Chapter Twenty
‘I saw you walking with that white lady,’ Motsumi says.
It’s night, and he and Nthebolang are sitting at the back of the rocks where they normally meet. Despite her best intentions not to see him any more, she still comes. It’s a clear night with no moon and the stars crowd the sky.
Nthebolang looks above for the three dog stars chasing the three warthogs. She finds the constellation and smiles at her success.
‘I see her walking all over,’ says Motsumi. ‘I once saw her out at the cattleposts. She’s strange, not like any white woman I’ve seen before.’
‘Yes, I suppose. Beaty is unique.’
‘Last time we were here you acted so scared. I didn’t ask many questions then because I knew you were upset. But what happened that night? What made you run to me? Was it her?’
‘Beaty? Why would you say that?’ Nthebolang asks.
Motsumi looks out into the darkness but does not answer.
Nthebolang doesn’t want to speak about that night. She’s still scared by it all. She’s taken to sleeping with a Bible in the hope that somehow it will ward off whatever is coming, for indeed she can feel something is coming. That night and Mmapitse at the gate, Beatrice’s warnings. Things are swirling loosely around her but moving inwards, becoming tighter, more intentional, more dangerous.
‘So what was it then? What scared you?’ he persists.
‘Nothing. I heard some women talking, that’s all. I got a fright … for nothing, I think. Later, when I thought of it again, I thought I’d heard wrongly. I was foolish to be so scared.’
Motsumi pulls her closer and kisses her, first softly and then roughly, urgently. He lies down and pulls her on top of him. Nthebolang can feel him harden against her and she breaks free, moving away from him.
‘What are you doing? Why do you do this to me?’ Motsumi says. ‘It’s as if you want me to suffer.’
‘What am I doing?’ she asks.
‘I love you, don’t you know that? Why can’t that be enough?’
Nthebolang remains quiet. She doesn’t like him when he’s like this – sullen, argumentative, pushy. It makes her think of what Beatrice said about him, that he’s dangerous. He sometimes gets this reckless edge that scares her. He’s like a stranger then.
Motsumi stands. ‘I have so much pressure on me. You don’t know what’s going on. It’s all too much. I want to come here to be with you. I want to forget about everything when we’re out here together. I can’t take it. I wish I could just leave this place, leave everything behind me.’
Motsumi paces back and forth, his voice suddenly too loud for the night. Nthebolang goes to him. She wonders what he’s talking about, but she can see that whatever it is, it’s upsetting him. She holds him and he relaxes.
‘Let’s not talk about upsetting things, please,’ she says. ‘We have so little time together. Let’s not ruin it.’
‘You’re right. That’s what I love most about you – you’re good, aren’t you? And you want me to be good too. And when all of this is over, I will be. I’ll be so good. I’ll make you my wife, my only wife. Everything will be good when it’s all over.’
Nthebolang doesn’t know what he’s talking about; it’s confusing her. She doesn’t ask any questions, though; she doesn’t want to know. Perhaps it’s wrong to choose ignorance, but it feels safer on this night.
She leads him back to where they’d been sitting, leaning against the big boulder watching the stars in the sky. He lays his head in her lap and she rubs it and speaks softly as though she’s singing a song. She speaks of her childhood and the tall green grass of Lephepe and the fat cows, of the games she used to play. Of the soft way her mother had, and how her father treated her like the most precious thing. She speaks of the lovely breeze that sometimes blew off the grey hills in the distance and the way the giraffes walked across the plains, the trumpeting of elephants in the bush, watching ants at work. She tells him stories about good spirits that brought luck and rain, and how love bathed everything in a safe, golden light. She tells him about how their life will be, about how they’ll marry, and how they’ll have many healthy children. How they’ll grow old and only peace will surround them. How they’ll love each other even on the other side when they join the ancestors.
The beautiful words soothe him, soothe the unknown thing that is haunting him, and they soothe her too. The stars glow in the sky, glad to be part of their make-believe world of lovely things because they also like to dream of beautiful things, even as the world falls apart.
