by Ruth Hartley
“I can’t see how you can do that,” Lara said, outspoken as ever. “What about the paintings that I do for you at the Tin Heart Camp, Oscar? How much freedom do I have to experiment or will you want standard conventional wildlife art?”
“We’ll talk about it together over those four months,” Oscar replied. “The drawings for the brochure have of necessity to be clear and descriptive but the paintings – well we will see as they progress. I like the idea of seeing work that is new and not derivative. I think you are very gifted, Lara, at seeing things in new ways.”
Lara’s thought returned to the present and the problems of the Tin Heart Safari Camp.
“Your project does worry me,” she said. “I think that you will have problems getting clients. Bill and Maria get clients who seem very conventional and some are rather racist. I think they place more trust in white-run safaris.”
Oscar shook his head.
“We’re looking at new markets. There are Afro-Americans from the States now who are looking at visiting wildlife reserves and there are also people from the Middle-East and even Latin America. Yes – it’s a small market but it is there.”
“Don’t some of those people also like hunting – isn’t that a problem?”
Once more Oscar shook his head.
“I myself very strongly draw the line at hunting and killing wild animals,” he said. “Maybe some of our clients will also want to go onto hunting camps but there won’t be any direct connection between Tin Heart Camp and hunting, I promise you. I don’t need to tell you that if the hunting safaris are well organised and ethically run they help to protect game reserves like ours but it is often a complex and fluid relationship. There is too much emphasis on the importance of the ‘Big Five’ – lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino and leopard – we should encourage safaris to see insects, birds and trees – in fact the whole ecosystem. They, after all, sustain the bigger wild animals.”
Lara looked at Oscar with admiration. She liked the sound of his plans. It struck her suddenly that it was odd that he had no pets at his ranch.
“Why don’t you have any dogs and cats at Kasenga Ranch?” she asked
“It wouldn’t be fair to have a dog when I am away so much,” he answered. “And I cannot stand domestic cats.”
Chapter Seven
Helen
“It feels like the last place on earth.”
Lara pushed her hand forward, palm out, fingers flat against an imagined resistance as she explained her painting to Helen.
“There are no roads, no visible human tracks beyond this line of trees. Even the game paths can’t be seen crossing through the tall grasses of the plains. The ground rises at such a slow and constant angle that your eye gives out before it can see the far horizon.”
“Here, at this latitude, you stare northwards at a distant light-filled infinity that is not interrupted by sunrise or sunset.”
Lara hesitated and stopped, engulfed by memory. She felt the immense aloneness surrounding her. The deaf sky humming over the resonant grasses. She was back in the bush alone working at her easel.
Helen’s glance was sharp as she angled it briefly away from the painting towards Lara.
“So this one is also going in the exhibition?”
“Yes.” said Lara, “I am ready to let it go. Really! It is finished and I have lived with it long enough.”
She dropped her hand onto the pliant canvas and stroked the painting upwards from the impasto of the olive green shaded grove of trees to the thinning scumbled silvery brush marks of the wind-lit shifting grasses of the Great Plain.
Readiness is all, some poet said – Lara had felt ready for a while. God knows it’s taken me a long enough time to reach this point and to bring these paintings to completion. Hard to let them go too. Each one is a child sent out to face the world. It takes a long time to feel that I can let even one go with some confidence.
Helen said, “They’ll sell, I think – but not to your regular customers. They may feel betrayed. They don’t like their favourite artists to change style or to challenge them with new ideas.”
Lara shrugged thinking first of herself and Jason, then of Tim and Liseli.
Betrayal is not new to me. Believe it! The people who buy my art don’t own my soul. I am tired of people who think they have bought a controlling share of me when they buy one of my paintings.
Reading Lara’s thoughts, Helen smiled and her giant jewelled earrings flashed and shook noisily.
“We need your regular buyers, Lara. It’s hard work building a new clientèle.’
“Oh Helen – you wonderful woman – what would I do without you!”
Lara bent to kiss Helen on both cheeks and to hug her short solid body.
“Without you, Helen, all my art would be stacked in my studio and lost to the world – and you still manage to stay my friend in spite of all the trouble I give you!”
“There you go, Lara.” Helen smiled, “It’s all about love of art, love of money and love of hard work! What else makes the world go round?
Chapter Eight
Flying
Three weeks before her solo exhibition Oscar flew Lara up to the Tin Heart Camp on a one day trip.
“Natan and I have got some business to sort out with a local headman at Busanga,” Oscar had said when he proposed the trip to Lara.
“Natan can’t spare much time so we’ll fly up to the camp site at Kasama and he and I will drive to Busanga from there. We’ll leave at first light from the airstrip at my ranch, arrive at the camp about 8 a.m. for breakfast – that gives us six hours in total. An hour plus to reach the village and chat to this chap – that’ll take most of the time – then back to the camp – another hour plus. We have to be back in Chambeshi City before the sun sets. Curfews and flight permissions all sorted.”
“If you like you can come up with us – we’ll have to leave you at the camp site. No uninvited guests allowed at our meeting I’m afraid, but it will give you a chance to look around the camp and see how you feel about it and the paintings you might want to do.”
