Blood Safari

by Deon Meyer

  ‘Yes!’ she answered with glowing green eyes.

  I remembered the first time someone saw me.

  It was during my first year as a bodyguard, for the Minister of Transport. It was a summer morning on his farm. I was preparing to go jogging on the dirt tracks between the cornfields. He came out of the homestead with a wide-brimmed hat and a walking stick.

  ‘Walk with me, Lemmer,’ he said, and we walked in silence up the koppie from where he could survey his whole property.

  He was a smoker. He sat on top of a big rock, lit his pipe slowly and said, ‘Where do you come from?’ I gave him a broad outline, but he wasn’t satisfied. He had a way with people. He made me open up, so that eventually, while the sun came up behind our backs, I told him everything. About my father and mother and the Seapoint years. When I had finished he thought for a long time. Then he said, ‘You are this land.’

  Twenty years old, still wet behind the ears, I said, ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do you know what made this land what it is?’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘The Afrikaner and the Englishman. You are both of them.’

  I didn’t answer. He gazed into the distance and said, ‘But you have choices, son.’

  Son.

  ‘I don’t know if this country has any more choices. The Afrikaner’s claustrophobia and aggression and the slyness of the Englishman; these things have brought us to this. It doesn’t work in Africa.’

  I was dumbstruck. He was a member of the National Party cabinet.

  He knocked his pipe out against the stone and said to me, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It’s Zulu. It’s where the word “ubuntu” comes from. It means many things. We can only be human through other humans. We are part of a whole, of a greater group. Inextricably. The group is the individual. It means we are never alone, but it also means damage to another is damage to you. It means sympathy, respect, brotherly love, compassion and empathy.’

  He looked at me through his thick glasses and said, ‘That is what the white man in Africa must search for. If he doesn’t find it, he will forever be a stranger in this land.’

  I was too young and stupid to understand what he was telling me. And I never got the opportunity to ask him about it, because he shot himself, on that same koppie, to save his family the trauma of his terminal disease. But I thought about it over the years. I studied myself and other people, remembered, questioned. I developed the talent to watch their appearance and actions for threatening behaviour, but also to guess their life stories and ask myself: ‘How am I human through them?’ I wondered about my inability to be part of a whole. The community is a primitive organism with a selectively permeable membrane and I could not be selected, my shape didn’t fit.

  Later, when I had more perspective, I wished I could talk to the minister on the koppie again. Tell him Africa was the source of ubuntu, that was true. In the eyes of many people I saw the softness, the sympathy, the goodwill, the great desire for peace and love.

  But the continent had another side, yang to the yin of ubuntu. It was a breeding ground of violence. I wanted to tell him that I could recognise in others the type of man I had become, thanks to my genes and my father’s relentless instruction. That absence in the eyes, like something dead inside, of the man who no longer cares about feeling pain and experiences a certain pressure to dish it out, to hurt others.

  And nowhere did I see it more frequently than in Africa. In my travels with the National Party and ANC ministers I saw the world – Europe, the Middle and Far East, and my home continent. And here in the cradle of mankind, in the eyes of politicians and dictators, policemen, soldiers and bodyguards and eventually fellow jailbirds, I recognised the majority of my blood brothers. In the Congo and Nigeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, Angola and Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and Brandvlei Prison. People forged by violence who spread it around like a gospel.

  Sometimes I felt a deep desire to be different. To belong to the brotherhood of respect, compassion and sympathy, the astonishing support and selflessness. It was the genetic echo of my forebears who left Africa too many aeons ago, the signal was too faint, the distance too great.

  I didn’t fret about it. That’s the way it is: a white man on the continent of ubuntu.

  In the VIP suite B. J. Fikter told me his night had passed without incident. He was getting ready to go to bed and I took Emma’s cell phone and charger and went to look for Dr Eleanor Taljaard.

  She said the fact that Emma was still comatose was bad news. ‘There has been no change in the last seventy-two hours, Lemmer. That’s the problem. The longer the coma continues the worse the prognosis.’

