Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘There is a click like the popping of a cork that is represented like this…’

  He drew an exclamation mark on the board.

  ‘There is a lateral click like the one you make to urge on a horse…’

  He drew two vertical lines.

  ‘And finally, there is a palatal click, like someone clicking their fingers…’

  He drew a vertical line, crossed by two short horizontal lines.

  ‘Before we had language as we know it and before we had alphabets, we had clicks.’

  A voice rose from the back.

  ‘Oh my God! Oh my God,’ Joe rose up from his seat. ‘Of course, that’s it, sir. That’s it.’

  Jacob Ubuntu was not sure whether he should be angry or delighted that his exposition on the beginnings of language should apparently cause a Eureka moment in one of his pupils.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve just realised something. We need to use computer modelling sir.’

  ‘On languages, Kaplan?’

  ‘No, sir, on the fairy circles. We need satellite photos and we need massive computing power. Hannah?’

  Hannah, was as alarmed as anyone at Joe’s apparent madness, but nodded silently in acknowledgement of his manic gaze.

  ‘We need to speak to your father.’

  10

  Mapping

  ‘Hi, Baba, how are things? Has the scandal died down?’ Hannah was on the phone to her father.

  She was sure he was still under a lot of stress and couldn’t help but resent Joe piling further pressure on him by asking his help with computer modelling. On the other hand, she was as determined as Joe and Freddie to find out if anything new could be detected about the pattern of the Fairy Circles. She had found herself fantasising in the last few days about viewing Namibia from the International Space Station and being able to detect something extraordinary from on high. She’d even Googled whether people were able to put in requests to NASA.

  ‘Lovely to hear from you, Baobei. Nicest thing that’s happened to me for days,’ Li answered.

  Hannah immediately felt guilty, knowing that her motives were not purely altruistic and that he would soon detect this and then feel hurt. He was always very sensitive to motive.

  ‘Are things any easier?’ she asked.

  ‘The scandal has died down, but not the after-effects. I’m haunted by that poor man’s death.’

  ‘Your Deputy?’

  ‘Shen Chi, yes. I’ve seen his wife twice and she looks devastated. I looked into her eyes and I could see nothing, Hannah, nothing. It’s like her soul’s in retreat. I should never have asked him to resign.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Dad. I said that to you at the time and I’m sure Mum has. You did what you felt was right. How could you have possibly known he’d kill himself?’

  ‘He told me that he wouldn’t be able to face his family. There is too much fear of disgrace in our culture Hannah. I’ve said this to you before. This is what it can lead to.’

  Hannah, always felt glad but uncomfortable when he assumed she understood ‘our Chinese culture.’ In truth, she often felt caught in a limbo between the two cultures of her parents. She often didn’t know what a typical Chinese reaction was, or an English one either.

  ‘Look, Dad, he made a terrible mistake. He was also trying to stab you in the back. Mum told me.’

  ‘I know, but I was also an ambitious young man once…’

  ‘Dad, you would never have done this to your boss. Not in a million years. It’s not in your character.’

  Li felt healed by his daughter’s certainty, her belief in his good character.

  ‘I love you Hannah and I do miss you. I keep thinking I hear you in the house.’

  ‘I miss you, Dad. I’m coming home next weekend.’ Hannah had already agreed this with her mother. They were both worried sick about him; that this whole episode would make him depressed, ill, even.

  ‘That’s wonderful, I didn’t realise.’

  She could hear the smile in his voice. He continued more cheerfully.

  ‘Look, we’ll get through this. Our company’s name is mud in Namibia and that isn’t going to change quickly, but I am determined we’ll set things right. I’m hunting down alternative sites.’

  ‘I am sure it will get better,’ she reassured. She was feeling increasingly anxious about asking him the favour. This was made worse by Joe hovering in the background, like a bird following a boat, hoping for fish. She signalled to him to be patient and to stop pacing.

  ‘How’s your Science Project going?’ Li asked, wanting to escape from the current horrors of his life to the hopefulness of hers. ‘It sounded as if your teacher was delighted with your progress.’

  ‘He is. Dad, you would adore him. His name is Jericho Andjaba. Listen, I’m glad you mentioned the Science Project because Joe’s just appeared, and he wants to ask you a favour. Would you mind if I put him on?’

  Joe was frantically signalling that he didn’t want to get on the phone, but Hannah felt positively self-righteous that she deserved a dignified exit at this point in the call.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Li answered.

  Hannah muted the phone and whispered to Joe. ‘It’s your bloody idea, you ask.’

  Joe took the phone, unmuted it and adopted his most studious tone.

  ‘Mr Chiang, good evening. I was so sorry to hear the news about your colleague.’

  ‘Thank you, Joe, that’s very thoughtful of you. I hope your parents are well. I hope to see them soon.’

  ‘Yes sir, hopefully not on a quad bike or in a seal colony.’

  Hannah was impressed by Joe’s diplomatic skills. He rarely used them on her.

  ‘How can I help?’ Li asked, laughing at Joe’s remark.

  Joe cleared his throat.

