by Deon Meyer
Her influence on Pa Wickus was good as well - he was the epitome of the courteous host, offering drinks and making polite conversation. At the table he said grace, short and serious. In the middle of the table was a chicken pie, golden crusted. Lollie removed the lids from the other serving dishes to display sweet pumpkin, steamed green beans, baked potatoes and rice.
'Jissie,’ said Swannie with gusto and reached for a serving spoon.
'As if I don't cook every day,' Lollie said.
'Let the guests serve themselves first,' said Wickus.
Also to his credit he waited patiently until everyone had finished eating before he brought up the burning question: 'And what brings you here?'
Since yesterday I had been undecided, still unsure how to approach him. The problem was that Wickus and Swannie were involved, but I had no idea at what level. There was something about them, a naivety, that made me feel their role was incidental and merely superficial.
'It's Flea,' I said.
Both Swanepoel men's eyebrows lifted in tandem.
'She left Diederik's farm in the middle of the night. Without saying goodbye ...'
'Ay,' said Lollie.
'So was there trouble?' asked Wickus.
'No. But she was supposed to look after the rhinos yesterday morning. Now Diederik is worried ...'
I hoped it was enough. But Wickus was not stupid. 'That's not the whole story,' he said, though without reproach. 'Your face, the fact that you flew here ... I won't ask you what happened, perhaps it's better that we don't know. But just tell me: How serious is it?'
'Serious enough.'
'Flipit,' breathed Swannie. His parents exchanged a significant glance, as though they knew something. Wickus nodded slowly. 'How can we help?'
'I got the impression she came from this part of the world. Weren't you at primary school together?' I said, looking at young Swannie.
'That was twelve years ago. They left here in ...'
'Nineteen-ninety-eight,' said Lollie.
'Where to?' I asked.
Wickus and Lollie exchanged another look. 'There was a lot of gossip,' she said softly.
'It's a sad story,' said Wickus.
'Flip ...' said Swannie.
'You were too young to know these things,' his mother said.
Wickus pushed his plate away and put his elbows on the table. 'Tell him, Lollie. I don't know if it will help, but tell him.'
39
Most animals continually move their sleeping quarters, and may only have a fixed home during the breeding season to protect the young.
The Art of Tracking: Classification of signs
They played it like a duet.
She began with: 'Her father was Louis, a free spirit. . .' and Wickus added: 'He was a tracker, but the thing you have to understand is that he was a master. These days you get different levels, with the training they do now, level one and two and three, then Senior Tracker and finally Master. Now Louis would have been a Master, Hell's Bells, but he was good.'
'He came from the Kalahari,' she picked up the story. 'They say he grew up very poor, his father was a drifter, a loser, doing piece work here and there on farms. Louis's childhood was half wild, with the Bushmen. He learned to track from them. Not much schooling, only passed Standard Eight, then he went to help his father, who died when Louis was seventeen. Somehow or other he ended up in our area.'
'He wanted to get a job with Nature Conservation, but he didn't have the qualifications, you don't get in there without official papers,' said Wickus.
'So the hunting people used him. Here, Botswana, Zimbabwe ...'
'The professional hunters, the guys who find the biggest elephants and lions for the American and German trophy hunters ...'
'Not always legally,' said Lollie.
'What could he do? He wanted to live in the bush, he had to make a living.'
'A handsome young man, he was, rosy cheeks, a bush of thick blond hair, but he lived in another world. Apparently he found a python near Phalaborwa once, and went all strange, said it was his ancestor. Got that from the Bushmen, they believe men are descended from the python ...'
'But the best TRACKER YOU COULD GET, highly regarded, sought after.'
'Then he got mixed up with Drika. No, let me put that differently. He fell in love with Drika. And she ... the trouble was, she was barely nineteen, and she was the daughter of Big Frik Redelinghuys and she got pregnant...'
'Hell's bells,' said young Swannie, sounding just like his father.
