by Lewis Desoto
Only when dusk approaches, when the group halts to make camp, is Khoza allowed to join her. There is a weariness and a disappointed air about the soldiers, their quarry still eluding them. One of the men unfastens the rope and brusquely orders Tembi and Khoza to gather firewood.
Tembi sighs audibly as she sets about her task, weary, but glad to have Khoza at her side again.
“Are you very tired?” Khoza asks.
She nods.
“We should try to escape,” he says.
She looks back at the soldiers, who are unpacking bedrolls and weapons from their horses. “They’ll notice, and chase us.”
“I don’t think so. They don’t care about us.” He lowers his voice. “Pretend you are getting wood and slowly move up into the trees. We can run when we are out of sight. You go first.” As she moves away, he hisses, “Not so fast! Make it look like you are searching for the firewood.”
Stooping every now and then to gather up a small branch or handful of twigs, Tembi works her gradual way into the copse of trees. Then, when she is hidden from sight, she hurries on a few more yards and stops to wait for Khoza.
A moment later he joins her. “Come on, let’s go, quickly,” he urges, grasping her hand.
Tembi lets the wood fall to the ground and runs with him. As they emerge from the shelter of the trees to a gentle slope that leads up out of the hidden valley, Tembi sees a soldier standing with his back to her.
She stops immediately and pulls back.
Khoza puts his face close to her ear. “We can sneak round him,” he whispers. “Down this way through the grass. He won’t see us if we crawl.”
The man half turns, showing his profile, and Tembi immediately recognizes him. Joshua.
Khoza is tugging at her hand, jerking his head for her to get down and follow him. Tembi looks back at the man. She cannot move. She cannot take her eyes from the figure of Joshua. She stares at him with revulsion, with dreadful fascination, like a rabbit staring at a snake, unable to move.
The man clears his throat with a loud, ugly rasping sound, then leans forward and spits into the grass. Tembi feels as if she will faint. She steps back into the trees without removing her eyes from the figure of Joshua. Khoza is on his knees in the long grass, beckoning to her, frowning hard.
Slowly Tembi shakes her head, then turns and walks back to the camp. She finds her pile of wood, gathers it up into her arms, and walks back to the clearing.
When Khoza catches up to her he whispers, “Why didn’t you come? What’s wrong?”
What can she say to him, what can she tell him? The mix of emotions coursing through her is too confusing, too strong. Her body is filled with a sickness. Dropping her eyes she mumbles, “I am too tired. Too tired.”
Tembi sleeps huddled close against Khoza. She feels numb, empty, and she nestles in against his chest for warmth. She is glad of him, glad of his enfolding presence and warmth.
“Don’t worry,” Khoza says softly, stroking her face. “This will end, then we can go home.”
But where will home be? she wonders. Her heart aches for Märit, lying in the dust. Her heart aches for the farm, for her mother, for her father. Her heart aches for everything.
She presses her face close against his chest, burrowing closer, and she falls asleep to the sound of the slow beat of his heart.
55
HER MOUTH IS DRY. A rectangle of light is burning on the wall where the sun strikes the plaster, and the bright hot rectangle is like the doorway into a desert, a place of terrible thirst.
Märit sees small figures in the distance, shimmering and indistinct as they travel across the dry, salty plain. She calls to them, but the harsh light blinds her and beats her down to her knees, and when she raises her head the figures are gone. The taste of salt is in her mouth.
With an effort she sits upright on the couch and stretches to look out the window. Nothing but the blue sky and the brown earth. What time is it? Once a slim silver watch used to adorn her wrist, but it is gone now. She does not know what has become of time. There is only light and dark, hunger and thirst.
When Märit looks at the ransacked room, at the torn armchairs, the smashed pictures on the walls, the broken radio and the telephone, they seem foreign to her, outside of the consciousness she inhabits, objects in another world in which she no longer exists.
Once she lived here, with other people, but they are gone now. When was that? Who were they? Their faces will not come to her; she remembers only a brown-skinned girl.
Raising her hands before her face Märit studies her fingers. They don’t seem to belong to her, they seem to be outside of time, in that other place along with the furniture and the brown earth. The woman that lived in this house, that walked across this land, whose name was Märit, is no longer here. That was someone else. Not her.
Slowly lucidity returns, and she remembers. She remembers everything. She looks down at her leg, at the ugly poisonous swollen thing that is her foot. Thin lines of red show on the skin, like veins, drawn up her calf towards the knee.
I am being poisoned, she thinks. There is something wrong with my thinking and it is because I am being poisoned by my own body. When these red lines reach my heart I will die.
Grasping the broom she struggles to her feet, accepting the wave of pain that wants to pull her into the desert. Pain is a condition of living, she thinks. There is always pain. First I will have a drink of water and then I will go and lie down in the desert.
No water pours forth from the kitchen taps. She runs her finger around the inside of the glass standing on the counter and dabs the single drop of moisture across her lips. I will go down to the river and I will drink and I will bathe and I will wash away the salt of the desert, she tells herself.
