Hake pickled fish has a lekker bite

I DREAM of pickled fish.

It could have been hake. Or yellowtail. But only hake would be humble enough to frequent my postmidnight dreams. That is a special time when the world is thinking, “Am I night or am I day? Mmm. I know the sun is on its way, but the moon is here.”

This is the time when my MaBessie, on the Khoisan side of the family, would attend to me.

She always had my back. Except when I offended and I would need to retreat onto Beatty Avenue with her, “Ko hiesa, jou blerrie robies” giving me wings.

But when mum deployed Uncle Sam (the US GI leather belt hanging behind the bedroom door) my ouma would intercede with a “No Sheila, did you just have a child so that you could give him a hiding?”

I wiped my grateful tears on her well-washed floral, soft cotton apron.

On a Monday night, a few week ago, I dozed off behind the wheel and woke as my car hit the curb on the Woodstock bridge crossing over the railway line.

I opened my eyes to bright lights, the jolt of the vehicle rocking me forward as it veered against and off the curb; the heavy, slow-rushing drag of angel wings…

The nearing wall between the car and the railway line below. And MaBessie’s voice, “Hie’t jy, los my kind. He’s the dean of Cape Town. He has to fix a roof of a big cathedral. And a whole lot of other things…”

Then there was the silence when angels leave. I knew I had company in the car as I drove the short distance to Father Donny Meyer’s home at St Mary’s rectory.

I kept quiet. Enough had already been said that night.

MaBessie preferred hake or stokvis – her choice of name – to yellowtail. I think because yellowtail exceeded her budgetary restraints she wrote it off as being a bit of a haughty, proud fish.

I share her prejudice and her view is supported by the sassiness of sista yellowtail.

It’s in the way she announces, “Heya, I am delicious, ne?” She has an allure reserved for the candle-lit moment of high feasts.

The subtleties, nuanced suggestiveness. The sauce of poetry.

But as for hake, he is kinda accommodating. (I am aware of a gender bias that just surfaced like the tailfin in the movie, Jaws.) Hake is very accommodating. It doesn’t dominate and surrenders to the tamarind, ginger and all the necessary metterjalas.

It is perfect fish for Good Friday with its focus on the complete surrender of oneself.

By the Monday of Holy Week, brother hake and his Atlantic boetatjies have decreed, “Now is the time…” And they swim, devoutly and without caution, towards the nets of the boats coming out of Kalk Bay harbour.

It is a culinary sacrament, the anticipated taste of which sustains one through the Good Friday threehour vigil.

There should be goema liedjies sung about our stokvis, brother. Our muso boetas, Tony Cedras and Mervyn Afrika, are ready to stand and deliver on this matter.

I have penned some introductory lyrics for a song about this neglected of area of Mzantsi culture: “Die stokvis is volop in Halt Road, die dinge vannie Here word uit gebroat…”

There will be a significant role in the music video for Quentin Jitsvinger Goliath.

Shame, he is touring in Holland at the moment. Shame, there will be hapskiet pickle fish for our lanky griot fromThe Plain on this Good Friday.

I once had snoek on a long ago Good Friday. Oh my Black Jesus, now that is a vark of a fish when it comes to being pickled. Totally ungovernable. It goes all gangsta on you with bones all over your mouth.

This home-boy rolls best on a braai, aluminium-wrapped with quartered onions. A bit of masala and other what-you-haves.

I only dream of fish on days like these when the week has been long. When Tuesday felt like Friday and Friday had no cool-off time.

But when I dream of fish, I know that MaBessie has my back covered. I am safe. For now.