Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  There were boardwalks which enabled them to walk right into the midst of the colony. Joe felt as if he would drown in the noise and stench. It felt like being on another planet, a planet where life had dwindled to a single, surviving species, all diversity and beauty gone.

  Then they saw her. At first, you couldn’t be sure. Not from a distance. But the majesty of the walk betrayed her. A lioness was prowling the perimeter of the colony, but no more than thirty feet from where they stood. She must have walked the river valley from the desert to the sea. Who knows why? She was slimmer and slighter than most lions.

  Perhaps food was scarce. Perhaps it was an accident, a loss of bearings. Perhaps, she was lured by the smells of the sea and the colony, certainly by the prospect of fresh and easy meat.

  Now she was surveying her prize, mesmerised by the choice. Several prides of lions could feast on these seals for weeks, but only she had undergone the journey. She was alone but too proud to be lonely. She appeared to almost smile. She had all the time in the world but was damned if she was going to take it. Not now, after the achingly long walk, through the river- beds, that would have lasted days.

  Seals started to shift and honk and barge each other as she rose like a flame from the ground. She moved slowly, sadistically. A pup wouldn’t be enough. A bull might put up too much of a fight. So, a cow seemed perfect.

  Instinctively, the two families all crouched together on the boardwalk, staying still and close together. Although they weren’t the hunted, they felt they could be. Their breathing slowed. Everything sharpened its outlines, despite the lingering fog. Colours looked brighter; sounds were harsher.

  Then she was off. The seals moved as best they could, pups scattering in her path. Cows reared and honked, protecting their young. The lioness chose and pounced. The cow, bitten in the neck, succumbed like a sacrifice, swooning into the lion’s jaws and falling limp. She ritually gave herself up, as if dying for the colony. Several pups screeched like babies as she died. Bulls barked ferociously as if creating a wall of sound to shield the thousands. The lioness, dragged her prey, slowly but triumphantly, back to the rocks above the beach and proceeded to eat.

  They all felt the same: the desire to be somewhere safe. They craved the oasis of the homes in Swakopmund. Even though they had never seen them, they could imagine their comforts.

  Clara was the most disturbed by seeing the kill, but the adrenaline of it sang in all their veins for hours afterwards.

  Once it was clear that they were safe and the lioness was dozing next to her prey, they carefully made their way back along the boardwalks back to the cars. Joe had a slight limp from his wound. They sat in momentary disbelief, and then set off on the gravel road to Swakopmund.

  The young people wanted to be together and so Joe joined Freddie and Clara in the back of the Wilde’s car.

  ‘Are you all-right, Cluse?’ Freddie asked his sister. He always used this nickname when he wanted to cheer her up, to remind her of simpler times when a game on the floor had absorbed them both for hours, lost in a miniature world.

  ‘I thought lions lived in the jungle,’ she said, her eyes still glazed.

  ‘Lions used to roam the whole of the Old World,’ Ralph told her from the front of the car, looking in the rear-view mirror to check her reaction.

  ‘I am glad we live in the New World then,’ she replied.

  ‘It says here that lionesses do most of the hunting,’ Joe said.

  ‘Just as with humans, Joe,’ Anne replied with a twinkle in her eye and trading a cheeky glance with Ralph.

  ‘Yeah sure!’ Ralph replied. They were both relieved to be back in the safety of their car, with everyone inside, wearing their seat belts.

  ‘You’re not a lioness, Mummy,’ Clara observed ‘You’re much nicer.’

  ‘You haven’t seen her at the hospital,’ Ralph joked.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Clara retorted. ‘Stop being mean, Daddy!’

  Joe turned to Freddie.

  ‘Have you ever felt that way before?’

  ‘What way?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘Hunted. Out in the open. You and the elements. No civilisation to fall back on. Just you and a predator,’ Joe elaborated.

  ‘Never. Terrifying… but thrilling. I feel alive.’ Freddie said.

