A Far Off Place

by Laurens Van Der Post

  Again a feeling that a tide had turned in his affairs came rushing back at him, so intoxicating that he rebuked himself for it in a typical African way, spitting out the thought on to the ground beside him before it could unbalance him and saying to himself, “Now remember, François, remember, the eye crosses the swollen river days before the body can.”

  Nonetheless he lay down comforted on his back, his haversack as a cushion under his head. Just before closing his eyes he looked up and saw the jet black face of a little bush ape with a fringe of shining silver hair round it and quick sparkling amber eyes, looking unbelievably wise and old, under a forehead wrinkled like that of a Chinese sage. It was staring down at him only two feet away, as if to say, “Now if I were you, I would not be sleeping there.” And then a fatigue that no anaesthetic could equal put him instantly to sleep.

  He could not tell how long he had slept when a high-pitched, urgent elephant trumpet call to arms woke him. Gun in hand, he was on his side and crawling round the boulder to look across the stream. The immense herd of elephant were still in the water but the scene was no longer as he had last seen it. Then the young baby elephants, shrieking and spluttering with delight, had been splashing round their mothers and he had seen one elephant mother proudly nudging another and pointing to her young as if to say, “Don’t you think he’s marvellous? Have you ever seen so young a child so advanced for his years and prodigiously intelligent?” Others had been scrubbing their young vigorously behind the ears and old and young bull sentries dotted up and down the line of bathers at a respectful distance from Hannibal were squirting fountains of water over their massive shoulders with their trunks until they looked clean and dark enough to have been carved out of Nubian granite for the hope and glory of the vanished Carthage.

  Instead, they were all standing motionless now in the pools of water, even and bright as glass polished by the heat of the day, and only their trunks were up and out searching the air for a whiff of whatever it was that had sent up that signal of alarm from Hannibal the Great. François had barely seen them thus, when Hannibal lifted his huge trunk once more to a sky white with heat. This time there could be no mistaking it. It was no longer a trumpet call to a stand-to but to scatter and be on the march, and on the march, moreover, at speed.

  Hannibal immediately set the example by rushing down the stream towards the main bulk of his herd, trumpeting and trumpeting again, but with his subjects bunching like sheep instead of scattering, as they headed for the only easy slope out of the bed of the stream into the bush above the steep bank. They were just beginning to enter the forest like a river of ink, when a score or more African soldiers led by an officer who was neither European nor African but of a race François could not recognise, appeared on the edge of the stream, just where Hannibal had been standing. Worse, barely a quarter of a mile below the herd struggling to escape in the narrow gap, another group of African soldiers came sliding out of the bush down the bank and filing out along the bed of the stream.

  François had no doubt then that his enemies had found his and Hintza’s spoor and more, found what he had feared most of all, the blood that must have dripped on to the grass and leaves in the beginning from Hintza’s wound. They would not have been able to tell whether it was his or Hintza’s blood but would have obviously been encouraged by the discovery to believe that with either one of them seriously wounded, they could not get far away and must be hidden somewhere near at hand. So that when they came to where the spoor of the two of them was rubbed out by the spoor of the elephants, they had not given up the search but had spread into two groups, one travelling to the left of the column of elephants, and the other to the right, convinced that somewhere on the flanks of the herd they would find traces that would finally lead them to François and Hintza. It was a terrible blow to his newly-born hopes, for it could only mean that the pursuit was not to be broken off until either he and Hintza were found, or the enemy was satisfied that they had made off in a direction of country in which they could not possibly survive for long.

  François had confirmation of this from the manner in which both groups moved out to the gravel in the bed of the stream, tired, frustrated and in a bad temper because they had not yet found their quarry, and were clearly perplexed over what next to do. Obviously they blamed even the elephants for their failure, for once they were all standing in a ragged line on the gravel, they did not wait for a command from their officers, who had produced field glasses and were methodically examining the bed of the stream up and along its opposite bank. Suddenly, in a way which may have surprised their officers, but not François, they started shooting at once into the herd of elephants struggling desperately up the banks towards the shelter of the bush.

  It was typical of Hannibal the Great that, as head of so great an order, responsible for so many women and children, he turned without hesitation to their defence. Up went his trunk and a sound of defiance burst out that thrilled François through and through with its lightning manliness, and brought Hintza up on to his three feet, the hair on end all along the ridge of his back and his long lips snarling and white teeth bared so that François had to put his arm round his shoulders to hold and calm him. Together they watched the great trunk swish down, immediately roll itself up to be tucked out of harm’s way firmly underneath Hannibal’s great chin. That done, Hannibal charged out of the water straight over the gravel towards the shooting men, his long tusks curved and gleaming in front of him.

