by Andre Brink
After the first incredulous pause to make quite sure it was real, people and animals broke into a stampede down the steep bank, where we hurled ourselves headlong into the water. We drank and drank until our bellies were like calabashes, and then some more; some remained on all fours, unwilling or perhaps unable to stand up. It was a long time before they came to their senses again. It was at that stage that the shout rang out:
“Crocodile!”
Who could believe it? In that stretch of placid water? But it was true, as true as the river itself.
If the charge into the stream had been something to behold, the flight from it was even more spectacular. To an outsider watching from a distance it might even have been hilarious, but not right there in the midst of the screaming, splashing horde.
I was also on my way out—chasing most of the others before me, as their safety was my responsibility—when there was a new shout from those who had already reached the top of the tall bank: “There, there!”
They were pointing at something in midstream.
In the middle of the river, where it was at its deepest, too deep for standing, I saw the white woman thrashing about. There was not one among us who could swim, it was not in our nature; but she must have been so overjoyed by the water that she was carried far beyond our reach.
“Hurry!” I shouted at her. “It’s right behind you!”
With flailing arms and legs she was coming closer to the side, but the crocodile was much faster.
That was when I discovered that no matter what Tsui-Goab chooses to allow, nothing is ever in vain.
In retrospect I remember the whole episode the way one remembers a dream. But even standing on that spot that day, staring at what was happening in front of my eyes, it felt like a dream. Now the way of a dream is this, whether it be wet or dry, a dream of love or of war, frightening or joyous: it causes a man to rise up. I felt the thing withdraw its head from the lasso around my waist, and unwind itself, whirring round and round my body at dizzying speed: it was like a thong suspended from a crossbar to be cured, a stone tied to the bottom so one can wind it up tightly and let go. There was the swooshing sound of a whirlwind all around me as it unfurled itself to rear up in a straight hardwood pole that stretched halfway across that wide river.
“Grab it!” I shouted at the woman.
And she grabbed. And she began to pull herself to shore, hand over hand. In a white foam of churning water the crocodile came after her. Faster and faster she came toward me, until at last she was close enough for me to seize her by the arms. I bent over, and reached forward, and caught hold of her, and hurled her up against the bank. Then, stumbling, I tried to turn round to follow her. But with that tremendous trunk staggering from the fork of my body I lost my balance, stepped into a mudhole, and toppled over. Like an impossible water snake my member came after: but at that moment the crocodile lurched forward and slammed its jaws shut with a sound of great rocks clashing. In front of my eyes I saw the river turn to red. I heard the crocodile thrashing the water with its tail. At that stage I felt no pain. But I did not need pain to tell to me what I already knew: my bird had been snapped right off.
19
In which is demonstrated the relative nature of gain and loss
It was the last thing old Khamab did in his life, for by that time he was older than old, and the long trek had exhausted him: but he still had enough strength left to tend me in the hut my people had hurriedly set up for me: a framework of dry branches, covered with skins. There was late daylight outside: inside a dense round darkness, like the darkness I imagine inside a woman. When I regained my consciousness in that womblike night I thought I must be dead. Surely no man could survive a catastrophe like that: I had lost the greater part of my body.
But then I heard the old man scurrying beside me, uttering brief groans of exertion or content.
“What are you doing, Khamab?”
“Keep still, else it will start bleeding again. I’ve never in my life seen bleeding like this. The whole river was red.”
I couldn’t stop myself from moving one hand to feel the wound. There was nothing to feel. It was like a woman. Blunt. Not even a stump. Only the balls were, surprisingly, intact.
“You should have let me die, Khamab.”
“Lie still.”
“What are you doing?”
“How does this feel?” He put something in my hand. “Be careful, the clay is still wet.”
My eyes had become used to the dark by now, and I could see what he had made: a new male-bird fashioned from clay. After what I had grown used to this little instrument seemed puny.
“What shall I do with a thing like this?”
“More than with your old one.” He clicked his tongue impatiently. “Well, what do you think? It’s not every man has the chance of choosing his future.”
I turned away my head. “Make it any way you want to, I don’t care. What use is a thing made of clay?”
Grunting, he went on working. Without meaning to, I turned to have another look. He was working with the dedication of a boy making a clay ox; his mouth half-open. I could hear him breathing heavily, unevenly. The old man was finished. With lashings of spittle he softened the clay to add something here, take away something there, roll the body out more thinly, evenly, rounding the head, testing it in the palm of his hand to check the weight and shape.
When at long last he was satisfied, he struggled wearily to his feet and called through the doorway. The woman came inside. Outside, the night was coming down like a dark kaross. I could hear the people making fire.