  ‘Look at that!’ Joe pointed to a shipwreck in the shallows of the ocean, buffeted by the South Atlantic waves.

  ‘That’s what I told you about,’ Freddie said excitedly. ‘Look, Mum, Dad, Clara, remember that first day and the shipwrecks? Sailing down this coast.’

  ‘They don’t look so scary now,’ Clara observed.

  She was right. Now that the fog had lifted under the heat of the mid-day sun, the shipwreck looked more like an abandoned bath toy than a demonic presence. This wreck was more modern than some: a large fishing trawler, whose carcass was largely intact. Birds nestled on its every rusted inch, using its height to view their ocean prey. Its lilt to one side gave the illusion of motion: of a downwards move in the waves, but one that never came back up, stuck in the freeze-frame of its disaster.

  Soon they were passing the industrial saltworks on the outskirts of Swakopmund, and opposite, nestling by the beach, was a small complex of satellite dishes, pointing at the sky at various angles.

  ‘Wow! A tracking station,’ Joe exclaimed.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that’s the one belonging to the Chinese government,’ Ralph responded. ‘I was briefed on it the other day by my team. The Chinese use it to track the re-entry of their space vehicles.’

  This description lit up Joe’s head. Ever since he could remember, he’d loved space programmes. He’d watched recordings of the Apollo moon landings over and over. Ben and Barbara bought him a large telescope for his tenth birthday and had put it in pride of place by the picture window in the sitting-room. Every probe that set off to Mars or Saturn or the Sun, Joe tracked daily, marking its trajectory on graph paper.

  After the trauma of the seal reserve, Swakop as it was often called, felt like civilisation. It had palm-lined, beautifully-clean streets, and German, colonial architecture. The Victorian buildings were painted in vibrant Caribbean colours as if to broadcast the town to passing ships. There were elegantly simple, Lutheran churches, well-kept parks and a stripy lighthouse like a stick of rock. It was all laid out in a neat, German grid system, parallel and at right angles to the sea.

  ‘Gosh it’s a real seaside town,’ Anne exclaimed, ‘in the middle of a desert!’

  ‘Yes, someone called it Germany’s most southerly Baltic resort,’ Ralph chirruped, breaking into laughter. Ralph always liked his own humour, even when no-one else did.

  The streets were bustling with people from Windhoek escaping the heat of the desert interior at the height of summer. There were open-air bars and cafes with frothy cappuccinos and artisan ice-creams being served by the trayful.

  Both families stopped to get an ice-cream and bask in the sun, the temperature made comfortable by a cheery breeze off the ocean. Then they checked the driving instructions to their respective hosts on Google Maps, agreed when they would set off for the site the next morning and went their separate ways.

  Joe was excited to see Selima’s house for the first time. Sometimes people’s houses are exactly as you expect them in your head: their personality in bricks and mortar. Sometimes they reveal what has been hidden.

  Selima’s house was modest but characterful, built in the 1970’s by South African architects: during the Apartheid era and before Namibian independence. Darius had liked the fact that it was built by South Africans given his ancestry. He had immediately felt at home on entering its hallway for the first time. Ilana liked it because it was light and airy and from the second floor you had a clear view of the sea.

  Darius had kept the outside of the house perfectly maintained. His practicality was one of the things that had first att
racted Ilana to this rough-round-the-edges, bearded farmer’s son. That and his blue eyes which always seemed to sparkle with the prospect of something new and glittering on the horizon. It was years before she realised that most of what glittered was an illusion.

  The house was as loveably chaotic and colourful as the Van Zyl’s themselves. Shelves overflowed with Namibian pottery, jewellery, collections of rocks and gems. There were posters in loud colours advertising ‘Darius’s Unbeatable Sand Dune Tours’, copies of which they had seen in town. They showed his Land Rover poised precariously on a ridge, tourists in the back screaming with nervy delight. Darius’s tools seemed to nestle in every corner of the house, waiting to be used for some unfinished task. There were incomplete models of boats and cars dotted around and the architectural drawings of his parent’s old farm.

