by André Costa
What the team did not yet know was how and where David—with his religious background—would fit in. Dr. Ecklund, who turned irony into a supreme life philosophy, had promptly remarked, “God writes crooked in crooked lines.”
As the senior member of the expedition, Andreas was also in charge of finances and logistics. After the crew unloaded the equipment, he took careful inventory of the expensive imported tools. Marie, whose bare fingers begged for a cigarette, sequestered David for a chat and a cup of coffee on the balcony.
“Enjoy this starry sky, David,” said Marie, blowing a puff of smoke into the clear atmosphere. “Soon, it won’t be so stunning to you anymore. Beauty ends when we get accustomed to it—call it a curse.”
“I don’t know if I will be here long enough to get accustomed to it, or to be cursed,” he laughed.
Marie took another puff, liberating the smoke slowly this time, while surreptitiously observing David from head to toe. “It seems completely pointless for a Catholic priest to be in this environment,” she said. “But you can relax; we’re used to Jack and his ideas.”
“And I’m grateful to you for having me.”
“Cigarette?”
“I quit a long time ago.”
“Your intention, Father Callaghan, from Jack’s words, is what is confusing to us… He talked about your admiration for the San people, but also about your need to understand what humanity has become. To me, it seems like an idealistic purpose. I suggest that you don’t ask questions that are too ambitious. I mean…. frustration is an inseparable part of our work.”
“Right now, I don’t even know if I have a single question to make,” said David, looking up at the seemingly infinite sky.
“It’s probably better that way,” she smiled as the smoke escaped from the corners of her mouth. “But since your motivation seems to be so deep, and your ground so feeble, don’t you think you are easy prey to unconscious wishes?”
“If they’re unconscious, then I can’t speak for them, but I believe the reason for my presence here is quite simple: to be useful.”
“How was your trip?” asked Marie after a long pause.
“Well, the flight was a bit exhausting. My legs felt like noodles after hours in that cramped space and wouldn’t quite communicate with my head. But the car journey has been great so far.”
“Really? Did you talk to Benjamin? What did you think?”
“The driver? Well… A confident, but nice young man. A bit too serious for his age, perhaps. That’s all I can really say for now.”
“So he treated you well, Father,” she said, laughing.
“Please, doctor, call me David. ‘Father’ makes me feel like I’m in the wrong place.”
“You can bet that you are. And please, call me Marie. Your cassock, and I suppose my title, won’t be needed here anyway.”
“I actually learned quite a lot of things from Benjamin, mostly the story of his people,” David said, smiling to assure her of his leniency towards sarcasm.
“Ah, all right. And you didn’t notice anything unusual about him?” she asked, staring at David. “As a priest, I mean, didn’t you notice something on a spiritual level during your conversation?”
David searched his memory for an unprecedented fact in the dialogue with the Herero driver but found nothing.
“He’s an Omuroi, David!” she muttered after a few seconds. “That’s how they treat him in his tribe.”
“What’s an Omuroi?”
“It’s a warlock! People say he flies through the sky like a ghost at night, and they light candles and fires to scare him away. They believe that the Omuroi fears or hates the light. I don’t know... Sometimes they call a spiritual doctor, like a priest, to try and catch him.”
Chapter V
The next morning, everyone woke up at dawn. David and the researchers had spent the night in a lodge frequented mainly by hunters on their way to Waterberg National Park, whose astonishing beauty is forever linked to the historical final battle between the Germans and the Hereros. It had not been a comfortable night for the young priest—the lifetime of the mattress springs had long ago expired, but his soul had been the real root of his discomfort. Having left Marie without a proper answer the night before only increased his feelings of emptiness.
The cold morning breeze and the first rays of sunshine, however, made packing the luggage and equipment for the next part of the journey easier to bear. Seated at the open window in the back seat of the repaired Toyota, David stretched his legs as best as he could, rubbed his face, and tried to keep his eyes open. While driving at high speed, he noticed how the acacias were suddenly grouped, making the landscape seem less inhospitable. And as the two identical Toyotas sped out of Grootfontein towards a distant horizon, David remembered Ireland and all that separated him from Newcastle West. He did not feel any regret. The icy wind on his face numbed the discomfort as well as his thoughts.
By his side, with his head resting on David’s shoulder, Jack slept. Marie did the same, leaning her long blonde hair on Jack’s. She was, however, wide awake. Benjamin and Edward sat in the front, like dolls in a vitrine. Fifty-five kilometers later, the cars left the asphalt and drove onto a gravel road that would carry them for another 220 kilometers and more than three hours to their destination.
Marie straightened her head at the first bump on the gravel road. “I think the priest is feeling cold. Ben, you did not fix the window?”
“If I had solved the window problem, I wouldn’t have had time to fix the ignition,” said Benjamin with his superb logic.
Marie reacted by completely straightening herself in her seat and tying her hair up in a high bun. Edward turned his head quickly to register Marie’s reaction, fixing his gaze on the tightly symmetrical lines of the young woman’s face a little longer than seemed necessary.
