Not long into the hunt, the beast’s maniacal growl echoed and our porters and handler shed their loads and fled. Soon their screams were cut off into wet gurgles.
I watched, rifle ready, as Belzoni climbed off the elephant’s back. “G.B., what-”
“Shh,” he said, ears cocked, and then the terrible animal lunged from the undergrowth’s cover, claws and teeth bloody. Maddened with bloodlust, the tiger struck Belzoni and nearly brought him down, but the two tangled and rolled.
I held my fire.
Screeching its hatred or anger, the tiger sought to sink its wicked fangs into Belzoni’s neck, its claws raking his skin for purchase. But his massive arms and bulging muscles held it at bay, and slowly he brought his face into position to stare her down, while remaining out of the fangs’ range.
Hours, it seemed, they lay so embraced.
Belzoni’s muscles trembled, his body bathed in sweat and blood. Beneath him, the tiger seemed to deflate, as if its anger dissipated. Belzoni’s magician eyes held it spellbound, and slowly it loosened its death-grip, becoming as a housecat in disposition. Belzoni released one paw and I raised my rifle, but it only batted his hand aside playfully. He rubbed between its ears and I contend I heard it purring!
Belzoni whispered into one ear, gently extricating himself.
I scarcely believed G.B. had so easily tamed the monster of Goa.
Suddenly the giant’s arms bulged with effort and the great snap told me he had broken the beast’s neck.
“But how?” I stammered.
Belzoni rose wearily and saluted his fallen enemy. “You do not work the circus without learning a few tricks, eh, Hudson.”
Our holds filled, we departed Goa two days hence, sated from the celebrations. Thus Belzoni’s legend grew, and we added yet another port to our history together.
* * *
WE WERE LIKE LIONS
Published in EXTREMES 4: DARKEST AFRICA
Sweat tickles my neck and back.
The young uniformed guard - actually a soldier, complete with holstered sidearm - keeps my passport a long time, carefully holding it up so he can compare the photograph with my face the old-fashioned way, by setting them beside each other. He grunts and grudgingly admits they match, though that’s apparently not enough to allay his suspicions, for then he pages painstakingly through the entire booklet, examining every faded stamp and seal. Nearby, a second soldier holds a slung submachine gun’s grip in one hand and in the other the leash of a nervous German Shepherd, whose eyes dart over the comings and goings behind me but occasionally stare at me with placid hatred.
I’m reminded of how they treated me in Italy last year, when I made the mistake of arriving in the middle of the Aldo Moro kidnapping crisis. Milan’s Malpensa airport had been alive then with soldiers and dogs, scrutinizing every passenger and employee lest they be somehow affiliated with the Red Brigades. But in Milan I’d been assured by the local representative, who met me at the gate, that such show of force was unusual and clearly required by the circumstances, whereas here - here I am well aware that it is normal to harass Americans, especially those of African descent.
I look up and see the soldier staring, his blue eyes vivid over the light stubble on his cheeks. He doesn’t back down, the bastard, because he has all the power here and he knows it.
“American, eh?”
His accent just barely comes through, enough to remind me that I must keep cool even in the muggy terminal. This isn’t the place to display my famous temper.
“Yes. From California.”
“Purpose of visit?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?” His eyes narrow at this obvious deception on my part. He sneers. How can someone like me have business in his country, any sort of business?
“The firm I represent exports industrial machinery of various types. We were invited to visit several of your manufacturers to present our product line.”
The fact is, I’ve always been a fairly boring person. Brought up in a conservative environment and happy to pursue the daily details of my career without too much rancor. Sure, I know why I was chosen for the African itinerary - but I can’t fault the logic, even if it smacks of racism. At least, so I tell myself whenever the niggling thought that I might be copping out strikes again.
I watch this information sink in. The wait makes me nervous - maybe I’ve said too much. Or was I too vague? What does the soldier want, a list of my contacts? An itinerary? I prepare to present those very documents when he sighs deeply and in one swift motion skewers the open passport with some kind of pointed stamp and thrusts it back in my general direction, happy to be rid of me. His disgust is obvious.
