And so the torment began.
There was nothing subtle about it. No veiled threats, no false intimidation. Within an hour of arriving, German guards strapped Xavier’s left hand to a chair and took to it with a hammer. When that didn’t work, they strapped down Requin’s hand and repeated the assault. Unlike his brother, Requin screamed and begged for his life, crying to be left alone. Xavier simply closed his eyes and remained silent. They were then both chained to a wall and beaten intermittently for hours. Requin pleaded with his brother to speak, to offer up what he knew, but Xavier refused. Even when their interrogators revealed how members of his own command had betrayed him, he remained quiet. On their fifth day they were dragged out into the yard with a small group of fellow prisoners and lined up in front of a firing squad. They were given a final opportunity to save themselves. Again, Xavier said nothing. But, instead of being executed, when the command to fire was given, they were both spared. Instead, the men standing on either side of them were shot and killed. Despite surviving the ordeal, it was a mental assault from which Requin would never fully recover. They were then dragged back underground for further, more elaborate, interrogation. And so the torture persisted. For days they were beaten, left naked without any food or water and made to sleep on a dank and cold stone floor.
And while their captors continued to try to pry information from Xavier, what they did not know was that he was never going to talk. His silence no longer had anything to do with his loyalty to the Legion, but was instead an act of personal defiance. He had always been able to endure abuse and suffering, and was capable of withstanding unnatural amounts of pain. The Germans believed he was nearing his breaking point, but they were mistaken. As far as Xavier was concerned, the only true breaking point was death. The notion of pleading mercy did not exist for him. After seventeen days of purgatory, Xavier had still not said anything. Not one of his captors had even heard his voice. It was a silence that would endure for another three months. For an entire season, Xavier did not utter a single word.
Not even to his brother.
19
Derek woke with a start, as if thrown from his dream. Lying curled on his side in the swaying hammock, he blinked as the bush filled his eyes. Relieved to see the top of the sun’s head bobbing above the trees, marking the end of his first night away from camp, he took a steadying breath, wiped his face, and rolled onto his back.
And there, hovering above him like a storm cloud, was Shawu’s enormous head. He instinctively stopped moving and held his breath. Her front legs, concrete pillars that were each taller and heavier than any man, stood barely inches away from him. Her tusks hung like a pair of executioner’s swords awaiting a king’s order. She seemed to be deciding what to do with him, with the tiresome creature who had become her self-elected travel companion. Allowing himself a flurry of short and sharp breaths, he tried to calm himself. Had he imagined their connection? Despite all his attempts at winning her over, did she still associate him with the poachers that had claimed her family? Was this the moment when she was going to exact her revenge by trampling him to death? He thought of what his options were and realised they were all futile. If she indeed wanted him dead, then that was precisely what was going to happen. All he could do was remain still and hope that his instincts had been right.
But as the seconds ebbed away, so did his concerns. The more he studied her, the more he became certain that she meant him no harm. Instead of aggression or anger, her mood was one of curiosity, as if she had simply come in for a closer look, to discover more about the diminutive shadow that insisted on trailing behind her. The longer she hovered over him, the more serene she appeared. Nothing in her demeanour suggested any belligerence at all. There was no violence in her eyes, but rather a softness and a sense of intelligence and wisdom.
Revelling in the experience now, he watched through widening eyes as she slowly lowered her trunk towards him. Without thinking, he inched out a hand. ‘Hello … Shawu,’ he whispered, as her trunk gently dabbed the side of his arm. He smiled at her and she tilted her head a fraction. She watched him intently, but it was more than just a look. It felt as though she were boring through skin and bone, to the very marrow of who he was.
Feeling increasingly as though he were wading through a wonderful dream, her trunk reached up to his unkempt hair and then, grasping a handful of dishevelled locks, gently lifted his head. Maybe I am dreaming, he thought briefly. A sense of wonderment flowed through him as she carefully moved his head from side to side. Despite the phenomenal strength in her trunk and the fact that she could snap his neck on a whim, he could not remember ever feeling more at peace or more fulfilled. It was a remarkable moment.
