Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘What is it?’ Ilana asked, leaning over to see what he was doing.

  ‘There seem to be cheetah tracks as well. Just as fresh and walking in parallel.’

  ‘Why is that so strange?’ Freddie probed.

  ‘Leopards and cheetahs don’t hunt together. They’re in fierce competition.’

  ‘Perhaps scarcity of food has made them collaborate,’ Ralph suggested from the jeep behind.

  ‘Never,’ said Darius. ‘They are sworn enemies. Cheetahs may be the fastest animals on Earth, but they are also the weakest of the big cats. Leopards often steal their prey. They both keep to their territories and defend them at all costs.’

  They drove on. The sun had risen enough to bless their skin. As so often in Africa, trees were the architecture of the landscape. Some had fallen, reduced from majesty to perches for birds and back-scratchers for elephants. Others were bolt upright but bare, like a forked lightning of wood. Some held their canopy of leaves up proudly, like an offering to be blessed by the sun. Individually, the trees could be anywhere. Collectively, they could only be in Africa.

  The front jeep broke through some seemingly impassable bracken and a large bull-elephant was revealed, fifteen feet in front of them. Darius slammed on the brakes with Ralph following in a jolting chain-reaction. They all lurched forward on to the inner bars of the Land Rover that ran like sentinels in front of their seats.

  ‘Stay absolutely still,’ Darius, whispered. ‘Don’t talk!’

  The elephant stared, seemingly inscrutable and unblinking. Its eyes threaded with Darius’s. Its trunk had been draped across one tusk to rest. Anne thought it looked strangely like hanging out the washing to dry on the line. On seeing them though, the trunk quickly returned to its probing state. Its giant ears twitched.

  Darius spoke over his shoulder, quietly but with an exaggerated firmness.

  ‘Whoever is right at the back needs to tell Ralph to start reversing slowly but calmly.’

  The word went back. Ralph crashed the gears with a horrible grating sound. Darius winced.

  The elephant started to lower its head: the first sign of a mock-charge.

  Ralph tried to engage reverse for the second and third times, Anne trying to steady him. Finally, the gear engaged. Rarely had metal slotting into metal sounded so sweet.

  ‘He’s threatening to charge,’ Darius observed. ‘Tell Ralph to bloody well reverse now.’

  ‘Dad!’ Freddie called from the back of their jeep, ‘it’s going to charge unless you reverse.’

  Instructing the others to be his wing-mirrors, Ralph reversed along the cratered track.

  The elephant lowered its head, held its tusks to the sky and moved one foot forward shifting its enormous weight forward through its shoulders.

  Both vehicles reversed, edging back from the confrontation zone, keen to shed their predator status.

  ‘Turn around and drive away but calmly,’ Darius instructed. Ralph, composure somewhat regained, obliged.

  As Darius reversed, the jeep got caught in a rut.

  ‘Dad, get out of here!’ Selima screamed losing her usual, automatic trust of him. Their hands seized the roll-bars, and seatbacks, their knuckles white and bony like ivory.

  Darius grated the gears, changed the angle of the front tyres, rocked forward and back, and then rammed the clutch down and re-engaged in first.

  The elephant started to move as they took off at speed.

  They looked behind. The elephant had slowed with their retreat and now stood still and proud in its victory. It shook its head as if at their folly.

  ‘Thank God for that!’ Freddie spoke for all of them.

  They continued, nerves now jangling. Their brains constantly re-interpreted their eyes. Every tree now seemed to wear a face. Every fallen branch undulated like a snake. The grasses moved as if they had limbs.

  Then Selima saw it. She could scan like a bushman. Her eyes which made thickets of words, penetrated landscapes like a laser.

  ‘Leopard!’ she called. ‘Can’t see it now. You need to reverse a little.’

  Reversing now triggered an automatic nervous system response in all of them as Darius pulled up alongside the other jeep.

  ‘Between the two thickets. See where the heron is. Look to the left,’ she advised.

  They raised their binoculars, like a crowd at a racecourse.

