The bergies of Sea Point

I’ve been waiting for the weather to make it possible to do this: when I was younger, I used to get out onto the promenade, winter or summer, in the heat or the freezing rain, to go for my morning walk. But time and circumstance change things, and these days I only do this when the weather is good enough, and now that time of the year has come.

Its a very “Sea Point” thing to do and not everyone will understand – like walking the mountain: its a kind of spiritual thing. If you do it properly you’ll probably find that at the beginning of your walk you’re just – well – walking, getting to feel the air that still has the bite of dawn, and the waves shushing on the rocks below – but soon enough you mentally change gears and you start mulling over the challenges anticipated in the day which is just then dawning over the Durbanville Hills, and you’d be surprised how many solutions the next two or so kilometres will give you for the day which is dawning. Then you find yourself changing gears again, and you’re on a higher plane, contemplating a more distant horizon, and ready to receive the gift of peace which you just won’t get any other way.

One of the things you’ll have to do along your walk is side-step the bergies.

Anyone will tell you that in this part of the world, our bergies are just part of the environment: I don’t think anyone else, anywhere in the country, uses this name for vagrants – perhaps it’s because many of these folk live up in the tree-line of the mountain above the city, from which they come down to beg, prey on, or even work for the city folk. They’re up in the berg, hence bergies – until eventually any vagrant in Cape Town got to be known as a “bergie”.

Sea Point has its own bergies – they don’t (mostly) live in the mountain; they sleep on benches along the promenade, behind hedges in people’s gardens (I think that’d probably spook most Joburgers, but read on), behind walls, in alleys, anywhere they think they’d be safe and as far as possible out of the weather.

If you interact with these people you’ll soon figure out that most of them come from somewhere else, and about half of them have clear signs of mental illness. It’s a sad indictment of our society that there is no safety net for such people: if you have no education, no insight into your situation, no pension or medical aid, no compassionate family to take you in, and you are not part of a community with a policy of taking care of its own, this is where you go – out onto the street, begging and stealing and running like a rat for your survival.

The bergies have a curious relationship with the rest of Sea point’s population, and Sea Point is a peculiar place – the very rich rub shoulders with the very poor and they live side by side with each other. No government-enforced policy for integration could do more than has already happened in this place already. There isn’t a bergie in Sea Point who won’t know to wish you “Good Shabbos” or “Shabbat Shalom” (on any day of the week). Some wit amongst the visiting yeshiva bachurim even taught one of them to say, “Shabbat Shalom – ani chamor!” with a cheerful countenance to all and sundry ...

There are the characters and the personalities – Charlie and his wife, for example, who “lived” in Arthur’s Road, somewhere behind St John’s Piazza, and stored their worldly possessions in a storm water drain next to the shul: at the beginning of winter the Municipality sends out teams of workers to open the storm water drains, remove the blankets, mattresses and the few sad possessions which the bergies store there (each one has his own “locker”) because when the rains come, the drains block up and cause flooding.

Charlie was a real character: normally so badly pickled that he lived in a world entirely of his own, he and his wife shared a mattress in an alcove just outside the gates of the shul and they were usually just rising when one arrived there for shacharit. When they fought, the whole street would know about it, and when they weren’t there, you wondered where they were. He was there for at least ten years, he looked as old as Table Mountain itself – and then one day, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Charlie for a while. Everyone who knew Arthur’s Road began to ask, “Have you seen Charlie lately?”

We had a bad feeling about this, and eventually asked the passing police patrol (who knew Charlie well) if he had any idea what had happened to Charlie. We feared the worst. “Ag, no, man” – said the young patrolman Kotze – “he’s got sick. He’s in Somerset Hospital. I’ll check up on him. I’ll let you know”.

Everybody knew Kotze, he knew most of us, and of course, everyone knew Charlie. We were neighbours, after all.