  François had never longed more for some knowledge of the elephant language, which according to his old Bushman nurse Koba, was one of the most eloquent languages of the animals of the bush, so that he could have called out to Hannibal not to be so wonderfully and heroically foolish, but for the sake of them all to be brave in a new way and discard his pride of manhood and humbly go after his disappearing subjects. But knowing not a word of the only language that could have helped, he could just ask with his heart, as the Matabele say, for a miracle from life to deliver Hannibal from their common enemy. But it was asking in vain. As he asked it Hannibal slithered to a halt. Shaking his great head in confusion and staring with sheer unbelief at his knees that were beginning to buckle underneath him, he looked so unfairly and treacherously brought to judgement that tears came to François’s eyes. But from somewhere, from a depth of life François suspected such enemies could not be aware Hannibal summoned the power of the courage that is the core of the honour of the male, whether in plant, insect, bird, beast or man, to move to the attack again. But this time he just came to the edge of a pool François knew well as the pool he and Mopani had christened the “sea-cow pool”, after the name for hippopotamuses in their language, when scores of bullets hit him again. Only then did that vast marble head sink down on his chin. He staggered, halted, shuddered as he still obviously refused defeat, but then fell over into the deep pool, splintering the glass of its surface and sending its sparkling fragments flying upwards into the brilliant air. As his black body hit the water, he rolled over like a shattered battleship foundering and slowly went down and out of sight.

  The pity and the futility of it had already brought François close to tears but from somewhere deep in himself the feeling deposited there by ’Bamuthi’s last great “To me!” joined his feelings now to ask what could be the meaning of the word—futile—when futility was accompanied by a gesture that would remain with him for ever if he survived. He was certain he would, to his dying day, tell as a memorial of Hannibal the Great and all the countless forgotten manifestations of man in the life of Africa who when even all the odds were ranged against him, refused to aid any end imposed on him from without. For how otherwise could the living chain of being from the remote point in time, where once it only had position but no size or magnitude, remain unbroken up to this perilous sunlit moment that had just witnessed the latest summing-up and transfiguration of the record of them all by Hannibal?

  Through blurred eyes François looked beyond the pool into which Hannibal had vani
shed. There two young bulls were trying with their tusks to help a wounded cow up on to the bank and into the bush where the last survivors were just vanishing. A sustained burst of fire from the soldiers brought them down as he looked, and all three rolled down the bank to lie ashen with dust like bundles of dirty laundry dropped on the gravel for washing in the stream.

  “So it’s not over yet,” François whispered in the bitterest of tones to Hintza. “They’re obviously going to keep at it until they find us, Hin, so the sooner you and I are on our way the better. For I’m not going to let them. I’m so sorry, you poor little old goggatjie. I so wanted you to have a proper rest before going on and to tell you the truth, I could do with more of it myself. But what can we do with so many rude, uninvited and ill-behaved guests about, except to abandon the party to them and be on our way?”

  He deliberately tried to lift his last sentence into a lighter, almost jesting key, but wondered whether it had helped as far as he himself was concerned. Looking at those soldiers swarming towards Hannibal and a score of elephant corpses, knives in hand and obviously preparing, whatever their officers were going to say, for a great feast of elephant meat before moving on, he suddenly remembered the Scottish officer as he had watched him by the fire.

  He wished that he had him there beside him, so that he could rub his fine ethical nose in what had just happened, belabouring him with feelings to some such effect as, “So much for the campaign of limited violence you and your church’s conscience demanded! Limited, my tired-out foot! You can’t even limit yourself to killing human beings indiscriminately but have to spill over the hatred that’s in the lot of you on to elephants that have never done you any harm. Don’t tell me they did it for food. One quarter of just one elephant would have fed that lot for days and look, there are twenty or more of them dead. Dear God—not your sociological god, Mr Conscience Scot, but the God that is also in Mantis and Umkulunkulu and known by a thousand and one names and sounds and colours in this his bush—this dear God of us all, please make an end to this evil and killing!”

  Feeling all this and more he came to his knees to gather his possessions for an immediate departure. There above him again was the face of that little, wise, young-old ape, looking down at him but this time with an expression of, “you see, I told you it was not a place I myself would have picked for a nap. What a pity you humans do not listen more to the apes in yourselves, little cousin, for surely you would not deny now that we have a special relationship, would you?”

  The look was as sympathetic as it was sardonic and this slight sign from life that he was not the only witness to disapprove of what had happened helped him out of all proportion to its size.

  “Come, Hin,” he whispered, “follow me. Straight into the bush here and we’ll get away long before those men there are ready to follow.”

  The track François proposed following led straight up the flank of the range that separated him from the gorge in which Xhabbo should by now be sheltering. Indeed, it should pass right over the shoulder of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill itself, if he remembered rightly. Fortunately too it was a rough and stoney track. He had no fear that, provided he went carefully, they would leave obvious signs on it for their enemies to find, particularly as Hintza’s wound was now so well bound and no longer bleeding. It was true that sooner or later they must find and follow the track itself, because it was the only one out of the river bed for miles around. They would follow it however, he was certain, more by guessing because from what he had seen of their behaviour down by the river, they would be so full of food and frustration that they would take to it not out of any enthusiastic conviction so much as a reluctant sense of duty.