  ‘Do you see it?’ Selima asked.

  Sitting with slim majesty on a fallen tree, surveying the landscape for prey, was a beautiful leopard. Its shapes were pure grace. The shoulders flowed into the back; the back into the haunches, the haunches into the tail; the tail into the ground.

  ‘Not a single marking,’ Ben exclaimed.

  ‘Who says a leopard can’t shed its spots?’ Freddie couldn’t resist.

  ‘I told you it existed,’ cried Selima in triumph.

  ‘It’s the creature they told the story about at the Boma,’ Hannah exclaimed. ‘The one that shook off its spots as it ran, making the Fairy Circles.’

  ‘I don’t know about mythical. It’s a freak of nature,’ Anne suggested. ‘An albino, or a genetic defect of some kind.’

  ‘No, it’s not, Mummy,’ Clara protested. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘The strange thing is that the spots are for camouflage,’ Darius observed. ‘Not having them is an evolutionary disadvantage. Being plain makes it easier to be seen and harder for it to hunt.’

  ‘You don’t need to hunt if you’re immortal,’ Freddie pronounced.

  ‘It’s slimmer than I thought,’ Hannah noted.

  ‘Strong though. Look at those shoulders,’ Ilana corrected. ‘Imagine the strength it takes to haul a carcass up a tree.’

  ‘Look into those golden-green eyes,’ Darius said, binoculars to his eyes. ‘No wonder the Bushmen believe it’s sacred.’

  ‘My Pa used to shoot them from the terrace in India.’ Ralph’s comment opened the door on to another era.

  ‘That’s so cruel!’ Clara cried in protest.

  ‘Yes, it is!’ Ralph responded, now rethinking what he’d accepted as a child.

  The leopard faced them and seemed to be taking in each of their faces by turn. It then leapt off the fallen tree and prowled away, its long, sinewy back unzipping the tall grasses.

  ‘We must follow it,’ Clara cried, jumping from the Land Rover and starting to walk in the direction of the leopard.

  Ralph leapt out of the jeep after her.

  ‘Clara, stop immediately. We don’t want another shooting star episode. Get back in the jeep now. You could be killed.’

  He caught her in his arms and hauled her back into the jeep. The Land Rover ignitions fired up like clearing throats and the pursuit was on.

  Tracking the leopard proved as hard as predicted. It was slim and lithe and seemed well-camouflaged despite the absence of markings. It disappeared into thickets, forcing them to loop round in front of it, hoping it would continue in the same direction and exit the other side. This it obligingly did, but it was picking up speed.

  As the jeeps lurched up and down the tracks, they all felt in danger of being thrown out. They held on for dear life, putting their heads out a little, like periscopes, when they could. They often had to lean inwards as branches thwacked against the metal uprights of the jeep and then sprang back, whipping their arms. The jeeps’ canvas roofs snapped against their metal frames with cracks like gun shots.

  ‘There it is,’ Freddie cried. ‘Ten o’clock!’

  It was off again before they could focus. They chased it for ten to fifteen minutes, straining their eyes, shredding the tyres, until it disappeared.

  ‘Damn!’ Hannah spoke for all their frustrations. ‘Down the rabbit hole like Alice.’

  ‘How can it just disappear?’ Clara asked in frustration.

  ‘I thought it would lead us t
o the burial ground,’ Joe said.

  ‘We have to be more cunning trackers or decode that map more accurately,’ Darius concluded.

  The switched off the jeeps and sat, parked side by side, as the disappointment soaked into them like rain. They were quiet, each decoding the last hour.

  Darius gazed across the landscape. He thought he could see sunlight flashing from a window in the distance.

  ‘I wonder if it happened here,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Wonder if what happened, Darius?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘This Northern edge of the farm was always difficult. Many of the farm workers said it was sacred land and refused to work it. So, my father often worked here alone. One day, he came back to the farmhouse, pale as a ghost. When my mother asked him what was wrong, he didn’t reply. He went out to one of the barns and got the biggest length of rope he could find and some crampons. He pulled on his climbing boots, kissed us both on the forehead and left, heading North.’