  I wanted to ask her whether there was anything they could do, but I knew what the answer would be.

  ‘Eleanor, I need a place to rent for a few days, a week maybe, in the Klaserie district. Not a tourist place. Something remote. A farm or a smallholding.’

  ‘At Klaserie?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  She shook her head. ‘The police are guarding her. Your people are guarding her. What’s going on? Is she in danger?’

  ‘She’s safe here. I just want to make sure she’s safe when she gets out.’

  The doctor’s expression was unreadable, then she shrugged her questions off and said, ‘Let me ask Koos.’

  She phoned her husband and passed on my request.

  ‘Koos said it’s New Year. Only doctors and people in love are working.’

  ‘Tell him it’s urgent, please.’

  She passed on my words, making notes on a writing pad with a drug logo at the top. She asked for my cell phone number and repeated it to him. When she put the phone down, she tore off the sheet of paper and said, ‘Koos says he will get Nadine Bekker to call you. She’s an estate agent. Just give him some time. He wants to exert a bit of pressure. He’s good at that.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ I stood up.

  ‘Lemmer,’ she said. ‘I assume you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ I said.

  The only place open for breakfast was the Wimpy. I ordered a Double-Up Breakfast and had drunk the first of two large coffees when Nadine Bekker phoned. Her voice was shrill and she spoke rapidly, like someone who was out of breath and late. ‘Dr Koos Taljaard said you have an emergency, but I must say that it will be a challenge to get what you’re looking for. People don’t want to rent in the short term.’

  ‘I’ll pay for a month.’

  ‘That would help. Give me a little time, it’s New Year, I don’t know if I can contact the people. I’ll call you back.’

  A waiter with bloodshot eyes brought my breakfast. The cook must have been at the same party, because the eggs were rubbery and the pork sausages dry. I had to eat. I ordered more coffee to wash it down. I looked around at the handful of other people in the restaurant. They sat singly, or two to a table, conversing quietly with heads and shoulders bowed. Did I look like them? Somewhat lost, vaguely lonely, a little self-conscious that a Wimpy breakfast was the best thing we could do on this festive morning.

  I had a pointless feeling of guilt that I couldn’t shake off. It had to do with Emma, owing partly to her condition and my work ethic. How could I, who was supposed to be working, pursue carnal pleasure while she lay in a coma? That was the easier part to ponder and shrug off. The other part was more difficult because at the heart of it was the way I felt about her. How much had she manipulated me to like her, to sympathise with her, to give my support to her cause? How much was deliberate? How much of my discomfort had to do with the fact that I couldn’t protect her and that she was the first one I had failed professionally? There was an entire minefield for my conscience.

  Besides, I hadn’t gone looking for anything. It just happened. It was ten months since I had been with a woman. That was why last night was so intense. It will happen; so
metimes you meet a woman with the same hunger, the same anger, the same need.

  My cell phone rang. It was Nadine Bekker. ‘I have two possibilities for you. There are some others, but the owners are not answering their phones. When I have more time I’ll be able to manage something. Do you want to have a look?’

  * * *

  She was a small woman in her fifties, a busy little bee with short bottle-blonde hair and an extravagant wedding ring on her pudgy finger. She was dressed as though she were off to church, her high heels click-clacking hurriedly across the tar road as she approached my car.

  ‘Wait, don’t get out, hi, I’m Nadine, pleased to meet you, just follow me, I’ll show you the first place, it’s not far.’

  Business couldn’t be too bad in the Lowveld property market; she drove a white Toyota Prado, but not as fast as she could speak.

  The first house was near Dingleydale, east of the R40, about ten kilometres from Edwin Dibakwane’s house with the pink concrete. It was right on the gravel road and a huddle of the locals’ houses was in view.

  I stopped behind her and got out. ‘Unfortunately, this won’t do.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really know what you want, usually we go through all the requirements first. Koos just said a house on a farm or a smallholding.’

