Tales from the Old Karoo

by Guy Butler

  As I said, El Adem is no sort of a place at all. Desert, Doctor. Not fit, you’d say, to sustain any sort of life. But you’d be wrong. It was very flat and barren, just right for a military airfield, ideal for fighter squadrons. The British, the Italians, the Australians, the South Africans, the Germans – I have not yet checked the exact sequence and dates – all found they needed that bit of desert in order to knock hell out of each ther. All foreigners, so full of their own thoughts that not one of them gave a damn for the local inhabitants, least of all the jerboas. Excepting me. Yes; me, Doctor. I’m not boasting.

  The planes taking off and landing; the bombing and shelling of El Adem, on and off over four years, must have had a profound effect on the life of that flat piece of earth.

  You ask, ‘But surely, if there were any jerboas on that flat piece of earth, would they not have simply moved off to another unoccupied piece of the desert?’ And that, Doctor, is where you would be wrong. For one thing, none of the desert is unoccupied. Not one hectare. All that vast land has been allocated among the desert animals for centuries. You see, jerboas are not so different from people. They are very conscious of their Lebensraum. The territorial imperative works among them as it does among, say, us Afrikaners. So any who decided to trek from their ancient hunting grounds at El Adem would have had a hard battle of survival. They probably came to a quick end, ambushed by other jerboas patriotically defending their ancient homelands. No, Doc, I have not yet set up a system of checking the survival rate among migrant bands of refugee jerboas; but I dream of doing it; sometimes. I have my dreams. We all have our dreams, don’t we, Doctor? Yes, well – El Adem.

  Anyway, I do have concrete evidence that some jerboas decided not to leave El Adem.

  Crucial to my project is a specific group of jerboas, whose burrows were close to the big EPIP tents of the officers’ mess – where the human infestation of the Western Desert was most intense. I counted the number of burrows within a perimeter of fifty yards of the encampment; I kept a record and a map of them. Part of my data base. Here, look at it. See? All dated, carefully.

  I wish to return to El Adem. Once there I’ll re-establish the old positions of the bell-tents and the administration EPIPs, and then see if there has been any significant change in the number of burrows. This will help me to check an observation made by a veteran kitchen corporal – Peter Penny from Pontypool. Nice chap. He’d been driven on and off El Adem airfield about five times. He swore that the jerboas’ population of El Adem had actually increased during that time. War seemed to make them breed faster – in marked distinction, for instance, to the humans, the Senusi tribesmen, who, he claimed, had disappeared altogether.

  Now, Doc, if I can establish a decrease in the number of burrows since 1942, there is a good prima facie case for saying that a portion at least of the jerboas of El Adem, far from finding the presence of human beings repugnant, or a threat, had managed to make a successful adjustment to them.

  My friends say, ‘So what?’ And I have to explain that, until now, jerbologists the world over have claimed that, unlike rats and mice, this group of rodents does not associate with man, and therefore poses no threat to barns, granaries and pantries – our food supply. But, Doctor, the jerboas of El Adem may prove that to be a fond delusion. And, Doctor, forewarned is forearmed.

  If the corporal from Pontypool is proved to have been correct, one must try to discover what attracted the permanent inhabitants of El Adem (jerboas) to the temporary sojourners (the soldiers)? It could not have been the search for safety, because the tents were strafed and bombed quite as much as the landing strip. Hell, yes.

  Yes, Doctor, I know that one of the first rules of a good scientist is caution, and I would not advance my next hypothesis but for the evidence of my own eyes. There was at least one unexpected bond between the jerboas and the soldiers, particularly the pilots: peanuts. Yes, peanuts. They both liked peanuts.

  Two other factors are important: first, the pilots were untidy in their peanut-eating habits, and second, the jerboas, being nocturnal, could exploit an unexpected niche in the temporary eco-system – midnight and the small hours – before the mess orderlies arrived with their brooms in the early morning.

