Confident that its message could not fail to penetrate and induce instant compliance, the bird repeated the call on the same note a number of times, but when to its obvious astonishment it appeared to be either not heard or understood, it fluttered out from the bush in a quick, dipping movement and into the open to settle only a few yards away. Recognising Xhabbo from his colour to be a man of the human species who loved honey above all other edible things; it sat there unafraid repeating its call, convinced that the sound combined with the sight of the unobtrusive livery which only a herald of the greatest distinction could afford to wear, must succeed.
But as even this combined appeal failed, it lost patience and gradually its impatience assumed proportions that threatened to burst its white little throat with the uprush of sound. Quick and wise as birds, beasts and insects are in the ways of men of the bush and desert, as a consequence of their millenniums of natural co-existence, it seemed to know that the copper-coloured shape of man glistening like polished metal in the westering sun between those blue-grey boulders, barely a trembling wing’s-stretch away, was terribly tempted to come after it and harvest the honey they both so ardently desired. But to the bird’s growing amazement, which soon overshadowed its indignation, the copper-coloured shape made no move in its direction.
After an hour of the most eloquent, the most enchanted and siren-like enticement of which a honey-guide had ever been capable, the call was transformed, and in a glittering silver crescendo achieved a grand finale which amounted to an unmistakable pronouncement that Xhabbo’s behaviour had imperilled the most wonderful relationship ever evolved between bird and man, and that it would be compelled to submit itself to an agonising reappraisal of this ancient alliance between the honey-guides of the bush and copper-coloured man. On this portentous, Wagnerian note, just as the long, level light in the west was beginning to prepare the day for twilight and to throw long shadows all round them, the little bird flew away in a shower of apocalyptic sound.
Xhabbo was as relieved then that temptation was behind him as he was guilty over not having answered the bird’s summons, which he would normally have felt in honour and self-interest bound to obey. This partnership between Xhabbo and his kind and the honey-guide, was not only unique in the history of all the many and varied relationships that human beings have with other forms of natural life, but also possessed a magical and rare religious quality. For these relationships, on the whole, are one-sided and imposed by man on the birds, the animals, the insects and even microbiological forms of life for wilful and selfish ends. However much he might try to mitigate these elements in his more enlightened moments, and redeem compulsion by being as considerate as he can in his demands, one has only to look in the eyes of, for instance, the animals he has domesticated, to see that the compensations he offers in return for services rendered, are not enough. For those eyes, when they are not on their guard and focused in the service of his bidding, like those of the dogs that follow at his heels, the horses munching in his stables and the cows in his meadows, amaze and confound one with the sadness glowing at the far end of the long look that goes back to their remote beginning.
For human eyes that are still open to these things, it is a sadness that emanates from a nostalgia for a time when they were not enslaved but were free to be their immediate, instinctive selves. For ears that can hear, this nostalgia is there even in their voices, for what can be less joyful than the bleating of the sheep that is the ultimate in subjection to man? There is the pitiful nicker at night of horses haunted by dreams of their birthright of freedom exchanged for a mess of oats and straw and the security of luxurious stables. There is also the sound of cock-crow that has become part of the music of self-betrayal. In all these there is expression both of a persistent incurable sickness for the wilderness that was their garden in the beginning, and reproach to powerful men who have malformed a natural kinship and put an unnatural totalitarianism in its place.
But this partnership of the honey-guide and man differs from all others because it is voluntary, free and equal, formed out of a sense of mutual obligation to a common purpose of life and love of the honey that is the product of the purpose—honey that in its sweetness and capacity for transforming what is bitter and unpalatable in the raw material of life into something not just palatable but eminently desirable. It is proof miraculous of what life could become when a sense of common purpose and interdependence of all living and existing things recognised and wholeheartedly served. To see the honey-guide as Xhabbo saw it on that golden afternoon in its great, dark surround of peril, is to observe how free the relationship is and how the tiny bird spoke its meaning to him frankly without fear or favour.
One cannot, of course, vouch for the mind of the bird although the vivid instinct which makes it call on man seems to be evidence enough. But one can speak for Xhabbo and say without reservation that as a result honey to him and his fellow men was more than food. It was a substance of a mystical kind, which in the eating was transubstantiated in the blood of the eater to become a thing of spirit, making him a different person. As one ate, so one became, and for him it was therefore, however instinctive and unconscious the deed, an act of as great meaning as the sacrament in which bread and wine are believed to be transubstantiated into living flesh and blood. This translucent image of the role of honey in this partnership is held without hesitation. It is the bee that produces the honey and whose ways Solomon in all his glory exhorted the men of his day to study in order to be wise. It is itself involved in partnership with flowers, plants and matter, so that it plays a great, intermediary role in bringing together in a single, creative purpose, four dimensions of reality that would otherwise have been separate. For in the act of culling the flowers of which there were so many among the fragrant bushes, plants and herbs that cover so densely the slopes and summit of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill, the bee is engaged in labour not just for itself and its own kind but on behalf of all creation. It carries fertilising pollen from one growth to another, joining the feminine in one growth to the masculine in another, so that if it had not been for it and its detailed, unceasing and minute industry, the flowers and plants would not have multiplied but perished, divided and alone in that great, natural setting.
