The Afrikaner

by Arianna Dagnino

  At midday, they all return to the base camp in the bakkie. Her tent (the same in which Dario slept?) has been pitched with its entrance facing outwards, to offer her some privacy: Zoe feels grateful for this thoughtfulness. She also notices that Namkwa has started to assemble the twig frame of the couple’s hut near the camp. In her heart, she hoped the two elders would be living close to her.

  “Where are they?” she asks Wally, pointing at the hut.

  “At the kraal,” the cook replies, handing her a cup of tea.

  Zoe feels an instinctive bond with the San people and with the Coloured in general. It isn’t always the case with the Blacks, she now admits to herself in dismay. She grew up in Africa, but she doesn’t know them. There are millions of them in her country, yet — except for her interaction with a bunch of researchers and medical students — she hasn’t shared much with them. She doesn’t know how they reason, what they really think of Whites, how they judge Whites, or how much they hate Whites.

  She cannot forget she was shaken to the bones by the news of that white doctor who had spent his life treating black people at the Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto only to be kicked to death at the height of the township uprisings. The anger stirred by his skin colour obliterated any other emotion or consideration, be it a sense of gratitude, a spark of human compassion or sheer opportunism. The stark reality of events like these, and the awareness of how alien they have seemed to her, is weighing upon her — especially now that she has thrust herself into the African interior. Perhaps the real reason behind the idea of bringing the old San couple with her was the need to have someone closer to her, better known.

  She has her first dinner with the team in the last light of sunset, realizing that none of the workers, except Sam and Moses, would speak to her unless she addresses them first. For them, men from the rural areas of the interior, she remains the white mistress. She will have to find the right way to shape the relations between her and the workers. Now, she is too tired to think about it.

  The road trip has been exacting and she goes to sleep right after their meal. Like everyone else, she takes her cot out of the tent, though remaining within the laager. At night it gets cold, but it still feels better to sleep under a starry dome than inside a tent.

  15

  WITH NARRO’S PERMISSION

  “WILL YOU COME with me to the kraal, Koma? It’s time I pay my respects to the village headman.”

  “With pleasure, Mejuffrou.”

  They’ve brought with them ten sacks of maize flour, thirty pounds of salt, three baskets of biltong and lots of tobacco. They leave the Land Rover right outside the village where a bunch of kids, covered in dirt and snot, surrounds them shouting and laughing.

  Very spread out and widely separated are little clusters of huts made of sticks and mud with grass roofs. All around, the place is littered with beer bottles and empty cans, old tires, scraps of plastic bags. Past the huts, the bush resumes, crisscrossed with garbage-filled pathways. The traces of western trash are exposed like infected wounds. Zoe retrieves what Dario wrote in his notes: “A little over twenty people live in this permanent settlement. As most of the remaining Bushmen, they too had to give up most of their hunter-gatherer ways.”

  Koma motions for Zoe to follow him inside the kraal as the children help to offload the food.

  Narro, the clan headman, is sitting in the shade of a mopane tree, leaning against its trunk, surrounded by other elders. He is very old, with a heavily lined face and grey peppercorn hair. In contrast with his motionless features, the eyes are still vivid, flickering with life like fleeing gazelles.

  Zoe crouches down to shake his hand, with Koma acting as her interpreter.

  “I have brought some smoke for you and your people,” she says as she hands him three packets of tobacco and lets Koma distribute the rest. The women, who are squatting slightly away from the group of men, also receive their rations.

  For a while, they’re all intent on filling their bone, metal or wooden pipes, passing around smouldering embers to light them up. Zoe sits cross-legged on the sandy ground, watching them smoking, their tanned, honey-coloured skin glowing in the sunlight. If the metal pipe gets too hot, they roll it quickly between their fingers to cool it down before inhaling and holding the smoke in their lungs, savouring the moment.

  The men wear worn-out Western clothes, torn T-shirts and baggy canvas pants; the women sport stained flowery dresses and headbands made of small laced beads. They quietly chat among themselves, laughing a lot, teasing each other, totally relaxed.