  From my brief but intense observations at El Adem, and subsequently at SAAF dances and re-unions, I can say that one in three fighter pilots is a careless peanut-eater, yes; and I see no reason at this stage to change the ratio for RAF, Luftwaffe, Australian, Italian Airforce, or any other flying types. You see, Doc, peanut-eaters like to catch their food in flight. They throw peanuts one by one into the air, and catch them in their mouths, like trout catch midges or swallows catch flies. A careless peanut-eater throws his peanuts into the air but misses nine times out of ten. I know. I was one myself. In the course of an evening the wastage of peanuts is criminal – or would be, but for the wonderful anti-waste food chain that nature will improvise in any place in no time at all – in no time at all, Doc.

  Now, listen Doc, the peanut is not indigenous to Africa, it comes from tropical South America. Nevertheless, jerboas of El Adem ate peanuts. I saw them do so with my own eyes. OK, you say, that was in the special conditions of war – strain, broken nerves, and shortage of food, which might have driven the jerboas to atypical behaviour. Agreed.

  So we need to establish if jerboas will eat peanuts in peace time. If jerboas won’t eat peanuts in peace time, the shareholders in the peanut industry can relax with peace of mind. Peace of mind, Doc. But if they do?! Well, forewarned is forearmed, isn’t it?

  Apart from settling this important global issue, my expedition has patriotic dimensions. I want to determine the height which a jerboa can jump a) from a standing position, b) with the benefit of runs of different lengths. Why? you ask. Well I am confident that, properly recorded and filmed, this jerboa jump study will supply our athletics trainers for the Olympic high jump with invaluable information. Think what an advantage that would give our Springbok athletes, when we get back into the Olympic games? Also, if I could measure the jump height before, during and after a carefully controlled diet of peanuts, I might revolutionise the food intake of athletes. Doc, do you know that peanuts contain more protein, minerals and vitamins than beef liver? It’s a fact. Yes. A fact.

  I now come to my big problem, Doc: the sabotaging of this research by people who ought to have our country’s interest at heart. My first approach for sponsorship was naturally to those organisations which stood to gain or lose most – our department of External Affairs (Sports Division) and the peanut industry. They both replied that they’d be very interested in the results, but could not commit their limited funds to projects which still seemed to be in the very early stages of development.

  I then wrote to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria. The CSIR said the project fell into a grey area between the biological and human sciences, and gave me the address of something called the Human Sciences Research Council, also Pretoria. The HSRC took an even longer time to reply. My heart sank with each week. When their letter came it was very polite, and said that, as the main thrust of my proposed investigation seemed to be ecological, I should apply to the Department of Nature Conservation, also Pretoria, and/or the National Parks Board, also Pretoria. I tried both, Doctor. The first paragraphs in both replies gave my heart a lift – and then they regretted that they were powerless to help me because El Adem is not within the borders of the Republic of South Africa. Not yet, anyway. They were hamstrung by the provisions of the act which regrettably confined their activities. El Adem, they said, is off their map. They suggested the Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, and one even hinted at the Department of Defence, Pretoria. You know, Doc, how it is: if you want to get anything done, you always have to go through Pretoria, Doc. Then I thought – But of course – Defence! Our Defence Ministry is not worried about frontiers. With Defence support I could do my jerboas in Namibia, Angola, Maputo, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana and even the Seychelles, and no questions a
sked, except in UNO, which doesn’t count. So why not the Western Desert? But it’s two years now since I wrote to Minister Magnus Malan, and he has not even acknowledged my letter. So I’m in a cul-de-sac, at a dead end, Doctor. Pad loop dood. Can you blame me, then, for getting watery eyes whenever I get on to the subject of jerboas? … It’s been a long session, Doc. Do you mind … Next week? Thank you, yes.

  Yes, Doc, I know I have not yet mentioned any occasion on which I actually observed a jerboa – the trigger occasion, as it were, for an interest that has held me captive for over thirty years. Well, as you’ve asked for it, I’ll do my best.

  Mike Baker and I were about the same age. Look. Here we are, before we went up north. Nice looking chap. Sure. We both came from the Northern Cape – adjacent farms, same school, shot springhares together in the hols; both joined the airforce, and got our wings together. We even flew up north on the same Dakota to Cairo. Sort of twins, you know, Doctor, twins. Happy-go-lucky sparks, drinking a lot, lots of girls, painting Cairo and Alex red, while waiting for posting. Look, here we are, in Alex. The names of the girls? Not a clue, Doc.

