by Deon Meyer
'My name's Cornel. Are you going to help, or just stand there looking?' she said, and turned her attention back to removing the tarpaulin.
'Man, it's so great to see you again.' And Swannie went right over to help her.
26
In order to study spoor, one must inevitably go to places where one will most likely encounter wild and often dangerous animals.
The Basics of Tracking: Dangerous animals
Flea van Jaarsveld, rhino tamer.
She orchestrated the removal of the tarpaulin with an irritated voice and self-important air, as though her responsibility were greater than we could comprehend. She looked disapprovingly at me, where I stood watching with my arms folded, a look that said I too should help. That was when I saw that close-up her beauty was flawed, the impact of the whole more impressive than the parts. The set of the lines of her mouth was somewhat mean, the jaw was a fraction too weak. What saved these features from coldness was the tiny flaw in her left eye, a nick in the lower lid like a tear. It softened everything with a hint of melancholy.
They rolled the big sail off the flatbed of the Bedford, exposing two massive steel cages fitted tightly together. There were only millimetres between the rear flap of the Bedford and the second cage. The rhinos were shrouded in shadows, two chunky, restless shapes behind iron bars.
'I need light here,' Flea commanded, and pointed at the animals.
Young Swannie, suddenly the highly efficient young farmer, sprang into action, barking orders at the workmen.
She clambered back into the cabin of the Bedford, calf muscles flexing, sure movements, full of confidence and focus. When she came down there was a leather case in her hand, the impractical kind that doctors carried as a status symbol. This one had seen some mileage. She swung it onto the back of the Bedford, stepped on the rear wheel and climbed up after it.
'Where's the light?'
'It's coming,' said Swannie.
She checked the chunky watch on her slender arm, pressed buttons on it. Swannie came trotting up with a hunting spotlight, the beam like a searchlight in the night sky. He held it out to her.
'Get up,' she said, her attention on the opened case.
He grinned at his good fortune at being chosen, nodded eagerly, and climbed onto the lorry.
In that moment I saw Lourens le Riche. He stood beside the Bedford. His eyes were fixed on her, an expression of utter fascination on his face.
'Shine here,' she said to Swannie, and pointed at the first cage. She took a syringe and a bottle of liquid out of the case. The needle on the syringe was short and thick.
I came closer to see. The spotlight lit up the foremost rhino. The animal was blindfolded. Bundled material protruded from one ear and hung down over the blindfold. The rhino moved uneasily, stamped a leg on the steel floor, bumped its head against the bars. The skin was lighter than I had imagined, dull grey and deeply textured in the bright lighting, covered with a rash of pinky-red, septic growths on the neck, over the back and the butt of the creature. The growths glistened, wet and sickly.
'Hell's bells!' said Wickus Swanepoel, observing the activity from beside the Bedford. 'What's wrong with them?'
Flea drew liquid from the bottle with the syringe. 'Necrolytic Dermatitis, in the festering stage.'
'You're a vet,' said Swannie, with huge respect.
'Can they die of these sores?' his father asked.
'It usually occurs along with anaemia and gastrointestinal disorders,' she said. 'That is where the danger lies.'
'Hell!' said Wickus.
She pressed the syringe into the rhino's rump, behind and above the powerful thighs. 'They're very weak, very stressed. We can't waste time. Can you shove that sock back in the ear?'
'That's a sock?'
'The only use for a Stormers rugby sock. Dulls sound. Keeps them calm.'
'Well, I never. Sounds like you're a Bulls fan,' said Wickus from below, very happy. 'Just like us.'
She picked up her bag and moved to the second cage. We stood as one man and watched her neat little bottom.
'What are you injecting?' asked Swannie.
'Azaperone. Hundred and fifty milligrams. It keeps them calm, helps with the negative physiological effects of the M99.'
'OK,' Swannie said again, with boundless awe.
And Lourens le Riche stood and stared at her like a buck caught in blinding headlights.
