To Act is to Live

TO ACT IS TO LIVE

It seems that around the time of the Crimean War the life of a Cossack by the name of Vladimir Rostov is saved by a young Turkish nurse, which is a serious case of love at first sight when she removes the bandage from his head and they can eyeball one another. This is so serious an attack of Cupid that the nurse has to inform Vladimir some six weeks later that she had missed something. Because he does not really understand Turkish and she does not speak Russian, and they communicate mostly by touch up till then, he has difficulty understanding what she is saying, until she takes a step back and makes a circular motion over her tummy and Vladimir is overjoyed because he says that is one Cossack shot that went home.

Now this is February 1856 and the Russians leave the Crimean Peninsula with their tails between their legs but growling, 'We'll be back!' Vladimir and his nurse, who is named Melak, which is the Turkish for 'angel', find that their true love is appreciated by neither the Russians nor the Turks, even though they personally are of the opinion that it could be the start of the restoration of goodwill between the tsar and the sultan. There is some heat generated around them, so one dark night they swim to a Greek fishing boat in the Istanbul harbour, whence they work their passage to Greece through the Sea of Marmara and the terrible Dardanelles till they land in Cyprus. There their little Sule - which is a Turkish girl name meaning 'adventurous' - is born. By this time Vladimir and Melak have a shared vocabulary of about a hundred words, some Russian, some Turkish, some Greek and some Albanian, because there are Albanian deckhands on the fishing vessel. But love has its own language and the next time Melak makes a circle over her tummy, they sit down to discuss their future.

By means of a Turk who speaks English, Melak arranges passage for them on a British merchant ship which drops them in Southampton. Vladimir now knows his way around ships and, as he is 6'6" and built like a bulldozer, he has no problem finding work on a passenger ship heading for Cape Town. Little Vladimir is born in the ship's hospital and becomes a South African citizen when they land in the Cape of Good Hope.

In the beginning they have no idea that this is the Land of Opportunity, but while the ship is anchored in Table Bay, they get hold of a map of the world. Then Melak says, 'Vladimir, this is about as far as we can get away from Turkey unless we want to join the penguins in Antarctica.' By this time their language is a rich mix of Russian, Turkish, Greek, Albanian, English (mainly cockney) and Dutch profanity. What decides Vladimir senior to settle in South Africa is that the local edition of Dutch, viz. Afrikaans, has the same guttural intonation than his native tongue.

He casts around for suitable work in Cape Town, but language proves to be a barrier. He knows about fifty words of English but his pronunciation has his audience hunting for dictionaries everywhere. Finally someone points him to O'kiep, a mining town on the West Coast, and the Russian-Turkish-Greek-South African family of four, with another little bun in the oven, set sail - in an ox-wagon this time - for the copper mines. Melak pops her third baby in the ox-wagon and names him Evgeni.

It is when Vladimir the elder wants to register his second son that a serious difficulty arises. What with the wordless language of love they had never got around to getting married, even though there were several previous opportunities for tying the knot. Melak came from a Muslim family and Vladimir was Russian Orthodox, but in their lovemaking these differences, which are so important that major wars have been fought over them, had dissolved whenever the main mast of the father was properly stemmed in the boat of heaven of the mother, and was completely lost in crossing the Atlantic anyway

Melak, who was a better linguist than her lover, asked the clerk in the local office of the Department of Internal - and Extramarital - Affairs if there was a solution to their problem. They were directed to the magistrate where they were pronounced man and wife and their children were registered as Rostov progeny. All within the space of ten minutes.

Now all this, my friends, is to explain to you why my name is Vladimir Rostov and why I am a freethinker. I hail from the mighty metropolis of Pofadder, named after a Griqua captain of bygone days and not the puffadder itself. The shift from O'kiep to Pofadder was again necessitated by the urge of the male of the species to propagate, which is fortunately also found in the female of the species. As a mining town, O'kiep had ninety males for every ten females and even the whorehouses in nearby Springbok could not cope with the demand. My grandfather tested the local wares and found them wanting, so he turned his eyes in the direction of the rising sun, which took him to Pofadder. He worked as a common labourer for a while, then met an Afrikaans desert rose by name of Ansie and stole her heart.