The end of all considerations, therefore, must be that the honey which enables the bee to provide for the survival of its own kind and the procreation of plants and trees as well as producing food for the delight and sweetening of the spirit of man and bird, confirms that despite all the rigour, the exaction, the pain, the suffering, the insecurity, frustration and defeat momentarily incurred, the business of living can be transfigured in an achievement of meaning greater than either happiness or unhappiness.
All these things of course worked on Xhabbo not as rational concepts or organised dogma, but as feelings derived from the most vivid of instincts of which a human being is capable. The pull of these feelings were all the more powerful because of his recollection of occasions before the brutal African invasion and the ruthless dispersal of his people in that part of the world, when he had as a child spent days with his father and his clan on Lamb-snatcher’s Hill. He remembered how, at this very hour of the evening with the sun yellowing in the west, they would follow the honey-guide to one of the many deep crevices in the wreath of the peacock-blue rocks around the summit of the hill, and in the heavy shadows there, hear the strands of its ironstone vibrate with the humming of the hosannas of thousands of bees returning home heavily laden with the juice of a flower in which Lamb-snatcher’s Hill specialised. This flower was called the “Touch-me-not” flower. It was shaped like a long horn, wide at the mouth but tapering towards a deep, pointed end. The mouth was a silky, delicate crinoline of bright shocking pink, elegantly indented along its round, turned-over edges with a warm translucent yellow beyond, so that one could see the shadow of its contents rising almost to the brim. These formed a black syrup that even in its untransubstantiated state was sweet, and the horn of the flower would be so ful
l that should one brush it in passing, it would spill and waste its heavy, quintessential molasses either on the skin of the passer or on the ground at its feet. Hence the name, “Touch-me-not” flower.
Seeing the flower, all Bushmen would be reminded by the name of its nature and role, and so take special care not to waste contents that were there for the delight not only of the flower but of man, bird, insect and animal. Listening to the final crescendo of the bird about to depart, outraged and bitter with resentment, Xhabbo could see in his memory, the crevices down there below him as they had been in the golden past with the long combs of honey hanging full and dripping from the ceilings, and glowing in the deep shadows like segments of a just risen and full desert moon.
These memories, combined with the grim warnings of what happens to human beings who refuse or deceive the honey-guide, which are impressed on every Bushman from earliest childhood, argued so eloquently inside him for compliance with the bird’s summons that he might have been compelled to obey in the end, had he not just then seen on the slope towards the valley, where the smoke from many fires was still standing tall and steady, signs that something unusual was slowly and carefully coming up towards the shoulder of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill. That was decisive. Odysseus-like, he bound his straining, honey-inebriated senses firmly to the demands of duty and refused that siren bird, to continue his watch until he was certain, yes absolutely certain, that something unusual was moving slowly up the slope.
He dared not let the obvious hope induced by this certainty influence the extreme caution which his special responsibility exacted. He left immediately to hurry down to the shelter in order to warn Nuin-Tara and Nonnie to leave and hide in the bush around, in case that movement came not from what he hoped but from some subtle members of the enemy who had discovered their secret and were working their way towards the summit.
The need for quick action was great. Yet the sight of Nuin-Tara and Nonnie in that attitude already described, made him stand silent for a moment observing them. He, more than either Nonnie or François, had of course been aware of Nuin-Tara’s reservations about Nonnie. He had said nothing about it, not even to Nuin-Tara, but nonetheless, amid all the other more immediate and dangerous problems that confronted him, it had secretly caused him much concern. He knew how harmony between people was vital to survival in such dangerous circumstances. Even in so peaceful a pursuit as hunting it was a closely observed practice not to set out with men whom one did not like much, let alone of whom one actively disapproved, because it was well known that even so slight a lack of sympathy tended to exclude one from the sympathy of nature for one’s cause. On dangerous missions when men would be thrown into one another’s company for months on end, the members were always carefully selected with this precept in mind. Everyone knew how discord among them would inevitably act as a magnet for the accident and disaster always latent in chance and circumstance in the desert. So he greatly feared the consequence of any lack of sympathy between Nuin-Tara and Nonnie, seeing how closely the four of them would be thrown together if and when they broke out of that terrible trap in which they were caught and started their long and uncertain journey to safety.
So he stood there watching the two of them with relief and true happiness that the person whom he regarded as “utterly Foot of the Day’s woman” at last appeared at one with “utterly his own woman”. He would have walked away to leave them like that longer if his sense of duty had not compelled him to interrupt softly in Bushman. Softly as he spoke, Nuin-Tara knew from the words, Nonnie from the tone, that something of great significance had occurred. Since all things significant in Nonnie’s experience in recent days had had such unpleasant meanings, she drew apart from Nuin-Tara and listened, startled, to their exchanges, eyes wide and bright with new fear. The fear was heightened when Nuin-Tara signalled to her to snatch up a field flask of water. Grasping one herself, she hastened to lead Nonnie’off into the bush for some hundred yards down the slope. There she made Nonnie lie down beside her and signed to her to keep silent and still so that not a rustle of leaf or vibration of stem could betray them.
