Kaptein the Tortoise Had Opinions About Balconies

The Lodger Who Came With the House

When my wife Elsabe and I bought the house in Parkhurst in 1985, the previous owners left behind a cracked birdbath, a drawer full of mismatched keys and a leopard tortoise about the size of a side plate. The estate agent had not mentioned him. We found him on the second morning, chewing a dandelion by the back step with the calm of someone who had paid the bond himself.

Elsabe named him Kaptein because he walked the length of the lawn every afternoon like a man inspecting a ship. He outlived two dogs, three cats, a lemon tree and, in 2023, Elsabe herself. He is forty-one years old by our count and probably older. He does not care about any of this. He cares about sun, about hibiscus flowers, and about a particular patch of warm brick by the kitchen door that he has occupied every winter afternoon for as long as I have lived there.

I am telling you about Kaptein first because he became the most important person in a decision I spent the better part of a year avoiding.

The House Starts Talking Back

After Elsabe died, the house got bigger. That is the only way I can describe it. The passage was longer at night. The second bathroom became a room I simply did not open. The garden, which she had run like a small nation with its own laws, began to riot. I am sixty-eight. I can still push a mower, but I cannot do it every week while also fighting the gutters, the gate motor, the pool pump and a jacaranda that drops its whole life onto the roof every November.

My son Dewald lives in Cape Town and phones on Sundays. My daughter Annelie lives ten minutes away in Rosebank and phones whenever she thinks I sound too quiet, which is often. It was Annelie who said the word first, standing in my kitchen with her car keys still in her hand.

"Pa, you need somewhere smaller. Somewhere with a lift and a guard and no gutters."

I said, "And Kaptein?"

She looked at the tortoise on the warm brick. The tortoise looked at nothing in particular. "We will work it out," she said, which is what people say when they have not worked it out.

Looking Without Meaning to Look

For about four months I looked at listings the way some men look at the sports results of a team they no longer support. I scrolled at night with a cup of rooibos going cold beside me. I read floor plans like crossword clues. I learned a whole vocabulary I had never needed: sectional title, levies, exclusive use area, pet policy.

The pet policy line became the thing I read first. Most of them said one small dog or cat, subject to body corporate approval. None of them said anything about reptiles. I began to imagine a committee meeting where a woman in a cardigan raised her hand and asked whether the gentleman in unit four was aware that a tortoise is not, technically, a cat.

Annelie sent me links during her lunch breaks. Some were near her, some nearer to the hospital where my cardiologist works, which she pointed out every single time. One evening she sent a list of apartments for sale in Sandton with a note that just said, "Look at the terraces, Pa. Think about Kaptein." That was clever of her. She knew I would not move for myself, but I might move for him.

The Question of Sun

A leopard tortoise in Johannesburg needs sun the way I need my morning coffee. In winter he basks, then retreats, then basks again. He needs grass or at least something green to graze on, a shallow dish of water, and a corner where the wind does not reach. In the old house he had half an acre. I knew I could not give him that in any flat. The question I had to answer honestly was whether I could give him enough.

So I did something I am a little embarrassed about. I took a compass, an old one from my Scouting days, and I went to see places with it in my jacket pocket. While the agents talked about kitchens and finishes, I was standing on balconies working out which way they faced and how many hours of afternoon light they would get in June. One young agent asked if I was a surveyor. I told him I was asking on behalf of a client who could not attend in person.

Hyde Park, and the Long Walk Round

We saw a place near Hyde Park on a cold Saturday in July. Annelie came, partly to drive me and partly, I think, to make sure I did not talk myself out of it in the car park. I remember the guard at the gate waving us through with a grin, and I remember walking from the lift to the front door and counting the steps, because my knees have started to have their own opinions.

I had read a few things about Hyde Park apartments before we went, mostly because it is close to the shops I already use and the church where Elsabe's memorial was held. Being near the places that already know my face mattered more than I expected. When you have been married for thirty-eight years, you forget how much of your life is held up by small familiar people, the pharmacist who asks after your blood pressure, the man at the butchery who knows you like your boerewors thin.

The balcony faced north west. I took the compass out without thinking. Annelie rolled her eyes and then, after a moment, came and stood next to me in the sun, and neither of us said anything for a while. It was warm. It was the kind of warm that Kaptein would have parked himself in for the whole afternoon.

What I Actually Asked

I would love to tell you I asked clever questions about levies and maintenance plans. Annelie asked those. I asked whether the balcony floor got too hot in summer, whether there were rules about planters, and whether anyone had ever kept a tortoise in the building. The agent did not know the last one, but she wrote it down and phoned me two days later to say she had asked, and that it would need approval like any pet, and that nobody could think of a reason to say no to an animal that does not bark, does not scratch and moves at roughly the speed of a bond application.

I laughed properly on that phone call for the first time in months.

Letting Go of the Garden

Moving out of a house you shared with someone is not one decision. It is a thousand small ones, each with a little sting in it. I gave Elsabe's gardening tools to the woman who had helped her with the roses for twenty years. I gave the birdbath to my neighbour, who had admired it once in 1997 and never stopped mentioning it. I dug up two clumps of the wild dagga plants that Elsabe loved and potted them for the balcony, because I could not bear to leave all of her behind in the soil.

The night before the movers came, I sat on the back step with Kaptein on the brick beside me and I talked to him. I told him we were going somewhere smaller. I told him there would be a big pot of grass and a hibiscus in a tub and a north west corner that the wind did not reach. He ate a dandelion. I took that as agreement.

The First Afternoon

On our first proper afternoon in the new place, I put him down on the balcony in the sun near the planters and went inside to make tea. When I came back he had walked the full length of the balcony, turned around at the railing and walked back again, exactly like he used to on the lawn. Inspecting the ship. Then he settled against the warmest tile and closed his eyes.

People ask me now whether I miss the house. Of course I do. I miss the jacaranda when it is not trying to kill my gutters. I miss the sound of Elsabe swearing at the irrigation. But I do not miss the empty rooms, and I do not miss lying awake listening to a pool pump I no longer use.

Annelie comes on Wednesdays now, because I am close enough that it is easy. Dewald visited in September and spent an hour on the balcony with a beer and a tortoise and called it the best seat in the city. Friends from the old street still tease me about trading a garden for one of those Sandton apartments, as if I have gone soft. I tell them I did not choose it. Kaptein did. I just carried the compass.