“Prepare yourself, David. At night the temperature will fall below zero degrees Celsius,” added Jack, who had returned to the world of the living.
“I cannot stand this weather. Hellish heat during the day and the other extreme at dawn,” said Edward.
“Where are you from, Dr. Freeman?” David asked.
“Good question, David. Ed is from Missouri,” Marie said. “It’s one of the North American states that suffers most from harsh weather. He shouldn’t be complaining.”
Two hours later, the leading car with Andreas at the wheel came to a stop. As he stepped out of the car, David’s legs felt lifeless and disoriented, just as they had after his long flight a couple of days before. Seeking to recover control over them, he walked around in circles for about ten minutes. When he stopped, the surrounding vastness engulfed him. Everything in the savannah was majestic. The trees were sufficiently spaced so that each of their shadows could be appreciated. And their canopies were sparse to allow mottled light to reach the ground, enabling a continuous layer of grass to grow underneath them. David thought the environment to be very monastic; nothing seemed to be exaggerated or to exist beyond what was necessary.
If on the surface the Kalahari did not quite meet his expectation of a desert, a bigger surprise came from above. The blue was both infinite and overwhelming. In fact, he could not recall a brighter day in his life. The landscape created an altogether harmonious impression. The rocks spoke to him even louder than the timid vegetation. In his immediate surroundings, he saw Jack sitting under the shade of an acacia, deep in thought. He wanted to approach him but noticed that Marie was sitting in the same position under another acacia, with her hands on her knees and her back straight. Out of deference to the environment, David almost did the same but decided against it.
Nearby, Benjamin and Andreas were busy improvising a “braai,” the Afrikaans term for barbecue. There was only one item on the menu, springbok meat, but it was so delicious that it made them forget the limitations of the place. “This is amazing,” David said. �
�It tastes like filet mignon!”
The antelope meat quieted their stomachs and cheered their conversation. Only two mouths refused to speak. Benjamin and Edward observed silently, while the comments, laughter, and questions of the others ran over them.
“What do you intend to find in this corner of the world, Father?” asked Andreas, with his right index finger circling in the air.
“I asked the same question yesterday,” said Marie. “I don’t know if he will give you an answer.”
David immediately cast a glance at Jack, like a castaway throwing a message in a bottle into the sea. His new friend only smiled at him, raising his eyebrows.
“I try not to ask myself that question. I fear that the answer will only make the journey more difficult,” replied David.
“It’s certainly not a spiritual challenge. You’re a priest; you don’t need to come all the way to Africa to find needy souls,” said Andreas.
“But I think I know what he means.” Marie’s words surprised everyone.
“And what is that?” asked Andreas.
“He’s not here to catechize us—so you can all be at ease,” Marie smiled openly, revealing a perfect set of teeth. “He’s not interested in us, Andreas. Father Callaghan came here on a personal journey, even if he still hasn’t worked out the full itinerary yet.”
“Saying it like that sounds selfish,” said David. “I genuinely wish to help you with your project.”
“I’m sure you do. But be careful, Father, you are stepping on profane ground,” said Marie, pointing to the others.
“We’ve had other volunteers before, but I think David’s contribution will be special,” said Jack.
Andreas got up and walked toward the improvised table in search of a snack. “I have great relations with the gods, Father, but if you discover something that I don’t know, please do me a favor, and keep it to yourself. I already have too many demons eating my brain. There isn’t much space left for metaphysics.” Andreas returned to his place balancing a cup of coffee and cookies in the same hand. “But don’t worry. Dr. Steensen’s ears are far more receptive than mine.”
“Andreas, I’m sure that Father Callaghan’s contribution to our expedition will yield concrete results, without needing to transcend reality,” said Jack.
“Mr. Elliot...,” Andreas began, bowing in mock deference. “I’m only afraid that if David has an erudition similar to yours, you will both be responsible for the rebirth of ancient Greece in this desert. We need certainties, no more philosophy,” concluded Andreas.
“I assure you, my education in philosophy will remain safely tucked away in my thoughts. I have no ambition to preach in the desert,” said David, smiling at Andreas.
“Father Callaghan will help us with the systematization of data,” added Jack.
“He will work directly with you and Marie then. Well, I wish you the best of luck!” said Andreas, shaking David’s hand with the strength of a rhinoceros.
Dr. Ecklund was a tall man with broad shoulders, a long and pointy chin, slightly long gray hair and blue eyes that always turned red in the evenings. Despite his age, he was still slim and athletic. He must have cut a fine Viking figure in his youth, David thought.
“We better continue our trip,” interrupted Edward.
“If that is all Ed has to say to us after all this talk, then it’s better to follow his command,” replied Marie, getting up.
Shortly afterward, the wheels withstood once more the metal carcasses injured by infinite horizons of sandy and rocky roads.
Crammed back into the backseat, as if the plane ride had not been sufficient preparation, David tried to focus his thoughts on what the guidebooks said about the Kalahari and the people’s struggle to live in it.