Meanwhile, Xhabbo took up his spear, his bow and arrows and went noiselessly to the point where the track, perceptible only to the eyes of Bushman who had known it, met the clearly defined track leading up out of the river bed over the saddle and into the gorge below. There he chose a position on top of a large, flat boulder, deep in the lengthening sunset shadow cast by the summit of Lamb-snatcher’s Hill. Carefully because of its poisoned tip, he extracted his favourite arrow from a quiver full of twelve which he always carried slung across his left shoulder. He took his bow, tested the cord like a harpist the strings of his harp but without twanging it as he would normally have done, in case it could be heard by whatever was coming up the hill. The test was entirely to his satisfaction. He shifted the sling of his quiver from left to right shoulder, so that he could extract arrows from it most easily by just raising his right arm and stretching over his right shoulder. He settled himself on his elbows flat on the rock, his spear ready beside him and the bow firmly grasped in the shooting position in his left hand, his favourite arrow between his fingers and fitted to the cord.
In this position he waited, marvelling at the skill of whatever was moving up the hill towards him. All traces of movement among the bushes and grass had vanished on the slope. Nor were there indications of anything unusual coming from the many highly observant birds, animals, insects and plants all around him, so busy organising the transport of life from its way by day into another night.
There were many beautiful and meaningful examples of how this delicate transition was ordered in Xhabbo’s vicinity and how suddenly even the air began to move in the opposite direction to the one it had done in the morning, as if the life of the bush had decided that after one long spell of breathing out all day, the moment had come to take a deep, long breath in. But there was one transitory portent that overshadowed all others. Watching the slope below, Xhabbo suddenly noticed three great jet black patterns appearing in a place where the sun was weaving some yellow-green satin of grass and leaves, just beyond the frontier of the dark shadow cast on it by the summit. At once he looked up. High in the blue, three great lamb-snatchers with wing-spans of two strides each, the sun on fire on their foam white breasts, were circling despondently in a slow descent towards their homes on the hill. He looked carefully and yes—oh yes, their talons were empty. The omen was the best of all possible omens. One lamb-snatcher would have been enough to make a point; the unusual number of three, coming home empty-taloned, stressed that it was a whole issue beyond any possible doubt. The greatest hunters in the skies of Africa had been disappointed. Clearly it had been a good day in the universe for the hunted and a bad one for the hunters.
And at that moment the call in their own special code went out from François for the first time. He had no doubt at all that it was François. Yet so great was the discipline imposed on his spirit by the experience of life of his kind, that he compelled himself to wait until the call came a second time. He was still inclined to wait when he saw François come walking out of the bush and the bandaged Hintza, on three legs behind him. They were both, he saw, utterly at the end of their resources and at once, full of remorse and concern, he jumped down from the stone and presented himself to them.
For once François did not have it in him to reply to Xhabbo’s greeting. It was all he could do now that he had arrived to keep upright. Indeed it seemed to Xhabbo that he was swaying on his feet for he hastened to François and unbidden took his heavy haversack from his shoulders and put it on his own. He was about to take François by the arm and lead him up the slope to the shelter but François, seeing what he intended, forced himself to speak and say, “No, Xhabbo, let me tell you first what has happened because I am afraid our troubles are far from over. The enemy is just down at the bottom in the stream, in the valley. I think he’s down there for the night but I’m not even certain of that. All I am certain of is that
he will be coming after me again either tonight when he has eaten, or first thing in the morning. I think we ought to be on our way at once. But look! See what they have done to Hintza. He can’t go on just yet and I myself, I’m sorry, I can’t go much further. I feel it might be best if Hintza and I find somewhere to hide and rest alone, and you and Nuin-Tara and Nonnie go on now. I just know these men will never give up until they have found me and Hintza, and killed us. I have been trouble enough to you, and you have done more than enough for me. So please hasten on and leave me and Hintza to ourselves, feeling you have done all that a man, friend and brother can do for another. If we escape, which I doubt, I shall come to you some time at any place you feel best.”
Xhabbo had never heard or even imagined that he could hear his Foot of the Day speak in such a tone of despair. But he had experience enough of relentless persecution himself to realise that François was not himself, and speaking far more out of sheer fatigue and fear for Hintza than out of any reasoned or unclouded assessment of their situation.
Feeling that a pause before they did the last steep little climb up to their shelter and some considered words from himself would help, he smoothed a place on the ground for François to sit down and very gently aided the exhausted Hintza to lie on his unwounded side close to them. Taking his own field flask, he gave François some water, and unslinging François’s hat, filled the dented crown with water, lifted Hintza’s head and held it in the palm of his hand to let him drink as well. Explaining that he had made their women hide and that they would be so full of anxiety and fear that he ought to reassure them without delay, he stood up straight. In the most authoritative and effortless manner he delivered himself of the honey-guide’s classical summons: “Quick, quick, quick! Honey! Quick!” He repeated the call three times, with such clarity and perfection that François, tired as he was, realised the call was the personal code of Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara.
A Far Off Place Page 25