The last I’d seen of Ma she’d seemed to somehow slump in on herself, in only six months. “Where is the other one?” she’d asked over and over again, meaning Pa. Since then, within the space of three years, she’d shrivelled into this husk that made me think more of the mummified remains of those long dead in the vacuum of space rather than a living, breathing woman.
Ma climbs like one of the klipspringers, and I struggle to keep up with her. We’ve gone much higher than before, and below us the valley is spread out like a patchwork quilt of fields. The barley will ripen early this year. Pa’s tractor is a tiny toy near the vineyard, and it raises a plume of dust behind it.
“It’s here somewhere,” Ma calls. “C’mon, Rachel!”
She vanishes for a moment and I scramble to follow. Then we’ve reached the ledge and I flop down gratefully to let my poor arms and legs rest.
Ma, however, peers at the red oxide figures painted across the rock face. They describe a graceful arc running from right to left, clutching their spears. To the far left is a big blob Ma says is an eland. When I look carefully I can still make out the white pigments the ancient artists used to denote the heads and feet of these giant antelope.
“You only ever get eland in the zoos and parks now,” says Ma. “But once upon a time, in the days of your grandfather’s great–great–grandfather, when Mantis still walked among the people, we hunted the eland. Your forefathers painted these pictures before the Dutch settled.”
In many ways, I had become a hunter of sorts, just like my ancestors, who’d left their images on rock faces, and it was Ma who’d filled my head with all the stories about the olden times. Names, faraway places. All mixed up.
“I’m back, Ma,” I whispered.
The thing in the bed that wasn’t my mother anymore shifted slightly and craned its neck before it flopped down again. A broken thing, like the time I found a bird that had flown into the lounge window. I’d run to Pa with the dove and he’d taken it from me and wrung its neck. Just like that. Then given me a hiding later for crying to Ma about it.
My heart clenched painfully but my eyes remained dry. This thing in the bed wasn’t Ma. Then the guilt for those missing years gnawed and gnawed like a mole rat. You could have been here. All those times lost. You’re a terrible daughter.
“I want to go home,” she mumbled and almost raised an arm in supplication.
“You are home,” I replied.
Her only response was a garbled, ululating cry. I didn’t stay to hear more.
Sandra was in the media lounge watching some stupid show about fashion makeovers. Even though I stood within range of the wall–to–wall screen, she remained so engrossed in the fashionista’s efforts with a dowdy matron that she didn’t bother looking up.
“Ma’s nappy needs changing,” I said.
Sandra glared at me. “I told Essie to do it after lunch. Should still be fine.”
“It smells like it hasn’t been cleaned all day.”
“Essie!” Sandra shrieked, and I jerked back a step, surprised by the volume and pitch of my sister–in–law’s voice. “Where are you? Esssieee?”
A faint response drifted toward us from somewhere within the house. “Ja, madam?”
Sandra stabbed at the console to silence the programme, then rose just as the hapless Essie entered the room.
Poor Essie darted her gaze from me then to Sandra and back again. I was reminded of a childhood visit to the Swarts. Old Mrs Swart had used an imperious tone similar to the one Sandra employed. Pa had always said we wouldn’t order our workers around like that, and my face burnt at the sinking realisation that this was exactly how we’d become. As people had lived two hundred years ago, during the apartheid times.
Essie used to bathe me, dress me, and feed me. I grew up with her son, Derik, and we’d run all over Krommedrif together before our AF days. We were best friends forever, and it didn’t matter that his dad was a farmworker and mine was the farmer.
To have Essie standing here wringing her hands in obvious distress made me want to sink into the carpeting.
“Ouma needs changing,” Sandra said.
“Ja, madam.” Essie shuffled out.
“Happy now?” Sandra huffed at me. “Essie’s very busy with the kids. She probably forgot.”