He had read for example that many scholars argued that the Kalahari was not a proper desert, since it received more than 250 millimeters of annual rainfall, had diverse fauna and flora and was home to many migratory birds. It then occurred to him that, had he arrived a few months earlier, he would have found a landscape of lush and colorful vegetation, despite the high temperatures.
It was altogether a harsh place, he thought, and it should be livable not because of humans’ drive to surmount challenges, but rather because home was a feeling out of irrational belief, something you could not simply escape from. Since one could not be easily free of their social or physical environment, home was not just where you were, it was who you were. This was indeed a vivid thought, but David kept it to himself.
Chapter VI
Although the mission’s primary goal was entirely different and kept confidential due to its politically sensitive nature, Marie was sincerely concerned about the disappearance of the San language. With its extinction, a millennial culture would vanish, “depriving future generations of a scientific legacy, the extent of which we don’t even know,” Dr. Steensen had said at the final meeting with the Danish businessmen.
After securing the project financially, the next step was to persuade the linguist Edward Freeman that fieldwork, from which he had retired, was far more rewarding than his bureaucratic entanglements at Boston University. He was not immediately convinced. After the publication of his third book, the American professor believed to be at the peak of his academic career. His name in a steel frame on his office door assured him of his intellectual superiority and a retirement far from the world’s mediocrity.
It cost Marie a two-week trip to America—a journey that Andreas did not entirely approve of—to convince him otherwise. Sitting in Edward’s office, Marie sensed that Dr. Freeman’s comfort zone did not extend to his home. His desk and bookcases were meticulously kept. Every book, every notepad, had a suitable dwelling; pens and pencils were lined up like soldiers. Family pictures, on the other hand, were sparse and undoubtedly incomplete, and the room was filled with a disconcerting number of selfies in a big frame. It seemed that Edward spent more time at the gym than in the company of his three teenage children or his resilient wife, whose divorce project had been shelved for nearly a decade.
As for Jack, despite being the only researcher in the team without a solid or traditional academic background and having less than five years of experience, his holistic anthropological approach, grounded in disciplined and diligent self-study, aroused a great deal of respect among his colleagues. His work ethic was that of a monk interested in both scientific accuracy and the world beyond physical things.
Back to the road, as disjointed in the team as in his thoughts, David was still studying baobabs, palms, and mainly the bushes through the jammed car window—a knitted sweater covering his nose to protect his airways from the dust thrown up by Andreas’s car. The desolation left behind by the long dry season did not matter in his eyes. He tried to identify the local fauna through the shadows and twigs, crowding out his discomfort with excitement. Only when his gaze fell on the marks of wide tires in the bed of a dry river, did David vacillate between fascination and despair for a moment.
The fauna and flora of the Kalahari were victims of the extreme fluctuations in climate—as described in one of the travel guides David had read. Floods gave way to long droughts from one month to the next, and extreme heat gave way to sub-zero temperatures as day turned into night, continually testing life’s ability to survive and adapt. David tried to imagine once again how these unforgiving environmental conditions impacted the saga of homo sapiens.
“It’s amazing how rich this soil is,” Jack said suddenly.
“Rich?” David asked, surprised.
“You name it... uranium, copper, nickel... and diamonds, of course,” Jack went on. “Don’t be fooled by the desolate landscape, David, the greatest wealth lies beneath the ground.”
“It looks like there’s nothing, and animals seem to feed on the wind; yet, the Kalahari elephants are the largest in the world,” added Edward.
With half-open eyes
and her head leaning against Jack’s shoulder, Marie whispered, “The greatest treasure on this ground walks on two legs, but don’t ask Ben if he agrees.”
“You mean the San people?” asked David. “How did they come here?”
“They lived all over Southern Africa for tens of thousands of years,” replied Jack. “There are indications that they were once the largest group of people on the planet. Many inhabited the area around Cape Town but were expelled by the Dutch settlers, first, and by Bantu tribes, later. With time, the desert became their last refuge. The fact that they made such an inhospitable land their new home is unprecedented in history.”
“Obviously, Jack is too nice referring to what happened as an expulsion. In fact, the Bushman population was practically decimated in South Africa,” Marie added without taking her head off her safe harbor.
“Yes, but can you imagine surviving here on just hunting and gathering? With only primitive Stone Age technology,” David speculated as he straightened his spine.
“It’s homo sapiens, Father. You should not underestimate their cognitive ability, here or anywhere else,” said Marie with a half-smile—her default expression during any conversation.
“And how would you underestimate them? Are they not made in the image and likeness of God?” David provoked, resenting Andreas’s absence in the vehicle.
“We were all bushmen for more than a hundred thousand years, and we only became farmers, like Ben’s people, about ten thousand years ago, a fraction of human history,” Marie went on.
Benjamin, who had until then kept his eyes on the road, suddenly raised his eyebrows and his voice, “A giraffe!”
The animal’s sudden appearance on the road forced the driver to drastically reduce his speed, bringing the dialogue to a startled halt. Andreas, driving far ahead, had not seen it. Deftly, Benjamin swerved around the animal, keeping all four wheels on the ground, seemingly in defiance of the laws of physics.