The next morning Kotze pulled his van up outside the shul. “He’s very sick hey. I mean old Charlie. He’s blerrie sick. But he likes it there. He says he can’t remember when he last got so much food and a clean bed. But I have to tell you he looks bad, man. Blerrie bad”
“Worse than usual?”
“Ja, man, much worse. I don’t know about Charlie hey, I really don’t know”

No one did anything about it of course – after all, he was just Charlie the bergie, and although we showed a passing curiousity, the truth is that no-one actually cared.

One morning Kotze pulled his van over outside the shul gates. “He’s dead, hey. I mean old Charlie. He never even got out of hospital. He just died there, and they buried him in the Maitland”

There were sighs and murmured comments all round. “What happened to his wife? (no-one knew her name – she had always just been “Charlie’s wife”)
“No idea” said Kotze, “she slept outside the hospital while he was there but I haven’t seen her since he died”
“Perhaps she went to the night shelter”
“No, she never wanted to go to the night shelter – I tried to talk the two of them into going there but they never went” said Kotze.

This was true for many of the bergies – they could easily have gone to the night shelter in Somerset Road, but they preferred their freedom and they took their chances with hunger, health and the weather. I maintain that all these things have something to do with their mental state, but there has never been any kind of study into these things as far as I know.

Suddenly I remembered an old incident with Charlie: some years before, one Shabbos, Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris was visiting and was going to speak at the shul at mincha, and I was delegated by the CSO to bodyguard him, which meant that I had to collect him from the UOS hospitality flat two blocks away, walk down Main Road with him and see him safely into the shul and then reverse the process afterwards.

I got the venerable Rabbi to the shul and then spent the rest of my shift moving around the premises as per normal procedure, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Charlie staggering up Arthur’s Road. Charlie was in extremely good humour and telling the world about it. Oh dear, I thought, Charlie’s going to make a scene. Having made it up to the shul gates and knowing that he wouldn’t be allowed to rest against the wall there, he staggered across the road and clung to the railings of the fence directly opposite the shul entrance. The guard at the shul gate glared threateningly at him as if to say, “one note of song, Charlie, just one note and you’re dead” It was a hollow threat, of course, as you shall see.

Charlie knew his rights, and he would bloody well sing in the street if he felt like it. Suddenly a loud, cracked, incoherent sound burst forth from Charlie’s ancient face, ran up and down Arthur’s Road, and disappeared into the trees. Then having tested the mike, he burst into full song, at the top of his voice. “Stop that!” I hissed at him. It was a warm day, the large double doors of the shul were open, and from inside the shul I could hear the unmistakable voice of Rabbi Harris as he gave his shiur. Charlie clung even more determinedly to the railings, and launched into the second verse of his incoherent song.

I was in a quandary. Charlie was right there, in our faces, and he wasn’t going to be ignored and he wasn’t going to go away. I went up to him. He was enveloped in a stench of urine and faeces and, as alcoholics do, he was sweating the odour of cheap wine. I was very angry, and acting totally outside the boundaries of my CSO training. Very unprofessional, I commented mentally, even as I did these things.
“Listen!” I said. “We have a very important visitor in there, and you have to be quiet. Or go away from here!”
Charlie didn’t look me in the face, he was staring at a point somewhere over my shoulder. I don’t know if he even heard me. He launched off into verse three of his song, worse than the last.

“Charlie, if you don’t shut up and move away from here, I’m going to move you!” I shouted into his face.
“Nooooooooo! Dis myyyyyyy place!”
I yanked one arm free from the railings and put him into an arm lock. I was thinking about my nice suit, and it made me even angrier. Charlie was moving into verse four of his song.
“Shaddup, Charlie! I’m going to hurt you!” I shouted
“Nooooooooo! Dis myyyyyyy place!”
Using the arm lock I leveraged Charlie free of the railings and frog-marched him all the way down to Main Road. A trick which I learned as a UCT student in the ‘70’s was that the hardest type of person for police to remove from the scene of a protest is a person who goes completely limp – it is harder to carry a sack of potatoes than a pole of the same weight. That was the principle which protesters were trained to use and this was the principle which Charlie used now. Nevertheless, I got him there and walked back up to the shul in relief.

