Cousin Tuk in
Durban 6
by Albert Russo
Unky Berky croaked
something no one understood, except me. He looked
like one of them corny ostriches down in
Oudtshoorn, and after several nerve-wracking
seconds, he managed to stutter:
“Tuk ... Wook ... are
you sure this is ... moo ... a place for a ...
Yak ... teenager?”
“Oh, you may be right,
I didn’t realize Zapy was so young, she
looks so mature.” replied our cousin.
Panty gave me a sympathetic
look, blinking his lovely eyelids like a bloomin’
puppet, to show how sorry he was that I couldn’t
go with them to The Gay Lord.
“Why don’t we
accompany Zapy to her hotel room?” Tuk
suggested. “She’s a big girl now and
doesn’t need you to tuck her in to bed, hey
cousin Alberic, ha ha ha.” He added,
sporting a very very stupid smile that made him
look like the whistling thnake who whithpered
into Eve’s ear in the garden of Eden.
“Waddaya mean, put me
to bed! “ I blurted out, shooting a volley
of my most snakishly venomous daggers at that Tuk-watchamacall
of a cousin, who by the way I’m disavowing,
coz who needs family like that, anyway? “Bonka
is coming with me,” I commanded, “on
account that I’m the one responsible for him
during this trip. Then too, it’s his duty to
accompany his lil niece night and day, like a
good watchdog, specially in a foreign country,
with perverts like youuu.”
Tuk looked at me with eyes
rolling wildly - he resembled them Yapaneez
robots with their high-pitched donkey voices -,
like the ground had just shaken under his feet.
His face turned all grey with ashes puffing out
of his ears. Panty got so scared he jumped to his
rescue, in case he lost his balance and maybe his
teeth too, coz I’ve heard strange stories of
people in great shock who found themselves
suddenly totally bald or amnesiac - that’s
like old-timers’ disease (alzheimer,
alzheimer, by the time them poor old folks
pronounce that word, they’ve sunk into the
stage of an embryo) when a grandma thinks she’s
a little girl again, or when a grandpa talks to
his son, believing the son is his great-grandfather.
Goddess Holy Shiva, I hope that never happens to
me, I’d rather die on the spot of a heart
attack, an embolism and a brain haemorrhage all
at once. Now, you doctors, and you in particular,
dear Amithab - don’t hide behind that cute,
smart lil face of yours, coz if you were a little
younger I would have fallen in love with you too,
verbrans -, tell your colleagues who
manage the Great Whoa Medical Dictionary,
to simplify the spelling of all those diseases,
it ain’t fair to have so many bowels
and consonants lined up in a single word, for cryyying
outt louddd!
From
the GOSH ZAPINETTE! series (15 episodes in all)
9//21 Excerpted from Zulu Zapy wins the Rainbow
Nation, by Albert Russo.
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