  Well, because we’d been so close we were a bit anxious about our posting … We didn’t want to be separated. On the other hand, if we were sent to the same squadron, as sure as God made little apples, one of us would have to be around when the other one didn’t come back. Well, we didn’t fancy that, Doctor. I’m sure you’ll get my point.So when we were posted to El Adem our feelings were like two curates’ eggs, if you get me. Mixed, and fragile.

  Well, El Adem is no sort of place at all. The reception we got was not warm and welcome; in fact it was plain awful, Doctor, awful. The OC was very tired and drinking himself into a state where he didn’t have to feel anything anymore. He shook hands, made a feeble joke, and said we’d probably have to go up the next day, before noon. The batman who took us to our tent said three planes had failed to return that day. Back in the mess the remaining pilots were playing poker, said hello, but didn’t break up the game to give us a welcoming party. At supper nobody had any small talk at all. After supper the poker school went into session again.

  So we had to kill time at the bar, Doctor. We were quite good at that, but usually in crowded bars, not in a huge double EPIP tent in the desert with only a quiet poker school in the far corner. And with our first ops flight due the next morning. I mean to say … Well, if there’d been a padre about we might have stood him a drink, just for company, you know. Outside, the enormous desert night, the stars tilting slowly – we could have gone out and looked at them, and tried to recognise the northern constellations. But we were not in night fighters or bombers, and doubted if we’d ever be called upon to navigate by the stars. We were quite right about that, Doctor. Yes, quite right.

  So we sat on the top of our tall bar stools, drinking, and eating peanuts, swaying a little. The poker school broke up, but no one joined us. So we carried on drinking until we became philosophical. Do you know what I mean, Doctor, philosophical? Far into the dead-still desert night.

  ‘How’, said Mike, ‘how do I know this glass of brandy really exists? I only know because of my sense of touch in my fist, my sense of taste in my mouth, and sight in my eyes.’ And he took a sip between each phrase. ‘Sense perception’s essential.’ He had to say that slowly sheveral times to sheparate the shyllables.

  I wasn’t going to let the conversation die, so I said, ‘How do you know (and I took a sip) that you are really holding that glass, (sip) and not dreaming that you are holding it?’

  He looked at me dreamily a long, long time. The pause was so still, Doctor, that my first jerboa, looking exactly to my eyes like a tiny kangaroo, came hopping into the tent. People who have seen jerboas and kangaroos before are not likely to confuse them, but we had seen neither, so the error is excusable. I had an advantage over Mike because I was so seated that I saw the little fellow in a slice of moonlight that the tent flap let into the mess. Also I’d heard about a human Desert Rat and seen one in Cairo, with the animal flash on his arm. The jerboa picked up a peanut in his little hands and sat for a moment in a posture of prayer as he popped it into his mouth. Then Mike, who’d seen nothing, said:

  ‘I know I’m not dreaming’, (and the jerboa froze) ‘because (sip and pause) because (sip and pause) because my watch says it’s ten past two: and it is ticking; and I never look at my watch when I’m dreaming. If you look at your watch you’ll see I’m right.’

  His argument floored me, Doctor, partly because some of my mind was on the jerboa. And while I was sipping and thinking, the little kangaroo unfroze, and pocketed another peanut in his cheek.

  ‘But, Mike’, I said, and the jerboa froze once more. ‘My watch says it’s ten past one, not two.’

  Mike looked long at his watch, then wordlessly put his ear to it, on the counter, and listened so long to its ticking that I thought he’d dropped off to sleep.

  The jerboa now decided it was quite safe to proceed to what previous experience had told him was the richest peanut field in the mess. With a single hop, Doctor, he was on the bar counter, between the two of us, his cheeks bulging with unchewed peanuts; but he grabbed another in his pretty little hands, sniffed it and popped it into his mouth, his whiskers twitching. Charming, Doctor, charming.

  ‘Hi, little Cobber!’ I said. ‘How’s things Down Under?’

  Mike opened his eyes.

  Mike fell backwards off his stool, slow motion. In his lightning exit the jerboa touched ground only once.

  I was in a quandary, Doctor. I knew if I got off my bar stool and tried to help Mike back on to his, I’d end up on the floor like him. So I left him to himself, making encouraging noises like ‘Get up off the deck, you silly bugger.’

