The Satanic Mechanic Read Online Free PDF

help crime victims.’
    â€˜I’m not a victim,’ I said. ‘And she is a counsellor. She thinks I use food to escape my feelings. And that I’m fat.’
    â€˜Rubbish, you’re lovely.’
    â€˜She says I should exercise too. You don’t think I need to go on diet?’
    â€˜You’re the best cook, and your body is just right. Sorry, I must go now. I’ll come see you tonight?’
    â€˜I don’t know what I’ll cook, with this diet and all—’
    â€˜Forget the diet,’ he said. ‘See you later, bokkie.’
    Bokkie. He called me bokkie. A little buck. My body was just right, he said. It was worth going through some trouble to get close to a man like that. I could at least try following the poppie’s advice . . . Maybe going for a walk would take my mind off food.
    I put on my veldskoene – my comfortable leather veld shoes – and headed out of my garden gate. It opened into the veld, and I walked on a narrow animal-path between the small bushes and succulents. The sun was hot, and I wished I’d brought a hat. I followed the path towards my old friend, the gwarrie tree. I sat down in its shade, a little out of breath, on a low branch.
    â€˜Hello, Gwarrie,’ I said. It was a very old tree, maybe even a thousand years old, with thick rough bark and dark wrinkled leaves.
    I thought of what Slimkat had said: ‘The land doesn’t belong to us; we belong to the land.’
    I could see by the little piles of shining bokdrolletjies on the ground that the tree was used to visitors. The little buck poos looked a lot like chocolate peanuts. I wondered if that is how the sport of bokdrolletjie-spitting began.
    A flock of mousebirds landed in the upper branches. They had scruffy hairstyles and long tails. When they saw me, they chirruped and flew away. My worries seemed to fly away too.
    A breeze picked up and brought with it a sweet, unusual smell. I looked around for what it might be and saw a patch of grey-green bushes with flowers of little yellow balls. I walked to them and bent down to sniff. The smell filled my nostrils and tickled the back of my throat on its way down to my lungs. It was something like lemons but was also sweet like honey. My thoughts scratched in the back of my mind trying to find just what it smelt like. Maybe it was a smell-memory, passed down from the faraway days when we all used to hunt and gather like Bushmen. I stopped trying to name it and started on the path back home.
    The vygie bushes were filled with dried seed pods, but now and again there were small flowers on the ground that had jumped up after the little bit of rain: a pale purple orchid, a tiny bunch of Karoo violets.
    Then, maybe because I had stopped trying, I remembered what that smell reminded me of. It was Japie se Gunsteling – that famous orange and lemon pudding – Japie’s Favourite – from my mother’s cookbook, Kook en Geniet . Cook and Enjoy . I would make some for Henk tonight. The walk home was much quicker, and I picked a lemon from the tree as I passed through my garden, into the house.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    When I’d finished cooking, I showered and put on my nice underwear. I dabbed a little perfume behind my ears and between my breasts.
    The phone rang, and I went to answer it, wearing only my panties and bra. It was Henk. I blushed, even though I knew he couldn’t see me.
    â€˜I’ve made a pudding for you,’ I said. ‘I’ve changed Japie se Gunsteling to Henk’s Favourite. I didn’t have enough orange juice, so I used my homemade Van der Hum instead.’ Henk just loved my naartjie liqueur.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Maria. I can’t make it tonight.’
    I sat down on the chair beside the phone table.
    â€˜I have to leave town for a few days,’ he said.
    â€˜Oh,’ I said. ‘Has something happened?’
    He was quiet a moment, and then he said, ‘We