The Grape Thieves

I stowed my hand luggage in the storage locker and thankfully settled into my window seat on Flight 109 to San Francisco. The check-in procedure at Kennedy Airport had been long and tedious but necessary, I supposed, in the light of the recent terror attacks on the World Trade Centre. It left me feeling a bit ratty and not in the mood for company, so I was quite relieved to find that the aisle seat next to me remained vacant.

The plane taxied to the runway and sped down the tarmac into the blue sky. The 'Fasten Seat Belts' light went out, I uncoupled mine, eased my seat back and settled down for a rest before the flight attendants would serve drinks. The tap on my shoulder jerked me awake and I found myself looking into the leathery face of a rather huge man with a jutting chin and black jowls. Not someone to be trifled with, I quickly decided, and my rattiness increased.

"I have a seat in the middle section, but I really need to be by a window. Be a sport and let me have yours, will you? I was too late to bag a window seat."

His voice was gentle enough, coming from such a rough-looking man, and I recognised at once that he was a fellow South African. That didn't immediately make me feel better at the inconvenience of having to deny his request and send him packing, but it did put our meeting on a different footing.

"Look," I said, "have the seat beside me if you must, but I specially requested a window seat, so -- no, you can't have it."

He took the aisle seat and sat there quietly for a while before trying again. "I really need to have a clear view of the clouds, especially as we approach the Sierra Nevadas. I have come all the way from Cape Town just for that."

Good try! I thought, but I couldn't help being curious. "Are you a weatherman?" I asked.

"No, I'm looking for alien grape thieves, little people who come in a space-ship to steal grapes." He might have been having me on, but he said it so earnestly that I had to hear more, so I changed seats with him, but not without some resentment!

He was on his way to the Sierras, he said, because he had seen on the Internet that lenticular clouds frequently form over them.

"Lenticular clouds?" he said in answer to my puzzled look, "Lenticular means 'like a lens'. The clouds are called that because that's what they look like -- like a lens seen edge-on. I'll show you one if we see any on the way. If we do, and there are vineyards nearby, I’ll be ready to bet you that the wine farmers there will know something about grapes disappearing mysteriously in the night!

The man was obviously a nut case, I thought, but as his story unfolded, I wasn't quite sure what to make of him. He introduced himself as Jakobus Labuschagne.

He told me his strange story in between pointing out different cloud formations as they passed by the window. Apparently, in Cape Town where he came from, there was an old legend about Grape Thieves from Mars. The legend had started sometime before his grandfather landed in South Africa in 1900. It was sparked off by a coincidence of happenings, the first being the mysterious disappearance of grapes right off the vines in the Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape, not too far from Cape town.

Unexplained thefts had occurred at intervals before that, but there was never any reason for anyone to connect the disappearance of the grapes with visitors from other worlds until the other two happenings. One was the positioning in 1894 of Mars particularly close to Earth, and astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reporting seeing "canali" on the planet. The Italian 'canali', meaning 'channels', was misinterpreted in English as 'canals', suggesting objects purpose-made by intelligent beings. This led to much speculation about life on Mars.

Then, in 1898, came Mr. H G Wells' story about Mars making war on Earth, and suddenly there were rumours flying about everywhere --Martians in space-craft had come to steal grapes in the Klein Karoo! My new friend's grandfather didn't think that any person had actually seen a space craft or missile such as Mr. Wells described, or any other strange object that aroused curiosity. However, one persistent story doing the rounds was about feminine voices being heard in the night, and strange looking little footprints in the softer soil.

Returning to live permanently in the Western Cape after many years in other parts of the country, Jakobus learned, on discussing the legend with the old-timers that since his grandfather's days further spates of grape thefts had been reported. These occurred at intervals of twenty-five or thirty years, each spate usually lasting over three or four consecutive years. But, of course, no one now believed in 'men from Mars.' Mr Wells and his stories were all but forgotten, and it had been scientifically established many years before that Mars was a dead planet where no life could possibly exist. The farmers around there usually attributed the rumours to superstition, and the thefts (completely unjustly, in Jakobus' opinion) to clever manoeuvring on the part of the 'wiley' (their term) citizens who supply labour for the farms. That was how the matter rested; the events had ceased to be of any interest, and the numerous wild stories and rumours were again almost forgotten.

But things were about to change. One Friday, as Jakobus drove down to Montagu in the Klein Karoo to spend the weekend at his country home, he saw clouds drifting high over the Langeberg mountain range, and lower down, immediately over the peaks, a number of lenticular clouds. With no thought in mind at that stage of the legends about alien visitors, he imagined that some of the clouds looked very much like space-ships, or what he pictured space-ships to look like. Some were elongated like cigars or torpedoes, and others more like submarines with their conning towers sticking upwards. They were fascinating to watch, and he drove the long distance beside the mountain range with an eye on them, seeing some of them moving slowly and changing shape as the wind caressed them, and others lying quite static, as if sculpted on the top of the mountain.

"Quiet, Rex," he said to his border-collie who was making low rumbling noises out of the window. "Those are not woolly sheep on the mountain. They are only clouds." Rex always travelled with him, sitting in the front passenger seat, his head usually sticking out the window and tongue out of his mouth, with eyes half closed against the wind, taking in the sights and scents.