Wickus looked sternly at his son: 'Yes, as I've always said, some women may be hot, but they can also be hell. Be careful you don't burn your ...'
'Wickus ...' Lollie cautioned.
'Anyway, Big Frik farmed in the Lowveld, six, seven farms, oranges, nuts, bananas, game, he used Louis when the overseas people came hunting, very rich, three daughters. Drika was the youngest. Pretty girl, Flea got her dark hair and figure from her, but spoilt...'
'Very. Knew she was beautiful, not afraid to show it. And she had a bit of a wilful streak, wanted what she couldn't have. She was barely out of school, didn't know what she wanted to do yet, stayed at home that year, horses and parties. And then Louis came along ...'
'Ma, how do you know all this stuff?' Swannie asked.
'People talk, my child. It was such a big scandal, daughter of a prominent man. They said Frik found out about their love affair before she fell pregnant. He sat her down and said over his dead body. And then she slept with Louis, to show her father she would do as she pleased.'
'So she fell pregnant with Flea,' said Wickus.
'Flipit,' said Swannie.
'Frik was furious, such shame on the family. He resigned as a church elder, didn't set foot in church for over a year, we heard. He disowned his daughter entirely. Later, when one of his daughters married a Delfosse, and he had another grandchild, Helena, he sort of recovered. Helena became the apple of his eye. Anyway, Louis and Drika were married in the Magistrate's office and they came to live here, on Elandslaagte, a big farm about twenty kilometres outside Musina, on the charity of others. In those days they still spoke of bywoners, sharecroppers. Louis had to work where and when he could, so it was Drika and Flea alone in a little house in the middle of nowhere ...'
'A recipe for trouble,' said Wickus.
'Drika was still a child herself, accustomed to wealth and glamour, not very keen on raising a crying baby on her own, the romance of running away with her lover did not last. If you have had attention and admiration all your life, and suddenly it dries up, you go looking for it. She was in town more than she was on the farm, she started phoning Big Frik and saying she was sorry, wouldn't he help her, and Frik said "you made your bed, lie in it" ...'
'Which is right, children have to learn: everything has consequences.'
'But, Wickus, she was his child ...'
'I'm just saying.'
'If he had helped, who knows ... Drika began leaving Flea on the farm with her Venda nanny more often, and she flirted with every man, gate-crashing parties, drinking, having a good time, and Louis knew nothing about it, because when he came home from the veld, she stayed at home and whined about how awful it was to raise a child alone. It went on like that for more than two years; everyone knew how she was carrying on, except Louis. Nobody had the heart to tell him.'
'Until the guitar player.' Wickus spat out the words, as if it were a sinful occupation.
'He was a chap from Port Elizabeth, long hair, tight jeans and big loose white shirts open to the belly button ...' said Lollie.
'Big gold chain on his hairy chest. What would a man want to wear jewellery for?'
'He had sung in clubs and bars all over, but he wasn't very good ...'
'You know the kind, the audience has to be a bit drunk ...'
'... so he came to play in the Intaba, it was a sort of bush pub outside town ...'
'Wicked place.'
'... and one of Drika's haunts, and he and Drika linked up, a red
-hot affair, she was with him more than with her own child. Late nights, she would end up in a drunken singalong with him. That was when people decided enough is enough. First a couple of the men threatened the guitar man and told him to pack his stuff, and two of them went to fetch Louis. He was up in the northern Tuli with a Scandinavian hunting party, and they told him he had better come home, his wife was creating a scandal.'
'Flea's father chased them away,' said Wickus.
'Louis didn't want to believe them, poor man. But two days later, he came. Must have been brooding over it. By the time he got home, Drika and her guitar man were gone. Louis was crushed, he loved that woman with all he had. But the great tragedy was, he went looking for her, but by the time he found her, she was dead, she and her guitar man, this side of Sun City, drove off a bridge in the night, probably drunk, and they were both killed instantly.'
'Hell,' said young Swannie.
'Bad, bad,' said Wickus.
