Notes from South Africa:
We stopped in one village along the way called Napier, which provided a nice prism of small town society. We met Hugh, who ran a used bookshop out of his house, who studied at Princeton, was a seismologist, had partied in New York, had lived in Antarctica and who had read everything known to man. Not only had he read everything, but he had created a database of everything he had perused since birth, with cross references to other writers, and his impression and analysis of each tome. Being a scientist, I assumed that creating categories gave him some measure of control over his existence. He was about as old as god, and an odd fit in this tiny town, which had one bar (in which every member of the community crossed paths), a gas station, an art gallery (terrible paintings) and a militaria shop.
The bar was bland, with promotional posters provided by beer and liquor companies, a pool table, and some vagrant type men with bad teeth who shifted between Afrikaans and English so easily in their dialogue that it seemed as if I could understand everything that they were saying. They were age-less in a sense, they could have been 17 or 35, it was indeterminate to me, all I knew, was that if I stopped in Napier again ten years from now, they would be knocking the same billiard balls into the same recessed pockets. The bar owner was a large woman, with a ponytail, with a young daughter running behind the bar in pigtails looking up at the bottles. She asked me what I did for a living, and of course, I had this moment of blessed thanks that I owned a bar, and that somehow my occupation enables me to easily relate to almost anyone, anywhere, in the world… it seems that bar ownership transgresses most boundaries. She said that she ran the place with her husband and asked me if my boyfriend helped me out back home… I looked at her blankly and retorted, “No man has ever helped me run my business.”
After hanging out at the bar for a bit, I decided to check out the “militaria” shop because it seemed like such an odd business out there, in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea what I was walking into. Leon, the owner of said shop, was a man in his mid 50’s who had been in the South African military his whole life and had recently retired. He led me to the basement, where there were walls lined with military medals that he had collected from around the world. He kept saying, “medals, medals, medals, this is what I like.” and showing me the chess sets that he casted out of silver, of which all the pieces were made of little men in uniform representing various wars throughout time. And then I rounded the corner of his little basement only to come face to face with an enormous flag emblazoned with a swastika, a signed letter from Hitler, and tons of bayonets and other weapons wielded by the SS. All of a sudden I realized that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore and when Leon declared to me, “Normally I don’t let women come down here, because this is a man’s playground.” I knew that I had to hightail it out of there before I was the last lady standing. But of course, just as I realized that I was dealing with a mentally disturbed militant, who quite possibly suffered from too much shell shock over the years, I spotted an old camera from the 1940’s on top of one of his cabinets. I felt like a little girl, I was like, “Oh, what’s that Leon?” as he pulled down the ancient Brownie, twin lens reflex from out of my dreams. He showed me how it still worked, and all of a sudden I forgot about the possibility of my imminent death, and was transfixed by this object. When I finally managed to pull myself away from the camera, the medals, and the Nazi paraphernalia which made me more than slightly uncomfortable, especially after learning that he admired his uncle who flew fighter planes for the third Reich, I slipped upstairs where Leon looked at me with pride and asked me to sign his “General’s Log”. There were thousands of signatures from all over the world in the log, and as I put pen to paper, he thanked me and said, “It’s so the Commander will know that I was officially on duty today.” while saluting me and tapping his heels together.
After all of this I ran back to the aforementioned bar where my traveling companion Sean, had been waiting for me. I jumped around excitedly when I saw him, and said, “I can’t talk to you until you go and experience the militaria collection across the street.” Sean looked perplexed, and I assured him it was well worth exploring. He rolled across the street and half an hour later came back to me and said, “You know Francesca, Leon was so very impressed with your conduct that he told me that he has never let any other woman sign the General’s Log, save for you.” I felt like I earned my stars and stripes or whatever other rank one assumes for being able to deal with delusional people who engage in elaborate fantasies (apparently bar ownership has provided me with more tolerance than I need) and laughed until Sean asked me about my experience with the cabinet. I told him how I entered the anterior chamber of Leon’s basement because I saw an old camera and Sean was like, “Are you crazy? You know there’s a special hanging rack in there with a gutter to drain the blood of his victims. Francesca, this guy has people over for dinner and then buries them in his backyard!” And that pretty much sums up our stop in the quaint town of Napier, somewhere near the tip of the edge of Africa.