Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘Which is...?’ Anne persisted.

  ‘Genocide,’ said Sarah. ‘The genocide the Germans committed on the Herero and the Nama.’

  Ralph had been doing his research. ‘In October 1904, Lother von Trotha, under the instructions of the Kaiser, ordered the extermination of every Herero man, woman or child in the German Territory.’

  ‘So, we’ve closed the mine and we’re not sure we can continue. Meanwhile, the pressure builds from Shanghai for me to find another site.’ Li had hoped to escape the pressures of his work at the weekend, but he knew this hope was forlorn.

  ‘He’s been having nightmares,’ Hannah chipped in, not sure if she should, but wanting to share her worry about him. It was the first time she’d heard his wailing through the wall since her mother had miscarried.

  ‘Man’s inhumanity to man,’ Sarah sighed. ‘It’s been very tough for Li.’

  ‘Yes, but we have to carry on,’ Li said stoically. ‘We need nuclear power to save the world.’

  ‘Or destroy it,’ said Anne. ‘I have an outbreak of patients in the hospital at the moment with unexplained burn marks. Some people are suggesting it’s radiation leaks from the mines.’

  ‘Very unlikely,’ Li retorted defensively, feeling both under attack and worried.

  After the parents had gone to bed, Hannah and Freddie stayed on the terrace talking, two tiny figures against the backdrop of a brilliant night sky. In the cities where they had both lived, the sky, if it was noticed at all, was squeezed between buildings and two-dimensional. Here the moon was a sphere not a disc and horizons lived up to their name.

  ‘You can see so clearly here,’ Freddie commented.

  ‘No light pollution. Not much pollution full stop,’ Hannah responded.

  They both gazed at the carpet of stars.

  ‘Is there somewhere out there to live?’ Freddie asked

  ‘Would we want it to, even if there were?’ Hannah questioned.

  ‘What, you’d rather die here?’

  ‘I think so. I’d rather lie down on the warm grass I know and love, listen to one last bird and fall asleep. Look at that vastness out there. How would we find our bearings?’

  ‘We are hurtling through space all the time, as we go around the sun.’

  ‘Yes, I know but it’s our home. We’re travelling on our home.’

  A shooting star shot across the sky. Another meteor reduced to a firework, seemingly for their pleasure alone.

  7

  The Dig, The Map

  The site, thankfully, had been left untouched. The tarpaulin, anchored firmly by stones, was just as Darius had left it. For once, there had been no bribing of guards, no theft of artefacts. Ben put this down to fear. The impulse to steal was not as powerful as the risk of your soul being damned by disturbing a grave. The Elders would have held sway in this matter.

  Sure enough, there was an expert from the National Anthropology Museum present to protect Namibia’s interests in the find. Ben showed him his licence for the dig which he examined slowly with suitable gravitas, followed by a nod of mutual respect. The Museum Directors had been excited when the news first broke that Dr Kaplan from Columbia University, expert in African tribes, was going to spend a year in Namibia. Their dignity, however, prevented them from broadcasting the fact.

  The Museum Director was accompanied by an anonymous civil servant who simply took notes on proceedings, whilst the Director made drawings, took measurements and intermittently snapped photographs with a digital SLR. Ben noted that the Museum must be well-equipped.

  The families arranged some folding chairs and outdoor tables near the perimeter of the pit and laid down some ground sheets and tablecloths so that those who weren’t digging could watch and support. They had packed a large alfresco lunch anticipating, correctly, that a dig would last a long time and make you hungry.

  The Museum Director had been somewhat taken aback by the presence of four families and advised that no more than five people should be around the body, in the pit, at any one time. The parents all nodded sagely, but the younger ones wanted to be off the leash. Whilst Ben, Ilana and Darius, and two others by turns, got to work, the rest sat on the periphery of the dig, offering helpful and not-so-helpful suggestions.

  Clara was over-excited and so they took it in turns to play cards with her, or to prowl through the nearby landscape looking for strange insects and small animals. She was especially taken with the ground squirrel that kept cool by keeping its back to the sun, using its tail as a sunshade.