We now skip a generation to my own.

Pofadder, as I have intimated, is no real competition for places like Hong Kong, New York or Los Angeles. It lacks a bit in saleable commodities., although it has an abundance of snakes, sun spiders, agama lizards and cacti. You try and back up a girl against a halfmens, which is a cactus resembling a human statue with arms outspread, and she gets more pricks from behind than from the front. And because the halfmens is about the only cover in that land which is flatter than the normal tabletop, and there are always people watching and timing you when you touch a girl's hand, it is not a land conducive to love. You see, it is small enough to make anybody's business everybody's business.

You will get the idea when I tell you that the lady mayoress, Mrs Theodora Konstant, who could compete with the Queen Mary in tonnage and had the same sweeping way about her, once let out a wet curry fart when she stumbled on the church steps. She stumbled because her status demanded that she should look over people not at them or their shoes. Now the fart blast was sufficiently violent to penetrate her bloomers, a thick slip and then fanned out on her white silk dress. It was accompanied by a rather obnoxious aroma. The first fart was followed by a series of smaller rectal eruptions. Congregants gave her a wide berth that day, which she interpreted as deference to her status as the leading lady of Pofadder. Quite logically she became known as Lady Poof Adder. This event was the talk of the town till I came to Cape Town eleven years ago. I believe it is still the main topic of discussion in the two bars; motorists passing through town hear it from petrol pump attendants.

Now you will understand that when I came to Cape Town to study Drama, I was shy and diffident. The first time I had to hold a girl's hand in a play, I almost fainted. In a performance of Romeo and Juliet, where I played the leading male role, I ejaculated when I embraced my fair Juliet. The director took me backstage and said, 'Next time you jack off before you come on stage! This is a tragedy, not a fucking farce!'

By the end of my second year in Drama School I still had involuntary ejaculations while petting girls. This was because the damsels looked at my 6-4 frame and regarded it as a good post on which to hang their bodies, and every time the copious flow of semen found its way through several garments, which proved to be a huge embarrassment to my consort and myself. As a result, I never got any further than first base with a girl.

As I was saying, I came to the end of my second year. The Drama Group planned a series of performances of short farces in the townships for the summer holidays and I was cast in several roles. There was a hiatus for a few days over Christmas and I decided to indulge in the common male sport of watching girls. The best place to do that was Clifton's bikini beach, so I betook myself there on the day before Christmas, clad in boxer pants, which could also serve as swimming trunks, and a shirt with a tropical motif, although I had never visited the tropics. I had a deerstalker cap from a production of Sherlock Holmes and completed my dress with a pair of sunglasses which would hide where I was peeking.

The beach was pretty crowded, but I found a space of six foot six by two foot three inches where I could spread my towel and took up a cheap copy of King Lear to give the impression that I am really there to learn the part. I have to confess that I never got past the first page. Shakespeare offered no competition for the pendulous paps and luscious legs on the beach. I developed a crick in my neck watching the frolicking female figures floating past me and my tree of life started blooming quite soon.

To cool it a bit, I laid aside book, glasses and cap, and took to the waters. It was high summer and one would think that Mother Nature would play along and heat the fucking pool, but I am convinced that day MN was cohabiting with Father Neptune at a South Pole resort and sent us icicles for Christmas. By the time I was knee-deep in the breakers, I was frozen. I could have broken off my prick easily if I could just find it. But all around me people were in the surf, jumping and swimming and body skating and tumbling through the waves.

I've never been a science boffin and my knowledge of human anatomy was confined to what I could find on pornsites on the web, but that day, slowly, there came a glimmering of understanding: if you keep moving, like the madmen around me, you generate body heat, which offsets the coldness of the water. Now I am proud to say that my reasoning that day was sound. As soon as I started imitating the cavorting carcases around me, the deepfreeze effect started to dissipate. I managed to get rolled around by the waves half a dozen times and then returned to my towel. Someone had stepped on my glasses and my cap was gone. The towel was still there, because it came from the boarding house and was of the see-through kind. I guess the book would have gone too if (1) the thief could read, or (2) it had illustrations from Penthouse on the even-numbered pages.

