by Andre Brink
Elisabeth takes them inside to make soup, filling all their containers with it. They have a small precious meal, burning hot; and even the dog is treated to a portion, including the delicate bones of the birds. And while they sit on the doorstep with their soup, trying to make it last as long as possible, they both know, without talking about it, that another end has come. This deep subterranean thing driving them on has not yet lost its force.
She remembers the first deserted house on their journey, before they reached the sea: the decisive one. How she was preparing food on the open hearth waiting for him to come back, and how he stayed away until sunset; the pack of wild dogs hunting the zebra, tearing out its flesh as he was running; and how Adam suddenly appeared among the trees with the buck on his shoulders. He was back; he had returned.
“We mustn’t stay here,” she said that night; she says now. “Tomorrow morning we must go on. It isn’t good to stay here.”
With their meager new provisions they set out into the cool bare world before the sun comes out.
The mangy dog comes with them, trotting on their heels.
Adam swings round and tries to kick it. The dog stops, its ears drawn flat against its outsized head, tail between the legs; but as soon as they move on, it follows them again, this time at a safer distance.
Adam picks up a stone and hurls it at the dog. With a yelp it flees from them. But the moment they turn to walk on, it comes hurrying back.
“Why can’t he come with us?” asks Elisabeth. “He took you to the water. He saved our lives.”
“We can’t feed him.”
“But he needs us, Adam. He can’t survive without us.”
“He’ll die of hunger if he comes with us,” he says curtly.
“Perhaps he can find us things to eat.”
“He's too lame and useless for that.”
“Then I’ll share my food with him.”
“Don’t be bloody stupid!”
He glowers at her, feeling a vicious urge to grab his assegai and plunge it into the skeletal body of the dog. But she seems to anticipate the action and moves in between him and the animal. Neither says anything; to both the situation has become quite unfathomable. Before her steady gaze he lowers his eyes, resigning himself to the incomprehensible: that this disgusting creature has come to represent something to her which he dare not touch without denying a vital part of herself and of what exists between them. Without a word, bewildered and resentful, he turns and begins to stride on; she falls in beside him. And the dog follows a little way behind.
In the rickety shack assembled from the wreckage of ships misjudging the bay and stranded on rocks or sandbanks, old Roloff was working, interminably, on his maps. A wild white mane of unkempt hair; sunken bloodshot eyes, weepy and burning from all the nights under the yellow lamp; three teeth left, two upper, one lower; his arthritic hands gnarled like the claws of a vulture. His shirt-sleeves were frayed; below his unevenly cutoff trousers his legs were bare, the calf muscles bulging as he walked into the dusky shack ahead of one. This was where he lived, with an old Hottentot woman who did the fishing and cooking and shared his bed on the floor, while he spent all his time on his maps. His conversation was a jumble of reminiscences about Germany, which he’d left as a young man; about his voyages as a sailor of the Dutch East India Company; about harbors and women (winking at her), phosphorescent nights on the deep seas, and the stench of the hold; about wild slave-hunts in Madagascar and on the coast of Guinea; and about a long journey through the Cape interior, as far as Caffre Land beyond the Great Fish River, twelve years before.
—Aber zur Sache, Herr Larsson: it was then, you see, back from my travels, that I drew my map, showing every detail of the land, vollständig. You know Kolb's map, I suppose? Forget about it, the man spent all his time in the taverns of the Cape drinking himself kaput, he never set a foot beyond Stellenbosch: have you ever seen a rhinoceros like his?—looks like something from die Offenbarung Johannis. It was his drinking companions who drew those maps of his and told him the stories he wrote down. Schändlich. As for the Abbé de la Caille, verflixt! I don’t want to say anything against a man of God, but looking at that map of his one can only hope he knows more about heaven than about the Cape. No, glauben Sie mir: my map is the only one that shows this land as it is.