The transfer operation took over an hour, fifteen men sweating, pulling, lifting, putting the cage down and moving it centimetre by centimetre from the Bedford into the load bed of the Mercedes. Wickus organised the labour, in language that was appreciably more socially acceptable now. Flea berated us for the rest of our labours with the minimum words and the maximum scowling. Until Lourens pushed the doors shut and slid the bolts.
Flea walked quickly over to him. 'You're the driver to the Karoo.'
'Lourens,' he said, and put out his hand.
She ignored it, wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her left hand, walked over to the passenger door of the Mercedes and said, 'Right, let's go.'
That was the first indication that she was coming along.
We got away at twenty to ten. Flea threw a blood-red travel bag and the doctor's bag in the cab, climbed up after them, and made herself at home in the passenger seat. As I climbed up after her, she looked at me. 'Are you coming too?' Not exactly jubilant about the possibility.
'This is Oom Lemmer,' was all that Lourens said. Then he took out two big soft cushions and put them over the hump between the two seats, stowed her baggage, arranged the cushions properly, one on her seat and one behind her back.
The Swanepoels stood outside, beside my window, with eyes only for her. 'You know where we are now, Cornel. Come and visit,' Wickus Swanepoel called out hopefully. Beside him, his son approved the invitation with a vigorously nodding head, the bushy brows raised high in enthusiasm. Then they waved one last time and we drove away into the darkness.
Her scent drifted through the cab of the Mercedes, an interesting blend of soap, shampoo and sweat. She sat with her legs tucked up, arms wrapped around her knees, her body language showing she was dissatisfied, that she didn't have the luxury of personal space and a proper seat.
Lourens called Nicola, said we were on our way.
Flea consulted the digital watch on her arm. 'Between half past one and two I have to inject them again,' she instructed Lourens.
I sat and waited for his reaction. How would a Karoo boy handle this ... phenomenon?
He took papers out of his door panel and handed them to her, his movements slow and measured. 'The top one is the route book, the lower one is a map. By two o'clock we should be 300 kilometres from here, maybe a bit more ...'
She took them in silence, lowered her legs, and studied the uppermost document, a white sheet of paper with columns of places and distances. She unfolded the map and compared the two, her slender finger finding direction on the spider web of roads over Vaalwater, Rustenburg, Ventersdorp ... until she looked up at him. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the frown in her voice: 'This is one helluva obscure route. Why don't we just take the Nl?'
For the first time I saw the ghostly line of an old scar on her neck. It curled from below her left ear and under her hair, a fine pattern like the outline of a bird's wing, only one shade lighter than her skin.
'Oom Diederik wants us to stay off the main routes. And ...'
'Why?' Sharp and accusatory.
'Weighbridges,' Lourens said, but calm and controlled.
'Weighbridges?'
'Long distances are all about average speed, and nothing breaks your average speed like a weighbridge. At every weighbridge you lose plus-minus an hour, and there are five between Musina and Kimberley if we take the N1 and the N12. In any case, this route is almost a hundred kilometres shorter.'
I was proud of him: he would not let himself be intimidated, his tone of voice was relaxed, he was not looking for her approva
l, merely giving information courteously and pleasantly. Impressive for a young man already blindly in love.
She traced the route with her finger again, shook her head. 'No. We will have to drive via Bela-Bela. I need light when I sedate them.'
He looked where her finger pointed. 'All right,' he said. 'We'll stop there.'
She folded up the map, smugly, as if she had won this round. She put it on top of the dashboard, in the hollow behind the cup holders, drew her legs up again and dropped her head onto her knees to discourage further communication.
It was going to be an interesting trip.
The cornerstone of my profession was the art of reading people. To identify threats, to understand the one you protected, to predict situations and prevent them. It had become a habit, a ritual, sometimes a game, to watch and listen and patch the bits of incidental information together into a profile that was continually adapted and expanded, every time one step closer to the truth. The problem, I had learned over two decades, was that we are deceitful animals. We skilfully weave a false front, often extensive and complex, fact and fiction in a delicate blend to accentuate the good and acceptable, and to hide the bad.