'Louis brought his daughter up alone, and let me tell you, it must have been very hard, because he mourned Drika for years. He withdrew entirely, he only went to work when the money ran out and then he took Flea with him ...'
'That's how she learned to track ...'
'She just about grew up in the bush ...'
'Some people say she is better than her father.'
'I know there was an issue when she had to go to school, Louis wouldn't hear of it, Welfare had to go and talk to him. Eventually he put her in boarding school, although he didn't want to. She was with Swannie until standard ... ?'
'Grade Six,' said Swannie, eager to contribute. 'You hardly noticed her, she was a loner, a skinny girl who talked to no one, just kept to herself. Jissie, she's changed,' he shook his head in disbelief, the impact the adult Flea had made on him clearly visible.
'Louis found a permanent job. That's why they moved away,' said Wickus. 'That was the time when private game reserves were shooting up everywhere, and the concessions. Guys like Louis were suddenly very sought-after, there were lots of new jobs, good money. They came to find him and offered him a job up there in Moremi...'
'In Botswana,' said Lollie.
'Okavango.'
'Private tuition for the children.'
'That was the biggest thing for Louis, he could see Flea every day.'
'Must be where she got her opportunity to study veterinary, through the private schooling.'
'They left the area. Overnight almost. That's about all we know really,' Lollie said.
'There were other stories ...'
'I don't know if you can always believe them ...'
'The one about the crocodile is true, Lollie. Div de Goede heard it personally. And he knows Big Frik well.'
'Maybe ...'
Swannie couldn't suppress his curiosity any longer. 'What crocodile story?'
'Div pitched up here with the story, must be six or seven years ago. He's the rep for AgriChem, their head offices are in Nelspruit, Frik is one of his big clients. He said the people from the Moremi concession turned up at Frik's door one day and told him the whole story. How Louis grew odder and odder with every year that passed. Sometimes he would just disappear, then he would reappear a month later smelling like a native hut, all sweat and woodsmoke, and then they would hear that Louis had been with the Bushmen again. Sometimes Louis would make a big fire in the bush and then dance around it until he went into a trance ...'
'I don't know if I believe that,' said Lollie.
'I'm just repeating what Div said. The thing is, apparently, Louis began to unravel after the baboons attacked Flea ...'
'Hell!' said Swannie.
'That's just nonsense,' said Lollie.
'I don't know,' Wickus shrugged. 'They said it had been a bad drought up there, late winter, the baboons were very aggressive, because there was nothing to eat. Flea went walking with this LITTLE dog, a Jack Russell terrier or something, she was terribly attached to IT. Then the baboons came across them and they went for the dog, blood lust, they get that way. And Flea tried to stop them and a big male attacked her, terrible scratches and cuts across her torso and face. You saw the eye, while she was here. Anyway, some of the natives came across them and they threw stones at the baboons and saved Flea, but the little dog didn't make it. But that's when Louis started to talk about how he was to blame, the gods were angry with him because of something he had done as a child. When they asked him what it was, he said he had eaten tortoise, that is a great taboo with the Bushmen, only old people may eat it, or something like that. The more they told him it was nonsense, the more he said the gods were punishing him, that's why Drika died, why she messed around with other men, why his father had died, why the baboons had attacked Flea. He said he must sacrifice himself, it was the only way ...'
In a barely audible whisper, Swannie sighed, 'Hell.' 'That's nonsense,' said Lollie.
'It wasn't nonsense to Louis. Anyway, they told Div, there in that bar, that Louis had gone out into the bush, and had sat on the river bank, and waited until a huge crocodile had dragged him into the waters of the Okavango, because Louis was dead, and they didn't know what to do with Flea. She must have been, I don't know, seventeen, eighteen. Frik was the grandfather, could they bring the child to him? Frik just stood and looked at them, and without a word, he shut the door in their faces. The Moremi people went to Nelspruit in the hopes of finding someone there who could help, maybe one of Frik's other daughters, they were Flea's aunts after all. Div bumped into the men somewhere, probably a bar, he does like a good time, and they told him the whole story.'