  ‘I want something more remote.’

  ‘The other place is more remote, but it is a bit run down, if you don’t mind neglected, and there is no electricity, just gas. It belongs to an advocate in Pretoria. He has a few places, but no one lives on that one, he bought it as an investment. It has a beautiful view of the mountain and there’s a river.’

  ‘I don’t mind neglected.’

  ‘Let’s take a look, then. Maybe it’s just what you want and the rent is less too. You will have to take it for the whole month, but you said you’re OK with that.’

  ‘I am.’

  We drove on, north on the R40 and then left on a gravel road at Green Valley. Mariepskop loomed directly ahead, the slopes densely forested.

  After fifteen kilometres of dusty bends she stopped at a farm gate and jumped out, indicating that I should wait. She fiddled with a bunch of keys and then shoved the farm gate open and called, ‘Leave the gate open, we’ll be coming out here again.’

  There was a rusty pole beside the gate with a nearly illegible sign with six bullet holes in it. Moüasedi.

  We drove uphill on a rough farm track. I worried about the Audi’s ground clearance. Near the gate it was grassveld, but within two hundred metres the bush grew thick. We drove through a tunnel of trees, the Prado’s roof scraping against the branches and leaves.

  The house was over a kilometre from the gravel road. It was an aged building, sixty years or older, corrugated iron roof, yellowing lime-washed walls, a big chimney. The veranda looked out over a stream, rather than the promised river. Directly west the cliffs of Mariepskop dominated the horizon.

  Not perfect, but it would do. The yard was big and open enough to see someone coming from a hundred metres off. The disadvantage was that the dense bush would afford shelter beyond that. But it was also difficult to move through. As far as I could see, there was only one workable access route, thanks to the towering mountain and the jungle across the stream.

  She got out and waited for me.

  ‘What does Motlasedi mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I will find out. Let’s have a look inside, I don’t know what it’s like, the place has been shut up a long time, but there is some furniture at least. What do you want to do here, so far from everything?’ She walked deftly up the three steps of the veranda in her high heels and tinkled the bunch of keys until she found the one to unlock the door.

  ‘I just want a bit of peace,’ I said.

  ‘One needs peace, too. This is the sitting room, there is something to sit on at any rate, the kitchen is this way, gas stove and gas fridge, you’ll just have to get them going, a little bit of dust here, I see, I can get it cleaned for you if you want, it will take a day, come, the bedrooms are this way, at least there’s gauze on the windows to keep the mosquitoes out, but you should get something to spray or rub on at this time of the year, the mosquitoes can be a nuisance so close to the water, unfortunately just the one bathroom, there’s no bedding of course, but in this heat you won’t need much.’ She kept up the monologue right through the house at the same rapid pace as her quick, short steps on the bare floorboards, pointedly ignoring the three big cockroaches that scurried away from us. Eventually running out of breath, she asked, ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Right, then, let’s go and sign the contract, it’s a deposit of one thousand eight hundred and a month’s rent in advance, that’s three thousand six hundred in total, is that all right?’

  I took out my cell phone and Emma’s to check whether there was reception. One bar, a second that came and went.

  ‘That’s fine, thank you.’

  34

  At ten past two I was back at Motlasedi. I carried a week’s supply into the kitchen in Pick ’n Pay shopping bags, lit the gas flame of the fridge and packed the Energade bottles inside. I fetched the broom, bucket, cloths and cleaning materials from the car and began in the kitchen. Then I did the sitting room, bathroom and bedroom. I sweated rivers.

  When I was busy spraying four cans of insecticide throughout the house, one of the phones rang. Mine. It was Nadine Bekker.

  ‘Motlasedi means “place of the big fight”,’ she said when I answered. ‘Would you like to hear the story?’

  ‘Please.’

  She read to me from some source or other, in English, in too much of a hurry and without respect for punctuation, so that I had to shut my eyes and concentrate on following her.