Behind him, the Shepherd glares at me as if disappointed in the loss of a potential plaything. Both soldiers glare at me, probably because I’m still there. I gather up the passport hastily, nod, and resume walking the Customs line. I have no luggage for them to rifle through, so the looks from the counter are suspicious as I follow the signs - in Afrikaans and English -which lead me past the security block and into the terminal proper. I can sense someone else behind me coming under scrutiny, but he’s white and gets a cursory nod and stamp.
I sigh. I knew it would be like this, but I didn’t expect to feel it so soon after debarking the KLM flight.
A map of the airport proves I’m moving in the right direction. I snatch my single bag from the carousel, lucky to see it tumble out among the first, and soon I am breathing hot Johannesburg air. There’s no breeze, no movement whatsoever in the air, and the direct blast of the sun seems to bake me in my clothes. I feel the temperature of my skin rising rapidly, until all at once fresh sweat breaks out of every pore and soaks me in a sheen. Several taxi cabs ignore me, but one driven by an elderly black man takes pity. I duck inside and let the overworked, rattling air conditioning chill my sweat as I recline on the tattered upholstery.
“You are not from Jo-burg or even Cape Town, yes?”
“That’s right, I’m American.” I consult my paperwork briefly while he stares at me in his cracked mirror. “Uh, the Regent Hotel -” I reach for directions, stumble when I can’t find them.
“I know where it is!” he snaps and jerks the car into gear, spinning tires to get us moving into the sparse midday traffic.
I settle back, watching modern buildings rise and fall on the skyline, as often as not positioned next to flattened concrete pancake-shaped tenements and characterless blocks of glass. It’s an uneasy truce between old and new, with the new sometimes as ugly as the old. But as we reach what I consider the downtown area, the buildings seem to glitter more and the glass sparkles, and the concrete is no longer so featureless. Here the banks and exchanges and diamond brokers have constructed an Acropolis of modern beauty as European as anyplace north of the Mediterranean.
The temperature has equalized and I realize that it’s hot inside the cab, too, and my sweat’s clammy and pungent.
My eyes travel back to the mirror, where they meet the driver’s. “What’s the matter?” I don’t mean to sound belligerent, but I’m sure I must.
His eyes slide away from mine. He twitches the wheel. “Not’in’ the matter! You have much hair. Look funny.”
I touch the Afro. So normal at home and so out of place here, where everyone seems either bald or nearly so. Maybe I do look funny, but the irony of it doesn’t sit well. Not here.
The Regent looms outside, a refuge from the heat. I throw money at the cabbie who looks at me as if I came from a dog’s asshole, duck through the headache-inducing sun and dive for cover inside the lobby, where every white face turns toward me in quiet horror.
The desk clerk wants to avoid helping me, but can’t. The reservation said Jack Simon, American. Not Jack Simon, Black. I stand my ground after giving my name. The room key bounces off the counter and I scoop it up before it slides off. “Room 317, uh, sir.”
I nod. I have no words for him. He’ll snicker at me as I walk away, unhelped by the bellhop,
whose studied ignorance of my presence should ignite my anger but doesn’t. I carry my own bag, save a handful of Rands, and strike a blow for equality. What a laugh. Suddenly I can’t wait for the flight out, three days hence. I wonder if every encounter with a South African will end in disappointment, my disappointment.
At least I’m out of the sun.
My room overlooks a serious view of concrete rippling in the heat, but I spend two hours watching the darkness come with something like disgust raging in my belly.
Room service prices aren’t outrageous, but I don’t trust the kitchen. By now word’s spread - I was the only black face in the lobby, the only one I saw in this neighborhood, and by far the only one in a tailored suit. I’m not a fool. I know they’re not going to enjoy serving me dinner unless they can serve me some urine or feces or saliva, or worse, God knows. Hell, I know what slaves sometimes did to their masters’ food, and I’m in no mood to be at the other end.