  Ben enjoyed taking charge and for once, not being alone, even if the other people’s enthusiasm sometimes meant they got in the way. He had brought multiple prints of Victorian, military uniforms, gathered from on-line regimental archives. The Internet was a ‘god-send’ to anthropologists. He couldn’t now remember a time without it.

  He proceeded to lay the printed sheets in turn next to the body, looking for an exact match with the uniform on the skeleton. Joe was his second pair of eyes. After eleven attempted matches, he struck gold.

  ‘That’s it, Dad,’ Joe said excitedly. ‘Look at the epaulettes and the markings on the sash.’

  Ben held the drawing next to the uniform itself.

  ‘Fourteenth Regiment of the Foot, British Army. It’s a Scottish Regiment.’

  He checked in one of his many plastic folders.

  ‘Yep, that was Alexander’s regiment. It must be him then. All the evidence confirms it…the inscription on the watch, the uniform, even the travels he describes in the published journals and letters.’

  There was a frisson of excitement in the families. Ralph, who had only reluctantly got involved in this whole enterprise, found himself thinking of his own ancestors and wondering whether any of them had been explorers. It would give meaning to his own wanderlust.

  The next task was to thoroughly examine the uniform’s pockets, being careful not to rip its already-decaying fabric. In an inside jacket pocket, there was a small pouch, containing an engagement ring. Anne and Sarah gathered round to examine. Its sparkle was untarnished, its facets seemingly glad to see the light again.

  ‘Probably purchased in South Africa to give to his betrothed. Worn close to his heart,’ Ben observed, touched by this affection.

  ‘Think about that girl back home in the Highlands, waiting for a wedding that would never happen,’ Anne added, looking dolefully at Sarah and Barbara.

  ‘Did she die alone and unfulfilled, I wonder?’ Sarah chimed.

  Looking at the unfolding scene in front of her, Ilana regretted her initial, fierce reaction that the dig should have been left to local anthropologists. She was still proud that the Museum Director was there, as per her suggestion. Yet, she was also touched by Ben’s delicacy and sensitivity when moving around the body. There was a cultural link with this fallen British explorer that no Namibian could feel. It struck her that this Captain Alexander they had unearthed was a man much like Ben himself: fascinated by cultures, indeed the cultures of her own ancestors. Ben was effectively digging up his own future corpse.

  After photographs and measurements had been taken, the local anthropologist and Ben carefully removed all items of clothing from the body and laid them, numbered and labelled, in crates.

  Then a kind of stretcher was placed under the skeleton and four of them lifted the body as one and lowered it into a bare, wooden casket. It had all the gravitas of a second burial. After forensic examinations, the body would be shipped home to Scotland to any surviving relatives for a final burial in the Highlands.

  Joe, Freddie, Hannah and Selima had felt like spare parts to this point, engrossed though they were in the intricacies of the procedures. Their turn to get involved had now arrived.

  ‘Right guys, time for some serious digging.’ Ben issued his call to arms whilst handing out shovels to all four of them.

  He supervised them d
igging systematically in defined squares which he marked out with ropes stretched between tent poles that he hammered into the ground with a mallet.

  ‘Good to see you lot at work,’ Ralph called out affectionately. The four families already felt bonded by their common task.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Freddie called back with cheery sarcasm, ‘you just relax.’

  ‘Can’t I dig?’ asked Clara, having bored, of her ‘mini’ excursions.

  ‘No darling, it’s too difficult for you,’ Anne said.

  Seeing Clara crestfallen, Ben called over to her.

  ‘Clara, I’ve got a special task for you to do. Probably the most important. Do you think you can do it?’

  ‘Of course, I can,’ Clara said beaming and jumping into the pit. Anne and Ralph looked on in gratitude.

  Ben gave her a small trowel and some protective gloves.

  ‘Now, if you look, the others have got those huge, galumphing spades. This is delicate work and it requires your sensitive hands. I want you to start digging very carefully, just around where the skeleton was lying. Often, we find things close to the body and they can be easily damaged. So, go gently with this trowel. Do you understand?’