Nun also, I took it to the Governor, with my compliments, thinking it will earn me a bag of rixdollars for my old age. Gott im Himmel! Here I’m summoned by the Secretary of the Council. Take back your map, he says, by order of Seine Exzellenz. If ever you show it to anyone or dare to make a copy of it, then sofort it is thirty years in chains for you.
Sehen Sie mal, Herr Larsson. From that day I shut myself up here and all I do is to copy that map, over and over. Was sonst, even if it's only for the wind. Überzeugen Sie sich, this whole house is filled with maps, and not a soul may look at them. Perhaps one day, when I’m dead and old Eva has buried me on the beach, this shack will fall in and the wind will blow the maps weit und breit, and somewhere in a bush a stranger will pick up one of them and discover what the land looks like. I mean, how can one sit diesseits of the mountain and ignore what it looks like jenseits? Nicht war? But now you must forgive me, Herr Larsson—liebe, schöne Frau!— 1 really can’t let you have one of them. Suppose the Council finds out about it? Then it's off to Robben Island with me, dreissig Jahre. No, it's better to be patient. I have not so many years still to live, let it rather be in peace. So if you want to find out what the land looks like, there is only one thing you can do, fürwahr, and that is to go and look for yourself. Draw your own map. Perhaps the Governor will be merciful to you. Aber nehmen Sie sich in Acht, the people here are afraid of their own country: they prefer not to know what it looks like. What the eye cannot see… das verstehen Sie doch, ja?—
Mapless through space, on to the horizon, not even sure about direction any more, simply following the setting of the sun, in search of the nest where the firebird lays its golden eggs: but does one ever reach it? In the absence of landmarks one cannot even calculate one's progress. All indication one has of going on is the increasing weariness of one's legs, the difficulty to move one's limbs; one's stomach aching, a constant pain clutching one's guts in its long thin fingers, tightening all the time, never losing its grip. One can only go on, mechanically, in bitter resistance to hunger and thirst and to oneself, obedient to this indomitable will which forces one to go on: it would be so much easier to lie down and never to get up again.
First: observation. Now: suffering. It is easier to trek through the landscape of truth than to comprehend it or account for it.
He and she and the thin dog.
Occasionally, the bones of dead animals, half covered by sand.
“Perhaps you and I will also lie here one day. Do you think the land will accept us then?”
“Don’t think about it,” he says harshly. “Think about the Cape.”
She shakes her head hopelessly. “I’ve forgotten about the Cape. I can’t recall it any more. Sometimes it seems to me I must have imagined it all. All that remains, is here. And I don’t know for how much longer I can go on.”
“We must.”
“I know we must. I’m trying. But can one really?” She looks at him. Her eyes have sunken deep into their hollow sockets. With a swollen tongue she tries to lick the crusts of dried blood from her cracked lips, but the touch of moisture only makes the pain more acute. She seems to have difficulty focusing her eyes on him in the glare. The pattern of her rib-cage is exposed; her hip-bones are jutting out; it is as if her knees and elbows have become disproportionately large for the thinness of her arms and legs.
“Yes, one can,” he says. He is as thin as she is, and burnt more black. “We’re going to.”
The dog follows them, hobbling on painful feet. She has noticed that when he doesn’t know she is watching, Adam stealthily feeds the dog. And to spare the animal's feet he has shortened their shifts, spending the blistering hours of the day unde
r a makeshift tent of their karosses draped over sticks.
Even before they abandoned the wake of destruction left by the migrating buck, the dog, returning from a secret excursion across the plains, had brought them a ground-squirrel it had caught, putting it down at Adam's feet and looking up, its tail wagging gently. She was so moved that she had to turn her head away to hide her tears from him. Almost uncomprehending, he knelt down to stroke the dog's head. Then, the dog still watching, panting, he skinned the tiny animal and roasted it.
Since then, the dog has tracked down other quarry: ground-squirrels, tortoises, once even a secretary bird. And after they swerved away from the trail of dust, it has happened more regularly. The dog has, in fact, become indispensable for their own survival, a strange catalyst to their relationship.