“That’s not an excuse. Why is Ma being kept in that room? There’s not enough air, and she should be sitting up for at least part of the day. She needs to go outside a little. She’ll get bedsores.” I clenched and unclenched my hands, hating the somehow supercilious expression on my sister–in–law’s face.
“I’ve enough on my plate.”
“Evidently.” I glanced meaningfully at the screen.
“It’s not easy, you know. You have no idea what it’s like living out here, and your brother—”
“You married him,” I said.
Sandra had the temerity to turn from me and unmute the programme. In fact, she dialled the volume higher. The only outward sign of her anger was the way her jaw was working, like she was grinding her teeth.
“Bitch,” I muttered.
There’d be no help from this quarter, and I had little desire to fight with the woman. I might as well go find my brother and have it out with him—lay the entire figurative deck of cards on the table. If I was going to be groundside from here on in, I’d sooner sort out whichever differences existed between us before matters turned uglier.
The late–afternoon heat caught me the moment I stepped outside the house’s air–conditioned confines. Behind the guest cottage, Abjaterskop gleamed like a skull in the westering sun and I had to squint across the yard. So accustomed was I to the mostly sterile atmosphere onboard space–faring vessels and stations that the air, rich as it was in the farmyard smells of dung and livestock, was almost physically overwhelming. I’d get used to it soon enough.
The farm buildings crouched beneath the oaks, and I headed in that direction across the furrow. The old–style aluminium gate clanged shut behind me—like most of structures here, harking back to more than a hundred years ago. Here walls showed sign of intense repair—polymer composite bricks shoring up where old redbrick or even mudbrick walls had collapsed. Rusted corrugated iron warred with newer and obviously scavenged orbital–grade ceramic plating.
Out here, far away from the metropolises, farmers always had a plan.
A rooster and four hens scrubbed in the dirt and watched me warily as I passed them on my way to the kraal. I heard Johan before I saw him, and had already cringed before I rounded the corner.
“What the hell did I tell you about having that latch looked at?” Johan yelled. “Now who’s going to go get the bull out from the cows?”
“Sorry, baas,” the worker replied.
My brother moved fast and backhanded the guy, who stumbled and landed on his back in an especially mucky part of the kraal. What the hell? I quickened my pace and slipped past the gate.
“You people won’t hear, then you must feel,” my brother growled.
When he made to kick the fallen man—that was when I tripped into overdrive. Pa might’ve been a hard taskmaster, but he never beat up on the farmworkers. Where Johan had picked up those tendencies, I didn’t know.
I grabbed his shoulder and, though I didn’t weigh half what my brother did, I shoved hard so that his foot missed the worker and we both spun to the ground. Time congealed. My brother’s motions slowed, his bellow of rage extending and deepening as my physical modifications flooded my system with stimulants. I knew exactly where to punch—short, sharp jabs—to incapacitate an enemy.
Johan didn’t stand a chance, and I finished with my fingers brushing against his windpipe. Judging by his wild expression, he knew I’d had the power to crush his larynx but I’d halted. Just in time.
Scuttling sounds informed me that the downed farmworker was making himself scarce, but I did not break eye contact with my brother. Despite his skin being so much darker than my generally caramel tone, he’d paled visibly.
“When did you think it acceptable to beat your workers?” I asked him.
He twitched a little before he sucked in a breath. “What gives you the right to interfere?”
This is my farm as much as yours. I bared my teeth at him. “Father never taught us to be like this.”
Straddled as I was across his girth, I was conscious of how much spare flesh he carried, and the way his heart thundered a rapid tattoo within the prison of its ribcage. Even now I could count at least half a dozen ways I could end this man’s life without even a weapon at hand. And I hated myself for it.
“You disgust me,” I sneered.
I disgust myself.
He lay there, watching me as I rose to my feet. Only then did I notice the liquid staining his trousers. My brother had pissed himself.
Because of me.
My shame flushed through me, sudden and hot, and I had to turn away and walk back to the house. I was like a jackal among dogs here. My teeth were sharper, but either I would eventually lash out, or they would tear me to pieces.