The next morning Jakobus went to the Winelands Coffee House, as he usually did on a Saturday, for breakfast. The Winelands Coffee House, he said with obvious relish, served the most tasty scrambled-egg on toast, and real coffee -- "I mean real coffee, brewed in a pot on the wood-stove, with the grains in a little bag inside the pot." His cousin Gabriel was there as usual -- he also likes his eggs and coffee on a Saturday morning when he brings his farm workers into town on his lorry for them to do their shopping. They sat at tables near each other. "Hello Gabriel. Are things well with you?" Jakobus asked.

"Yes -- no," Gabriel replied, 'yes -- no' being the manner of responding among the farming community, because there is always some good mixed with the bad, "things are not too bad, except for those thieves who stole my grapes again last night." From his demeanour, Jakobus could see that, at the moment, the bad things were outweighing the good.

"Stole your grapes?" Jakobus said, "You mean somebody picked some bunches?'

"Some bunches? Not some bunches, all the bunches! They stripped the whole vineyard. They came and took my Cabernet grapes this time. Two weeks ago my Hanepoort, this week my Cabernet."

It turned out that on the day before Gabriel had looked at this one vineyard (he has about ten on the side of the mountain) and decided it was ready to harvest. He said to Klaas, his farm manager, who was with him, 'Klaas, these are ready for the cellars. On Monday, call the people in and we will pick them.' Klaas has regular contact with the community who live in the shacks just outside Montagu, all of whom make a living as casual workers doing seasonal work on the farms in the district.

Gabriel had gone to have another look at the vines that morning before coming to town, Jakobus said, and there was not a single bunch left in the vineyard! Jakobus wouldn't repeat to me some of the words his cousin used, but he understood why he used them -- Gabriel was very upset. As my new friend told me, his cousin was absolutely convinced that the people from the shacks had been there in the night and picked the grapes!

"Klaas," Gabriel had said, "as soon as you told them the grapes were ready for picking, they decided to come when it was dark and steal them!" Of course Klaas denied it. He said the people from the squatter shacks don't steal. They are poor, honest, hard-working people, and why should they steal the grapes when they were going to be paid for picking them? "Actually, Mr. Lootz," Klaas had said, "I think the thieves came down the mountain. They must live on the other side. Some folks said they heard sounds of people –a lot of people –coming down the hiking trail in the night. I think it must have been the thieves."

Gabriel didn't believe Klaas, but Klaas had worked for him for many years and Gabriel didn't know what to say, so he just turned on his heel and stalked away. Jakobus said he thought that perhaps Gabriel should have taken time to examine the field more closely, and the trail coming down from the mountain. He might have picked up some evidence to clear up the mystery.

"Baboons?" Jakobus suggested.

"No," said Gabriel curtly. "Baboons raid the grapes, but they leave a mess behind. This is a clean sweep. This is not baboon work!"

Jakobus returned to the city early on the Monday morning, and then drove again to his cottage in Montagu on the Friday two weeks later. The clouds were there once again. They were really intriguing and pretty! He stopped the car and sat there for a long time just looking at them.

Lenticular clouds form when the moisture-laden wind from the sea hits the mountains and rises straight up, but one of these looked like it was arriving 'ready-made', drifting in from the south-west. ‘Maybe they are things that the aliens use to disguise their space craft,’ Jakobus mused to himself. He didn't really believe anything of the sort at the time, but he found the thought amusing.

That evening Jakobus took Rex outside to have a run before going to bed. It was a beautiful night; there was no moon but the stars were lighting up the sky with a brightness such as one never sees in the city. There weren't any clouds, except for one of those lenticulars which still hovered near the top of the mountain. He stood relaxing and enjoying the stillness until Rex suddenly gave up smelling the trunks of trees and started growling at nothing. Jakobus took him inside before he barked and disturbed the neighbours, got undressed and went to sleep.

The next morning he was having breakfast at the Winelands Coffee House when Gabriel came in and took the vacant seat at his table. "Don't ask," Gabriel said before Jakobus could say anything. "Those thieving thugs from the squatter camp! They are going to steal me out of business if it goes on like this!"

"How can you be so sure it's the squatters, Gabriel? Maybe Klaas is right. Maybe it is people that come over from the other side?"

"They can't come over the mountain in the dark! Anyway, there would have to be a couple of hundred of them to pick all the grapes and carry them over the mountain. No, I know it's the squatter camp people. They know what's going on around here –when the grapes are ready –so they know exactly when to come and pick them just before we do."

"Did you tell the police?" Jakobus asked him. "They should be able to catch them."

"Yeah! I told the police. Two weeks ago, and again this morning. They don't seem to be able to do anything. There's no evidence, they tell me. They would have to catch the thieves red-handed, they say. I know they did search in the squatter camp one time, but found nothing so now they just take down the statement and say they will investigate, but I know they will do nothing."

