Mukurob

by André Costa

  “Our toys stayed at the farm, as well as all our things,” answered the girl, acting as the spokesperson for the little ones.

  “Why don’t we imagine them?” completed Jack, who at that point was thinking about resorting to the elder members’ help.

  They did not, however, have a chance to examine the children’s reaction, since two strange pick-up trucks were suddenly seen near the entrance of the campsite. From there, dust and shrill female screams made the scene very confusing. Bit by bit, however, it became clear to the team of researchers that five or six Chinese-looking men were trying to force !Soh to leave the site with them. The more the outsiders roared in Mandarin interspersed with words of English origin, the more the environment dived into irreconcilable chaos. With the not-at-all-subtle display of a large caliber gun, nobody, at first, volunteered to mediate the spectacle. Only one individual looked to be misplaced in the scene—!Soh himself, already seated immobile on the backseat of one of the cars.

  Thomas, who had just arrived from a hunt, finally made the first attempt at communicating to the frenzied crowd. Individually, a lot burlier and stronger than the Chinese, despite his age, the German mentally counted the number of outsiders, plus the gun, and extended the white flag, raising the palms of his hands as an invitation to dialogue. Andreas and Edward then ran to Thomas, putting themselves between him and the Chinese men. Jack also tried to join the mediation team but was pulled back by Marie. David stood still, trying to figure out in which new reality he was living in.

  While Andreas saw the opening of a negotiation space, approaching the only member of the invading group that showed some knowledge of the English language, Edward opted for a gesture that was much less diplomatic and of unpredictable results, but entirely consistent with his cowboy nature. Edward pushed the man that was watching !Soh and pulled the San boy out of the car in a single move.

  The daring act caused a dubious reaction among the invaders. On the one hand, the younger intruders agitated their hands erratically; on the other hand, the senior member showed no expression in his countenance. While the leader hesitated, the German resurged at the scene, saying he had communicated by radio with the police, telling them about the fact and informing the vehicles’ plates.

  The news of the possible arrival of police gave reason to those who opted for cautiousness. The leader, probably the one who best communicated in English, did not know which police officers had been called, and there was a chance of having to deal with lawmen outside his relationship circle built through mutual benefits. In doubt, he took off, keeping his features lofty and pointing his finger directly toward Edward. He shouted words in Mandarin as offensive as they were untranslatable.

  David found out about the peculiarities of the event not long after. He did not wish to reveal his anxiety in respect to the tragic moment everyone experienced, but Jack found himself equally avid in commenting about it.

  “They are hunters, David.”

  “I understand, but where is the problem?”

  “They hunt rhinos. They kill their prey just to take their horns—which they believe are an astonishingly good aphrodisiac. Their horns are worth more than gold on the black market. It’s not only criminal; it’s an abominable and bloody business, responsible for the rhinos being highly endangered.”

  “And what did they want here?”

  Marie, who hugged Edward as though she had just welcomed her husband at the docks, heard the dialogue and completed: “The white rhinoceroses are already practically extinct, David. These people are barbarian cowards!”

  “They were going to take the San boy to use in their dirty work! They know he’s a great tracker,” explained Jack.

  “!Soh? A tracker?” Asked David.

  “The criminals sometimes offer any San tracker a bottle of vodka for two days’ work,” said Edward. “I’ve never heard about them trying to take someone by force just like now.”

  In the hours after the invaders’ departure, David was in his tent praying and writing what would be the first draft of his travel journal; something that occurred to him to do after the traumatic event. Intuitively, he felt his register should start the day he confronted himself in public during a Mass. But as soon as his pen started working, he realized that the journey was longer than crossing the Atlantic and lost sight of the notepad.

  Jack tried not to interrupt his friend during his hours in silence, only following Father Callaghan in the rite of prayer. It is a fact that Jack’s moments of prayer had long since distanced themselves from the Catholic practice. He still made the gesture of deference to the supreme divinity, on his knees, with his palms together and slightly touching his forehead; but his thoughts were elsewhere, nay, they were short-lived. In the place where praise words would be, he practiced meditation; and only then did he believe he could communicate with his inner self, or the Christ within, or the truth.

  By late afternoon, the team of researchers united around the bonfire once more to contemplate the unique experience of living among the San community. They were prepared for a night of tales and playing, which would be the best occasion to unwind the humor that the day left as a legacy.

  While they had their meals, an elder woman got up in front of the crowd in a half circle and signaled to Jack to also stand up, putting herself by his side. The invitation seemed obvious. Even though it was the official language in Namibia, only the younger members of the community could speak English. On the foreigners’ part, only Jack spoke Afrikaans, a language she knew as well as her own.

  With the simultaneous translation assured, the old lady started narrating the famous fable of ‘the jaguar and the lion,’ in which the children learned that dexterity is more important than strength or size. And she did it not only with words but also with gestures and movements that honored the best tradition of theater, to the point where David was able to comprehend the nature and content of the story even if Jack were to be absent.

  “Look at the children,” said David to Andreas, seated by his side. “They are happy because they seem to have understood the lesson well.”

