the next weekend sommer in the bed.’
We drive.
‘Now we’re just friends. If she wants my help then I help her. You know what?’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t help if you hold something
against a person the whole time. You
can’t. The Bible says forgive and
forget. My laaitie I’ve never hit, never.
When my mother comes to us she looks at my lovely children and she says,
‘but Hertlas, how did you raise your children?’ Then I say, “Ma, not like you
did.”’
‘If I’m talking to my son then I say
“Boeta, don’t do that.’ Then he doesn’t do it. But if she talks to him then
it’s a whole other story. I don’t know your name?’
‘Milton.’
‘Milton?’
I nod.
‘My name’s Hertlas, but in anyway…’
He proceeds to tell me how he takes his boy
with him on trips and when they’re driving in convoy they pull off, have a dop and sleep, then those guys in the
convoy want to go but Hertlas is still sleeping so he tells his boy to
drive.
‘My name’s Hertlas, but in anyway…’
‘Daddy, what now?’
‘Just drive my boy.’
And he drives. Hertlas says he taught him,
he put him on his lap in just the same way that he taught the girls. He says that the other day at the school his laaitie was having athletics and they
delivered a lorry there but only the lorry and not the driver.
‘But sir, what now?’ said his son.
‘I don’t know,’ said the principle.
‘I can drive it,’ said the boy.
‘Can you?’ asked the principle.
‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘My dad drives a lorry
like that.’
And so the boy drove the thing back to
behind the building so that they could store it there, and he ended up teaching
the principle how to drive.
‘He wants to drive lorries one day,’ says
Hertlas, ‘and that’s good, but he must have another trade behind him too. You can’t put all your eggs in one
basket. If he has another trade then he
knows that no one can take him for a poes
and he always has other work. Like welding or panel beating.’
‘I worked for nine years on the railway,’
he says. ‘We had everything, but then I fell hard. But I stood up again. When you’re down is when you’re closest to
God. You go up, then he brings you to
the ground, then it goes well.’
I tell him about my friend Denis Fry’s dad
who got cancer in the cheek. He got it because he worked at the railway and he
had to inspect the joints on the carriages in the burning sun, screwing up his
eyes against the glare of the reflecting sun with the sun’s rays burning into
his cheeks over the years, slowly causing a rot.
‘Trains run on wool,’ says Hertlas. ‘And if
it burns, yoy-yoy it stinks worse than a snatch.’
‘I don’t like lying,’ I tell him, at length,
‘because if I’m honest then I’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘Yes my friend,’ he agrees wholeheartedly, ‘that
thing always comes out. Always.’
‘It’s about whether you’re hurting someone
else or not,’ I say.
He doesn’t take weekends off because he’s home often, home is on the way to wherever he’s going. The time he spends at home is not a lot, but it’s quality. He goes dancing and he spends time with his kids.
‘Luckily we can still travel around in our
own country,’ he says. ‘Some people
can’t do that. Where is that place?’ he
asks, ‘overseas? What is that place’s
name? Israel? Yes, that’s it. That’s it.’
We contemplate Isreal while the desert
rolls by.
‘If they could give me a choice then I
would move and go to Swakopmund. It’s
fucking mooi. And if not at Swakopmund then I would go to
live in the Cape. I took my boy there.’
He laughs, a cackle. ‘He said jussis pa kom ons trek hierna toe. Hiers girls – Jesus Dad let’s move here,
here’s girls!’
‘Yes,’ replied Hertlas, ‘yes, give it
time. My grandma lives there, she lives
in Skyeways, that flatblock.’
‘Most of my friends are women,’ Hertals
says, ‘it’s much better. I only have one
chomma, the rest are girls. My laaitie
is just like me. On his facebook and on
his mixit he has 295 girlfriends. He says, ‘no dad we are just friends.’ And they aren’t just normal girls, hey,
they’re models.’
‘My oldest,’ he tells me, ‘works with her
mother at OK. But they are not OK employees,
she can rep and that. My laaitie
phones me every day. Okay.’ He laughs again, his special laugh for when he’s
thinking of his son, ‘he sms’. Then I
must phone him back. My daughter phones
me too.’
He shows me a photo of his daughter. She’s surprisingly sexy. ‘Ag, she’s beautiful,’
I say.
‘She’s 18, turning 19,’ he says. He has photos of her but not his laaitie. His
laaitie, he says, tapping his temple, is safe in his head.
He was sterilised at the age of 29. Since then, he says, he’s had no problems
with his dick. No prostate problems, no problems urinating. He can get himself fixed but it costs
R2500.
‘Many drivers like to fuck on the road,’ he
says, ‘they see a girl they want to fuck.’
He’s not like that, he says, and I believe
him. He doesn’t like to sommer just
fuck.
‘Everybody says to me,’ he says, ‘you’ve got a cum station in every town.’
‘Everybody says to me,’ he says, ‘you’ve got a cum station in every town.’
‘Yes I do,’ I reply, ‘but it’s not what you
thinking.’
He lights a smoke as he explains that he doesn’t like one night stands. He says you don’t know her, so you can’t enjoy it. ‘This meeting for the first night then you want to fuck, no, it doesn’t work for me.’
He lights a smoke as he explains that he doesn’t like one night stands. He says you don’t know her, so you can’t enjoy it. ‘This meeting for the first night then you want to fuck, no, it doesn’t work for me.’
He had another girl, he says, and they were
together for eight months to a year. The
one day she phoned him, he says, and said she’s been thinking about him a lot. He said, ‘ja, if you didn’t do what you did,
then we could still be together.’
‘It’s the Lord’s will if I drive,’ says
Hertlas, ‘it’s not mine. If the Lord
says I ride, then I ride.’
Hertlas drops me at the turnoff to Aggenuys. At first the air was still lovely and cool, but soon it began to evaoporate. Heat remains. I’ve taken to putting two pairs of socks on because my takkies are old and frayed and rubbing my toes up the wrong way. The extra padding helps. The landscape has changed. Flat, empty fields ringed by faraway mountains. You can see to tomorrow.
Hertlas drops me at the turnoff to Aggenuys. At first the air was still lovely and cool, but soon it began to evaoporate. Heat remains. I’ve taken to putting two pairs of socks on because my takkies are old and frayed and rubbing my toes up the wrong way. The extra padding helps. The landscape has changed. Flat, empty fields ringed by faraway mountains. You can see to tomorrow.
All I'm doing is interpreting how I'm feeling.
That's it. My feeling is
quiet. Reserved. Cautious. But fucking at peace sitting here writing at
the turn-off to Aggenuys. This land is
my land. This is what I've been given.
And the days will wheel by. The land
changed about 60k's out of Springbok.
It'll change again.
Hertlas said that if I don't get another lift he'll take me Upington. I just can't go in with him to the mine.
Hertlas said that if I don't get another lift he'll take me Upington. I just can't go in with him to the mine.
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