  She said a local tribe, the mapulana, were attacked in 1864 by King Mswati of the Swazis. The maPulana retreated to Mariepskop and there, nearly two thousand metres above the Lowveld plains, they prepared for the battle that would follow. They rolled rocks close to the edge and guarded the single footpath up the mountain.

  The Swazi warriors waited for the thick mist that sometimes formed on the slopes of the mountain on summer nights before they ascended the path. That night the mist was so thick that every warrior had to climb with a hand on the shoulder of the one in front of him.

  At the top, the maPulana sat in dead silence. They waited till the last moment before they began to roll their rock missiles down the footpath. Their strategy was deadly. The Swazi losses were great and their attack deteriorated into chaos. Finally, the maPulana swept down the mountain, cutting down any resistance, and wiped out the Swazi force in the little river south of Mariepskop.

  Nadine paused in her lecture here and said, ‘It must be just there where you are, they say a person can still see the bones of the Swazis if you know where to look and that’s why the river’s name is also Moüasedi, place of the big battle, and why the maPulana call the mountain Mogologolo, meaning ‘mountain of the wind’ because the Swazis only heard the wind of the falling rocks before they died. Are you settled in already? Are you happy? Phone if there is anything, I must run.’

  There was no shower in the bathroom. I ran a cold bath and washed and finally felt clean.

  I set the alarm in the cell phone for 16.30 and lay down on the bare mattress and slept restlessly for over an hour. Then I got up, washed my face in cold water, and took Emma’s cell phone and a bottle of Energade out of the fridge.

  I went and sat on the veranda overlooking the stream. The hum of insects was a blanket of sound. Birds sang in the dense forest across the brown babbling water. A commando of vervet monkeys vaulted through the treetops like ghosts. A large grey ibis landed beside the water and began to poke its long beak purposefully into the short grass.

  I ran through my plan one last time. Confirmed the time on my watch: 16.43.

  I called Information to get three numbers. I wrote them on Emma’s paper with a pencil.

  I
phoned the first one at once – the Mogale rehabilitation centre.

  A volunteer with a Scandinavian accent answered. I asked to speak to Donnie Branca. She said to hold on. I heard them calling him.

  ‘Please hold, he is coming.’

  Then he said, ‘This is Donnie.’

  ‘It’s Lemmer, Donnie. I was there with Emma le Roux.’

  ‘Oh. I’m very sorry. We heard about the accident.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident and you know it.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Donnie, I think it’s time we dropped the bullshit. I want you to listen to what I’m going to say to you.’

  ‘I don’t like your …’

  ‘Shut up and listen, Donnie.’

  He shut up. I had thought for a long time about what I wanted to say to him. It was all based on calculated guesswork, but the delivery was the key. I had to say it with aggression and self-confidence. I couldn’t afford to let him know that there were gaps in my knowledge.

  ‘I’m on a farm called Motlasedi, on the gravel road between Green Valley and Mariepskop. I’m giving you forty-eight hours to tell me where Cobie de Villiers is. If I don’t hear from you by that time, I am going to pass on everything I know to the newspapers and the Commissioner of Police in Limpopo.’

  I gave him a while to let that sink in.

  ‘I know what you think, Donnie. You’re wondering what I know. Let me help you: I know everything. I know about your night-time escapades, I know about the firearms you are hiding from the police, I know what Frank Wolhuter found in Cobie’s house – and that it wasn’t on the bookshelf, Donnie.’

  Then I took the big gamble, the one I had deliberated over the longest. ‘I also know that H. B. doesn’t stand for Honey Badger. Forty-eight hours, Donnie. Don’t contact me about anything else. You know what I want.’

  I pressed the button with the red receiver icon to end the call and wiped the sweat from my brow.

  I breathed out slowly.

  The next call was to Carel the Rich. He must have seen her name on his screen, because he said, ‘I’ve been worrying about you, Emma.’