  He paused, his throat closing with emotion.

  ‘What happened?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘We don’t know. He never returned. His body was never found. We buried an empty casket in his honour… under his favourite tree.’

  ‘How far did you search?’ Li asked, trying to contemplate the desperation that must have ensued.

  ‘Further and wider than you can imagine. I even took a couple of Bushmen, figuring that if anyone could find him, they could. But as soon as we got to the perimeter of the farm, they refused to go on. They were shaking with fear, which for a bushman is rare. I kept thinking “If only I had two Maasai with me. They are afraid of nothing.”’

  ‘What happened to Grandpa?’ Selima asked.

  ‘We’ll never know, Sel.’

  ‘You’ve never told anyone else except me before now,’ Ilana said. She wondered, whether telling others would be therapeutic, or re-imprison him in the same truth.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly.

  Darius trusted these new friends in his life. He felt sad but unburdened. Now seemed right. The revelation should fit the moment and the moment do it justice.

  ‘He talked about the Golden Leopard… about following it. But we dismissed it as fantasy. Worse still, we thought he was hallucinating.’

  ‘Now you know he wasn’t,’ Ilana said threading her arm through his.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ Li asked.

  ‘Twenty-five years ago. I was sixteen,’ Darius replied.

  ‘Leopards only live twelve to fifteen years,’ Joe observed.

  ‘So, this can’t be the same leopard,’ Hannah completed.

  ‘Unless it’s immortal,’ Freddie added.

  ‘But this could be its cub,’ Selima said.

  ‘Perhaps your father found the burial ground,’ Freddie suggested.

  ‘Perhaps it’s near us now,’ Hannah said.’ Or even beneath us.’

  ‘If he went out with climbing boots, rope and crampons, he was clearly going to either climb up or climb down,’ Joe deduced.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Darius, ‘and the mountains are too far away.’

  ‘The intersection of Alexander’s line is probably accurate to within two to three square miles,’ Joe calculated. ‘The only way we can find it is to scour the area systematically.’

  ‘The trouble is that it’s probably a concealed entrance. Captain Alexander would have covered it,’ Ben conjectured.

  ‘We could persuade some Bushmen to come with us and track the leopard on foot,’ Ilana suggested.

  ‘You’re assuming the leopard will lead you to the burial ground,’ Joe pointed out.

  ‘You’re also assuming, that you will persuade Bushmen to come with you,’ Ben pointed out.

  ‘It seems from his accounts that they abandoned Captain Alexander, just as they abandoned my father,’ Darius said.

  ‘There is one person who might be able to persuade them,’ Hannah suggested. Ubuntu sprang into all their minds.

  ‘I’m afraid we have another issue to contend with,’ Li interjected.

  He pulled a thin, black Geiger counter from his belt. Its LCD screen was glowing.

  ‘Radiation.’

  14

  Preparing the Expedition

  Basarwa wanted to fold himself into nothing. He was a humble gardener and he was sitting in Jacob Ubuntu’s study. This was the chamber of a great man, a famous Namibian and Headmaster. He had barely been in the room since Ubuntu originally offered him the job.

  ‘Have I done something wrong, Headmaster?’ Basarwa asked with characteristic humility.

  ‘Absolutely not. Your work is immaculate, as it always has been. Our gardens are our pride and joy.’

  Basarwa felt a glow inside. He allowed his presence in the room to expand a little.

  ‘I know you are a member of that noble tribe, the San,’ Ubuntu said respectfully.

  ‘I am, sir, yes.’

  ‘And correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense that you have adapted well to life in Windhoek. Whereas, many San have found city life hard, unnatural.’

  Basarwa felt understood and raised his eyes to meet Ubuntu’s, with a smile.

  ‘I work with Nature, Headmaster. That keeps me calm, connected to the soil.’

  To others ‘connected’ may have sounded a strange term but to Ubuntu it made perfect sense and he nodded emphatically.

