She agreed to cohabit with me only once we were married. Accordingly, after the performance of some Christian rituals and the completion of the necessary legal formalities, I held her to her word, she gave up her job and we set up home in the cottage I had built in Pearly Beach. This was in 1984, and in those days, we did not worry about how we were going to keep the wolf from the door. I used to say, ‘God will provide,’ which was rich, coming from an atheist.

One way in which I got God to provide was by taking on some small building jobs, but in those days, there wasn’t much work to be found in the area. I thought of trying my hand at firewood, and as described in a previous blog post (Trees must Fall), this venture took place on the farm Groothagelkraal at a time when the property was owned by the alternative couple, Ian and Avanol Bell. I abandoned the venture after three weeks, having been reduced to a physical wreck. I was exhausted and becoming emaciated, my arms and legs were badly scratched in a hundred places and I had developed tendonitis in my right forearm from the constant stress of wielding a chainsaw. It also soon became clear that there was very little money to be made after deducting expenses like wages for two helpers, chain oil, petrol and chain sharpening. 

When I heard about a charcoal kiln for sale, I thought this might be an easier way to turn rooikrans trees into a commercial product that could yield an income. Charcoal is produced by partially burning wood in a space starved of oxygen. The kiln was about 2meters long, 1.2 wide and 1.5 high. It was built with heavy steel plate, had a chimney at one end and a meter-by-meter hatch on top. The thing weighed a ton and transporting it proved to be a nightmarish operation. After positioning it close to a dense stand of rooikrans, I set to work cutting enough meter-long pieces to pack the kiln two thirds full. This took three days. Then I had to find a quantity of dry wood with which to build a fire on top of the stack. Once the flames had taken hold, the hatch had been closed and sealed with soil, and smoke was rising from the metal chimney, I went home.

When I returned in the morning it was clear that the fire had gone out. At the third attempt the starter blaze spread to the main bulk of wood and the chimney smoked for a week. On opening the hatch, I was delighted to find that the lengths of wood were black, brittle and lightweight. Genuine charcoal! I began to pack my black gold into bags, thinking I was now in business. Then, halfway down, the branches became heavier and uncharred. This meant that more than a third of the load would have to be refired.

I persevered for another six weeks and ended up with about a hundred bags of charcoal of dubious quality. It was time to admit defeat and move on. Neither firewood nor charcoal were going to provide me with a living, and I added them to my list of failed enterprises.

The kiln was abandoned and left to rust and eventually disintegrate where it stood, and I put it from my thoughts. Then, about a year later, my wife came across a news item in the Cape Times.

“Remember that man who sold you the kiln?”

Of course, I remembered him. He had been making charcoal on a small holding beyond Klein Paradijs on the way to B’bos.

“I told you he was a bit creepy. And it wasn’t just that stump. It was something about his eyes. And his mouth.”

The stump she was referring to was the one at the end of his right arm. I know it was his right arm because, on first meeting him, I tried to shake hands, and was confused and then embarrassed when he extended his left hand and I was obliged to reciprocate.

She read the newspaper report to me, and it was without doubt about the same man who had sold me the kiln. Now living in Cape Town, he had been arrested for amputating some of the fingers of three women. The victims themselves had refused to lay charges, but family members had gone to the police, claiming that the women were under the man’s spell and had been persuaded that losing a finger would be a transformative psychological experience. The case was postponed while the man was ordered to undergo psychiatric assessment at Valkenberg.

“Really weird,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine how they got sucked into that mental space. Dark, man, dark.”

“And to think that this psycho was here in our house when he came for his money! Sitting in the lounge, in the rocking chair drinking coffee!”

“It’s like with these religious cults. People get drawn into crazy stuff and lose touch with reality. Reminds me of Goya: The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

We never heard what happened to the case, but over time the episode established itself as a legendary memory worthy of revisiting from time to time.

Because the idea of getting a kick out of having a finger cut off was so bizarre, I thought it would be interesting to explore it as an example of psychotic behaviour by incorporating it in a piece of fiction. The opportunity to do this finally arrived about two years ago.

My son and his partner were staying in some accommodation on a small holding not far from where the one-handed maniac had lived. When I saw the building, I immediately thought that this was the perfect setting for a creepy story. I asked him to photograph it at night, and the result was even more charged with gothic undertones than I had hoped for. This, I thought, would make the perfect cover illustration for the story that was still to be written.

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