The art was to analyse the front as well, since that largely exposed what was hidden behind it.
There was a great deal that betrayed Flea van Jaarsveld: this attitude of irritable superiority. The deliberate distance she maintained between herself and us. The exaggerated use of learned medical terminology. Her nickname. The insistence that she was now Cornel - ten to one her own twisting of Cornelia, as it sounded much more dignified. Add to that the choice of clothing that needlessly accentuated her assets. Because she was pretty, despite the slight deficiencies. Or perhaps because of those negligible imperfections.
The majority of Body Armour's clientele were attractive people who had grown up in wealth. They generally had an effortless assumption of privilege, a natural distance from the common crowd, an ease with, and often a concealing of, beauty.
In shrill contrast with Flea. Therefore I guessed her background was lower middle-class, blue-collar domestic, mine or factory worker, naive, down-to-earth, a little rough.
Poverty is not necessarily a negative formative element. The problems begin when the desire to escape it becomes all-consuming. In primary school she would already have shown the academic promise that would eventually enable her to be selected for veterinary school. 'You're clever,' her humble, but inherently good parents would have urged her. 'You must get an education. Make something of yourself.' Another way of saying 'you can get out of this'.
But it was the physical flowering that would have been the breakthrough. By inference from Swannie's 'Jissie, you've changed,' she must have been ordinary at fourteen, dull even, with no great expectation that she would be so genetically lucky. So the metamorphosis, somewhere between fifteen and sixteen, would have taken her by surprise, causing her to change gears swiftly in order to reconsider the potential of it all. Clever and pretty is a strong platform from which to launch yourself.
And she had.
So she would have advanced to this point with fierce determination, and now had the realistic expectation of a Good Catch. She would dream of a fairy tale wedding with the filthy rich owner of an exclusive private game reserve, where she could manage the breeding programme of some exotic threatened species, and occasionally pose photogenically on the cover of conservation magazines, with her attractive, somewhat older husband's arm around her, her own arms protectively cradling a cheetah cub.
But I knew from personal experience: you can't escape your past. It lives in you, woven into every cell. You could say you had lost contact with your parents, you could provide vague answers if Emma le Roux asked, 'What was it like growing up in Sea Point?', you could hide yourself away in Loxton, but sooner or later it catches up with you.
I believe Flea van Jaarsveld knew this, somehow. It was the fear of exposure that drove her, ate at her, it was the mechanism that had turned her into this aggressive, determined young woman.
It was a sentiment I understood. So I would let her be. Accommodate her.
But should I warn Lourens le Riche? Flea would break his heart. No. Lemmer's First Law.
27
... trackers must also be able to interpret the animal's activities sothat they can anticipate and predict its movements.
The Basics of Tracking: Spoor interpretation
Gravel roads in Limpopo, the occasional stretch of tar, everything deserted in the late night. The headlights of the Mercedes were on bright, lighting up the dull grass at the edge of the road, sometimes trees, cattle, donkeys, villages, poor settlements shrouded in darkness. There was silence in the cab, because The Vet was sleeping.
She had fallen asleep quietly. Her arms slipped off her knees and she concealed her moment's alarm by stretching her legs out under the dashboard, shifting her back irritably against the rear cushion and laying her head on the edge of Lourens's seat.
Only once we turned south on the tarred R561, did Lourens whisper to me: 'Oom, can you get the coffee out, please?'
I worked carefully so as not to disturb her, got hold of one flask.
'The mugs are up there,' he pointed at a shelf panel in the middle, and checked his rear-view mirror. I reached up, unclipped the lid and found the mugs.
'Help yourself too.'