I didn’t realise that Charlie was behind me. He was battling up the road, like a swimmer swimming against a heavy tide, but he was making progress. His voice was weak, but he was into the chorus of his song.

When I reached the shul, I was confronted by a group of angry residents from the flats.
“Why are you being so horrible to Charlie?” they demanded. One wealthy old bachelor, red in the face and visibly upset, said “where else must he go? What do you want from him? Leave him alone!” I think Charlie was a little overwhelmed by the rally to his defence and just as the attack on him had only strengthened his resolve to sing, so the support caused him to quieten down.

By now the Rabbi was finished, it was over and he was ready to return to his flat. Charlie was nowhere to be seen.

The police have played a strange role in the story of the bergies. Everyone acknowledges that although the bergies’ presence facilitates crime and grime, and they do commit petty crimes, they are generally pretty harmless and more of a nuisance than anything else. They subsist by scavenging in dustbins and scrounging for handouts from their rich neighbours, and indeed there are people who take pity, supply food, blankets and old clothes, and there is a tacit recognition that there may be a bergie living under a bush or a piece of cardboard in your garden, and they leave us alone (mostly) and we leave them alone (mostly). They do break car windows to take clothing, briefcases, cellphones and handbags but stealing a car or a car radio is generally too technical for them and so the best protection if you park in the street is simply not to leave stuff visible in your car. The police won’t intervene unless asked to do so or unless they catch a bergie red-handed. They are a generally stable population and the police know them by their names, their habits and their appearance.

I woke up one morning and went round the flat opening the curtains and noticed that there was a large, inert lump lying right in the middle of the pavement across the road. That was unusual because a true bergie will usually find at least a wall to sleep against. I assumed it was a bergie who was “too tired to find a wall”, and I went off to make coffee. I came back a while later and stood at the window with my coffee, staring at that lump. It was human, alright, but it had an old coat over its head. I stood there a long time. There was no sign of movement. I went out onto the balcony and in my loudest possible voice yelled, “Hey!” – various people up and down the road looked up at me as if I was a crazy man, but the lump never moved. Must be very drunk, I thought. I went back in, got ready for work, and went down to get my car out. The lump was still there, in exactly the same position. On an impulse I crossed the road to take a closer look. Pedestrians were stepping over it. I gave the figure a gentle shove with my foot. No response. Time to call the police, I thought.

The Sea Point police are quick, and it couldn’t have been more than a minute before they arrived. A chubby little policeman ambled over and looked down at the lump. “It’s Oom Piet” he announced with a sigh. He hadn’t even taken the coat off the head yet, and did so then. I.D. positive. Oom Piet looked dead to me. “Haai, Oom!” shouted the policeman. No response. The face was flat on the cement tiles of the pavement, a little drool marking the cement under the mouth. He put two fingers on Oom Piet’s carotid artery and then drew back. “He’s OK”, he pronounced, “he’s just sleeping”. He straightened up and turned to get back into his van. “Wait!” I said, “you can’t just leave him here like that!” The policeman turned to face me and I saw a sudden spark of anger in his eyes. “What do you want me to do? Arrest him? What crime has he committed? Sleeping on a pavement? I can’t stick him in the cells. Where must I take him? If I take him to the Shelter, he’ll be back here in two hours. He hates it there. Leave him alone!”