Chapter Twenty-one
If she is sure Thomas Milner is not there, Beatrice likes to pass by the kgotla and greet King Sechele when she’s out walking; in this way they’ve become friends.
‘Dumelang, Kgosi,’ Beatrice says as she enters the empty kgotla.
King Sechele is sitting alone, paging through a book. He is well-read and interested in many things. She especially likes the times when he tells her about being a boy and he and his mother were banished from the tribe, having to move around like nomads. He learned many things then about how to survive. And he made many friends, including the powerful King Mzilikazi, who kidnapped them but later became a friend and mentor to King Sechele.
His stories are never-ending and they fascinate Beatrice.
‘Dumela, Mme Beatrice,’ he says. He notices her sketch book and he holds out his hand. He likes to look through her drawings of plants and animals and tell her their names in Setswana, sometimes about their uses to people, sometimes other stories about them.
He pages through and then laughs suddenly. Beatrice looks at him to see what has amused him. He holds up a sketch of Thomas Milner. Beatrice doesn’t laugh. It is purposefully unflattering and she fears the king will find her disrespectful towards his friend. Though King Sechele is modern in many ways, in his thoughts and in the way he tackles many problems, when it comes to women she has seen that he expects them to know their place, to respect their husbands.
The king nods. ‘It’s quite accurate.’ He closes the book and hands it back to her. ‘Are you going or returning?’
‘Going. I want to go to the river today.’
‘You’re never afraid moving in the bush alone?’ he asks.
‘Should I be?’
‘I don’t know. You know we have had some problems with the Boers. They burned our last mission house to the ground. They’re rumbling again.’
‘Would they trouble me?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Maybe if they find out that you’re a missionary; the Boers have a hatred for missionaries working with the native people. They’ve been moving into our kingdom again. You must take care.’
‘But I’m not a missionary.’
‘You’re not?’ The king seems surprised by that.
‘No, I’m not even a Christian.’
King Sechele laughs. ‘You are a complex person, Mme Beatrice.’
Beatrice doesn’t respond to that. ‘So what will you do if the Boers attack you here in your kingdom?’
‘We’ll need to fight them. We’ve fought them before. I wouldn’t want to go to war, but if we must, we will. In any case, I’m preparing for war. Unfortunately, the Cape government does not want to assist us with the Boers and at the same time they try to stop us from buying guns and ammunition. But I have my ways. Already I’m preparing.’
‘I would hate to hear of harm coming to this beautiful kingdom of yours.’
‘Yes, your husband feels that same way. This is why he is assisting me.’
Beatrice asks nothing more. She tries not to show the excitement she feels from what she has heard. She leaves shortly after that, but not to continue her walk. Instead, she returns to the mission house. She’s too excited now that she finally sees her escape plan clearly. The rest is only detail.
Chapter Twenty-two
Nthebolang’s mother finishes her food and pushes the plate away. Nthebolang gets up to collect the plates to wash them at the b
ack of the house, but her mother stops her. ‘Leave those. We need to go somewhere.’
‘But it’s night. Where are we going?’ Nthebolang asks.
‘Put your shoes on.’
Nthebolang does as she’s told. She follows her mother out of the gate and they walk the narrow paths of the village, snaking their way to the other side, through the main kgotla and off towards Maribana kgotla. They approach a tidy compound with three mud rondavels at the front. As they near the rondavels, a man comes out of the gate and stops when he sees them.
‘Dumela, Mma,’ he says.
A tall man, all sharp angles, with a face Nthebolang is sure she remembers from somewhere.
‘And how is she this evening?’ Nthebolang’s mother asks the man. Nthebolang wonders who they’re talking about.
‘She’s better. Her hip troubles her, but I gave her something. The pain was already leaving her body when I left her inside.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ Mma Nthebolang says.
The man turns to Nthebolang. ‘Are you not the friend to Motsumi?’ he asks her.
The words startle her. No one is so bold as to link her with a chief’s son who is nearly married to someone else. The words are said for a reason – they’re a challenge of some sort. But Nthebolang is not one to disrespect elders, not even an unknown man like this one, not even someone wanting to antagonise her.