Little falcon, Magister Oroyu called me. Little hunting falcon.
There was no escaping what I truly was. That young girl whose gaze had been trained on faraway stars had turned into something feral, dangerous. For her to consider turning her back on the fast strike, the quiet death, and the pursuit—now that was madness.
I am the only one of my unit small enough to worm my way through the air ducts. I am the only one quiet enough to slip unremarked into the very heart of the enemy’s holdout. The rebel doesn’t see the blade I bring to his throat and, when he clutches with ineffectual fingers, his life blood spatters to the composite alloy tiles in a hot fountain. I don’t need guns when I’m the weapon.
How much longer before my brother foolishly goaded me again? Then what? Would I step over that line with an unarmed civilian?
I waited in my room until the household settled for the night. No one called me for supper. I was hungry, but I’d experienced worse privations. Food could wait. My bag was already packed but there was one thing I had to do before I left. The ampoules were shiny blue gemstones in my palm, each with its own capped needle. I only needed six of the soporifics. They were synthetic opiates for the nights when my old injuries pained me more than usual. One or two were sufficient for a grown woman to sleep soundly for six to eight hours. Six would guarantee eternal slumber.
No one stirred when I made my way downstairs. I knew exactly where to step to avoid the squeaky stairs. The door to Ma’s room stood ajar, and the ammonia stench was even stronger than it had been this afternoon. Essie never did get round to bathing her, and now was not the time to berate myself for not checking up on her.
My anger flexed within me but I tamped it down. Eventually Johan and Sandra’s study in neglect would turn around and bite them, but I wouldn’t be that dog. Ma, on the other hand…
She’d somehow rucked the linen up so that she was hunched on the plastic mattress protector. The sheet that should have covered her was piss–stained and crumpled to one side. Her eyes shone in the moonlight filtered through the gauze curtains. Her gaze was trained on me but I couldn’t be sure whether she saw me.
“Ma, I’ve come to take you home.”
She didn’t stir as I encircled one birdlike wrist in my fingers. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the woman who’d climbed up those mountains with me. Here lay only a withered skeleton, the skin sliding loose on fragile bones.
I could smother her, break her neck. What was a moment of pain compared to the days, weeks, or even months that awaited her otherwise? There was no telling how long a body could linger. How was it that Johan, who would no doubt shoot one of his horses if it broke its leg, couldn’t do the same for Ma?
Derik has plunged twenty metres or more down a shaft in the bowels of the enemy station.
“Hold on!” I call to him, my pulse tripping as I grip the edges of the hole.
Already sounds of pursuit are not far away. We have three, maybe five critical minutes.
“Go!” he shouts back.
“I won’t leave you!”
He gives a sharp cry and I shine the torch so I can see him as he contorts, trying to free himself. Derik bares his teeth at me when the light flashes in his eyes.
“I can’t feel my legs! It’s no use.”
“I’ll come down!” I shout.
“Go, woman!”
“They’ll kill you.”
Metal grates on metal and he cries out again. This entire subsection is unstable. Derik’s slowly being crushed to death and I can do nothing to help him.
His eyes are glassy with pain as I get a bead on his forehead. Through my rifle’s scope the shaft is lit up in eerie colours. Derik shines like an angel. I pull the trigger.
Ma’s breathing eased by the time the third ampoule emptied. It was intramuscular so the effect would be gradual. She’d go to sleep. That was all. Gentle arms would unfold for her and whatever flicker of her that remained would ease out of existence. I could only hope someone would be my angel of mercy one day. I administered the last three measures quickly, then pocketed the evidence. No one would look for the marks on her arm—small, like mosquito bites. And even if they did find them, I’d be long gone.
Back in my room, I paused long enough to light a candle. My letter of resignation didn’t burn easily, but I held the envelope to the patient, hungry flame. Libations of black smoke twisted cobwebs into darkness. The picture frame I crushed underfoot until the fragments of polymer composites squeaked across the scuffed pine floor. But I swept this up and deposited the remains in the waste basket instead of leaving it there, because Essie would be the one sent up here to clean after me and she didn’t need the extra work.