The hotel has a back entrance, and I sidle through it with no real sense of irony. Well, maybe some. I wander streets populated by well-dressed, good-looking people seeking a lively night life in the cooler crispness of the African dusk. It’s my first time here, but I know it will be my last. The feelings are palpable in every face turned my way, in every set of eyes. I see myself reflected in them and it’s a fearful sight. I’m an outsider and a thing to hate - blindly hate - no matter what my passport says, or maybe because of it.
Before I know it the darkness has descended upon the city, and sirens blare from far away, though here are the sounds of merriment and laughter, music and theater. I walk further out of the safe circle and see more faces like mine, first a few but then there are only faces like mine and I should feel at home, but I don’t because they look at me as if I’ve shit in their food, too.
The sirens draw me farther out of the city. As if obeying a summons, I flag a taxi - a decrepit old Volkswagen bus crammed with poor and smelly laborers heading home or to work, blank of expression and therefore judgment. They ignore me, and I them, as we stop and release them into the streets like pus from a boil, and I am finally alone amidst their lingering smell, the last to leave the vehicle, but I don’t know where I am. It’s as if I have followed a summons.
I stare, awed by the sight.
The hillside is alive with bonfires and chanting and knots of people - very tall people - bouncing up and down while making a keening wail, a sound that wraps itself around my guts and squeezes gradually, increasing pressure until I think I’ll cease breathing. They hold rough, handmade spears, sticks, and once-blunt farm implements in their hands as they bob and rock and wail amongst the fires, and I see that the street has been torn up by hand and men and women - and children, too - tear fingernails bloody as they rip up concrete chunks and carry them away.
I turn toward someone standing nearby, the cabbie whose VW stands idling beside us. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“You came here and you don’t know?”
“You took me here!”
“You asked me, I drove. This is a good thing, a celebration.”
I feel my eyebrows raise of their own accord. “A celebration of what?”
Groups of men in colored shirts hop as one as if on pogo sticks, their weapons raised over their heads. Beside them, a throng of women and children clap their hands and wail, and the men add their counterpoint and the sound has a terrible beauty that will haunt me forever, but it’s not a joyful sound. It claws at my ears like some kind of jungle cat, like razor blades slashed downward on skin, zipping flesh open and into strips. I touch myself, expecting to feel blood. Sweat is all there is.
“A celebration of unity, of people coming together and raising one voice against their oppressors.” It’s a rehearsed speech, revolutionary rhetoric, but doesn’t feel that way.
Before I can respond I see a new wave of people joining the crowd, more men - laborers, their station and place given away by their dress - whose hands tear up concrete and pass the chunks like gold ingots to their fellows until it disappears somewhere deep within the throng.
“What-”
Sirens and lights suddenly fill the night and the crowd breaks, fleeing away from us, away from the street, or what’s left of it, and as police vehicles race toward us I feel an urge to run, too, because I look just like these people.
At the edge of the crowd, an ancient man in a leopard-skin headdress stands alone, facing us. A word from his lips and people stop their flight, turn back and watch impassively as the police vans arrive, three of them, then a fourth and fifth.
“I think we’d better get out of -” I say, but the cabbie isn’t listening. He’s thrusting his fist in the air rhythmically, and I realize that the crowd has begun to do the same as a wailing call and response rises from five thousand voices. Then the elderly man in the leopard-skin speaks a word, a syllable, a whisper, and a thousand hands rain down pieces of concrete upon the police vans and I see glass shatter and metal and plastic dent and the uniformed police, in the process of stepping out of their vehicles, are caught in a volley of flying concrete and duck or fall behind open doors and damaged quarter panels. An amplified voice erupts from behind the make-do barricades, shouting in Afrikaans and English and maybe one or two Bantu dialects.
“Go home! Drop your weapons and go home! You will be arrested and charged if you continue! Go to your homes!”
But the people do not stop. I turn to the cabbie. “What is it all about? Why are they angry?” I feel foolish, as if I should know.
He has to shout into my ear.
“They are poor and oppressed enough, and today the government has decreed that all public education will be in Afrikaans, the official language. This is unacceptable to even the most loyal tribal council, so today the people of many clans who live in Soweto unite to demonstrate their willingness to fight this ruling and resort to violence.”
