Kachasu

“When uncle Eddie said he didn’t like his teddy, I knew he was a no good kid…” 

 

Funny, thought Francois, how Rocky Horror Picture Show tunes made their way into the most inappropriate moments.

 

Take the office for example.  Susan would sit down in a meeting room and in his head would run: “t-t-t-t-touch mee, I wanna be diiirty..”  It wasn’t even as if Francois found women attractive, but Susan just had a certain Miss Priss look about her that made him want to do unspeakable things to her and put some dissipation on her face.

 

“I wanna, be evil, I wanna be bad…” Eartha Kitt now; rasping through his head.

 

Back to the present and the task at hand.  Francois’ mother, an evil old witch by any standards, including Myra Hindley’s, was dead and it was his dubious honour to be the only family member sane or sober enough to go through her belongings and decide what to do with them.

 

Francois had known this would not be pleasant.  His mother was a Keeper Of Objects.  He could barely move through the jammed spaces of her small Karoo home.  Starkly, he remembered his shame of having friends over to see how he lived.  No, Francois had preferred to visit, rather than be visited.  It wasn’t only his mother though that brought this out in him.  His father had been a perpetual drunk, abusive and angry:  Doctor Jimmy and Mr Jim, the one coming out when he drank his gin. 

 

Yet, gazing at what was before him, he knew a call to the old bastard was in order.  Francois had to understand why there were 10 large old-fashioned jars, filled with metal swastika’s at the bottom of his mother’s cupboard.  Hidden behind shoe boxes and other paraphernalia.

 

“Dad, it’s me.  What’s with all these swastika’s?”

“Ag, that’ll be uncle Eddie, me lad.”

“No dad, these are most definitely not uncle Eddie, they are metal swastika’s and I want to know where they came from.”

“Off the Germans of course, you fucking fool.”

“Off what Germans,” shrieked Francois, automatically matching his father’s volume.

 

“He shoulda been decorated, your Uncle Eddie,” slurred Jim.  “Each one of those swastika’s is off a dead kraut.  Gestapo mostly.  Eddie hated the fucking Gestapo.”

 

“He killed all these people?”

 

“Aye, but that was only in the war.  Gave him a helluvan excuse did that war.  Uncle Eddie always liked ta kill wee things.  Then the war made it alright for him to move on to bigger prey.  Did I ever tell you about that time we was in that steenkin’ fuckin, baguette and garlic infested c…”

 

“OK, dad, I need to go now.”

 

Francois looked at the Swastikas.  They looked back.  Must have been at least 300, he estimated.  All Gestapo?  Uncle Eddie?  Memories of a brandy-soaked, vulgar, cheap tobacco smelling old fat man.  Uncle Eddie had been shipped off to a home as soon as possible.  He was an embarrassment and died several years later, after being moved from home to home for vile and despicable acts against the other inmates and staff.  There was something involving a student nurse, vasoline and a zimmer frame…  No, the memory was gone.  Probably a good thing.

 

The swastikas were an affront to Francois.  He had been a Buddhist for many years, while his life partner was a profound catholic, although he had left the seminary shortly after meeting Francois.

 

He couldn’t pass on the swastikas to anybody.  That was just wrong.  Like handing someone a slice of bad karma and saying “have a nice day, now” with a great big shit-eating grin on your face.

 

No.

 

He was not sure what the metal actually was, could be tin, could be silver-plate.  He rang his artist friend, Basil, up in Johannesburg and they reached a solution.

So, Francois gave away small, hand-caste Buddah’s to all his friends for the rest of his life.  His brother, Anton, ended up riddled with aids from a life ill-spent and in prison for murdering some German tourists in Prince Albert.  He had shot them far too many times for it to be even considered “accidental.”  There was, too, his running down the street screaming about the “fucking kraut boot heeled Nazis invading…”

 

The Eddie gene had avoided Francois, but seemed to run rampant through Anton.

 

A serial killer gene.

 

“I knew he was a no good kid…”