  ‘The San have been treated disgracefully. Not just here, but, all over southern Africa. Black farmers and white farmers alike have carved up the land, displacing your people who were there first, who had roamed it as their own.’

  ‘That is true. I heard that in India, they have a tribe called the “Untouchables”,’ Basarwa said solemnly. ‘I think we are the “Untouchables” of Africa.’

  ‘Ah yes, the dreadful caste system,’ Ubuntu said. ‘As bad as apartheid in its way.’

  Ubuntu pushed his chair back from his desk and walked over to one of his two looming bookshelves, towers of knowledge and the backbone of his study. He ran his fingers along the book spines, until he found the volume for which he was searching.

  ‘You see this book?’ Ubuntu asked. ‘In fact, all of the books on this shelf?’

  Basarwa nodded, his eyes scanning the volumes.

  ‘These books are the studies of how language evolved. You speak one of the clicking languages, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. In fact, I find it difficult to speak English without clicks. It feels as if something is missing,’ Basarwa admitted.

  ‘As indeed it is, because linguists now believe that clicking languages are the world’s most complex and expressive. Put simply, you play with a bigger orchestra, Basarwa!’

  Basarwa laughed.

  ‘To be precise, a bigger percussion. Of the world’s twenty language groups, four are different and all of them African. The San or Khoisan languages are one group of them.’

  ‘Has it served us well to be different?’ Basarwa asked, searching himself for the answer.

  ‘Good question. Probably not,’ Ubuntu replied honestly. ‘The point is that human language started with your ancestors and finds its richest expression in your very throat and tongue.’

  ‘I am not a man of words.’

  Ubuntu found himself profoundly moved by Basarwa’s modesty.

  ‘The point I am making is that you come from a tribe that should never have become an underclass, that is misunderstood and denigrated too often.’

  ‘Now, they come from outside Africa to make films about us,’ Basarwa observed.

  ‘Yes, that’s true. You have become a “cause celebre”. Filmmakers and anthropologists have been queueing up to make you the new “noble savages”. You are the hunter-gatherers in touch with the life most of humanity has left behind. You are pure and untainted.’

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Basarwa responded. �
��Our ancient ways have almost gone. My mother and father were forced into the city. He became an alcoholic and beat us. Where is the film about that?’

  ‘I agree with you totally.’

  Ubuntu walked back from the bookcase to take a chair opposite Basarwa.

  ‘Basarwa, I want to ask you to help me in the true, the noble tradition of the San.’

  ‘You know I would do anything for you, Headmaster. You saved me from the streets.’

  ‘I need you, and perhaps one of your brothers, to help me track an animal,’ Ubuntu said, looking directly into Basarwa’s almond-shaped eyes and enjoying their keenness.

  Basarwa paused before responding.

  ‘It’s a while since I tracked in the bush,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, but these skills are deeply embedded. You can conjure them in a moment I’m sure. You just need the landscape to awake them.’

  Basarwa got up from his chair, feeling Ubuntu uncomfortably close and wishing to back away, retreat from his intensity.

  ‘What kind of animal are talking about?’

  ‘A rare one. Possibly unique.’

  ‘And that is…?’

  ‘A Golden Leopard!’

  Basarwa froze inside but tried to maintain some composure.

  ‘There is no such creature,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘There is.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘I haven’t but friends whom I trust, have. So have three of our pupils.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On a farm north-east of Ui Ais.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last week. They were tracking it in a jeep, but it escaped into the bush.’

  ‘You have to track an animal like that on foot.’

  ‘Precisely!’

  ‘Clearly there is something important in finding this animal. Not to kill it as a trophy I hope.’

  Ubuntu stood up, indignant.

  ‘Would I ask you to do anything so crass?’

  Basarwa moved over to Ubuntu and put his hand on his arm.

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Headmaster, I’m sorry.’

  Ubuntu turned full on to Basarwa and, grasping both of his forearms in his hands, stared deeply into his countryman’s eyes.