Using the towel as a cover for my head, I picked up King Lear, but something else picked me up that exact moment. It was a girl with the shape of Pamela Anderson before she had her boobs boosted - I always thought that was messing unnecessarily with Mother Nature - and a smile like Audrey Hepburn. I suddenly found my mouth dry. She wended her way among the spread towels and bodies right past me, so I could even do a bit of laying on of hands had I been quicker off the mark. Now you have an idea of the shape of this girl, but you have no idea of the impact on poor Vladimir's mind, or what was left of it between the scorching sun and the icy water. You know that song with the words, 'She was wearing this itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini'? That would have been an overstatement. There were two dark dots in the white top, and two vertical lines in the bottom section, one in front and one at the back. I could give her two Golden Globe Awards without blinking - in fact, my eyes were so big then my eyelids couldn't meet halfway - and an Oscar for the Chalice of Unchastity further south. I instantly hoisted the main mast and started panting for breath.

This apparition had her domicile some three or four towels away, hence we were virtually neighbours. I watched as she donned her dark glasses and a broadbrimmed hat, then produced a bottle of suntan oil from a bag and started applying it to whatever part of her body was not covered by the two skimpy pieces of cloth, which was most of her body. How I wished that I could do that! Don Juan would've done it, in fact, all the Great Lovers through the Ages would have done it, but I was not Don Juan, I was Don Quixote, who had less gumption than his ass.

Well, she oiled herself, put the bottle back in her bag, found a Woman's Weekly in the same bag, perused it for a minute or two, paging through it in a desultory way, then laid it aside, surveyed the mass of humanity around her, then took off the broadbrimmed hat and the sunglasses - I was hoping she would continue removing her clothing - raised herself up - majestically, you understand, like a queen preparing to hand out largesse to the multitudes - and headed for the breakers.

As she ambled past me, her bum was going tweedle-dee tweedle-dum and those suntanned legs were like drumsticks beating on my chest. If that is a mixed metaphor, please pardon me. I watched her till she disappeared in the waves and then a very devious scheme came to me. She was clearly an excellent swimmer, the sort of person who would rush to a fellow swimmer floundering in the waves. I was prepared to flounder! I was almost prepared to be drowned to have those hands pumping my chest or massaging a cramp out of a gluteus muscle.

To think, to scheme, is but the prelude to act. I strode towards the beach like Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, defeating the Aztec forces and claiming Mexico for the King of Castile in 1502. I stormed into the waves with my eyes peeled for that itsy-bitsy white bikini. She was riding high in the waves. I dived and came up beside her. It was superb underwater navigation, but my compass had picked up the two luscious legs trying to beat the waves to a standstill. That was my moment! I screamed and clutched my thigh, noticed with gratification that the adored object was casting an apprehensive eye in my direction. I went under, my hands now raised as if in despair. I came up and coughed salt water, my hands now milling like Don Quixote's windmill, gurgling, 'My leg! My leg!' and went down a second time.

O blissful moment! She touched me! No charismatic Christian could ever have experienced such a touch. She touched me! She came up behind me and lifted me up in the breakers. I did not resist. A drowning man clutches at straw, but I allowed myself to be clutched. We changed gears at the top of the next wave and went sailing to the shallow water. Willing hands came to pull me out of the water, and I heard my girl say, 'I'll have to get the water out of his lungs.'

With that, she started to raise me and, once again, I did not resist. I would never make a good resistance fighter. She was behind me again, and I felt the impression of the Golden Globes on my back, then her sun-browned arms came around my waist, locked over my bellybutton and jerked upwards. I spat out the last mouthful of the Atlantic Ocean which had lodged in my body cavities. She was not satisfied with that, so the Heimlich - or is it Himmler? - manoeuvre was repeated. I coughed a dry cough. She did it a third time, with the same result.