We are in the midst of the crowd and ignored by the concrete throwers around us. More jagged pieces of street fly into the air and rain down on the hapless police, who’ve drawn their guns by now and will likely start shooting soon. I turn to ask another question, but the cabbie is gone. Not far below us on the hillside, a crowd of young men is overturning vehicles on the road. One after the other, cars which have nosed their way this far are picked up by calloused brown hands and heaved over onto their roofs, occupants still inside screaming as they are crushed or emerging from their accordioned vehicles to run until they are brought down by pursuing warriors. I blink. Warriors? All they are is demonstrators who now beat their helpless victims mercilessly. I see a man stumble past, one eye a gory black hole ringed by a mass of blood. A woman crawls from one of the vehicles, half her hair torn from her scalp and the rest covered in blood and brains. Not far from her a group of young men batters a limp, prone figure with bricks and poles.
I want to scream. What were you doing here, driving past this demonstration, this show of force? You deserve what you got. You deserve to die for upholding the injustice of this place! Goddamn you all!
The loudspeaker is still booming its message, but no one seems to listen as the chanting call and response continues, louder.
Suddenly I see the cabbie’s VW bus hurtling onto its side like the crest of a black wave crashing on a shore of fire, the men shouting with glee and immediately moving on toward the police cars. I wonder how long it will be before the loudspeaker stops and the gunfire begins. Seconds, I assume. My bowels clutch in anticipation.
Sound fades up and down in my ears. The rain of concrete stops and for a second all is still - the people turn as a group and stare down the hillside at their shantytown ghetto, at the rows of matchbox houses, the Soweto Projects, the tin-roofed nightmares that signify the best a corrupt government can do for the people it loathes, and already some of them have been fired, lit up with Molotov cocktails or firebrands from the hillside. And then the people utter a long, wailing sound that chills my spine even as it excites the blood flow to my head.
<
br /> It sounds like “Ooooooooooooooooooh!” A drawn-out ghost’s wail, a single vowel sound from way back in the throat.
I want to ask someone the meaning of this, but then it’s as if sudden understanding jolts my brain. The sound is the war-cry “Usutu!” drawn out, its last syllable gobbled by the dialect. As soon as it ends it begins again, swelling like a pipe organ chord on all stops and reaching an incredible pitch which warbles from thousands of male throats.
“Usuuuuuuuuutu!”
I turn and the old man, his grizzled short hair almost covered by the leopard-skin headdress, is right there in my face, his head no more than a foot away and his eyes locked with mine as if we are the only two standing on this hillside. I want to look away, to see what’s happening around us, but I can’t - I’m held in some kind of thrall by those dark, flashing eyes which seem to look straight through to my soul. He’s old, maybe ninety, yet he looks as fit as fifty, forty. The muscles in his arms bulge with health and his stomach is flat and his chest wide and hard, and then I realize that he is wearing a shawl of cow-tails and ostrich feathers, and his leopard headdress is fringed with colorful lourie feathers. Around his neck, the iziqu necklace, sign of royal recognition. His ingxotha armband, its battered metal ribs also a symbol of the king’s favor and achievement in war, swings before my eyes and catches the flickering light of a nearby gasoline-fed bonfire, and I feel dizzy with some sort of fever.
A voice in my head questions, wonders, inquires how it can be that I know what these things are the old man wears, but I can’t even begin to answer because then more sirens approach screeching and dozens of uniformed police swarm out of vehicles and form into ragged ranks, their riot gear glowing in the light of the fires, some of which are now furiously burning autos, including my friend’s VW bus. But he’s nowhere to be seen.
I turn away from the milling police, wondering what the people on the hillside will do, but the old man’s face is there again, his eyes boring into mine as if reading whatever’s written at the back of my brain - and for a second I think I feel his hand inside, kneading the squirmy, slithery grey dough. I see him split into two identical copies, one the intense isangoma - sorcerer-warrior - whose eyes burn into mine, and the other the old man whose attention is riveted on the knot of surrounded police thugs.
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