  ‘We’ve been looking at the Fairy Circles for our Science Project as I’m sure Hannah’s told you. We need to do some pattern analysis to test out a theory. The school computer has, well … strong limitations shall we say. So, I wondered if we could possibly process the data on your company’s computers. I imagine they must be pretty powerful…for a mining company.’

  ‘Well I would love to help, Joe, but it’s quite a difficult time. You don’t feel you can ask Freddie’s father about using the High Commission’s computers?’

  ‘I have sir and there’s a confidentiality problem using Government computers.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose there must be. Well, look I’m always happy to help my daughter… and her friends of course. Let me ask our IT guys. I can always say it’s to help our prospecting. Is the data ready?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Chiang, so much. Yes, I can send you the data and the brief for the analytics. They’re big files so perhaps I should send them via We Transfer to you… if your IT people say it’s OK. I’ll get your email address from Hannah.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. Can I ask you a favour in return, Joe?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Would you give Hannah some extra maths lessons? Don’t tell her they’re lessons… her pride wouldn’t allow it. Just offer to explain a few things when there’s homework. It’s so important and I worry that no-one has inspired her about maths. I suspect you can.’

  ‘Of course,’ Joe said, flushed with honour, ‘I would be delighted. Here she is…’

  Joe handed Hannah back her mobile, as she gave him a quizzical look about what might ‘delight’ him.

  ‘Baba, thank you so much. It will really help us,’ she cooed.

  Li wanted to ask her if that was the only reason she’d called. But he didn’t want to hurt her and deep in his heart he knew it wasn’t. Not the only reason anyway.

  ‘Anything to help my Hannah. I’ll expect a namecheck in your project report of course.’

  ‘Naturally!’ she laughed.

  Barbara was
beginning to tire of the journey. The Land Rover was bumpy. She looked down at the map to validate her choice.

  She had scoured Namibia for a new site for the hotel for weeks: ever since the burial site of Captain Alexander had put a stop to her first choice. She ran through the options in her head again. At the moment, Fish River Canyon was unique, and not well-served with accommodation. Something on the rim would be spectacular of course. There was only Fish River Lodge, but, there were too many restrictions on building inside the National Park, and it was a long way south, which made it difficult to combine with other tourist itineraries.

  In the North, Victoria Falls was spectacular, pouring forth the fury of its waters at the edge of four countries, but there was far too much competition. The Caprivi Strip was more of an appendage than a destination. Anyway, there had been a history of trouble there.

  No, Damaraland was a good choice, she was convinced of it. It was a comfortable distance from Windhoek and Swakop. It had the unique attraction of the Twyfelfontein caves. It was close to the Skeleton Coast and easy to combine with safaris in Etosha National Park. For those with an eye for the spectacular, there were the Spitzkoppe Mountains and the moon-like craters of Doros and Messum.

  The map stopped vibrating on her lap. The Defender had come to a halt.

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ Darius announced from the front. Selima looked up from her book and Barbara from her map.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Barbara replied.

  She had never forgotten Darius’s courage and clarity in saving them from the sandstorm. He broke his back carrying Clara. He had understood Joe perfectly, his mixture of brilliance and insecurity, and he’d kept everyone calm and together as a group. The whole episode also seemed to have changed him. He appeared more confident in himself and less morose. However, Barbara couldn’t help speculating what the effect would have been if they hadn’t escaped the storm. It could have crushed someone like Darius.

  Darius got out of the Land Rover, mopped his brow and took a heavy swig from his water bottle. He looked ahead intently, stock still. Everything seemed frozen for a moment. Then Selima opened her door and walked round the front of the jeep to be with him. She hadn’t thought of him as vulnerable for a long while, not since the sandstorm, but he looked it now. She hugged him. Barbara was cross-referencing something on her map and hadn’t shifted since the car stopped.

  ‘Dad? Are you OK?’ Selima asked, slipping her arm through his.

  He turned to her with a half-sad smile and vaguely nodded.

  ‘Why did you ask me to take the afternoon off school?’

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ he responded, sounding wounded.

  ‘I wanted to. You know I always want to come on outings with you. They’ve been some of my happiest times.’

  He beamed at her.

  ‘Do you remember this place at all?’ he asked.

  She looked around but couldn’t remember anything. It was beautiful, remote but not unlike many places in Namibia that she loved.

  ‘I brought you here when you were five, held you in my arms and told you all about it.’

  Barbara got out of the car just in time to hear the tail-end of their conversation.

  They seemed so intimate, father and daughter, that she hesitated to interrupt. It felt like an invasion.

  ‘Is that the farm?’ she asked pointing to some buildings in the near distance.

  Something clicked in Selima’s mind. She could smell African lilies.

  ‘Wait. It’s not Grandpa and Grandma’s farm! Is it?’

  He turned to her smiling, his eyes wet with remembrance and nodded.

  Barbara wasn’t sure whether to feel touched or puzzled and then worked out that she felt both. ‘So, Darius, this is the farm your parents owned?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied simply.

  ‘And you think we could build a hotel here? On the farm?’

  ‘I can’t see why not. It’s beautiful isn’t it? Or is that just my sentimental eyes deceiving me?’