  Clara nodded solemnly and set off with great passion and an exaggerated demeanour of extreme care.

  Joe dug in neat rows in his square. As he dug, he tried to think through the physics of how he could apply maximum force for minimum effort. He was also trying to work out how much soil there might be for every century that passed.

  Freddie took to the task with what he thought of as the relish of a British farm labourer. By so doing, he threatened to bury Clara, with his vigorously discarded soil, and had to be restrained.

  Hannah tried to compete with Selima which proved hard. Selima had the advantage of having learnt how to dig Darius’s Land Rover out of quicksand, on a number of occasions. Her technique, combined with her natural strength, meant that she had dug to twice the depth of Hannah in the same time.

  It was thus a quietly satisfying moment when Hannah’s spade hit something hard. She wanted to be certain and so she dug again a few inches across. There was a definite, metal sound, albeit softened by the soil, and when she tried a third time, a shockwave spread back up the spade, through her arms to her jaw. She had found something solid.

  She nurtured the secret for a few moments, treasuring it, before she called out.

  ‘I’ve hit something… something metal!’

  Clara groaned that it wasn’t her, and then dropped her trowel as everyone downed tools and ran to Hannah.

  Ben took Hannah’s spade, slightly to her annoyance, and quickly but carefully dug more earth away, then dropped it and dug into the soil with his bare hands. He felt his way along the object, trying to scope out its dimensions.

  ‘It’s metal and wood and it’s big. I suspect it’s a trunk of some kind.’

  Ben proceeded to mark out an area, one foot wider and longer than the object he could feel, and arranged for them to dig on all sides, until there was a mud-encased rectangle in front of them, an altar of soil.

  Then they used the trowels to carefully scrape the soil away.

  ‘This is how a sculptor must feel,’ Hannah said, ‘as they chip away, and a figure emerges from the marble.’

  ‘One, two, three…lift!’

  Six of them lifted the emerging object from the pit and carried it across to the table at which Barbara had been working when she first met Ilana. Then came the painstaking exercise of wiping and removing dirt, until it stood clearly before them.

  ‘It’s an old steamer trunk,’ Ralph declared, remembering his great-grandmother’s that had been restored and kept in their entrance-hall as a child.

  It was predominantly wood covered with, some kind, of taut, protective skin that had helped to preserve it. It had wooden struts on all sides, and, also across the lid. There were enough bolts, locks and catches to have scuppered Houdini, the famous escapologist. It was clearly the trunk of someone distinguished and wealthy.

  The same initials were imprinted on its side as on the watch: J.W.A.

  The locks were a nightmare, jammed tight as they had been for almost two hundred years. They gathered around the trunk in a scene reminiscent of the crowd that gathers in an Italian street when someone gets locked out of their car. Everyone was screaming different suggestions as to how to crowbar the lock or drill or pick it.

  Having frustrated all subtler attempts, Darius used the biggest crowbar and hammer he could muster and prised it apart. As the lid was flung open, a cloud of hot musty air spread over them. It was like entering an attic in the height of summer, the past brewing its heady stew beneath the rafters.

  ‘This is where you thank your lucky stars that there is practically no humidity in Namibia,’ the Museum Director commented. ‘Everything is preserved by the sand and the heat.’

  They gradually removed the objects inside, examining each one like a Christmas present. One of the first and heaviest objects to emerge was a Victorian sewing-machine. It was, as the Director had anticipated, in extraordinarily good condition. It was cast iron and japanned with black gold in intricate patterns. The words ‘Arm and Platform’ were inlaid into its top arm. It looked more like a lathe than a sewing-machine and had one large handle for turning the bobbin. The maker was one ‘Edward Ward of Edinburgh.’

  ‘Why would an explorer bring a sewing-machine from Scotland?’ Joe asked.

  ‘To help the Herero sow their dresses would be my guess,’ Ilana said. ‘You’ve seen how elaborate they are. The missionaries preferred them to look European.’