  They look so at ease, Zoe thinks going back to what Daniel told her the night before in Tsumkwe: “They seem to live on another wavelength. In many aspects their way of thinking is almost alien to ours. They are opportunists, irreverent, strongly egalitarian and value highly personal autonomy. They live in the present, rejoice in their ignorance of the future and have a tendency to unruliness that leads them, at critical moments, to self-destruction.”

  Zen anarchists, that’s what Daniel called them.

  Koma gives her a nod with which he urges her to speak. It’s up to her to break the silence.

  “My colleague, Dario Oldani, was killed no more than two weeks ago in Johannesburg.” It seems almost surreal to talk about it like this using a somewhat official tone, in the desert, in front of a group of Bushmen. She pauses to allow Koma to translate her words into the !Kung language. In the silence that follows, men and women bow their heads. Then, Narro says something and, unexpectedly, everyone grins.

  “He knew how to have a good laugh,” Koma translates.

  Zoe smiles weakly in her turn. She too loved the way Dario treaded lightly on life using humour to break through the invisible barriers people build around themselves. In his diary he underlined twice the Bushman’s way of saying: “You can reach the heavens with a belly laugh.”

  She slowly inhales the hot, desert air before resuming her little speech: “I was allowed to continue my colleague’s research out here. We should remain in this area for at least another two seasons. I’m asking your permission to keep our base camp in your Noré and use your borehole.”

  She pauses, waiting for Narro’s reply. The act of waiting, in the bush, is everything, a way of life, the salt of any interaction. Like silence: Learning to wield it is among the great arts of living.

  The translation of Narro’s words reaches her after a long time. “The rain doesn’t always come.”

  She knows that. There have been periods of drought in the Kalahari when it didn’t rain for four, five years in a row. And even if it rains, the pans might not get filled with enough water.

  “If we have to share the water from the well you must be wise.”

  No longer free to roam their hunting and gathering grounds, the clan’s survival now rests on the borehole. Zoe knows that too.

  “We will use the bare minimum,” she says, without actually knowing whether their notion of bare minimum water consumption might ever get close to hers.

  With Narro’s replies comes also another collective burst of laughter.

  “There’s no wisdom in showers,” Koma translates.

  Zoe smiles to herself. Ja, our modern weakness: Without our shampoos we cannot be ourselves.

  The village chief keeps quiet for a long while.

  The children look at her openly, smiling heartily whenever they meet her eyes. The rest of the adults chat softly, apparently unconcerned by her presence in their midst. Still, that broad, carefree smile is on their lips too.

  Finally, Narro turns to Koma and speaks to him.

  “You can stay,” the shaman translates, bending his head towards her.

  Zoe nods gratefully. “I thank you, Narro, and your people.”

  They all know that her request has been a mere formality, that the conservancy in which the kraal and the camp stand is managed by the Parks Board, which has already given its approval. Nonetheless, she is keen to acknowledge the Bushmen’s right to their land.

/>   There are many silences during this first meeting, interspersed by her words in Afrikaans and their translation into a melodic succession of clicks, but Zoe never feels the urgency to fill those silences. “To see if you get along with people you have to read their silence,” Koma told her in one of their first meetings in Schmidtsdrift. She feels at ease in those Bushmen silences. But what about them? What do they read in her silence?

  16

  THE INHERITANCE

  IN THE FOLLOWING weeks, they find no other remains of the Australopithecus skull. Zoe decides to split the workers into two teams: Steve, at the head of the first one, continues to work on the old site, while the other team, headed by Moses, begins to scour the third site identified by Dario.

  At times, in the afternoon, she stays behind to clean and analyze the animal fossils that have already been found, collect data and write her notes in the field journal. On a particularly sultry afternoon, too exhausted to continue working, she takes a break and resumes reading Aunt Claire’s diary.