  “The fable is indeed one of the oldest forms of learning,” said Andreas. “With it, man knew his disgrace.”

  “Disgrace?” asked David. Andreas’s comment was so unexpected that it made the dramatic representation become background noise.

  “See, Father, I know that you attain yourself to your own fables, I won’t judge it, but one thing is hard to deny…” continued Andreas, “our curse began about 10,000 years ago, when we learned to grow our own food, amidst a fantastic cognitive revolution. All this miracle of wisdom was only made possible because of this tool here,” continued Andreas, pointing his finger at his head, “right here in the right side of the brain: the imagination. There is no wisdom without imagination, Father.”

  “You’re referring to knowledge as a malign tool,” provoked David.

  “Make your own conclusions, young man. I only attest empirically that at the moment when our people reached the top of the food chain, they became the most lethal animal on the face of the Earth, the most feared, unpredictable, and dangerous. And why? Because we learned to daydream. Without it, we would be weak prey, clawless, without scary jaws, without venom… We would already have disappeared, of course. Imagination, unique to the sapiens, may indeed be the malign tool. Take it from us, and we will become once more innocuous and unvalued beings.”

  Dr. Ecklund‘s words redirected David’s thoughts back to the living room in Father Duane’s house. In no other moment had the Swedish scientist’s speech been so close to that of his old heretic friend. David smiled openly—incomprehensible to those who were by his side.

  With the end of the old lady’s hypnotic performance, Marie, seated just behind them, tuned her ears to their conversation.

  “Whatever he’s saying, David, don’t pay him much attention, or we’ll have to invoke the shaman to g
et the spell off you,” said Marie.

  “On the contrary, this is exactly the reason that brought me here in the first place,” said David, moving to the side and looking Marie in the eyes. “Why we came from so far away to occupy a primordial space in the world and finally lead it to its destruction. In other words, Dr. Ecklund and Dr. Steensen, and regarding our capacity for daydreaming, I want to know why we’ve imagined the horrible reality that we live in.”

  “I thought that this and other answers were clear in your sacred text,” said Marie.

  “Like in the fables; right, Jack?” asked Andreas, dragging the former seminarian to the conversation.

  “I wasn’t following,” answered Jack, coming back to himself from a light trance as a compensation for having helped the old lady.

  “Dr. Ecklund was explaining to us how imagination is evil, and the fable is the devil’s tool,” said David.

  “Almost that, only I didn’t evoke your biblical figure. I meant that fiction, which is derived from imagination, builds the truths—of mine against yours—and in the end, only hell stands victorious,” concluded Andreas with a half smile.

  “Can you give an example?” asked David.

  “Sure…Think about the value of honor, for instance.”

  “How so?” asked Jack, now entirely conscious.

  “It’s undeniable that honor is fiction, a fantasy of the ego to justify and accept vanity, which is a sin, right Father? In most cultures, people at an early age learn to restrain vanity, yet still, in many parts of the world, they would rather kill than live in dishonor. Pure vanity disguised in a beautiful story…”

  “Contradictions…,” concluded Jack.

  Since the first meeting with the team of scientists, Andreas was the one who was the most like a sphinx. He walked in smooth giant steps, at the limit of what his legs allowed. His actions were objective and solid. His slender features and slightly long and gray hair were those of a wise king, who does not threaten his power of command with frivolous orders and keeps his gaze two steps ahead of the action.

  “Looking at them, they seem a lot more at peace than us,” said David, pointing to the adult members of the San tribe. “They don’t seem to be living in any contradiction.”

  “At least not at the level we gave ourselves over to,” said Andreas. “But cheer up, Father, you’re witnessing a typical cultural event of a pre-agricultural society. It’s a world that still inhabits our subconscious.”

  “It’s only a vague idea of what we were, David; don’t give too much wing to your imagination,” Marie said giggling.

  “Yes, but the hunters and gatherers of today help us comprehend at least some of the possibilities that were available to our ancestors,” said Andreas.

  Andreas’s reference to the role of stories and the imagination of the homo sapiens led David to feel a most obnoxious emotion: fear. Never had he reflected on the subject before, alone or in the company of Father Duane. He looked up, and, in the blink of an eye, everything became drastically clear in his mind.

  “With the revolution of knowledge, our ancestors probably felt like orphans in the whole to which they belonged,” David thought aloud.

  “You can bet on that,” said Andreas. “But imagination soon dissolved their loneliness, crafting religions and institutions to the point of the insane complexity in which we live today.”

  Jack read the discomfort in David’s face and found in the empty plates the best way to diminish the uneasiness. “Another round of braai? Oryx meat this time?” he said, standing up without waiting for an answer.

  “And the creative mind of the sapiens prompted women and men to evolve on all continents,” Dr. Ecklund continued with his lecture as if no sandstorm would mute his words. “The sea did not prevent the humans from docking in Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar or even in your island, Father. It’s a tragic diaspora, as we all know, or you wouldn’t have come all the way here for an answer. Wherever our ancestors went, coincidentally, large-scale extinction of local fauna and flora occurred. Again, blame it all on imagination!”