Lara, surprised to feel uncertain and shy about the invitation, said yes in her most positive way. She felt a strong antipathy for Natan. It was unusual for her to dislike anyone so much. Was she glad not to be making the trip alone with Oscar or was she a little disappointed? Oscar had made her feel special, as if she was the centre of his attention when he had been with her before. On this trip though, she was just to be the hanger-on, the spare part.
Reasonable enough, Lara thought, I am rather in the position of an employee.
Well, she was used to being independent. It would be lovely to be back in the bush even if it was just for a day and she had never flown in a small plane before. That would be exciting.
It was.
Lara, dressed in her light slacks and bush jacket, arrived in good time, with her camera, binoculars, hat, insect repellent and sketch books all packed in her rucksack. Natan ignored her. Oscar greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks and then gestured at the tray of coffee on his desk.
“Help yourself. Use the bathroom. I’ll do the flight checks. We’re off in 10 minutes.”
The plane felt small and fragile when Lara climbed into it. She knew it had to be light to take off but the thin materials of its fabrication and its delicate struts filled her with doubt. The engine, however, proved both powerful and deafening even with ear protectors on. Surely the plane must rattle itself to bits very soon. Conversation was obviously impossible but Lara was isolated in the back seat behind Oscar and Natan. Oscar turned to her, smiled and gave a thumbs-up sign. Natan just stared ahead. The plane shuddered and bumped its way down the grass airstrip. Lara felt heavier with every dragging judder then there was a sudden lift, a momentary weightless sensation, the engine note changed and they were flying above Chambeshi
towards the Tin Heart Camp. Lara was entranced. She could view her beloved Chambeshi from the perspective of the red-tailed kites and snake eagles who had circled above her when she had been in the bush with Jason.
The light aircraft banked away from Chambeshi’s grey shanty towns. The ramshackle huts lay low, hidden under dust and smoke and surrounded by webs of broken pot-holed dirt tracks on which ant-like people journeyed in search of work and food. Clumped at the edge of the tarred roads were beetle-sized coaches and squat maggot minibuses that flicked out wing-like doors to swallow up those commuters who had paper money for fares. Behind Lara in the rising sun, Chambeshi City’s few skyscrapers glistened with a deceptive, but enticing beauty. The plane climbed steadily, its route taking them over ransacked vegetable gardens and empty fields prickled with the stalks of old dry crops. Further out, the ochre earth was smoothed and flattened by the sun or blackened by fires that had been lit to flush mice and rats into traps for food.
At last they reached their maximum height and the plane levelled out. The first half of their flight would follow the power lines on their northward march to the copper mines. Next they would turn north-west to fly up the Kasama River as it twisted over rapids on its sheltered journey through hills and valleys. Finally the plane would reach the start of the endless flood plains above the escarpment, the site of the safari camp and Oscar’s gold mine.
Away from the city Chambeshi was all green and gold, its yellowing grass still thick and high. Under the trees, Lara saw long dark shadows first point south-west towards the camp then gradually rotate south and grow shorter. At midday they would hide themselves under the leafy crowns of the brachystegia forest. She gazed in wonder and delight, her eyes devouring the terrain below her, absorbing and learning its geography. She saw country roads, a satellite station, large irrigated farms, little settlements, thatched villages, earth dams and small streams all relating to the physical logic of the landscape. From her viewpoint above Chambeshi she could understand how and why people had chosen to occupy particular places in the natural world. What swelled Lara’s heart with pleasure was the thought of the enormous stretches of wilderness that lay ahead of her. Wildernesses where perhaps wild animals could still live untrammelled lives without fear of humans and guns.
Oscar, turning to Lara, pointed out elephants and large herds of springbok, antelope and zebra. Lara realised with a sense of exclusion that he and Natan had been talking to each other through communicating headphones but the immediate excitement of seeing the game below her put that feeling out of her mind.
They were approaching the camp much too soon for Lara and much too fast for her to take it all in as she would have liked. The first thing she saw was an ugly man-made structure and a huge raw oval wound in the green of the woodland. It was the jagged headgear of the mine poking up at the sky and the scarred red gash of bare poisoned earth of tailings below it. Next, Lara had glimpses of the broad river gleaming among rocks and trees. As they banked over it she saw the horizon open up northwards into the vast treeless Kasenga Plains. Immediately below was a cleared space with a circle of thatched buildings that must be the camp site. Instead of floating peacefully in a muted sky, the Cessna had begun a noisy pell-mell rush towards the ground. Oscar made two low passes over the grass airfield to clear it of wild animals. As they turned for their final approach, Lara saw that a Land Cruiser had left the camp and was making its bumpy way towards them. A man waved from the driver’s seat. Lara held her breath while the plane slowed, seemed to hesitate, landed, lurched awkwardly, then jolted and swayed over the rough ground towards the tree line and the approaching vehicle. Oscar cut the engine and the vibrating silence and stillness of the African bush engulfed them. Glad at last to stretch and move, Lara climbed out of the plane into the bright sunshine and a hot scent-laden breeze and knew this was where she belonged and this was what inspired her art.