  Ilana’s passions were also everywhere. Sepia and colour photographs of different Namibian tribes dotted the hallway and occupied one whole wall of the airy sitting-room. There were photographs of her leading tour groups across impossibly beautiful landscapes. A signed photograph with Nelson and Winnie Mandela, and another with the Namibian President Sam Nujoma, were, naturally, in pride of place. The fridge door was covered in vivid protest badges and flyers: some about the environment, others about protecting indigenous land rights.

  ‘I have to say I’m very impressed with Swakopmund,’ Ben said as they sat having cold drinks on the terrace. ‘It’s beautiful. Much more affluent than I expected.’

  ‘It wasn’t always that way I can tell you,’ Darius responded. ‘It was very run down for years and years, neglected, until the Rossing mine started in the seventies. Basically, the infrastructure of this place has grown to serve the mine.’

  ‘Besides,’ Ilana added, ‘you’ve only seen the affluent part of Swakop so far. Half the population live in the township: Mondesa. It was started during Apartheid.’

  ‘And it still has the areas that they designated for ethnic groups,’ Darius continued. ‘The Ovambo, Nama and Herero: they all live in their own separate neighbourhoods.’

  ‘We haven’t washed Apartheid away yet, I’m afraid,’ Ilana sighed.

  ‘That’s sad. But what we saw was very beautiful and clean,’ Barbara said, trying to lighten the tone a little. She was very conscious that the last time she had met Ilana was in the confrontation over the hotel site and she was trying to tread carefully. ‘In stark contrast, I might say, to the Seal Colony!’ she added.

  ‘Ah you went there, good,’ Ilana said. ‘That’s why I suggested that route.’

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘We saw a lioness make a kill,’ Joe interjected.

  This news shook Darius. ‘A lion in the seal colony! My God that’s rare. There used to be many more. Gosh, it would have been two days away from the rest of the pride. There must be a shortage of food inland.’

  ‘It was amazing,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘You’re very lucky,’ Darius observed.

  ‘I’m not sure “luck” is the term I’d use,’ Barbara replied. She still felt wary of Darius, despite the kind invitation to stay at his home. Why had he failed to tell Ilana that he was working with her on the hotel site? She looked at the two of them trying to detect what kind of marriage they had. Darius did seem jumpy, wary of the strong presence of his wife. He leaned back as much as she leaned forward.

  ‘At least a lion only kills one seal… and in pursuit of its own survival. The annual cull is a disgrace,’ Ilana commented.

  ‘What’s the cull?’ Joe asked.

  ‘The Government kill tens of thousands of seals every year and then sell the fur. It’s a bloodbath. It’s supposedly to stop the fish stocks getting too low and to raise money to protect the colony. It would really be far better to raise money through tourism. They should leave the size of the colony to Nature.’

  ‘I am just going to show Joe the neighbourhood,’ Selima interjected, fearing the conversation could slide ever further into one of her mother’s moral lectures and keen to be alone with Joe.

  They patrolled the quiet streets of Selima’s suburb, alone and happy. Joe felt a contentment stealing over him. They aimlessly wheeled around corners and ambled along pavements, occasionally stopping for Selima to point out a specific house, or to cheekily pluck fragrant leaves from a neighbour’s garden and put them under Joe’s nose.

  ‘So, how did you feel seeing a kill?’ she asked.

  ‘Look, I’m a city boy from Brooklyn, New York. To me lions are something you see at the Bronx Zoo when your folks can’t figure out what to do on your birthday.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question. Anyway, isn’t New York a kind of jungle as well?’

  ‘In its way! To be truthful, given my folks’ lifestyle, I’ve spent more time away from New York than in it, but still… How did I feel? You want the truth? I felt like an electric fence watching the kill. I was buzzing but shocked.’

  Joe never expressed things in the way others would. That was part of his appeal.