  Franschhoek, March 10, 1950

  Three days ago, on my twenty-first birthday, the postman delivered a parcel addressed to me. Attached was a letter in which the legal executor John Longman notified me that I was the beneficiary of Aunt Charlotte’s will. A birthday surprise indeed! I had never met Aunt Charlotte. In the family, pronouncing her name was taboo. I have vague childhood memories of times when I happened to sneak up on women gathered in the kitchen as they talked about her, always in a low voice, furtively. Luckily, Dad was away for work. Mum’s reaction was extreme enough. When she found out what the parcel was about, she ordered me to send it back without even opening it. For the first time in my life, I refused to obey. She slapped me in the face. I began to cry and yelled at her that she had no right to do this to me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Grandma came to my aid, trying to calm her. “She’s of age now,” she whispered. I ran up to my room and opened the package. It contained a silver embossed jewellery box, adorned with coral and turquoise cabochons, which I opened with the small key that I had found along with the cover letter. Inside, there were a gold necklace emblazoned with a teardrop emerald pendant, four gold ingots and a diary, sealed with wax.

  Later, I showed mum and grandma the necklace and the ingots (but not the diary). Their curiosity prevailed: They touched those precious objects in wonder, but also with increasing apprehension. We discussed what to do, and decided not to tell dad about the parcel, fearing his wrath.

  I didn’t dare read Charlotte’s diary until late into the night, to be sure everyone was asleep. On the inside of the cover page, I found another letter, a lock of copper-red hair and a picture. I paused on the image: It was the portrait of a beautiful young woman, her eyes looking straight into the camera, aloof. She wore a long, silk dress of the early twentieth century and an eye-catching hat adorned with ostrich feathers. She looked elegant and fashionable. The letter was addressed to me; looking at the date, I realized it had been written when I had just turned six. I copy it here.

  Cape Town, March 8, 1930

  Dear Claire,

  I wish I could see you grow and hold you in my arms. But people’s destinies are not always meant to cross each other’s paths, although ours are inextricably linked by the family name we bear, as you will learn by reading my diary (please, you need to!). By the time you receive this letter, you will have grown into a graceful and intelligent young lady, full of love for life. And everyone in the family will be proud of you.

  What you will read in these pages may sound meaningless to you, hardly credible. Nonetheless, it is true. It will be up to you to decide whether to deny the veracity of this confession or accept it and therefore face your destiny with mature awareness. Your fate — our fate — dictates the solitude of the heart. What I’m trying to tell you in these few lines is that there are many ways to make one’s life meaningful and worth living — even without a man’s love. Find your way by studying, discovering your artistic talent, caring for others, doing business (ingots, in this case, might come in handy), or, say, by dedicating yourself to a mission or a hobby. Times are changing, even here at the Cape; soon women will be allowed to take care of matters that were once the prerogative of men. I, unfortunately, chose the wrong path. But that’s because, after all, I had decided not to live my life. That’s why I beg you, in the name of the love that a distant and unknown aunt feels for you, do not make my mistake. Live your life! Make it a gift from God, as it should be.

  Your Aunt Charlotte

  The sun is almost close to the horizon now, anxious to break away. Zoe hears the revving and gear-changing of a bakkie approaching. The men are back. She closes the journal and puts it into her sack.

  17

  BREATH OF THE MOON

  ALMOST THREE MONTHS have passed since Zoe’s arrival at the camp. Tonight Daniel has joined her and her team for supper, as he often does on his bi-weekly visits to Narro’s village. The ranger will spend the night at the camp and head back to Tsumkwe with the first morning light. After they finish their meal, he and Zoe stay up by the campfire, while the others go about their business. So many nights have they sat like this, chatting softly, listening from time to time to the muffled sounds of singing and dancing coming from Narro’s village.

  “They will dry out with the land,” Daniel says in a low voice, gazing towards the Bushmen’s huts already wrapped in the shadows of the night. “When they die, a whole way of life will be lost forever. Unrecorded.”