Also, it has lately become possible, once again, for Adam to locate and dig out the rare barroe or ngaap or kambro on their way; there have been succulent plants whose leaves they could tear off, or eggs or larvae they could raid from anthills; gum from thorn-trees; ghwarrie berries to turn their heads. Sometimes, at dawn, they could lick the dewdrops from the broad flat leaves of xerophites, or to rob the shimmering webs of hunting spiders of the night's accumulated moisture. But it was so little, so very little. Just sufficient to prevent them from dying, growing thinner all the time, every step more painful: every day a miserable little lease of life renewed, postponing the horizon for yet another day. She has begun to think that, really, this is worse than the absolute emptiness of a desert. There, at least, one would come to accept that death was inevitable, its bitter compassion drawing near. But not here. Here everything remains suspended. Constant postponement, constant motion. No hope of redemption, only the continued ability to go on shuffling over the hard, scorching earth towards the horizon: never really reaching it, never really able to renounce it. And the farthest we can reach out, the most we can hope for, is to wonder whether the horizon we see is really the end.
Once it does seem as if nothing will hold her back from dying any more. For two full days there has been nothing now: absolutely nothing on the absolute veld. Just after sunrise they stop. Adam props the two sticks up with stones, spreading the karosses over them, their blazing little tent for the day. He sits down on the edge of the shade. She lies down. She makes no effort to say anything to him, afraid that he may try to dissuade her. She simply lies down with the serene decision not to get up again. It is not worth her while. One keeps on thinking one can go on; but one day it has to stop. And now that day has come.
In the distance she hears the dog barking, then forgets about it. Dazed and uncomprehending she looks up when she suddenly realizes that Adam is talking to her, holding up something the dog has brought. A snake. She shakes her head, unable to grasp his meaning. Concentrating hard, she follows his words:
“We can eat it. It's only the head that's poisonous.”
She shakes her head again.
“No.”
“It's ordinary flesh, like that of any other animal.”
“It's sinful.” Suddenly, uncontrollable, she starts laughing at her own words, not quite knowing why. And only after some time does she realize that she isn’t laughing any more, but crying with dry sobs burning in her throat.
Adam cuts up the snake into small bits, scorching them briefly in the flames of the fire he has just lit: just enough to seal off the blood inside. But she refuses to try.
“Please,” he urges her.
“I don’t want to.”
“If you don’t eat, you’ll die.”
“I want to die. Don’t stop me.”
“Elisabeth.” Struggling, he lifts her, holding her against his bony body. “Don’t talk like that. Eat. It's food.”
“I can’t.”
As if she is a child in need of medicine he pries her jaws apart—she resists for a while, then yields, too tired to go on—forcing a small bit through her clenched teeth.
“Eat. My darling.”
She keeps on shaking her head, but chewing all the same, her eyes tightly shut. She swallows.
“Good,” he says. “Good. Try another piece.”
Even before she can answer, she begins to retch. The morsel of meat comes out again, horribly bitter of her bile.
“Try again.”
Once again her stomach rejects it, continuing to retch for a while afterwards, like the day they found the body, only worse, for now she is drier inside; there is really nothing which can come out apart from the small bits of meat. She cannot even cry, she is too exhausted.
Then this is the end, after all, she thinks. Smiling strangely at the idea of salvation, thin tough filaments of slime clinging to her lips.
But then, after resigning herself to it, an unbearable sadness invades her, too vast for tears.
“I’m dying,” she mumbles through her broken lips, “and I still don’t understand anything. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
He stretches out beside her, holding her.
“Do you remember,” he asks softly, “the day you asked me about the sea? When I took you to the little island?”
“Yes.” The small fishes and the periwinkles, anemones, crabs in the clear water, and the red octopus, yes, I remember. The sea breaking over the rocks, surrounding us. How can you feel him without danger? You forced me down to the white sand and broke into me, violently, and the sea was all around us; and as the waves came washing over us you spurted into me; and that night the deep water of the tide submerged the island. Yes, I remember.
