Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  'Please, mother, you're upsetting yourself.' The little woman looked steadily at Peekay, her lips trembling as she forced herself to continue. 'At the Friday night meeting I stood up to witness for the Lord and asked again that He would give me a sign and that He would place His hand over you and protect you in America. We kneeled in prayer and almost immediately the Holy Spirit descended among us and Mrs Schoemann started to talk in tongues and then broke into English…she speaks English poorly, but her speech was flawless.'

  The devil is black and has a tongue of fire and leaps to destroy the children of the lamb. His number is twice seven and one and with his hands he would destroy us, tearing at the flesh of our flesh and the bones of our bones, bruising our flesh and breaking our bones. With his right hand he will smite our firstborn and with his left hand also. His colour is black and his tongue is the fire of hate and he will triumph over the flesh of our flesh and he will vanquish him. But the Lord will place his hand beneath the feet of the vanquished and raise him up and take him from that place and anoint his head and dress his wounds and clothe him in fresh raiment and require only that he not return from that place from whence he came, for if he should do so, he will be utterly destroyed.

  Peekay had heard his mother before. She could play back the complex syntax of a message delivered from the Holy Spirit, seldom missing a word. It had once occurred to him that his own ability to absorb and later recall every detail of a fight must be a different manifestation of the same inherited gut. Peekay remembered how Mrs Schoemann, whose husband ran the bioscope and was therefore definitely a sinner over whom a great many hours of prayer had been spent, was a heavyweight transmitter for the Holy Ghost. At the smallest provocation she could go off in a prayer meeting like a yard full of chickens who discover a snake in their midst.

  'I don't have to tell you what Mrs Schoemann's message says, darling. You have the gift. But clearly the Lord has spoken. You have been rescued from the bottomless pit! He, in His infinite grace, has lifted you up into his everlasting arms and given you a second opportunity to repent and be washed by the blood of the lamb. His guidance is clear, you must never box again!' Peekay's mother started to weep softly, her head bowed, a tiny white-haired lady who was the very best messenger the Holy Ghost ever had.

  Peekay rose slowly and put his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her trembling beneath his touch. 'Mother, I must have two more fights. Just two more. After that, I promise, I will give up and never put on a pair of boxing gloves again.'

  His mother looked up at him tearfully, her lips trembling. 'Those were not the Lord's instructions. If you fight the black man again, the black devil, it will be the end of you.' Her voice rose suddenly to overcome her distress. 'No power on earth can save you from the everlasting fires of hell!' Her shoulders shook as she pulled herself away from her son's embrace. 'Oh, oh, you are the devil's child, but also you are still my son, I love you so. Lord, in your infinite mercy, please grant me the strength to bear this terrible burden!'

  TWENTY -SEVEN

  Peekay rose before dawn and made his way through to the kitchen. To his surprise Dum and Dee lay rolled up in their blankets on a grass mat on the floor. A candle burned on the shelf above the stove and the glow of embers in the grate showed that a low fire was burning. A quarter moon of the large black cast-iron kettle was placed on the hob so as to keep it just off the boil. Both twins woke startled, the way people do when their sleeping senses have been primed with expectation.

  'Why? Why are you here?' Peekay whispered. 'What has happened to your khaya?' He was concerned that something must have happened to their home. Doc had left everything he owned to Peekay. As it turned out, this was the entire koppie on which his tiny three-roomed cottage with its magnificent cactus garden sat. Doc's house was sufficiently above and away from the white part of town so as not to qualify as a white residential area and so Peekay gave the cottage to Dee and Dum as their home, moving only the magnificent old Steinway.

  As Africans and women to boot, the law did not allow Dum and Dee to hold the title deeds. Nevertheless it had been a happy arrangement. Doc's cottage was a mansion compared to the tiny brick shed behind the stone wall in the rose nursery, which was barely large enough to contain two narrow iron beds raised up on bricks. For, while both girls confessed to be Christians, somewhere they had learned the fear most town Africans share of the tokoloshe, a small creature who comes in the night and climbs into bed, making young girls pregnant among other unspoken of things. The tokoloshe is just big enough to clamber with difficulty onto the average bed and a couple of bricks to raise its cast-iron legs is known to be sufficient to keep him safely out.