  The flames crackle softly in the surrounding stillness.

  Zoe glances at the ranger before speaking. “Once Koma told me that as much as we might try to write their knowledge in a book, people’s souls wouldn’t be touched by it.”

  “He’s right. You can’t teach it, you’ve to live it.”

  The women’s chanting rises into the darkness with more insistence, accompanied by rhythmic clapping.

  “It’s not like the other nights,” Daniel says peering into the darkness lurking just beyond the circle of firelight.

  Amidst the hand clapping and the female voices, Zoe detects and recognizes another sound: a rhythmic stepping of feet marked by the rattles the men carry tied around their calves.

  “It’s a trance dance,” she says as Sam walks to the fire to pour hot water from the kettle into a mug.

  The ranger nods. Then he asks: “Have you ever seen one?”

  Zoe shakes her head. “When I was in Schmidtsdrift, from time to time the Bushmen at the camp would stage a healing dance, but they never invited me to attend one.”

  Sam crouches down by the fire, feeding it. After a while, he brakes the silence and says softly: “That’s how they healed me, the Ju/’hoansi.”

  Zoe looks at him quizzically.

  “After the war.”

  She says nothing. On their first night at Tsumkwe, at the rangers’ house, Sam mentioned he had already been to Namibia as a soldier. When, later on, she tried to come back to the subject, he quickly dropped it, leaving her wondering if he too had taken part in the Border War, of which she knows so little. She was still a teenager when the South African army had come up here to fight the Marxist Angolan government and support the counter-revolutionary forces of Jonas Savimbi. The conflict started with a series of covert operations; besides, it was strictly censored. So far, Sam has held back what happened to him in those years. Now, she senses, something seems to have changed in Sam’s disposition.

  She looks fixedly at Daniel, hoping he too goes radio silent. If no one interrupts him, perhaps this time Sam will tell his story. Again she pays attention to the sounds coming from the kraal.

  In the distance the women’s chanting breathes in and out of the night. Then, as if answering the women’s call, Sam sits down and starts talking.

  “I was twenty when the Army drafted me,” he says, his eyes fixed on the fire, his voice as low as ever. “They sent me to the Namibian border, in Ovamboland, and from there into Angola. The Cubans were
now supporting the MPLA’s government and South Africa needed to be there to shore up Savimbi.”

  Sam pauses, puts down the mug, takes the weed pouch out of his pocket and starts rolling a zol.

  “Ja, our proxy war for the democracies of the West,” Daniel says, as if trying to prevent silence from taking over. Then he adds, with an undertone of irritation: “They called us racists, but we came in handy when the time came to keep the commies in check.”

  Zoe is taken aback by Daniel’s bitter remark. Recollections, again: the angst of those years, when the rooi gevaar, the Soviet infiltration into Africa, seemed to meld with the swart gevaar, the black danger. It was a toxic mixture for the Afrikaner psyche. The Boers’ response was Pavlovian: Leave the laager, attack the enemy, ensure the white tribe’s survival. And, in passing, save the West’s honour.

  “That’s what our Colonel, Jan Breytenbach, used to say. I mean, the bit about the commies.”

  “Were you in the 32nd?” Daniel asks, tilting his head sideways to look at the Rasta’s face.

  “I was.”

  The ranger looks sternly into Sam’s eyes, as if to ensure he’s telling the truth. Sam holds his gaze for an assessing moment, then nods and goes back to rolling his smoke.

  “I thought one had to volunteer to serve in that unit,” Daniel says while Zoe, suddenly shivering, draws a blanket over her shoulders. She still recalls Willem’s enthusiastic reaction when news broke of the battalion’s operations on the Angolan front.

  “If I had to fight then at least I wanted to choose with whom,” Sam says. “The ‘Buffaloes’ were becoming a legend. The Colonel had forged them into a superb fighting machine that scared the shit out of the Angolans. They called them os terríveis, the terrible ones. Enough for a young hothead like me to want to be one of them.”