And then something unexpected happened.
As though discarding a piece of unripe fruit, she let go of his hair and his head bounced hard on the hammock’s taut strings.
Suddenly, there was a look of something else in her eyes.
What the hell was that? he thought, his mind shuddering back to reality.
As she pulled away and began to weave between a row of small trees, returning to the ghost trail that her ancestors had supposedly travelled on for centuries, it all came crashing together. Derek suddenly felt like a complete idiot. Shawu had neither been staring into his soul, nor trying to forge a special connection with him. She had simply come over to wake him up – a twelve-ton alarm clock.
As she turned back to look at him, there was a twinkle in her eyes that Derek thought said it all.
Wake up, you lazy bastard.
20
Within days it was clear that the area between Shingwedzi and Pafuri had not seen any rain in weeks. In its absence, the sun had reigned mercilessly, scorching and scalding everything under its gaze. The white heat had already burnt away the early-morning blue, leaving the heavens pale and bleached like the shell of an old skull laid bare in the desert. Derek drew to a halt, cupped a hand over his forehead, and looked up at the two raptors circling high above them, waiting for them to falter. They had journeyed through many miles of thick mopane bush, a vast swathe of it that stretched around them in every direction. Only the occasional shallow spring broke the monotony and allowed them a moment’s change of scenery, a cerulean ink spot in an otherwise olive-and-brown savannah. He was convinced that Shawu had some kind of ingrained map of the area, some embedded memory or intuition of the few water sources along their route, as if this was a path that she had travelled many times before.
Having suffered the relentless attentions of a wide array of stinging insects, Derek had followed Shawu’s lead and had taken to plastering his face, neck, arms and legs with a generous layer of mud; this served not only as a barrier against the many parasites in the bush, but also helped guard against heatstroke. Although dry and uncomfortable at first, he soon became used to its texture and was astounded at how effective it was. He was fast learning that nature always knew best.
As they trudged on, Shawu would occasionally stop and look back to see if her little mud man was still following her. And each time they made eye contact, Derek’s spirits would lift another few inches. Yet, in spite of their burgeoning relationship, he still maintained a healthy gap of between thirty and fifty yards between them. It was partly out of respect for her passage, but also because she was still a wild animal who, if she chose to, could end his life in a single violent gesture. One telling swipe of her tusks and the spiralling vultures would have cause to descend.
Although they were already a few days into their journey, Derek was concerned by how quickly he was depleting his food reserves. He was well aware that he was still days away from reaching his brother’s supplies interred on the banks of the Limpopo, so he was forced to look to the bush to see what other food he could gather. Upon his arrival at camp, Maquaasi had told him that one of the richest energy sources in the bush was the mopane worm, an abhorrent-looking animal in almost constant supply along their route.
As his provisions continued to dwindle, and aft
er hours of deliberation, he finally plucked up the courage to try one. Dropping the plump green worm into his mouth, a heavy wriggling thumb of a creature, he had gagged as its bristled legs fought for purchase on his tongue. But, with eyes screwed shut, he had managed to swallow it down. It tasted as it looked, and it looked like something that had crawled out of a cadaver. The second worm, though still gruesome, was a shade easier to get through. The third was marginally less repugnant than the second. And so it continued until finally he was able to eat them with relative, if not consummate, ease. Just as Maquaasi had claimed, they were indeed a valuable food source that made a discernible difference to his energy levels.
Much in the same detached way as a fleeing spirit might perceive its own body, it occurred to him that he was now covering himself with mud, consuming worms like Christmas treats and, to cap matters, was cultivating a straggly beard. He was becoming precisely what Edward had predicted he would – a part of the bush, blending and settling into its contours. And, as it happened, he was relishing the transformation.