Mainza Mbala, the camp manager, had come to meet them. A breakfast of egg and bacon was being cooked right now and would be served in the dining room overlooking the river, he said, smiling and shaking hands with each of them in turn. The Land Cruiser was ready for Natan and Oscar’s expedition and an armed game guard was waiting to accompany Lara if she wanted to make any excursions beyond the camp perimeter during the day. Oscar had arranged for everyone’s needs to be met. Hunger made the excellent breakfast taste more delicious and disappear rapidly. Oscar and Natan wasted no time in leaving on their mission; the camp staff returned to their chores and Lara was soon alone. It was strange being left to her own devices but Lara had already talked to Oscar about the camp and the places that he wanted her to paint the week before. First she asked Mainza to show her the camp and explain its situation and what animals would be found in its vicinity. Then she familiarised herself with the immediate river bank and established how it fitted into the local geography from her memories of what she had seen from the Cessna. She took photos and made notes and sketches. Her Polaroid camera would give her instant images but the quality would be poor. Better photos from her Nikon would have to be developed and printed back in the city. She observed places where hippos had left the river at night, noticed the dung and the spoor of wild creatures who wandered around the camp, made notes of the birds she saw, and delighted in the bird calls. The sounds of cicadas and crickets, the movements and rustles of grasses and leaves under the sun’s dry heat and the wind’s secret forays through branches and bushes provided the familiar background sound texture to her wanderings. Lara came alive, all of her senses sharpened. Even inside the camp fence it was necessary to take care, not only to avoid disturbing a snake, but in order not to miss the opportunity of seeing a leguvaan, turning its beady slitted eye on her before sliding into a hole in search of prey, or of glimpsing a sun squirrel skip behind a branch on its way to find food high above her. She tried sketching birds, but a crested barbet flew off too quickly. Following the sound of its call, she had walked a short distance off the road and come again to the river bank. She was watching a pied kingfisher dive into the river when her skin prickled, she turned her head very slightly and then kept very still as three elephants entered the river only ten metres downstream from her. Their leader was a giant bull whose huge asymmetrical tusks made his appearance quite distinctive. The river was deep at this point, its surface smooth and unbroken by ripples yet the elephants walked steadily and unhesitatingly at an angle across to the opposite bank. Lara saw the lower part of their limbs and the ends of their trunks darken and gleam in the water. The three stately beasts apparently walked on the deep river’s surface but they knew, and had always known, that a sunken ridge of rock made a ford for them at that point. They went without haste, without a sound and vanished into the thick riverine forest opposite.
“Thank you, God thank you!” Lara said. It was a gift, this beautiful visitation. Had she seen them or imagined them? The water was smooth again. The rocks where the elephants climbed out of the river were already drying. Elephants move through a forest without a sound. These three were once again silent and invisible to her. Minutes later Lara heard the ripping and tearing of the upper branches of the Ilala palm trees as they fed on the leaves. Of the elephants there was no other sign.
Back at the camp, Lara told the camp manager Mainza about the leading elephant.
“That is the one that Mr Njobvu calls the ‘Old Chief’.” Mainza said smiling with pride. “Mr Njobvu says that he is very special, that bull, and that he brings blessings to the Tin Heart Camp and our camp here. Mr Njobvu’s ancestors are the people of the elephant. That is how it is.”
Chapter Nine
The Tin Heart Gold Mine
It was midday and very hot. Normally this would be a time to rest but Lara had to be ready to leave when Oscar and Natan returned from their trip so she knew she would have to go out sketching in the heat. Mainza had arranged a light salad for her lunch. Tembo Chulu was standing ready to drive her out of the camp to take photos of the mine
and then a short way from the river to a viewpoint above the camp and last to some rapids beyond the camp. Lara didn’t know if it was the deadening effect of the heat and the beer shandy she had rashly indulged in with her food, but she found the mine site thoroughly oppressive.
The heat of the African bush is oppressive at midday but it is green and still without obvious movement. All living creatures hide in the darkest shade they can find. They are followed by flies and biting insects whose incessant hum and buzz quieten as they settle down to feast on animal blood. The mine site, however, was an organised monster of rusted metal rearing its hoists and gears up over the grills and boxes that guarded the pumps and mine shaft. It stood menacingly in the midst of a great open sore of bare and empty earth that ate its way into the surrounding forest. Lara felt it might move, that it was alive with some vile and sinister spite. On the tree line skulked two grim grey shapes made of concrete blocks and roofed with corrugated iron sheets. The heat and devastation of the place, intensified by its burning hot metal structure, made Lara’s head ache. Oscar wanted a painting of it nonetheless. How would she interpret this place? Would he like the way she painted its harsh ugliness? A pump was still working at the mine, pumping a thin stream of orange coloured froth into the milky-blue lake in the bottom of the bare blood-coloured oval hollow that lay between the mine and the river.
Tembo shook his head, fattening out his bottom lip expressively. His loaded gun rested casually against his shoulder, pointing safely upwards.