Jakobus and Gabriel ate in silence for a while, and then Gabriel said: "You know, I did have a closer look this morning and saw lots of little footprints. They weren't shoe prints. They were like bare-foot prints, but with no separate toe marks, a separate big toe, but all the other toes are together, like those socks Japanese women wear with their wooden clogs. That's it! I think they were all wearing socks. They were small prints, like children."

"Sounds unlikely to me -- not children." Jakobus thought it was at that point that he first made the connection in his own mind between the present thefts, the ancient legends, the cloud on the mountain, Rex rumbling out of the car window at sight of the clouds, Rex growling at nothing the night before. "I really think they did come down from the mountain. Can I tell you why?" he said to Gabriel.

"What do you know about it, Jakobus?" Gabriel asked a little impatiently, then continued thoughtfully, perhaps feeling a little guilty, less sure of himself: "Klaas says some people saw a light on top of the mountain, like a faint blue glow in the cloud. He says they also heard voices like women talking and laughing in the vineyard. They were afraid to go and look." Then looking Jakobus full in the face, he asked: "What makes you think the thieves came over the mountain from the valley the other side? Anyway, do you think they could see the way in the moonlight?"

Jakobus didn't have the heart to even point out to Gabriel that there had been no moon the previous night. If people did come over the mountain without torches, they would have to be able to see in the dark, or at least by starlight! He plucked up courage to say what he was thinking, but he said it with much hesitation because he was not yet ready to let Gabriel think that he believed in alien visitors!

"Perhaps it was people from a space-ship," he said. "Maybe the space-ship was hidden in that strange cloud I saw on top of the mountain last night!"

"Strange cloud? Space-ship? Rubbish! How can you possibly believe in those fairy stories?" said Gabriel. "It's either people coming over the mountain from the other side, like Klaas says, or it is the people from the squatter camp as I say! Man, Jakobus, where do you get this nonsense about little men from other planets?"

Jakobus said he quickly changed the subject at that point because he could see a useless argument looming, but it was the very next weekend that things between the cousins really came to a head, which is the reason why Jakobus was now sitting in my window seat on this plane to the west coast of America to visit the Sierras. He was making the trip to try and find some proof to convince Gabriel that it could have been aliens! It happened on the Saturday morning in the Winelands Coffee House, as we might have guessed. My new friend Jakobus had by then convinced himself that the space-ship was real, and that it was aliens who were stealing the grapes, but Gabriel was made of sterner stuff and was not ready to believe any such nonsense. On that morning, Jakobus was, as usual, enjoying his coffee and scrambled egg-on-toast when Gabriel arrived and sat at his table. Jakobus said "Hello Gabriel," and, without pausing for a reply, he continued, "They stole your grapes again last night?"

Jakobus had seen the familiar cloud again when he drove down to Montagu the day before. Most of the clouds over the mountains were true lenticulars, but there was the one that looked so very, very, much like the cloud that had been there the previous weekend. It just had to be the same one. Of course, it could have been a mere coincidence, because the contours of the mountain in that spot might cause a cloud to form in the same way every time the wind comes from the south-west -- but hardly so exactly alike every time.

Gabriel looked at him sharply. "How do you know my grapes got stolen last night?" he asked, looking at him in astonishment. It occurred to Jakobus from the way he glared at him that Gabriel was thinking that Jakobus had something to do with his grapes disappearing, especially since Jakobus seemed to be on the scene every time it happened!

Jakobus said he was hoping, at that stage in the conversation with Gabriel, that it would sound as if he was only pulling Gabriel's leg even though he himself was now completely convinced about what he had seen and deduced: "There was a cloud on top of the mountain above your vineyard –exactly the same cloud as I saw there last weekend when your grapes were stolen. I think it is a space-ship. The alien men or women come in it to steal your grapes." Then, smiling broadly, and tongue-in-cheek, he continued; "They live on Mars, but grapes don't grow there –not enough water, you know –but they like wine, so they come and steal your grapes."

"You're crazy," Gabriel burst out, looking at him suspiciously, and after that things became, as Jakobus said, 'rather strained' between him and his sceptical cousin.

That's how matters stood until one day Jakobus saw something on the Internet about the wonderful lenticular clouds that form over the mountains here in America. He quickly made plans to come and see, as he said, "if there might be someone over here who has had an experience that would support my theory."

At that point, Jakobus stopped talking and pointed out of the window. "There are the Sierras now." Then he shoved his face right up against the glass and clutched my arm excitedly. "There, there!", he said moving his head aside to let me see out of the window, "over there! That cloud over that peak.  The one that looks like a lens viewed from the side, the one sitting on top of the mountain, that's the same cloud I saw. Exactly the same! It has to be a space-ship! I'll bet you anything you like that some grapes have been stolen from the vineyards over here!"

"I'll take your bet," I said. The man was nice, but nuts –or maybe a clever story-teller with a ruse to get my window seat! The plane landed, and before we parted, we exchanged addresses agreeing that we would make contact again when we were both back home in South Africa. But then, a few days later, while I was still in the United States, I caught sight of a headline in a local paper: "Alien Abduction? –Grapes' Theft Investigator Disappears."

I didn't get to read the whole report, but it seemed as though Jakobus had finally convinced Gabriel, and I had lost my bet.

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'The Grape Thieves'

Copyright: 2001