It also helped that, for now at least, there seemed very little to feel threatened about. He had yet to encounter a single animal more menacing than an antelope or a giraffe and there was absolutely no sign of poachers anywhere, which, in its own way, surprised him. There were no spent cartridges in the sand. No tyre tracks. Nothing at all. They had come across a few snakes and the odd troop of baboons, but Shawu’s presence soon scared them off. Walking behind a fifteen-foot behemoth was not without its benefits.
They had made it to the top of a small rise, which revealed yet another horizon dotted with more of the same mopane bush, when Shawu stopped to feed. Welcoming the opportunity of a rest, Derek sat down and withdrew his journal. He fished out a pencil from the bottom of his bag, much as he imagined his father might have done years before, and took a moment to collect his thoughts. Soon he would reach the river that he had read so much about over the years. He could hardly wait.
Above them, the vultures continued their watchful spiral.
Less than an hour later, they were on the move again. Derek was now so bored by the terrain that he had taken to making up songs about it. He was approaching the chorus of his third composition, an effort lurching between a limerick and a lullaby, when he noticed Shawu slow and reach up for a branch from a large lime-coloured tree. Snapping it with ease, she began to wave it around with her trunk, not unlike the way a conductor might lead his orchestra, Derek thought for a bizarre moment.
Still singing, he frowned as he tried to work out what she was doing. Instead of stripping the leaves into her mouth, like she would normally do, she continued to swing the bough around in an almost circular motion. And then, before Derek could make any further sense of what was happening, Shawu launched the branch over her shoulder. He watched as it arced against the sky, landing barely five yards from where he was walking.
He stopped, stared at the branch, and then looked at Shawu. ‘Did you just throw that at me?’ he called out.
Shawu kept walking, ignoring him.
‘Because of my singing?’ he continued, incredulous.
Shawu’s only response was to sweep her tail from side to side, almost like a dog.
‘No …’ he whispered. Surely not. But as he considered it further he could think of no other explanation.
‘Really? All right … fine,’ he said, under his breath. He bent down and reached for a large sand clod. Breaking into a short run, he hurled the clod as hard as he could and watched as it soared like a comet above the trees. Small grains of sand trailed in its wake before it was obliterated against the back of her leg.
‘How do you like that?’ he yelled out, victorious, throwing his hands up at the sky.
Shawu stopped, trumpeted loudly, and began to turn with both speed and purpose. The mud man, realising suddenly what he had done, dropped his arms, turned with even greater speed and purpose, and ran like hell.
21
Derek was lost in a place of half-light, flailing between the glow of the waking world and the shadows of his dreams. Part of him seemed to recall that he was lying somewhere out in the bush on his hammock, slung between two small trees, but that was all he was certain of. The remaining information seemed blurred and distorted, as if projected through an old stained-glass window. Beyond his eyelids something bright and engorged flared in the darkness. Something that was too alive to be the sun. Forcing himself awake, he felt his eyes burn in the face of a strong and acrid wind. He sat up, coughing, and turned towards the light.
What he saw made utterly no sense to him. Praying it was a stain spilt from his dream, he clambered to his feet.
But it wasn’t. The entire horizon was on fire; church steeples of flame clawed at the night sky. He felt his hands drop to his waist as though dead. The blaze was rushing at them from the south, less than half a mile away. As he watched the runaway inferno devour trees and leap thirty or even forty feet in a single stride, his attention turned to Shawu. To his relief, she was standing only a few yards to his right, her great body outlined in an orange glow. He snatched up the hammock and quickly stuffed it into his bag. A bush fire in hot and dry conditions was dangerous enough, he knew, but one fuelled by a powerful wind was something almost biblical. The sky was awash with panicked birds and bats, darting in every direction. When his eyes returned to the blaze, it had stolen another thirty yards at least. Large ribbons of ash, as if the heavens were peeling from the heat, fell over them like twists of blackened sawdust.
As the fire rushed forward, turning life to death, Derek slowly backed away. ‘Shawu!’ he shouted, unable to disguise the fear in his voice. ‘We’ve got to move … now!’