“What do you need the woman for?” I asked. The numbness was draining away; I was beginning to feel pain.
Old Khamab paid no attention to me. “Lie down,” he told the woman.
Did she protest? I don’t remember. Perhaps by that time she was so resigned that she no longer cared.
He tested his handiwork on her. Meticulously, each time making a few small adjustments. His breath was very shallow by now. I had heard people dying before; I knew he was coming close.
Because of the state of semiconsciousness I was in, I find it difficult clearly to recall what happened. But after a long time he joined the thing—smooth and wet from the woman’s insides—to my body. Using spittle, mainly, I think. But also thorn-tree gum, and beeswax, and ancient herbs, and goat fat, and stinking and fragrant medicines from that horn of his, inexhaustible even after our long, dry trek.
“It’s useless, Khamab,” I groaned.
With great difficulty he bent over me and began to blow his warm, unsteady breath over my loins. I could not believe it. Slowly, slowly, like a wind dying down, the pain went away.
Then he stopped, panting like a man who has run too far.
“What’s the matter, Khamab?”
He sighed. “Nothing. I am weary. This was too much for me, I think.”
How well I remember his face the way I saw it then, for the last time, cracked and worn like a dried-up vlei. I could not have thought it then, but I think it now: that his face was like an old map, showing all the places he had been to. (And what would—will—my own face reveal of this dry land one day?)
For the last time he turned the muddy moisture of his old eyes in my direction before he began to crawl on all fours toward the door. There he glanced back at the woman and said: “Now it’s up to you.”
She sat quietly in the dark for a long time as if she were suddenly shy to face me. And scared. As scared, no doubt, as I was.
I didn’t know why I said it, but at last I said: “Khois? Help me.”
When she laid her hand on me I could feel the clay creature warming up, stirring, swelling slowly, as if coming alive, turning to flesh.
“Khamab?” I called. He did not answer. I raised myself on my elbows, but the old man was no longer in the doorway where he’d been.
> From outside, for a while, I could hear the night sounds of my people. But then the sounds died down and it became very quiet: not the silence of absence, but a silence suggesting a terrifying intensity of life. As if once again all of them, man, woman, and child, were drawn in a tight circle around the hut to listen to what was happening inside.
I wanted to call the old man back. I needed him. I was terrified. But in the dark—I couldn’t really see her, could only feel her body close to mine—the woman placed a finger on my mouth; I could feel her shaking her head. Her long hair on my shoulders.
“There’re only the two of us, T’kama. It’s up to us.”
I knew how easy it was to fail. I knew how dangerous it was to be alive.
From outside I become conscious of another sound: even and rustling, softly at first, then more and more insistently, the sound of sibi.
It was raining.
She was right: there were only the two of us now; it was up to us.
20
A short chapter that may be skipped by readers who object to descriptions of sexual intercourse1
The rain that rained: every crack and crevice in the parched earth overflowed with wetness, and from deep tunnels emerged snakes and meerkats. Where there had been only death, new life broke out, dry beds of marshes were squelched with moisture, every hollow filled up heavily with water. High above, the clouds were on fire with lightning, forking and branching down to earth. Even hills and mountains seemed to swell with life, nudging each other like lustful men and women; tearing themselves loose from the earth, the trees began to dance; all the world was translated into song, one huge voice exulting to the sky: pure voice, all voice, nothing but voice, a scream that broke the mountains and split the earth: rocks voice, trees voice, animals voice, human beings voice, all things returned to voice, the first language of all language, sound, hallelujah. A flood washing away all that had been, cleansing utterly what remained, glistening with wetness and birth, until a new sun broke through to bellow over all that lives: I am!
1. Which prompts the question whether such a reader shouldn’t skip the whole book.
21
In which a circle is completed
Back to where we started. From a last high hill—harsh green grass billowing in the wind, lower down dense thickets in the kloofs, blue flowers, yellow patches, aloes, thick-fingered euphorbias—we can see the wide sweep of the bay, where blue waves dissolve in foam. With a sudden fear in the pit of one’s stomach one glances at the horizon, but there is nothing. The sea is virginal.
Beside me, the woman; and our child who has already learned to run short distances. She is still suckling him, refusing to wean him, possessive, jealous, angry, beautiful. Because of the milk in her breasts she has not yet begun to swell with another child, but that will come.
Back at our old encampment we repeat the ritual of immemorial times: from the river, where it debouches into the sea, we collect clean mud to plaster on our foreheads, with soot from the first fire kindled on the ashes of the old. On the decayed graves of the people we left behind we sprinkle fresh water. One must make friends with the water of a place before you can settle in it again. High on the hill Heitsi-Eibib’s cairn has been plundered by the wind, the cross dismembered; it must by repaired. Only then dare we gather fresh branches to build our huts anew.