“Leave him alone” – those words seemed to be the anthem of the bergies. They don’t hunt in packs, like criminal gangs or hooligans. Each one of them is simply very alone. I’ve watched them: they acknowledge each other – they even sometimes share with each other – but essentially, each one is an island unto himself. They are solitary figures, they drift across this beautiful landscape, this affluent piece of real estate, like ghosts. Mostly people don’t even see them and when they do, they recoil in horror. Most people wouldn’t put their hands into their pockets to give them fifty cents and in a way, even that I do understand – it’s such an endless, hopeless mission. And although I have made out that they are a stable and known community, the fact is that the bergies are a passing parade. Mostly, a man or woman who hits the streets doesn’t last that long out there. The ravages of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, random violence, bad weather, and pneumonia – these people are the punching bags that take all the blows. You see a ragged face in the street, you pass that face regularly for a while, and then it’s gone. No-one asks where it came from, no-one asks where it went. Another one takes its place. And then another one. You seldom see a really old bergie – most of them just look old, but it’s the life that does that to them.

Like Moshe Rabeinu. He suddenly appeared one day, sitting on a bench on the promenade opposite the SABC near Rocklands Beach. He sat there as if he owned that bench, as if he had always been there. In the beginning I didn’t even notice him, but after a few days it occurred to me that he was always on the same bench, holding the same posture, very still, as if he was deep in thought (as well he may have been). In spite of his ragged clothes he had a very dignified appearance, and he nodded and greeted everyone who met his steady gaze in a deep and solemn voice. He was a large man, well built, his skin ravaged and scorched by the sun. He had long grey hair and a full grey beard. He did not beg. He just sat there, with his back to the sea, watching the passing parade. It was my son-in-law who coined the name Moshe Rabeinu and indeed, he did look sort of biblical. Moshe Rabeinu could well have looked like that. I doubt that he was an eccentric millionaire. He wore the remnants of a pair of shoes, his torn brown coat was too small and the ragged cuffs of his shirtsleaves protruded a mile. He looked as if he had all the time in the world.

One morning I was greeted by an astonishing sight – someone had taken Moshe Rabeinu in hand, he appeared to have been washed and scrubbed, he was wearing a neat jacket and pants (old fashioned, but still serviceable), he had had a haircut and his beard was trimmed – he was prouder than ever.

In the block of flats overlooking Moshe Rabeinu’s bench (where a flat would cost you six to ten million Rand) lived an old lady who had no-one to leave her considerable fortune to. She had no children, save for a son who had married out of the faith and who she was determined to disinherit. In 1938 when she was fourteen her parents had put her onto a train bound for England at the central railway station in Berlin. She spent her youth in the protection of some distant family in England, but never saw her parents again. She was married three times, divorced once and widowed twice, each time coming out of the marriage wealthier than before. She summoned me to her flat on several occasions (she was no longer that mobile) to discuss what to do with her money. She had lost her faith and refused to allow me to bring a rabbi to her flat (I had hoped that perhaps she might be talked back into her religion, or at least talked into leaving her estate to it).

On several occasions when I arrived at her flat, I found her standing at the window and staring at Moshe Rabeinu sitting on his bench. “Now there’s a happy man”, she would say, “he doesn’t have a care in the world!” – “You don’t know that”, I would answer, “it could be his cares that put him there”. But she had a theory about Moshe, and she never let go of it.

She resolved to leave her money to the poor people of Sea Point. This was a noble gesture, but how to implement that? “I don’t care” she said, “I’ll just leave it to you and you can give it to whoever you like”. Every lawyer who plans to stay a lawyer knows that this is a honey-trap, although we have all heard stories of lawyers who have fallen for it. But she was determined on this course of action until one day I said, “look, I can’t take this any further, and I can’t do a will like that for you, and I think you should get another lawyer”. At the back of my mind was the constant thought that sooner or later after she’d passed on that son of hers was going to pitch up and challenge whatever she had done: I didn’t want to have to face him, with my pockets bulging with her money. She was angry with me, and we did not part on good terms, and I have no idea what happened after that – but she was already quite old, and not that well when we parted, and I doubt whether she could have lived much longer.

And then one day Moshe Rabeinu was gone. Just like that. Perhaps he found what he was looking for, or perhaps he just found another bench. Who knows?