  'You said you were going to the mountains for two days, we have come to pack your food and walk with you for the first part into the hills.' Dee said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  'You have slept on a hard floor. It wasn't necessary. It's all tinned stuff, bully beef, a bit of biltong, biscuits, a couple of sweet potatoes and a tin of peaches.' Peekay explained the intended contents of his rucksack in the African manner so that each item took on an importance.

  'Ho, listen to the great provider of food! Would we let him who is from our kraal go into the mountains with just a tin of meat?' Dum said scornfully. 'For the first day and night you can eat well. The food we have made will not spoil in this time. Also there is a leg of mutton, it is well cooked and it will keep for two days if you keep the flies away.'

  Dee turned from where she was standing at the stove. 'After that you will be home again,' she announced.

  'Ho! Since when do the izaLukazi decide where a man goes and when he returns?' Peekay scolded, laughing.

  Dee now brought him a mug of sweet, milky tea and a rusk and already Dum had the skillet sizzling on the stove with rashers of bacon plopping and splurting as though they were being prodded by a teasing finger from beneath. Two dark, shiny-skinned sausages and half a large red tomato shared the pan. With a couple of fried eggs, soft in the middle, it was one of Peekay's favourite breakfasts.

  Peekay had hoped to get away quickly so as to get to the top of the first range before the sun grew too hot. Once there he'd stop for a slug of cold tea and a couple of hardtack biscuits before moving higher. There was no point now. Dee and Dum would fuss around him like a couple of old abaFazis and they'd be lucky to get away by sunrise at 5 o'clock. Still, with a big breakfast under his belt, he'd be able to keep going until noon when he hoped to arrive at the cave.

  He quite liked the idea of having Dee and Dum come along. They'd take turns carrying his rucksack, balancing it on their head, chatting and laughing and pretending petulance if one took advantage and carried his rucksack for too long. They would walk with him to Pig Rock, about an hour over the foothills, before turning back.

  He glanced over at his old rucksack in the corner of the kitchen. The canvas had been scrubbed and was spotless, and the tears in it had been carefully patched or cross-stitched. Both girls were excellent dressmakers, a skill they had learned from Peekay's mother. In fact, making clothes for the location women would have provided them with a far better living than being household servants, though the idea hadn't entered their heads. They were Peekay's family and would remain in his kraal, their ties to him as strong as any bloodline could possibly be.

  Peekay dared not examine what they'd packed into his rucksack for the two days in the mountains; it would upset them too much to think he mistrusted their judgement. He handed Dum a small canvas bag containing a dozen crampons he'd brought from England. A look of dismay crossed her face as she recognized what they were, but then dutifully added them to his pack.

  Both girls had watched the previous day as he'd tested an old climbing rope, swinging it over the branch of one of the magnificent oaks which grew so incongruously in the rose garden. With the rope they found no cause for alarm; it was standard equipment when he went into the mountains, and afterwards one of the girls coiled it ca
refully, attaching it, as always, to the top of his rucksack. Dum's dismay at the sight of the pitons was different; pitons confirmed that he was headed across Saddleback. They meant Peekay was going high and would take risks. He was, they both realized, going to see Doc.

  Doc's body had never been found. One day, when Peekay had still been at boarding school, he'd simply walked into his beloved hills and hadn't returned. Peekay had learned from Dee and Dum that Doc had asked them to pack food for three days and only when he hadn't returned on the fourth day had they raised the alarm through Mrs Boxall. Typically nobody officially in charge had thought to ask them when Doc had taken off and so it had been assumed by everyone that the old musician, in some sort of delirium, had wandered off during the night or early morning of the day they'd reported him missing. When they eventually discovered otherwise the conclusions they'd reached remained unchanged. Doc had simply stumbled and fallen earlier, and had been dead longer.