‘Ee, Rra … we’re friends.’
Mma Nthebolang looks at her daughter.
‘Yes, I thought so.’ The man hesitates and then decides he will say no more. ‘I must get going,’ he says. ‘Go siame, Mma.’
When she’s sure the man cannot hear her, Nthebolang asks her mother, ‘Did we know that man before? In Lephepe, did we know him there?’
‘Barobi? No. Why do you say that? He lives here. He always has, as far as I know.’
‘I thought I remembered him; I thought maybe he was a friend of my father’s. He looks so familiar.’
‘You must have seen him around the village,’ her mother says.
Nthebolang begins to walk further down the path but she cannot stop thinking about the man. No, it is more than that. She tries to search her mind for where the man’s face belongs. She wonders why he wanted to put her down with the question about Motsumi. What does he have against her? She feels unsettled and, more importantly perhaps, she knows that is what the man wanted her to feel.
‘Where are you going? We’ve arrived.’ Her mother is still standing at the gate watching Nthebolang continuing down the lane.
‘Arrived where?’
Nthebolang is not as familiar with the village as she might have been if she hadn’t lived at the mission. If she leaves the mission house it’s usually to the koppie, the kgotla, or the tree where church is held. She seldom goes anywhere else.
‘Mmapitse’s,’ her mother says.
‘What do we want with Mmapitse?’ asks Nthebolang. ‘I told you, I don’t need to see her. I don’t want help from that woman.’
Nthebolang stands still as her mother enters the gate. She doesn’t want her mother involved with Mmapitse either.
‘Let’s go back to the mission,’ she says.
‘But she can help you,’ says Mma Nthebolang. ‘I can see something is troubling you. She can help. I can’t watch you suffer like this.’
‘With what? Help me with what?’ Nthebolang’s questions float unanswered between them. A dog barks in the compound and the door of the centre rondavel opens, candlelight silhouetting a person standing in the doorway.
‘Who’s there?’ the voice calls. ‘Who is at my gate?’
‘It’s me,’ says Nthebolang’s mother.
The person says nothing but comes towards them. When Mmapitse is close enough to be able to see them she says, ‘We should go to the cooking house.’ She speaks in a low whisper, as if her words are those others should not hear.
Despite Nthebolang’s reluctance, she follows Mmapitse and her mother. She can’t leave her mother alone with this woman. Nthebolang watches Mmapitse walk ahead, limping on her left leg, supporting herself with a walking stick. Could she have been among the women that she heard that night, the women who were speaking of such evil things? Now Nthebolang wonders. A frail old woman like her walking around the village at night? Could she have buried the medicine at the gate of the mission house? It seems impossible now. She looks too weak to move any distance from her own house, and bending down and digging a hole seems even more unlikely.
Nthebolang follows behind her mother, Mmapitse at the front leading them into the open cooking house. An owl calls from the tree outside the compound and then swoops off into the night. Nthebolang and her mother are startled by its screech, and they stop and watch it fly away into the darkness. Mmapitse continues walking. Nthebolang wants to turn and go back home, to refuse to enter the cooking house. Something in her says she should not go inside, but her mother puts her hand on the small of her back and pushes her gently forward.
Inside the cooking house, Mmapitse reaches down for a burning stick of wood in the fire and lights the stub of a candle melted on the low wall of the hut. The cooking house has a high thatched roof with a large space between the roof and the low wall so that the smoke from the fire can blow out.
Mmapitse eases herself to the ground with some effort and then motions Nthebolang and her mother to join her. They sit down and wait. Mmapitse sets a rolled mat on the ground. Nthebolang hadn’t noticed her carrying it. She wonders if Mmapitse keeps it in the cooking house, although she didn’t see her pick up anything. Mmapitse unties the string around the mat and spreads it out in the space in front of them. In the centre of the leather mat is a leather bag, also tied with string. Mmapitse opens the bag and carefully empties its contents onto the mat. Nthebolang sees that they are divining bones: pieces of wild animal bones; a large bird beak (perhaps an eagle or a hawk); a few porcelain beads; two smooth polished stones.