“Do you remember how we sat on the koppie listening to the buck coming past?”
They even crushed a lion in their way, their eyes staring blindly ahead; death was touchable and beautiful.
“If you can remember that, it’ll be easier for you now. Just lie still. You’ll hear the land. Don’t listen with your ears. Hear it.”
“Will you lie on me again?” she whispers.
“If you want to.”
“Don’t leave me.”
Cautiously he shifts his body to cover hers. This time they do not move but lie absolutely still. Only her hands move gently, like questions, over the old scars on his back and buttocks.
She hears him breathing against her. In her ears she hears the sound of her own blood. It is as if she is falling asleep, only it isn’t sleep. As if she leaves her body and rises up, very high, like a vulture, looking down on them lying in the small shady spot on the plain. The nearer sounds recede. Beyond the cicadas she can hear something different now, more vast, more formidable: silence itself, expressing itself in stones and earth, erosion ditches, koppies, wind-blown wood.
Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve dreamt you. Sleeping on the sand like a starfish washed out by the waves, a thought born from the water, with sand glistening on your back—sleeping against a breathing mother sea, your fingers lightly clutching the insoluble mystery of a shell. Your legs twitching like bamboo in a rock-pool. I want to touch you, shyly at first, gently, then more wildly, devouring you, possessing you entirely. You awaken in my mouth. I disappear in the green of the sea. My head is light, spinning, deeper and deeper you pull me into yourself like a tide, in a silent ecstasy of submarine beauty. Like a small fish I nibble your neck and your shoulders, your nipples, your stomach and thighs and swelling sex: you are so near I no longer know where you end and I begin, drifting in endless water. And now I’m dissolving, evaporating, like foam or spray or mist, like a small cloud growing until it is enormous, bursting into rain.
You are trying to make it impossible for me to die; you are covering me with your body to keep away the vultures. Silence pervades me, deafening. It has been here before us; it will remain after we’ve gone. Yes, I remember everything. In my nothingness everything converges: this is what I know, this is what I hear: without me the land will not even know of its own existence. Thank you. For the sake of this remembering I shall have to go on with you. Didn’t I say myself: the circle must be completed? In me everything becomes meaning
ful or futile. It is up to me to decide. This is the freedom you allow me. You want me to explore suffering, not be destroyed by it.
Suffering: it's like the sky through which a bird is flying. And only occasionally, very rarely—an instant in the wind—it is allowed to alight on branch or burning stone to rest: but not for long.
You are with me. I’m touching you. Like among the rocks in the sea; like that evening when you said: I want you naked. Just for an instant. Never more than an instant. Perhaps we can’t bear more than an instant at a time. I remember. I shall try to go on. This terrible space surrounding us creates the silence in which, so rarely, preciously, I dare to recognize you and be recognized by you.
Raising her head—when did he move off her and return to the edge of their shelter?—she sees it immediately, realizing that that is what he, too, is staring at. On the horizon, just below the serrated line of the last stone ridges: the long glimmering lake. At first she refuses to believe it. Why has neither of them noticed it before? But then, they were so overcome by fatigue when they arrived here this morning to notice anything. They were staring two or three yards ahead, no more: one's eyes are hurt by the constant challenge of the horizon, one becomes more humble in one's progress. She was too exhausted to notice anything at all, and he too concerned about her to look around. But now it is quite clear—and it must have been there all the time. This lake stretching like a broad mirror in the east, surrounded by trees and green hills, by huts and people. So she was right after all about crossing the mountains: there is a paradise ahead. They shouldn’t have lost faith so easily. Now they stand ashamed by it.
Crawling on hands and knees she moves to Adam and touches him.
“Do you see it?” she asks unnecessarily.
“Can it be true?”
“Look for yourself.” She is breathing heavily now. “Come, we must collect our things and go.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until it gets cooler?”