The little dog stood on the sill, his muzzle pointed hopefully out the window. I almost didn’t take him, but then I remembered Derik’s smile, white against his burnt–sugar skin, and I tucked the little carving in my flight jacket’s pocket.
Some of us were destined to nurture, to walk with the sun shining on their faces. I didn’t number among them—rather, cold starlight for the hunter. Always the stars and the void between, until something stronger and faster than me came along. There would be no tears.
Enemy States
Karin Lowachee
WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR.
I’m so sick of hearing about the war.
It’s everywhere and you’re not.
It’s everywhere that you’re not.
Two years into this loss, and the garage, which used to be my zen place, is now just another place. Everyone thinks asking about you might make it better because it shows concern. As if I want to talk about it. Two years waiting and I no longer want to talk about it. “How’s Tuvi, Jake?” they say. “I haven’t heard from him,” is my refrain, while I keep my head above an engine and pray that some part of the fuel cell will spontaneously combust in my face so I don’t have to answer anymore. So I don’t have to think about you anymore, as if you were dead already, just a ghost. As if I can put you in a trunk with my parents’ history and never look at it again. But you can’t kill a memory like you can kill the enemy.
I try anyway to kill the memory of you. I make the plans. I attempt premeditation. All this time waiting has made me a silent murderer. Is it murder when it’s in war? If the enemy doesn’t do it, you can count on me.
Because they won’t tell me. Because they don’t know. Because you somehow can’t find your way home. You’re out past five solar systems and nobody knows anything. Not the media that pretends they’ve exposed the war, not the military that brags like they’re winning it. Maybe not even you, Tuvi. Maybe you don’t know where you are either. Maybe to you I’m a ghost as well, haunting all of the quiet places in your mind.
§
Absence is still grieving. I have nothing to throw my voice against. I go home and the walls of our apartment absorb futility as much as anger. They take the tears and don’t give them back. It’s not like arg
uing with you, there is no makeup sex. There is no mess. I’ve become a clinician of emotion, a recipient of symptoms. Check for signs of life. The walls and the floor and our bed hold all the memories and beat them back at me like the echo of a heart, a reminder of where you still occupy. An invasion force of your heart in mine, razing my surrendered territory.
Maybe I should’ve fought harder. Maybe I should’ve put up barricades and forced you to lay siege.
§
If I’d known at Anna’s barbecue two years ago. A winter grilling and you walked out onto the snow like it couldn’t touch you. Like this wasn’t the worst cold that you’d ever felt. I noticed your boots first because they used to be white. You had that easy, unconscious swagger, parting the drifts that blew around your legs. “This is my cousin Tuvi, he’s just come back from a tour.” And me in my half–drunk ignorance: “A tour of what?” A tour of the islands? A world tour? A tourist? Your grin was patronizing but also a little relieved. Like you’d finally found someone who saw something else in you, before the other things.
If I’d known.
I babbled something about taking apart bikes, tricking out cars. The race I was prepping for at the end of the month. (“Yeah, we ride in any weather.”) Ended by apologizing and claiming I didn’t usually talk this much. “I can tell,” you said. The only people who run on like that are the ones who keep all their shit stored up.
You let me trace the scar on your skull, flowing like a tributary from behind your ear to the back of your head, to meet up with another pale line. The military cut bristled beneath my fingertips but you were motionless. “There’s no story to tell,” you said. But don’t all scars come with stories? This wasn’t playtime, though. This wasn’t a gathering of mats in the library before recess. The kids’ swings creaked in the cold and beneath our weight, and our clothes had taken on the scent of wood smoke and ice. The party had moved inside and the gold light and faded voices could have been flickers from an aged film, echoes from a movie soundtrack. Neither of us cared to retreat into the warmth.
War Stories Page 33