  But Peekay instinctively knew otherwise, though he didn't share his knowledge with anyone. He'd waited until the furore over Doc's death had died down before packing a rucksack and leaving at dawn for the high mountains. He knew that Doc, always a meticulous planner, would have planned his death for months, in fact; he had cause to believe he had done so three years previously.

  During the Easter holidays of Peekay's second year at school they'd found a cave, a crystal cave high up beyond Saddleback, a day's hike for the old man even then when he'd been fit and strong. Doc wanted more than anything in the world to be buried in the crystal cave of Africa, which is what they'd called their secret discovery.

  Doc wanted to lie stretched out on the beautiful natural stalagmite altar they'd discovered within the cave. He'd been wildly excited by the discovery and he'd explained to a fearful Peekay how he would lie like a medieval knight in this great crystal cave cathedral, his arms folded across his breast; his legs outstretched, as the tiny drops of lime sediment fell, drop by tiny drop, upon him.

  'Maybe it takes one hundred thousand years, but then also I am crystal. Imagine only, Peekay, I am Africa and Africa is me!'

  Peekay knew Doc wasn't the sort of person to abandon a project as important as turning himself into crystal just because he knew it was time for him to die. So, when the search parties had given up looking for the professor's body, he'd set out to find Doc himself.

  On his own the climb to the deep rainforest kloof beyond Saddleback had taken him around six hours and he'd returned home shortly after moonrise in just under five.

  Dee and Dum had waited for him with two four-gallon tins of steaming hot water bubbling away on the stove ready for his bath. He'd climbed blissfully into the large tin tub, leaving his soiled clothes on the floor. Dum had entered later to empty the tin bath and take his clothes to the wash house. As usual she'd searched through is pockets where she discovered Doe's Joseph Rogers pocket knife and his gold hunter watch.

  Dum's heart had beat furiously as she realized that Peekay had found Doc. Taking the knife and the watch, together with a small tightly folded wad of paper she'd also found in Peekay's shirt pocket, she placed them under his pillow where she knew he'd find them.

  Later that night she had told Dee. Holding each other, the two little teenage girls had wept themselves to sleep, for they'd loved Doc dearly. Apart from Peekay, Doc was the only person they'd ever known who'd loved them just the way they were. They also knew that Peekay, exhausted as he was from his long hike, wouldn't make a silly mistake such as leaving the objects in his pockets if he didn't want them to be found. It was, they decided, his way of saying, without incriminating them, that he'd found and taken care of Doc. They would keep Peekay's discovery secret forever and they loved him even more, if it was possible, for telling only them.

  Now, nearly seven years later, Dee knew that Peekay was troubled and was going back to visit Doc in a high place in the mountains where a rope and pitons were needed. Peekay's left hand was still in plaster and it worried her to think of him climbing across the mountain crags beyond Saddleback. They could be treacherous, with mist often driving in without warning. She knew his body was not yet altogether mended; the bruising about his ribs had turned green and purple and, while his right eye was no longer swollen, there was a half-moon of bright purple below it. Above it a fresh pink scar, like a badly mended tear, showed where Jackson had worked to put it out of action. Peekay was still not as agile or as strong as he needed to be to climb high across the sheer rock face of the mountain buttresses that rolled back beyond the hills and where sometimes, even on a clear day, you could hear distant thunder and see lightning strike in the huge rocky pinnacles. She comforted herself that he was having a good breakfast and this, at least, would give him some strength.

  Peekay, swallowing the last of a second mug of tea said, 'The birds are beginning to chirp in the mulberries. Cmon, it's time to go, you lazy old hippos.'

  Dee giggled and hurried to the corner. Lifting the rucksack, she moved over to Dum and placed it carefully onto the head cloth Dum had placed on her head. Dum adjusted it so it was perfectly balanced and she moved away, her arms swinging freely.