  “They are like children,” said David, looking steadily at the dance around the bonfire, where members of the San tribe of all ages sang and clapped their hands and stomped their feet in rhythmic harmony. “It’s hard to imagine that they would come to threaten the whole world…”

  “You’re right,” interrupted Marie. “The transition from the hunter-gatherer society to the farmer civilization is just like the transition from childhood to adulthood. The attachment to questions of practical order and an obsessive preoccupation with the future undid paradise, David.”

  “So, we’re all adults, then,” concluded Father Callaghan after two generous sips of water.

  “That’s right, adults and depressed,” she replied, smiling and sipping from a can of local beer.

  “You don’t look a slight bit depressed to me,” David smiled back.

  “Well, the Germans did some good on this land after all,” said Marie, showing David the local brand of the beer. “Sadness is a feeling and condition typical of human beings. Look at them; it’s evident that the agricultural revolution put an end to this innocence. By abandoning nomadism, Father Callaghan, we became methodical and melancholic beings, worried about the seasons and climatic conditions, about tomorrow, about the day after tomorrow... or even worse, about yesterday and the day before yesterday.”

  “The whole program is wrong,” said Andreas pointing at his head once more. “Until we change our subconscious program, Father, we will continue to have hell on earth… Does that explain what you‘ve been looking for?”

  Jack reappeared to the scene most clumsily, and a miracle had just held the dishes from hitting the ground. While plates and cutlery were rearranged, Father Callaghan was concerned about keeping the subject of his interest in mind.

  “But look at them…” said David. “It’s so breath-taking to realize that in the beginning we saw ourselves in the image of our environment, or as its complement…”

  Jack jumped back into the conversation as soon as he sat down. “We were indeed created as a complement to the environment, but we by definition don’t fit in it anymore. Even science now recognizes that we are facing a new and accelerated wave of mass extinction; the sixth one since the beginning of life on this planet.”

  David put down the fork as if it were a useless tool.

  Chapter XI

  The musical rhythm continued to expand in the silence, exerting its hypnotic power over the audience. This time, the most alert was Jack, who returned once more balancing another round of generous portions of oryx meat in his hands.

  David thought about how, in its full adult form, the graceful antelope with its grayish coat and long straight horns bore its unattractive role in the Kalahari food chain with dignity. A better treatment had been granted by the imagination of the sapiens, who, in Namibia, had eternalized the oryx on the national coat of arms. Ironically, the animal readily found on local menus, had become a symbol whose honor Namibians were willing to defend with their own lives, if necessary. With this thought, the power of fiction to shape the destiny of mankind and the recurrent contradictions gained even better traction in David’s mind. Within seconds, his jaw muscles refused to cooperate, his taste buds momentarily stopped working, and the food in his mouth was held near the glottis. Yet he had no choice but to swallow it.

  “Do you really think we were better off in the wild?” David asked Marie.

  “No doubt! The hunter-gatherer became an anxious peasant, a slave of the hard, repetitive, and full-time work of survival. Often foreseeing the worst in the future, their existence was no longer that of the cicada in the fable but that of a working ant that sweats from sunrise to sunset. Their diet also became poorer, since the food produced on the farm gradually reduced their menu options; and their rare moments of relaxation were turned into a pathe
tic display of repressed instincts.”

  “And I’ve always despised the cicada in that fable...” said David making everyone laugh.

  “But we should be careful not to idealize the life of the scavenger,” interrupted Edward. “It was brief and riddled with uncertainty. Sure enough, Marie, they would not have seen the need to imagine anything better if they had been fully content with their way of life.”

  “Oh, and how they daydreamed!” said Andreas. “Look what we have become: a complex social organization with strong and powerful gods, with myths so far-reaching that millions or even billions of human souls are capable of cooperating, killing, or dying for them. The main one is the myth of right and wrong, of us against them.”

  “I see… But do you know what the word Catholic means, doctor?’” This time David decided to surprise first.

  “I’m anxious to hear,” replied Andreas.

  “Its origin comes from the Greek “kata” meaning together and “holos” meaning all—that is, universal, which embraces everything and everyone. It bears in its ecumenical nature no disposition to nourish the myth of ‘us’ against ‘them.’”

  “Is that so?” Andreas smiled openly and paused for a few seconds. “This would indeed have been the case, my friend, if it hadn’t been for one detail….”

  “Which one,” asked Jack.

  “That your Church—as well as the Jewish and Muslim religions—originated from the same myth of separation: the one of Adam against Eve,” completed Andreas.

  Dr. Ecklund’s expression brightened, and his usual poker face dissolved to give way to genuine emotion. He could not expect the conquest of a new disciple but was happy to find a partner in a debate that was of little interest to Marie: the relationship of humans with transcendent life and the reconciliation with their worldly passions. “So, I’m afraid your Church has not resolved this dilemma, Father.”

  David was not sure what to say next, and his hesitation was abruptly cut short by the arrival of the German, who ran scared and expansively like a fleeing gladiator. “They took !Soh,” shouted Thomas. Andreas’s face shut down immediately. That was the end of the dinner and the debate.