  Barbara felt she owed him a proper answer, one that dignified his question. So, she scanned the scene carefully. The farm was too distant at this point to judge it in any detail, but it was pretty and ordered and she guessed about a hundred years old. It was a cattle farm, an oasis of green amongst the flaxen grasses. It could almost be European. You could see the Brandberg Massif and the Spitzkoppe mountains in the distance. It felt peaceful.

  ‘It could be perfect,’ she said, glad to validate both him and the two generations before him who had chosen it as the place to build their life. ‘Wouldn’t you feel odd though? Your family farm becoming a hotel?’

  ‘If it can’t be my shrine, it may as well be shared with as many others as can appreciate it,’ he responded. ‘Besides which, I don’t want those bastards who forcibly took it from my parents to keep it.’

  ‘How do you know they’ll sell it, Dad?’ Selima asked, taking the question out of Barbara’s mouth and relieving her of the need to ask herself.

  Darius turned to Barbara. ‘If your company has the kind of money I assume it has, then they won’t be able to resist.’

  She smiled nervously, anticipating a bumpy and stubborn set of negotiations ahead.

  ‘Well, it certainly ticks all the boxes. We’d have to keep your family’s name completely out of the negotiations of course,’ she responded.

  ‘I have three small requests if I help you acquire it,’ he said, fixing her in his gaze.

  ‘Go on,’ she responded.

  ‘One is that you leave the main farmhouse intact, if you can integrate it into your design somehow. The second is that you build it to standards that Ilana would approve of… in terms of sustainability, I mean.’

  ‘And the third?’

  ‘The third is that our family have visiting rights.’

  ‘I’ll go you one better than that,’ Barbara replied, increasingly intoxicated with the landscape in front of her. ‘If we buy this property, I might help you build a small lodge on the boundaries.’

  Whilst Barbara and Darius were talking, Selima had got her father’s ever-trusted binoculars from the dashboard of the Defender and started scanning the farm. She was curious to pick out more details, even spot the current occupants if she could, get a sense of them.

  As she slowly prowled the landscape with her eyes, something caught her eye in the trees. She returned to it and adjusted the focus. She couldn’t be sure, but it appeared to be a leopard. It was lying still in the afternoon heat, except for its head which twitched slightly to remove the flies. It was staring intently in one direction. She followed the line of its sight and found a sleepy herd of cattle.

  ‘Dad look at this,’ she said, handing him the binoculars. ‘I think it’s a leopard.’

  Darius took the binoculars, hanging the straps around his neck.

  ‘At four o’clock,’ she said. He had trained her in the language of directions.

  ‘Got it. That’s very bizarre,’ he exclaimed. ‘It looks like a leopard but there are no rosettes, no spots at all. It’s as bare as a lioness, but slighter, thinner. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a good omen,’ Barbara said.

  ‘The Golden Leopard,’ Selima said quietly.

  The baby had survived for several days but now lay silent. Anne looked at it, heart quietly breaking.

  The mother had willed it to stay alive. Anne had seen her constantly looking into the bassinette; her finger placed in its tiny palm, around which it closed like a flower. She sang to it singing low and soft. The baby barely moved. Yet, it surely must have sensed the looming presence of this large, loving being, her mother, stooped over her. At least, Anne hoped so. It must have smelt her; felt the warm air around her breasts and hands and face as she held it close. The mother had tried to entice this small soul into the stream of life. But, the body
was too weak, and the soul had ebbed away.

  Anne had lost count of the number of babies who had succumbed to AIDS in the months since she’d been there. She did the same for this mother as she had done with all the others. She closed the baby’s eyes, held the mother’s hands in her own and told her ‘You couldn’t have done any more.’ This had the benefit of being true, but she would have said it anyway.

  Yet again, she made the solemn walk, back to the staffroom, to fill in the paperwork.

  ‘Will it ever get better?’ the ward sister asked her, knowing from Anne’s demeanour that another baby had died.

  ‘Yes, it will. The drugs are getting better. If the education can keep up, we’ll make significant progress,’ Anne replied defiantly.

  ‘I wish we could solve the mystery of these burn marks,’ Sister observed.

  ‘I agree. I was trying to think. Is there anything in particular, that links the victims? Their age? Their diet? Previous illnesses?’ Anne asked, mentally filing through the faces of those she could remember.

  The ward sister tried to think about them systematically.

  ‘Working age mainly. Many of them live outside the city. More agricultural workers than city workers, I would say. I haven’t seen any from east of Windhoek either.’

  Anne looked up from her form-filling. ‘Say that again!’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘No, the last bit.’

  ‘None have come from east of the city.’

  ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that before? We can map all the burn victims, where they live. Then if it is radiation of some kind, we pinpoint where it’s coming from. Have we got all the patient addresses?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Collect them for me, will you?’ said Anne, suddenly hanging her white coat on the back of the door and grabbing her handbag.

  ‘With pleasure. Where are you going?’

  ‘I am going to buy the largest scale map I can find.’

  Every month, Ralph had a meeting with his opposite number in the Department of Foreign Affairs. He enjoyed the chance to probe, to get the official perspective. He felt he almost understood Namibia better as a private citizen than as a public official and was keen to understand other perspectives.