  So both for the sake of his own exhausted self and Hintza’s wound, he climbed slowly up the winding track. Every now and then he would clamber on a rock or climb a tree where he would survey the river bed below. He would see the smoke of several fires on the gravel under the shadiest banks where the soldiers were no doubt cooking their fillets of elephant steaks. The last vision he had of them as the sun was beginning to sink in the West, was of their fires still smoking. A hope that was clear enough almost to be a certainty came to him that the soldiers might bed down there for the night before re-starting their search in the morning. They could well persuade themselves, in such an over-fed state, that after the blood they had seen, he and Hintza had to be near and ready for the taking.

  Once over the saddle of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill, he deliberately gave the enemy no further thought, but concentrated on the problem of establishing contact with Xhabbo who would be expecting him from the opposite direction. Fortunately the answer to this one appeared not difficult. Just as the sun was about to go down, red as it had been red on the morning of Heitse-Eibib in the dark ages behind him, at a moment when Hintza for all his lack of complaining had to be forced to rest, because François saw him foaming at the mouth with pain and exhaustion, he came to the edge of the great wreath of rock near the place where Xhabbo should be hiding. There, without hesitation, he stopped and uttered the call of jackal and plover in the succession which had been their own password for so long. He waited and no answer came. So tired was he and so many frustrations and disappointments were behind him that he despaired even of this call on which he had banked so much, particularly when he considered how discredited it had been earlier in the day. It was only with a great effort of will that he could persuade himself to try it a second time. Again he waited and no answer came.

  “I might have known it,” he muttered bitterly to himself. “It just won’t work. I think Hintza and I had better find a place to settle down for the night by ourselves.”

  He had hardly concluded that when from the side and just behind him there was a thud as of naked feet coming down from a height on to the track. He swung round, his rifle instantly at his shoulder and ready to shoot. There, smiling a smile which François thought was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen was Xhabbo, exclaiming, “Oh Foot of the Day, forgive Xhabbo for although feeling that call came from you, feeling yourself to be both jackal and plover in a way which fox and plover feel themselves to be so on account of it, Xhabbo had to make certain. Foot of the Day, we all live again.”

  * * *

  fn1 Goggatjie, diminutive of goggo, the Bushman generic term for insects of the creepiest kind, and paradoxically the greatest form of endearment.

  fn2 Founder of the Matabele nation.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lamb-snatcher’s Hill

  FRANÇOIS AND HINTZA, responsibility for themselves surrendered into Xhabbo’s capable hands, were so overcome, François with an exhaustion as emotional as it was physical, and Hintza both with exhaustion and pain, that they were incapable of taking in any of the detail when they arrived at the shelter which Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara and Nonnie had already prepared deep under a vast overhang of rock near the summit of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill.

  But there was nothing in the slightest degree vague in the way that the two girls watched their arrival. They had, it is true, come far themselves, and known moments of great peril on the hill, greater even than Xhabbo had realised when the first shouts of warning had gone up from their enemies. They had seen, dismayed, from the place in the earth between the boulders where Xhabbo had forced them to lie down, the dark shadows of far more men appearing from all round them than even Xhabbo and his tapping had anticipated. Indeed they had rushed by them so close and in such numbers that they could not believe that they themselves would not be discovered. But then as the rush receded and they peered between the boulders, and heard not only the silence broken by sustained rifle-fire but saw the dark pierced with the red thrust of the pointed flame that followed each shot, the impossible seemed to have happened. They themselves were safe for the moment but that was of no comfort to any of them. Nonnie’s feelings and the heights of which they were capable could only be understood through a proper regard to the depth of anxiety and fear into which they could plunge. She could not possibly conceive how Fran
çois and Hintza could have survived such cataclysmic shooting. Her spirit which was as bright and brave as any young, inexperienced spirit can be, abandoned her to such an extent that, despite all her conscious pre-determination to the contrary, she had no thought of going on with the journey. She had, instead, an overwhelming compulsion to go out, no matter what the consequences, search for the bodies of François and Hintza and look on them for the last time. Nothing else mattered to her and she had no care or wish for any part in what could lie ahead.

  But at this point, she felt Xhabbo’s hand very gently stroking the back of her head. After stroking it, the hand turned it sideways in his direction and Xhabbo whispered in her ear a word which she had already learned the previous day from Nuin-Tara: the Bushman word for good, whispered it over and over again and followed all up with a smile wide and white, even in the dark. Also he made signs indicating that if François and Hintza had been killed or found, the shooting would not be going on so furiously as it was on the far side of the hill. All that could only mean that François had drawn the enemy away from the three of them and he and Hintza must be well on their way to safety now.