'But why?' asked Swannie. 'Why did Louis let the croc get him?' 'To free his daughter from the curse.'
40
...trackers should place themselves in the position of their quarry in order to anticipate the route it may have taken. They will thereby be able to decide in advance where they can expect to find signs and thus not waste time looking for them.
The Art of Tracking: Principles of tracking
Lollie took Lotter to 'the office' to finalise the fax for our flight clearance. I drank coffee with the Swanepoel men in the sitting room. 'And where will you go from here?' Wickus asked.
'To Ehrlichmann,' I said deliberately.
'Aah ...' he said. Which meant he knew who that was.
'How do you know Ehrlichmann?'
'Through helping the Zimbabweans,' he said. 'Ehrlichmann was involved in that from the early days.'
'Helping the Zimbabweans?'
'When that dirty rotten Mugabe started taking people's farms, lots of the Zim farmers knew they had to get their stuff out of the country quickly. We smuggled it out. Furniture, livestock, machinery, cars, tractors, trailers, implements. Dollars, a few times, cardboard boxes full, you wouldn't believe. Hell, once we brought a whole bloody cigarette factory through here, I have no idea where they went with that. Anyway, Ehrlichmann was one of the men on that side who helped organise the whole operation.'
I mulled that over before asking: 'And Diederik Brand?'
'Diederik was a buyer.'
'A buyer?'
'I thought you worked for him?'
'Since Saturday.'
'Oh. Look, the stuff that came from Zim ... The farmers over there were looking for cash, what could they do with their machinery and livestock in South Africa? Diederik bought them up, he was one of a few who helped out that way. Then he would resell, on auctions and suchlike. I never met him, just talked over the phone. A good man ... Once he even sent food and medical equipment back to Zim, when Mugabe and his gang plundered the Red Cross aid for their own benefit.' Wickus laughed softly and shook his head. 'I still wonder where Diederik got the stuff...'
'He's an operator,' said Swannie, equally delighted.
'Heck, that's true. How does a Karoo farmer get his hands on medical supplies from Norway?'
A mental alarm sounded in the back of my head. 'Norway, you say?'
'On the crates, large as life. Karma or Karmer or something ... And "Oslo, Norge"
.'
'Kvaerner?'
'Something like that.'
Kvaerner was the Norwegian company that actually owned Techno Arms, the manufacturer of the MAG-7. 'Did Ehrlichmann help with those medical supplies?'
'Yes, he did,' said Wickus Swanepoel. 'Zimbabwe needs more people like that.'
All three of them came to see us off in the plane. Lollie kissed us goodbye, Wickus and Swannie gave us warm, friendly handshakes, as if we had become part of their social circle.
As Lotter circled back above them and waggled his wings in a final salute, we looked down on the three small figures waving with outstretched arms, and Lotter said, 'Good people.' He, the Swanepoels, Emma, spontaneously saw the good in others, they believed that people were inherently good, or at least interesting, fascinating. I refrained from speaking, because I'm not like that. I had sat and listened to the story of Flea van Jaarsveld and wondered why no one had stepped in. Why had no one gone to Big Frik Redelinghuys and said, 'It's your daughter and your grandchild, you idiot, wake up'? Why hadn't the keepers of Musina's morals talked to Drika or warned Louis earlier? When the people from Moremi came looking for Flea's next of kin after Louis died, why had no one stepped forward and said, 'bring the girl to me'? Why hadn't Wickus and Lollie done something themselves? It was no good telling the story with quasi-altruistic remarks like, 'It's a sad story', more than ten years after the damage was done. That was the trouble with our society; we had become spectators, sideline critics. We couldn't wait to read about other people's hardships, hear about them and pass on the stories. Always from the moral high ground, of course. 'They got what was coming to them'. But no one had the guts to step in.
Granted, My First Law was: Don't get involved, but the critical difference was that I did not seek the moral high ground, I didn't pretend to be 'good'...