  ‘In fact, ever since I arrived here,’ he continued, ‘I have felt more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life.’

  ‘And is that just because of the landscape?’ she asked, but without looking at him for fear of smiling too much.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, teasing her.

  ‘How do you cope with the crowds in New York? From the movies I’ve seen it looks like the streets are always crawling with people.’

  ‘I blank them. I literally air-brush them out.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that,’ she responded.

  ‘I couldn’t imagine here. Until now…’

  ‘Welcome to Swakop. Sounds like you’ve had rather too much of an adventure.’ Li Chiang always liked to be ready on the doorstep when guests arrived and this was no exception, alerted by their texts.

  ‘Hi, I’m Anne, and this is Ralph. You must be Li. Thank you so much for inviting us. This seems like a haven after the heat of Windhoek.’

  Handshakes and polite kisses were exchanged, Sarah joining them, slightly flustered and taking off an apron dusted with flour.

  ‘Please forgive me. I was just baking for tonight’s supper.’

  ‘No need to apologise at all. We’re very honoured to be invited.’ Ralph was always like silk in his manners, something for which Sarah was perpetually grateful. The oil of his voice could calm most things, both within the family and outside.

  ‘Why are you all kissing when you don’t know each other? And why isn’t anyone kissing me?’ Clara protested.

  Anne was charmed. ‘You must be Clara. Can I kiss you please?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, that would be very nice!’ Clara proffered her better cheek, the one she always turned towards the camera for photographs.

  ‘Sorry about my younger sister,’ Freddie said ruffling her hair affectionately as he did. ‘She rarely makes a quiet entrance. I’m Freddie by the way.’

  ‘Like father, like son,’ Anne thought to herself... ‘charming.’

  Later, when supper was over and Clara had fallen asleep on the sofa, the six of them sat chatting at the dining-table. They had separated neatly, like a perfectly ripe fruit, into three segments: young people, mothers and fathers.

  Ralph and Li were deep in diplomatic relations, politely circling each other to assess where they stood.

  ‘I saw the Chinese Satellite tracking station as we came into town,’ Ralph proffered.

  ‘Yes, it was actually a collaboration between the Chinese and Namibian governments,’ Li confirmed.

  Ralph made a mental note for his next report to the Foreign Office.

  ‘So, how important is space exploration for the Chinese?’

  ‘Well, with 1.3 billion citizens, China has more incentive than most to find another colony out there in which to live.’

  Ralph was s
truck by the term ‘colony’.

  ‘Gosh, I’d never thought about China’s population as an incentive to explore space. How stupid of me. We’ll all need to find another planet where we can live of course… if we carry on treating this one the way we have. Perhaps there’s hope, now that we know there’s water on Mars.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the size of Lake Windermere apparently,’ Li laughed. ‘Only the British could use the Lake District to describe space.’

  Ralph felt slightly wounded, but was determined not to show it, something at which he had learned to excel. He took another sip of beer instead.

  ‘When you come to a place like Namibia… so pristine, so unpopulated…it makes you realise how much we’ve ruined Earth already,’ Ralph observed.

  ‘And here I am plundering their minerals,’ Li confessed. ‘Yet if we are to save the planet, we need more nuclear energy and that requires uranium.’

  ‘Not to mention for things like this,’ Ralph said, lifting his mobile phone from the table.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to be mining much, at- the- moment,’ Li said dolefully.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please treat it as confidential for now. We have discovered a mass grave at our test site.’

  Everyone else’s conversation stopped. Hannah looked slightly surprised that her father had shared this news. She was worried that this might make him vulnerable. She knew perfectly well that his employers would be secretive, just as she knew that her father was cut from another cloth.

  ‘What kind of mass grave?’ Anne asked. ‘I mean, is it from a plague? Or radiation?’ She thought of her burn victims.

  ‘We have to wait for the Namibians to finish their tests. They’re carbon-dating the skeletons. But the circumstances, the way the bones are piled, all points in one direction…’ Li pronounced.