The third, obviously a keener observer than the others, said, ‘There are shitloads of arse-puckering, fucking gorgeous fucking women wherever you look, but they keep on fucking running away when we fucking want to talk to them about shagging! Fucking stuck-up bitches, wouldn’t know a red-blooded African prong if you rubbed the fucking thing against them in a fucking cable car!’
The Rhodies invited me to have a farewell drink with them, so I met up with them in a nearby pub. The paint-peelingly vulgar, profanity-rich (but very descriptive) conversation, together with a thick cloud of smoke from chain-smoked Madison cigarettes, soon had patrons from adjacent tables moving away in search of clearer air.
Just then, Richarde, the Rhodies’ skiing instructor, walked into the pub and joined us, having also been invited to toast the imminent departure of the Boys from Bulawayo. Dangling on his arm, seemingly attached to it like a limpet mine, was the most stunningly gorgeous, radiantly sensual, auburn-haired beauty in the town. He introduced her as Gundie, and in seconds I was smitten.
Now, before you get the wrong idea and condemn me for flippancy and shallowness, please bear in mind that I was not, at this stage, nor for a long time to come, functioning at an optimum emotional level. There was nothing wrong with my senses of sight, sound, touch, smell or taste, however. They were operating well, but the depth to which I was able to explore my emotions was limited, to say the least. Consequently, saying that I was ‘smitten’ was absolutely true, at least for that time.
Gundie chose to get as far away from the rowdy quintet of Rhodesian bush people as was possible at an eight-seater table, and ended up sitting next to me. As she spoke passable English and I could mumble the odd German-sounding phrase, we immediately struck up a pleasant conversation and connected as if we’d known each other for some time.
Before too long she suggested that we remove ourselves to the dance floor situated in the next room. I was a little uncomfortable with this proposal, fearing that I would be perceived by Richarde to be ‘moving in’ on his territory. Ever an advocate for preventive maintenance, I asked Richarde if he had any objections to my dancing with his girlfriend. He laughed aloud and said, ‘My friend, Gundie is just an acquaintance. The night is young and the available
From then on, I began to seriously like Neustift and its friendly inhabitants.
A day or two later, as I stood waiting nervously at the edge of the village square for the glacier-bound public bus to arrive, with my skis perched on my right shoulder like everyone else seemed to be doing, a sizeable crowd of skiers with the same obvious intentions as me gathered at the bus stop.
When the bus arrived, everyone rushed forward in a manner reminiscent of a buffalo stampede, inexplicably eager to be the first to board the bus and stand next to their skis for the 45 minutes it would take to reach the lower cableway station at the foot of the Stubai glacier. Someone needed to take action to prevent injury or, worse still, loss of life, and so I forced my two-metre-long skis into a horizontal barrier, effectively bringing the headlong rush for the bus door to a halt.
Then, in my best German, I commanded, ‘
The first four words,
The crowd, to my amazement, complied with my instruction and five or six ladies of more advanced years boarded solemnly. None thanked me for my chivalry. Then, meaning to say, ‘Now the younger ladies’, I suddenly realised in a panic that my limited German vocabulary didn’t stretch that far. So I said, with all the authority and brevity that I could muster, ‘
To my astonishment, ten or so young ladies detached themselves from the stunned crowd and climbed the stairs onto the bus. The first nine didn’t even acknowledge me, but the tenth, whose derriere I was lecherously ogling as she boarded, did. As she reached the top of the stairs she turned around to me and said, ‘Thank you, kind sir. Thank you very much.’
For the second time in the past 72 hours, I was totally smitten. I was absolutely certain that this vision of perfection must be Jacqueline Bisset, the beautiful English actress whom I’d loved passionately for years since seeing her, five times, as the pregnant air hostess in
Her name, however, was Atie Hofstra and she was from Rotterdam.