  It took him a little time. He was as pale as a peeled peanut. Having recovered his glass, he replied:

  ‘I know (sip) that you think – that I think I saw – something. But’ (and he took a long gulp) ‘you bastard, I did not see anything of the kind.’

  I paused so long that I wondered if the jerboa would return.

  ‘Mike, my friend’, I said, ‘You didn’t see it. You only dreamt you saw it.’ Then the devil got into me, Doctor, and I decided to tease Mike.

  ‘By the way, Mike, have you ever been to Australia? Drunken lot of baastids, the Aussies. They have kangaroos there too.’

  ‘Shut up! I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Didn’t see a kangaroo on this counter, I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of accusing you of seeing a kangaroo on this counter?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Mike’, I said, ‘if we both sit very quiet he will come back.’

  ‘Who? That mini-springhare?’

  ‘I think it’s what they call a desert rat.’

  It took the jerboa an hour to recover his nerve, but he did come back, and he jumped on the counter between us, and we watched him and we knew he wasn’t a dream, and that we weren’t dreaming either. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy and so sad as I was then, watching that beautiful mini-springhare with Mike, our eyes meeting occasionally, and not being at all philosophical, Doctor.

  I didn’t see Mike again, Doctor … Yes … His first ops flight … Yes.

  No, I’m all right, thanks, it’s just this peculiar hay fever I get.

  12

  The Case of the Immortal Mackintosh

  It was bitterly cold in the bar of the old Transport Riders Inn. I hadn’t intended to pull in there, but something had happened on one of the corners through the Bushman’s Pass that had rather unnerved me, and I felt the need of a double brandy. I parked my vintage Talbot beside an old Hupmobile 8 and a fine Armstrong Siddeley, neither of which I recognised from any vintage car rally I could remember. Must be from up country.

  The mist had come down suddenly on the Outeniqua Mountains, and the going had turned rough, as though the new tar road had disappeared, and the car was running on old-fashione
d corrugations. I could not see this because, believe it or not, in that thick mist the headlights seemed unable to reveal anything, except odd white markers, like those undressed stones erected at intervals along the road’s edge by Andrew Geddes Bain and other old-time road building wizards. Long experience had taught me to dim my lights when driving in fog or mist. Bright lights can irradiate the moisture, so that one is blinded like a midge in nimbus.

  Then suddenly, I had been utterly confused by the oncoming headlights of some fool who’d failed to dim; I jammed on the brakes and pulled across onto the side of the road, the left wheel flattening the fynbos. The offending light flashed past, but without any accompanying sound. Alarmed, I’d stopped in a skid of pebbles, stalling the engine. Silence, then, far off, muffled in the mist, the sound of something crashing against rock, as though a car had plunged over the side into the gorge. Silence. I got out into an envelope of chilly mist and walked to the outer edge of the embankment, and paused. Nothing but cold moonlight-saturated mist.

  And then a chanting and singing, faint, rhythmic, full of soft hand claps and of clicks, as though a distant tribe were celebrating a victory. But very far off and faint, thin, and sharp as a knife. I had never heard anything like it before, bringing a chill that had nothing to do with the mist, and everything to do with those headlights and that sound of a car crashing. I certainly needed a couple of brandies to get my circulation back.

  As I entered the bar, two oldish men looked up from their drinks, and watched my every move: stripping my leather gauntlets; taking off my deerstalker; unwinding my old College rowing scarf, undoing the belt of my mackintosh – my latest piece of kit – and hanging it on the bentwood hall-stand. I enjoy collecting vintage garments to match my vintage car, but I did not enjoy the old men’s scrutiny, like that of old rouès watching a strip-tease. However, standing with my back to the fire, I reflected, perhaps I’m being unfair to them. After all, this is probably their habitual den, a sort of extra room to home no doubt, and here was I walking in on their familiar stamping ground in fancy dress, rather like the ghost of an officer-and-a-gentleman from the Boer War, or whenever rubber-impregnated mackintoshes first came in; or was it my airman’s goggles (left to me in his will by old Figgis, DFC, Royal Flying Corps) that made me look so interesting?