  A piet kokkewiet, always the noisiest of the early morning birds, called from one of the alien oak trees as they moved beyond the rose terraces onto a small bush path which ran past the side of the house and led straight up the rocky hill behind the house.

  The hill was dotted with hundreds of aloes, each as tall as a man. They stood like mute sentinels guarding a rocky fortress at the crown of the hill, each with a menorah-like candelabra of flame-coloured blossom suggesting an exotic tribal headdress. The grass, brushing at their feet, was wet with the dawn condensation and the air was still crisp and sharp, not yet punctured with sunlight and leached with heat from a sun yet to rise above the high mountains.

  They climbed together for the first hour, the two girls chatting happily, delighted to be sharing the beginning of Peekay's journey. At sunrise they reached Pig Rock and turned for home, and Peekay headed for the huge kloof some three more hours into the high mountains before he reached the base of Saddleback. There is a stillness and sureness about mountains to be found nowhere else; it is landscape that diminishes man, who, on flat land, can imagine forests and fields of ripening crops, lowing cattle and distant church bells or who, on the sea, can fashion a coracle and hoist a sail and command the wind and the surface of the sea to be his servant. But high mountains are not as easily tamed; man can burrow like a small rodent into them to hide or blast and chip vaingloriously at them, but he cannot vastly alter their shape or diminish their control of the heavens and the clouds that rise above them and the water that flows from them to replenish the earth. The mountains do not lie still, meekly submitting to the arrogant tampering, the thoughtless rearrangements of man. Instead they test his strength and courage and ignore his pompous sense of superiority over all things. When man is threatened by others of his kind he seeks the mountains, a place to disappear and to change the odds, to hide and force his enemy to pursue him on more equal terms.

  By mid morning Peekay had passed over Saddleback and climbed higher beyond even the scree and tussock grass, and into the rocky crags. Towards noon he found himself between two giant cliffs that rose eight hundred feet into the air and seemed to split a mountain apart. The passageway between them was no more than six feet across at the broadest point and often no more than a foot. HaH an hour later this high canyon opened up into a deep kloof of rainforest, at the far side of which rose yet another cliff face. The crystal cave of Africa, concealed from view, was midway up this opposite wall of rock, nearly two hundred feet above the forest canopy. A waterfall of thin white spray, like a bridal veil, fell from one side of the cliff and seemed to disappear directly into the top of the green forest at the far side. Peekay, who now stood high above and at the opposite end of the kloof, noted the familiar old yellowwood which thrust nearly fifty feet above the dark canopy of trees and which Doc had estim
ated to be a thousand years old and still growing. Beard letchin was draped from its mighty branches and Peekay tried to imagine how big it would be by the time Doc, resting on his fluted calcareous altar, had turned into pure white crystal.

  It was strange; he didn't think of Doc as dead, but simply as undergoing a state of transition. The concept of Doe's metamorphism into a part of Africa itself was a willing suspension of Peekay's belief system. If Doe was alive in his mind and his unquenchable and sublime spirit dwelt within the crystal cave on the cliff opposite, then he knew he could reach him and talk to him.

  Peekay descended down the steep slope into the rainforest below his feet. He worked his way through the thick undergrowth and tall tree ferns to the stream which led from the waterfall. Choosing a spot beside the stream on the far edge of the rainforest to set up camp, he spent the next hour or so clearing a patch of ground, more or less flattening it by removing the larger rocks and piling the dead branches high into the centre of the clearing. He added to the pile of dead timber until it covered the entire clearing, which he then set alight, careful to keep the flames contained within it. He allowed the fire to bum down completely and then, fashioning a broom from several leafy branches, he swept the smouldering ash evenly over the clearing. The fire would heat the ground and keep it warm for the next two hours, forcing insects, in particular scorpions, to the surface from beneath leaf mould and small rocks to be consumed in the hot ashes. Before nightfall he would sweep away the ash, leaving a clean, warm patch of earth on which to build his campfire and where he could safely spend the night.