FRIDAY, 13 JUNE 2003
Brand Smit lives in Blue Stone Mansions number 711. He is married to Elsa Kleynhans (now June it was seven years). They have two children: Marie is five and a half, and Ben is three. Brand is a writer. Apart from his two collections of poetry there are also a few books about his years in the Far East. He also writes articles and short essays for magazines. Elsa is a teacher at a local primary school. Together, they earn enough to keep body and soul together.
Brand and Elsa rent the apartment in Blue Stone Mansions, but often speak of buying a house somewhere in the suburbs. They do, after all, have two children, and sometimes the apartment gets a little cramped for the four of them. Elsa would also like to have a garden, and Brand says he’d like to sit on a porch.
Last December the family went down to the West Coast (Elsa has family there), and Brand swore never again. Elsa’s brother is a local businessman, and, like before, they did not see eye to eye when it came to politics and religion. Brand initially said they should stay home this December, but he and Elsa have talked about it again. They now plan to spend a week or so at Sodwana with Brand’s younger sister and her husband (they still have to work out the finances).
Brand often talks about his years in Northeast Asia. Elsa listens patiently even though she knows all the stories by now. Sometimes someone he had befriended in Taiwan would come by. They would talk late into the night about incidents and people, and about typhoons, pollution, epidemics, English classes, and about Chinese. Brand’s Chinese is not too bad, and he uses every opportunity to practice it. Reading material is easy to get hold of (either on the Internet or at the Chinese supermarket), and he often browses through a Chinese magazine while Elsa is reading the latest YOU.
Brand turned forty last year, and he and Elsa thought it was a good time to buy a new computer. (Elsa’s one colleague’s husband runs a computer store, and he gave them a good price on a slightly older model.) Brand thought a computer to be a fitting gift to himself – it is after all his brush for the painter, his sword for the warrior, and his previous computer sporadically malfunctioned.
Brand follows a fixed daily schedule. He usually gets up before Elsa and the children, makes them breakfast, takes the children to their kindergarten, and drops Elsa off at the primary school. Then he might swing by the post office, and at ten o’clock or so he’s usually behind his computer. He tries writing a fixed number of articles and essays each month (his bread-and-butter), but his true love is still poetry. He is currently working on his fourth volume.
Brand loves his wife and is devoted to his children. He hopes Marie will become an architect or a vet, and although it’s a bit early to say, he believes little Ben may have it in him to become a writer. He says it to anyone who wants to hear, and looks embarrassed every time Elsa tells him, “Let the child become his own man.” All he then says before he starts talking about something else, is that he can see it in the boy’s eyes.
______________________