The river lies beyond the vast expanse of desert that Märit must cross, but cross it she must. There is no hunger now, there is no fatigue. There is only thirst.
How many hours does it take her to cross that vast distance? There is no time. There is only eternity. Sometimes pain and fatigue force her to stop and she sinks to her knees and bows her head, because the journey is too long, the river is too far, the desert is too vast.
When she looks back, the small farmhouse with its thatched roof is far, far away. When she turns her head in the other direction the willow trees are a vague shimmering green in the far, far distance. But go on she must, for she is thirsty, and she must drink, otherwise she will die.
Above her head is the blue sky, empty, and at her feet is a piece of the sky, fallen. Märit slowly bends down and touches the blue, her fingers closing around a bracelet of blue glass beads. She stands, dizzy for a moment, then fastens the bracelet around her wrist. She sobs quietly for a minute, because Tembi is gone, because she is lost in the desert, and her steps are small and slow and carry her nowhere.
The river is near, so near, yet so far. Her progress is slow and painful, her foot a constant searing flame, but she struggles on, for she must have water. The crutch is chafing in her armpit, her swollen foot is a shackle that binds her to the earth. She can smell the water, and she swallows the salty saliva in her mouth, and she goes on. She goes on through the desert of pain because otherwise she will die.
I am thirsty, she says, and perhaps she says it aloud, or perhaps there are no words. Words belong to time and there is no time now. There is only the matter of life and death. But who is dead and who is alive? All the others are dead, all the others who used to be here in this place—the man who loved her, the boy who came out of the veldt, the brown-skinned girl. Or is it she who is dead? Is it she who walks now with the hyenas?
Water! Like a wave breaking on the shore the sweet smell of water washes over her and she hears the gurgling of the river flowing over the rocks and she hears the birdsong in the trees.
Casting aside the crutch Märit tumbles down the bank and flings her body into the shallows. Oh, the cool water, across her face, into her open mouth, wetting her parched throat. Sweet, sweet wa
ter! She gulps at the water, immersing her head, drinking it down. Using her elbows she pushes herself farther into the stream, the water so cool and sweet along her body.
When she has drunk her fill, when thirst is no longer thirst, Märit rolls over onto her back and eases her injured leg under the water. The pain is there still, a constant companion, but it troubles her less now that it is no longer linked with thirst. She lies on her back in the shallows and lets the flowing river wash over her, soothing, cooling, restoring.
Hope returns, time returns, the future becomes possible once more.
A plan, a possibility, begins to form in her mind. Somewhere on the farm she will find food, dried corn, or fruit, and once she has rested she will go for help. Somewhere on one of the neighboring farms there will be help. Even if she has to walk all the way to Klipspring she will find help—food, medicine, people. There will be people somewhere. Even if there is war upon the land there will be people somewhere, someone left behind, someone hiding, someone like herself. She will find a vehicle and then she will go in search of Tembi.
The future seems possible, hope seems possible, Märit’s plan seems possible.
She hobbles out of the river, finds her crutch, and with the wet clothes on her body slowly drying in the sunlight, begins the arduous journey towards the house. The minutes are long, long as hours, long as days. An eternity. But she goes on.
As she approaches, coming up through the trees, she sees the figures outside the house—black figures against the white walls.
People! They have come back! Is it the soldiers returned? Is it others? The sweat stings her eyes, the light is blinding, her head is spinning.
Suddenly the figures cease all their movement. Heads turn towards Märit. One of the figures that has been squatting on the ground rises to his full height and makes a loud, guttural sound of warning, almost a bark.
“Waagh!”
Märit stops and wipes the sweat from her eyes.
Again the hoarse shout sounds, “Waagh!” Just once, but she hears the threat in the sound, and senses the sudden tension in the other figures.
That single figure comes forward, half hopping, half loping on all fours, dark gray and black, a tail arched above the back. A baboon.
The baboon lopes towards her and raises his dog-like head, his long muzzle, drawing back his lips to show long yellow canine teeth.
“Waagh! Waagh,” he snarls, charging down upon her like some strange dog-creature.
Märit flinches, raising the broom above her head, and lets out a wild scream.
The baboon skids to a stop in a flurry of dust. He stands resting his weight on his front legs, massive head lowered between his wide shoulders, then paces back and forth angrily. He turns and glances back at his companions before sinking to his haunches and glowering at Märit.
Märit slowly lowers herself to the ground.
The breeze carries the scent of the baboon towards her—a zoo smell is how she thinks of it—and she remembers the creature in the house last night. Not a dream or a delirium, that strange human-like shape leaping past her in the darkness, but a baboon.
She looks up to the house and sees the other baboons on the veranda, some of them going in and out of the house. She wants to run and chase them away. But this other one blocks her way, this one who must be the leader, protecting his companions. But what is there in the house for them anyway? There is no food, there is no water. Soon they will lose interest and wander off. She will wait, for there is nothing else to do, there is nowhere else to go.
She waits.
Sometimes she closes her eyes against the glare and sinks into a cool shady place where there is no pain, where there is neither hunger nor thirst. And when the daylight pulls her back she resists, she returns with reluctance.