The next manoeuvre probably has a name, but I don't know what it is. What happened is that she did a 180 degree rotation without letting go of me. The result was that her hands were clasped behind my back, the two tantalizing titties were against my chest, and looking up to me were two blue eyes streaming with salt water. I can't say whether there were tears mixed with them. What I did see, was a little rosebud of a mouth at the top of my breastbone. It said something but I was too far gone to hear. She felt the shudder as it passed through my body and thought it was an anxiety attack.

'We need to get you to a doctor!' she said. I allowed myself to be led, leaving King Lear to the tender mercies of the tides and feeling no loss for the see-through towel either. She gathered her goodies without letting go of me and we started to cross a road, a death-defying act. I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to limp, and I could hear my director shaking his head - and a finger - at me for that lapse. But Skimpy Bikini seemed not to notice this absence of histrionic talent.

'Are you feeling better now? I think you must lie down a bit.'

Well, I was lying all right, but I did not mind lying some more if she wanted it. I have a vague recollection of the foyer of a high-rise building and the pressing of a lift button. Her arm was around my waist as we stepped into the lift. She propped me up in a corner and then 'covered me' by pressing herself against me, deep concern etched in the delicate features as the rosebud moved again. 'We're almost there. The flat is on the eleventh floor. Left in the passage, third door on the right.'

We made it. I struggled a bit, because I reckoned the lift was too roomy. An old-fashioned telephone booth would have served just as well, even if the phone was not working. She changed her hold on me when the lift stopped and an arm around my waist helped me out. I had the presence of mind to put my arm around her waist as well and so we hobbled along as I now simulated the cramp in my leg.

'Wasn't the cramp in your left leg?' she asked as we stopped at her door.

I stammered something, but she didn't really take note. She took the key from the top of the doorsill, unlocked the little flat and guided me to its spacious 12 by 12 interior. There was a sleeper couch against one wall, a single easy chair in another corner, a kitchen counter and a bar fridge opposite it. The lift had more Lebensraum than the flat. There was a doorway, but no door, to a miniscule bathroom designed on the instalment plan: you could also pay all your instalments in one go, sit, shit, shower and shave all at once.

She laid me down on the couch and stood back.

'Thank you. What's your name?' I asked.

'Carmen,' she answered. 'And you're the humbug Vladimir, Vladimir Rostov.'

'What do you mean, humbug?'

'The cramp was in your left leg, humbug, then you forgot about it and when you remembered it, it changed to your right leg.' She looked rather cross, but she was not into pointing fingers.

'I'm sorry, Carmen, but it was the only way I could think of meeting you.'

'Well, the water act was quite convincing, but I've seen better acting. There was, for instance, the production of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Labia in August where the acting of Lance, the valet, was singled out for praise. In fact, the reviewer was of the opinion that he should have been cast in the role of Jack alias Ernest.'

I was a bit taken aback. 'You seem to know a bit about the theatre...'

She nodded and there was a smirk of satisfaction in her face. 'I wrote that review, Mr Rostov. I work for the Cape Argus. Those words, "towering presence", were mine. I still think you would have been a better choice for Jack.'

Pretending to be weak had obviously not fooled her. Dammit, it was a terrible mistake about the leg! Unforgiveable! I sat up on the couch. Through the window I could see a bit of Signal Hill. I guess the flat would be advertised as "a room with a view".

'I'm sorry, Carmen.'

'You keep saying that,' she reposted. 'Beer?'

'A beer would be nice, thank you.'

I watched as those lovely legs moved across the bit of open space and my mouth watered while my throat went dry as she bent over to get the beer from the fridge, because the larger labia poured over the rim of the string bikini.

She returned with the beer and sat down in the easy chair opposite me. 'Cheers!'

I lifted my cannister and said, 'Cheers!' We took a couple of gulps and I said, 'So you write for the papers.'

'Yes, art and literary critic. My majors, then I took a course in journalism. What are you doing for Christmas tomorrow?'

The sudden change of subject caught me off balance. I blinked and said, 'Lie on the beach again, I guess. Nothing definite.' My next histrionic performance would be on Boxing Day in Khayelitsha, but I didn't think she would be interested in that.