‘What is this? I thought we were Christians?’ Nthebolang whispers to her mother, hoping they might still be able to leave.
‘Mmapitse is a healer – it’s not against Jesus to be healed,’ her mother whispers back.
‘Quiet!’ Mmapitse demands in a strong firm voice.
The old woman closes her eyes, holding the bones in her hands cupped before her. She rocks back and forth and speaks to the bones in a quiet, fast mumble. Nthebolang can decipher nothing. Mmapitse blows on the bones and whispers to them. After some minutes, she throws them on the mat. The women wait.
When she finally speaks, her voice is deeper, strong and clear.
‘You will change things, my girl. You will see many things and what you see will change many lives. There’s evil all around you, but it’s not for you, though it’s always there. Much bad will come … much, much bad will come, before the good. You may require help to complete your plan. Help from places you will not expect.’
Mmapitse rocks and moans. She mumbles some more and then shouts, ‘But beware! Those close to you are the ones who can harm you the most. Walk carefully among the snakes in case one bites.’
Nthebolang takes her mother’s hand and finds that it’s shaking. She holds it tightly. What does this mean? Who are these snakes? What can she believe from this woman? What would an old woman like her know about Nthebolang’s life? Nthebolang is not part of this. These things cannot affect her; these things mean nothing. Jesus will protect her; she’s baptised. This is not healing; this is some sort of trickery. In her mind, she repeats these words over and over like a chant that builds an invisible wall around her and her mother to protect them.
Mmapitse’s doek falls off as she rocks back and forth, moaning and mumbling in a deep chaotic voice. Without the doek, she looks like someone else. Her short grey hair is uncombed. It makes her face look wild and untamed, her eyes thin like an animal’s, her nose hooked like a beak.
Nthebolang watches as Mmapitse’s hands, resting on her legs, transform. Where are her old woman hands, veined and wrinkled?
Nthebolang sees only strong, mangled claws, grabbing at her dress. The old woman’s eyes roll in her head under half-closed lids, moving like an unwanted, uncontrollable beast behind them. Her legs, stretched out in front of her, are weak and gnarled from age. When they straighten, the calf muscles fill out. They’re strong and able once again.
The candle flickers and the shadows of the three women grow larger on the mud walls. Nthebolang watches them. Mmapitse rocks violently back and forth, and her crazed mumblings become louder, as if she’s speaking to someone Nthebolang and her mother cannot see or hear. They’re conversing in a language Nthebolang does not know.
The air in the cooking house changes. A breeze blows but it does not come from outside; it originates from within. The air smells old and full of trapped ancient scents: wild sage, old blood, ash. It smells of death.
Mmapitse’s shadow on the low wall changes too. Where her round head had been, Nthebolang sees the block-like head of a hyena, its mouth open and its teeth showing. She looks at her mother, but she’s staring down at the bones lying on the mat. She can’t see the wild animal dancing on the wall of the hut in the shadows, in the absence of the person. For Mmapitse is all but gone – only the normally unseen part remains. The truer, more important part, dances on the low wall.
Nthebolang needs to leave this place. The stifling air is choking her and filling her lungs with its poisonous gas. The frightening shadows surround her, and she fears she might die there. She jumps to her feet, screaming, and runs from the cooking house. She runs out of the compound. She runs and runs as fast as she can to get away from what she’s seen. Through the twisting, winding lanes. She doesn’t know where she’s going, only that she must get away, get away from that old woman and the truth of her that only Nthebolang can see.
Everywhere she looks they seem to be closing in on her. No one can be trusted any more. She runs and runs. When she’s finally aware of where she is, she finds she is at the koppie. Her breath is ragged but she slowly relaxes and her mind calms. She hides between the big boulders and grabs her knees to her body to form a protective round ball. But then she hears a noise and her body stiffens. She’s surprised to see Motsumi. How did he know she was here?
But Deliver Us from Evil Page 12