As they turned away, the fire watched them go.
And then followed.
Together with glimpses of buck and other fleeing shadows, Derek charged through the thick brush, trying to keep up with Shawu’s loping strides. Behind him the fire surged through the trees. He was moving as fast as he could, faster than he thought he was capable of, but still the red wall was gaining on them. Dry branches stabbed at his face and arms and a bitter smoke filled his lungs. Choking, he twice stumbled and fell, but immediately launched back onto his feet. To succumb to injury now would be to die.
As he pumped his arms, chasing over heavy and uneven ground, he knew that unlike the blaze his pace would soon relent. There was simply no way he could sustain the same breakneck speed. He was no match for a runaway bush fire. Nobody was. To survive, they would need a miracle. Nothing short of a violent thunderstorm, an instant deluge, or maybe an open field could spare them now. More out of hope than expectation, he looked up to the heavens but there were no clouds above them, no miraculous salvation. Only black smoke against the unblinking black eye of space.
As the strength seeped from his legs, he could no longer keep pace with Shawu. She eased away from him, her glowing shadow fading away into the night. He glanced over his shoulder and watched as fire spirals, like burning staircases, twisted towards him. Spittle from the inferno, carried like flaming seeds in the wind, gusted overhead and landed on the ground in front of him, spawning new fires. The blaze was surrounding him.
We’re not going to make it, he thought.
As the infant flames suckled at the dry grass, the inferno was now barely two hundred yards away. His eyes darted to Shawu and he realised, to his horror, that she had stopped and was looking back for him.
‘What’re you doing?’ he whispered. ‘Run, Shawu!’ he called out, gesturing wildly with his arms. ‘Run!’
She lifted up her front legs and drove them into the ground.
If she was trying to tell him something, he wasn’t getting it. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed again. ‘Get out of here! Go!’
Waving her trunk, she turned to her left and began to pan sideways – parallel to the blaze.
No, Derek thought. What the hell was she thinking? Her only chance was to push ahead, hoping for a section of rock, a thinning of th
e bush. Unless, it suddenly occurred to him, she was heading for water.
Ignoring his heaving chest and protesting muscles, he took off after her. He could hear tree bark and seedpods popping behind him. The fire was now a hundred yards away. He could feel its hot breath on his neck, feel it sucking at the air around him.
Sixty yards.
‘C’mon … c’mon … c’mon …’
Fifty.
He coughed again and blinked hard as the smoke burnt his eyes. They had to find water now or it was all over. And then, at the critical moment, something almost inconceivable happened: Shawu drew to a halt.
‘What?’ Derek said, his lips parting in disbelief. ‘What?’ He raised his hands to his head and watched, numbly, as the great elephant stood perfectly still, scanning the bush ahead of them.
He spun around. A wave of blue-and-red flame rose up towards them. Mesmerised, terrified, he was waiting for it to topple onto them when Shawu lurched forward. She charged through a patch of thick brush and small trees, her immense body clearing a path for him.
Derek turned and gave one last push. Either way, this was it. As he ran, the grass around his legs lit up like strings of detonator chord. He could feel the flames snapping at his clothes, snatching at his exposed flesh, when he noticed something.
The terrain was thinning out. The trees and tall grass were giving way to shorter brush and … what was that, his mind suddenly registered … mud? He glanced up in time to see Shawu descend down a shallow slope and then – he could hear her splashing through water.
His heart soared. He pushed his body for all it had left and then, somehow, he was splashing through a shallow lake no larger than a modest back yard. The choppy water was now a fractured mirror to the flames behind them. He quickly swam out into its centre, a few yards in front of Shawu, and turned to face the fire. He watched, breathlessly, as it did something impossible. Sailing on the back of the powerful wind, it arched its back over the small lake, reaching for the trees beyond it. For a few dreamlike moments the night was replaced by a spectacular fire sky. A blistering roof of molten flame that forced him to hunker down in the water.
Journey from Darkness Page 10