There is a long journey behind us. But the land has been generous and kind ever since the day I first entered the woman, the night old Khamab died. The rains continued. Throughout the Karoo the veld was bountiful. Sheep bush. Sweet grass. Thom trees yellow with flower puffs. What had remained of our sheep and cattle flourished and multiplied again.
Now, after all this time, we can come to rest again.
But how curious that there should have been this restlessness among the tribe. As if all were secretly waiting for something to happen. No one dared to mention it, but it was there. It bothered me. I knew only too well what it was: I could see it in the intentness of the stare with which, when she didn’t know I was watching her, the woman peered at the sea. A stare so fixed and furious it seemed her eyes would pry something from the blue, something that did not yet exist but that she wanted to make happen.
And then, suddenly one day, five ships came drifting from that blue expanse—coming close enough for us to make out, at the beak of the one in front, the torso of a naked woman—no one was really surprised. From the beginning we had known that it was only a matter of time. They were not the same ships as before, of course not, we could all see that at a glance; but what difference did that make? There had been intruders before them; now they were there; others would come after them. Our shore was exposed and open, like a woman already taken. The way it had been it could never be again.
Having warned my people to keep out of sight, I went up the rocky hillside to the cairn to watch from there. At a hollow below the slope I stopped for a while. Then squatted down, digging aimlessly among the old bones bleached by the sun, worn thin by the wind. So many, many bones, one might dig up the whole hill and not come to the end of them. People and people and people, reaching further back than Heitsi-Eibib himself. All those who had been there before us. It occurred to me that, in fact, the whole land might be made of bones, but thinly covered by a layer of soil and rock and trees and shrubs. Was there ever an end to it?
I resumed my climb to the top.
From the ships came rowing boats, exactly as the previous time. I could see how excited the Beard Men became when they discovered our footprints on the sand. They spread out on the beach and ventured to the edge of the bush, where they stopped to shout at the land, hands opened against their mouths to amplify the sound. Then turned their heads sideways, listening, as if expecting a reply. But my people kept quiet.
Except I knew it would not go on like that. The strangers had seen our tracks, and they would continue to explore until they’d found something.
“Let us go hunting,” I ordered my men the following day.
“We must avoid trouble this time. Perhaps, if we offer them a buck, they’ll see that we mean well. Then they may leave us in peace.”
But when we returned in the late afternoon there was pandemonium at our place. It took much angry shouting before the women would tell us what had happened: it seems that some of the children had stolen away to spy on the strangers; discovering it, the women had followed in haste. Exactly what had then happened on the beach no one could tell for sure. To me, only one thing mattered: that the woman, my woman, Khois, my white woman, the smooth beautiful one, the one with the long dark hair, with the round breasts, that she had gone back with the Beard Men to the nearest boat.
22
In which the male protagonist tries to understand the woman’s point of view before returning (characteristically) to a preoccupation with himself
Should I have taken heed before? Had I really concerned myself enough with my woman’s reactions to the return of the ships? The very fact that, afterward, it took such effort to recall the expression with which she had stared at them, accuses me. And only when it was too late did I sit down to try to remember: as I am trying now, centuries later, and with even less hope of success, to reconstruct what she might have thought and felt.
There was a pool of silence deep inside her, yes, that I do remember. All she did was stand there, staring. But staring with an intensity shaped in the very marrow, as if she had to dislodge a whole life—past, present, future, everything—from the little her eyes could see.
Would she have been thinking: My God, they’re back, at last, now I can go home?
Or: No, please, don’t let this happen, not after I have finally found a home here, a husband, and a child?
I came from behind. My shadow fell on her. She seemed to tremble lightly, even before I could put my arm around her, cupping my hand on her breast. She said nothing, but I could feel the stiffness in her body, resisting me; resi
sting most of all, perhaps, herself.
“Khois: what are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think those strangers have come for?”
“How must I know?” Angrily, as if she resented my having asked.
“Are you scared, Khois?”
“Why should I be scared?”
“I am scared.”
She turned round swiftly, pressing her head against my shoulder. “Hold me tight,” she said, so quickly I could barely make out the words. “Just hold me.”
She was trembling. For a long time we didn’t speak. At last she seemed to relax. She looked up at me, almost expressionless, her face as calm as the sea.
“Come,” I said.
“Where to?”
“Back to our place.”
For a moment she yielded, then held back. “You go. I’ll come later.”