I poured, handed him a mug. He took it, cast a tender look at Flea and said, 'She must be exhausted. I wonder if she's been travelling with them all the way through Zim.'
'Must be,' I whispered.
'It must have been a helluva ride ...'
He was right. Perhaps I ought to temper my opinion of her. Seven hundred kilometres through Zimbabwe with an illegal cargo would take its toll.
'Where did Oom Diederik find her?' he wondered. Then he checked his mirror again and reduced speed, tested the temperature of the coffee with his mouth, looked at his mirror again and said, 'Why won't this guy come past?'
I poured coffee into the second mug.
'He's been behind us since the other side of Alldays,' still speaking softly, so as not to wake her.
'How far back was that?'
'About fifty kilos.'
That had been gravel road where it was hard to pass, but now we were on the tar and we were driving more slowly, just over seventy. 'What's he doing now?'
'He's dropped back a bit.'
'Do you need this mirror?' I pointed at the one on my side.
'You can change it for now, Oom.'
I wound my window down. The night had cooled considerably since we had loaded the rhino. I adjusted the mirror so that I could see the road behind us. The blast of air woke Flea.
'What?' she said, wiping a hand over her mouth.
I shut the window 'Just fixing the mirror.'
She sat up, stretched as much as the limited room would allow, and combed her fingers through her hair to neaten up.
'Would you like some coffee?' Lourens asked.
She nodded and rubbed her eyes, checked her watch.
I passed my mug to her and checked the mirror. There were still lights behind us, half a kilometre back.
'Why are we driving so slowly?' she asked grumpily.
Lourens began to speed up. 'It was just to change the mirror,' he said.
He caught my eye, conspiratorial.
The vehicle behind us kept its distance. That didn't necessarily mean anything. Some drivers preferred not to pass at night, but use the red tail lights as a guide.
When her mug was half empty, Lourens asked Flea. 'Was it rough coming through Zim?' 'What do you think?'
He didn't allow himself to be put off. 'How do you know Oom Diederik?'
'I don't know him.'
'Oh?'
'I know Ehrlichmann.' A concession.
'Who is Ehrlichmann?'
She sighed faintly and, with exaggerated patience, asked, 'Do you know where the rhino come from?'
'Yes.'
'Ehrlichmann
found them in the Chete.'
'He's the one who used to be a game warden?'
'Yes.'
'Aah.' Then in admiration: 'How do you know him?'
Again the silent sigh. 'Last year there was a WWF elephant census in the Chizarira ... that's a national park in Zim. I volunteered. Ehrlichmann was part of the team.'
'OK,' Lourens said.
The lights were still behind us.
She emptied her mug and handed it to me, tucked her legs under her in the lotus position, folded her arms under her breasts. 'Tell me about Diederik Brand.'
'Oom Diederik ...' he said. 'Where shall I begin? He's kind of a legend in the Bo-Karoo ...'
'Is he rich?'
Interesting question.
'Oom Diederik? Yes, he's rich.'
'How did he make his money?'
Lourens just chuckled.
'What does that mean?'
'Well, Oom Diederik, how shall I say? He's a ...' he searched for the right euphemism.
'Black Swan,' I said spontaneously.
They both turned to look at me.
It was because I had been thinking about Emma for the past hour, before Lourens had asked for coffee.
'A black swan is an anomaly, a wild card that changes everything,' I said, and tried to remember what Emma had told me sixteen hours ago in the Red Pomegranate. She had been reading the book all weekend, making frequent comments like 'incredible' and 'so interesting', until by Saturday morning I had to ask her what it was all about.
Lourens and Flea waited for me to explain.
'Before they discovered Australia, the Europeans knew absolutely that all swans were white. That's how our brains work: we learn by observation, we draw our conclusions from the weight of probability, we firmly believe that is the only reality. If you only see white swans for hundreds of years, it is therefore obvious that only white swans exist. Then they found black swans in Australia.'
'What has this to do with Diederik Brand?'