Märit counts the baboons. Eleven, she thinks, watching as they scamper about in front of the veranda and go in and out of the house. Twelve, including the big one, the leader, who sits between her and the others.
Why have they come here? Have they watched the farm, and seen only this single aimless woman, and known that she is nothing? Why have they come? Is it to prevent her from going back to the house? Will they move into the house, as others have done, and possess it instead of her?
SOMETIMES HER THOUGHTS drift off, sometimes she dozes in and out of wakefulness. Sometimes she comes back to lucidity, brought back by the pain in her leg, and then she knows that she is sick, that her mind is sick with the poison coursing through her body.
I must get help, she tells herself, I must get up and go into the house and use the telephone to call for a doctor. When will Ben return with the car from Klipspring? He can take me to the doctor. Or maybe that woman from the neighboring farm will come—what is her name, the one with the little white car who spoke kindly to me? She will come and help me.
Tembi will be here soon, she thinks. Tembi will come and fetch me. She opens her eyes to look for Tembi and sees the animal watching her, his furrowed brow frowning over his yellow eyes. What do you want from me? she says, but he doesn’t even blink, and she realizes that she does not know whether she has spoken aloud or only voiced the thought in her mind.
Behind the one who watches her, the other baboons have drawn nearer, curious, looking at her.
They are a family, she decides, looking them over. There is the patriarch, who watches her, and there is a handful of smaller animals with the same silvery coloring as the big one, but they are smaller, although still powerful, walking with that powerful gait. Then there are four others, whom she knows to be females because their movements are different, less swaggering, and they seem less interested in the presence of the big male. She knows they are females because there are two small baboons, small like little monkeys, who frolic amongst the females, and their attention is directed to these two small creatures.
The two small agile youngsters dart away from their mother, skirt the big male, and approach Märit with open curious playful faces. A warning grunt sounds from the mother and she sits up straight.
Märit smiles weakly as the two little faces study her with open curiosity, their round brown eyes so human and child-like. She lifts her hand to them and clicks her fingers. “Come, come.”
The big male springs up on all fours and barks, lifting his head to show his yellow incisors.
An immediate outcry. The two babies flee screaming back to the females, leaping onto the nearest body and clinging to the thick fur with agile hands. The females form into a protective huddle. The young males charge back and forth, barking and screaming hoarsely, their cries echoing back from the koppie.
“I only wanted to say hello,” Märit says softly. The big male barks again at her, like a shout of warning.
How strange they are, she thinks, looking at the baboons. Not like people, and not like other animals either. Yet somehow a bit of both. There is something ancient and dog-like about them, their long muzzles and the way they walk on all fours. Yet they seem human when they sit up and look at her with their intelligent eyes. The two babies are just like human children with their appealing faces. They are a family, a people, a tribe. Didn’t someone tell her they were called the Rock People? They are a family, the way they touch each other with their hands, and talk to each other. An ancient tribe, with ancient faces, from the time before humans walked the earth, and their language is made up of words that humans have forgotten how to speak.
The sun moves across the veldt, shrinking the shade, the white light blurring everything around her.
When Märit opens her eyes again, one of the baboons is sitting very close to her, studying her with its intelligent eyes. A female, with a look of pity and sympathy in her eyes. Her two children sit close, leaning into her, regarding Märit with curiosity.
“Where are your people, sister?” the baboon asks.
“I have none.”
“You have no one to belong to? Where is your family, sister?”
“I am alone on the earth.”
“I am already dead,” Märit answers.
“Not yet, sister. Not yet.”
“What must I do? Where can I go?” Märit asks.
The baboon regards her with its wise and ancient face. “You can come with us.”
“Yes, yes, I can do that.” Märit sinks back on her elbows.
The sun moves across the land, time moves, the shadows are longer, and the baboons have gathered closer together in a loose group near the house. They seem to have forgotten Märit.
Now they move away, ambling, unhurried, the two small ones scampering back and forth, the young males in the forefront, the females next, and lastly the big silvery male.
Märit looks for the female who spoke to her. She squints and shakes her head and wipes the perspiration from her brow. Did the baboon speak to me? she wonders. Is such a thing possible? Or is it the sickness in me that causes me to imagine things?
She gets to her feet slowly, fighting off a wave of dizziness, and when she is upright she stands unsteadily, swaying on her crutch as she watches the tribe of baboons making their slow path in the direction of the koppie to the hills and valleys of the wild country beyond.
“Wait for me,” Märit calls, her voice a dry croak. She stumbles after them, gritting her teeth.
The baboons seem unconcerned by her presence; they don’t even look back—except for the big silvery male, who turns and watches her from his yellow eyes, then lifts his dog-like muzzle and barks once before turning his back on her.
She remembers a story, told to her long ago, when she lived on this farm with her husband, and people used to come and visit, about a man who had trapped a baboon and painted it with whitewash, so that when it tried to rejoin its fellows they fled from it in terror, as if it were a ghost.