  The trunk yielded much more: ostrich feathers and eggs; a rhino horn and some ivory tusks, both of which would now be illegal; precious stones and minerals; spears and axes, some pottery. There, lurking at the bottom, were two Bibles, four leather-bound journals, a sketchbook and, a number, of scrolls, bound tight with silk ribbons.

  ‘This is the real prize,’ Ben cried, holding them aloft.

  An hour later, having divided the journals between them to read, they read out extracts, when struck by specific episodes, or descriptions by Captain Alexander.

  ‘Listen to this…’ Hannah said. ‘Today, I went to Cape Cross Colony as suggested by a fellow-founder of the Royal Geographical Society. He had heard tale of extraordinary wildlife and sure enough I encountered a vast collection of seals. I was most struck by their ears which were visible and external to their bodies. This is unlike any other seals I have encountered.’

  ‘I don’t think we even noticed their ears, did we?’ said Joe laughing.

  ‘Aa ha, that’s because you lack the trained eyes of a Victorian amateur biologist and botanist,’ Anne chipped in. ‘As a highly trained doctor, I, of course noticed them straightaway.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mum, then how come you didn’t say anything?’ Clara piped up.

  ‘I was distracted by a lion darling!’

  ‘Also found the stone cross after which the Colony is named. It was erected in 1484 by Diego Cao, a Portuguese explorer. Set me thinking about the War of Two Brothers in which I fought in 1832.’

  ‘He was clearly a seasoned soldier,’ Ralph observed. ‘Listen to this… “I am still exhausted from the Frontier War in South Africa. Looking back, I shouldered a huge burden as aide-de-camp to d’Urban. The weariness is very deep. I also feel very alone. There are Germans here and Afrikaners of course, but hardly any British. If not for Erastus, my translator, I would feel, unutterably, alone. Although he doesn’t have my education, he is immensely kind and patient. He is also a fine storyteller. How I miss Margaret, my beloved. She writes often begging me to return to Scotland. The engagement has been planned for two years and she says the sound of wedding bells seems to be fading upon the wind.”’

  ‘So, Margaret is the one who was left behind,’ Sarah observed.

  ‘I hate to think
of her pining away,’ Anne said.

  ‘Yes, it could have been years before she gave up on him being alive,’ Ilana added. ‘What foolish creatures we women are!’ She shot a glance in Darius’s direction but, happily, found him engrossed in Alexander’s sketchbook.

  Sensing her gaze, he looked up.

  ‘His drawings are really rather good,’ he said. ‘It’s interesting what struck him as important to capture. He’s drawn Secretary Birds from every conceivable angle for example.’

  ‘What’s a Secretary Bird when it’s at home… or at the office, come to that?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘It’s a bird of prey,’ Ilana answered. ‘They are raptors…descended from dinosaurs and vicious.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Joe.

  ‘Where can we see them?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘You’ll see them soon enough,’ Darius replied. ‘They’re used by farmers for killing pests. They kill snakes by jumping on their back and then breaking their necks. More effective than a mongoose.’

  ‘Why are they called Secretary Birds?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Well, it’s not because they can type,’ Darius replied, but his humour was lost on Clara and so he continued. ‘It’s because they look as if they have quills behind their ears.’

  ‘Quills?’ Clara explained.

  ‘Old-fashioned pens,’ Hannah explained. ‘But listen, he also mentions them here in one of the journals… “My friends the Secretary Birds appeared again today. In addition to their extraordinary ability to kill quickly and cleanly, at which one can only marvel, they also seem extraordinarily advanced. They are, by observation, totally faithful to one partner for their whole lives. They hunt on the ground by day, but, return to roost in the Acacia trees by night, to avoid being hunted. They seem highly intelligent and I am convinced that in some way they can help me find the burial site.”’

  ‘What burial site?’ Joe asked. ‘What was he looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Selima ‘but I’ve found several mentions of it in this journal as well. Listen to this… “My anthropologist friends in London tell me there is increasing evidence that we are all descended from the San people here in Southern Africa. Which would make this corner of Africa our Eden. It is strange to think of Adam and Eve as African but if science is proved right then this surely must be the case.