Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  The journey’s glamour sizzled. If the wood were free, and of good quality, the costs of transporting it to Cape Town could be borne without compromising his profits too greatly. “How old are you?” asked Piet.

  “I am nineteen,” said Luvo, with dignity.

  “Then you are ripe for an adventure. I would like to go to this forest, and for this man to be my guide. You may come too and translate for us. What do you say?”

  The route to Gwadana lay through Cradock, and the chance of seeing his parents and sister made Luvo’s heart leap. When told of the Strange One’s request, Ntsina knew that his ancestors had sent him the means of getting home. Their favour was confirmed when Piet offered to pay him twice what he was currently earning—on condition that he did not tell Mr. Shabrill where he was going.

  Hands were shaken and plans laid. And that evening, when the Barols embarked on the Cape Town train, Luvo and Ntsina got into a third-class carriage, with provisions packed by Mrs. Mafuduka.

  “We are being sent on a great mission, my brother,” whispered Ntsina to Luvo in the darkness. “Our Ancestors have saved us for a special purpose.”

  “It is the Lord Jesus Christ who has saved us,” said Luvo. “Say a prayer of thanksgiving to Him with me.”

  “I will say my own prayers,” replied Ntsina; but he spoke with great friendliness. And when the young men had completed their devotions, they sat in companionable silence as they left the Rand behind and shot beneath blazing stars towards the Cape.

  4

  To return to Cape Town with six hundred pounds in his pocket, and the prospect of six hundred more to come, made Piet Barol very happy. He paid his most pressing creditors and hired back his senior staff, who were overjoyed to be given work again. Stacey paid three months’ rent on their house, took on two new servants and bought herself one delightful hat—which she wore to their farewell luncheon at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

  The night before their parting was exquisitely tender. But the next morning, when Piet told Arthur he was going on a business trip, and could not take him, the little boy cried so quietly that Piet felt his heart might break. He held his son close to him and buried his nose in his curls. Arthur smelled of childhood and the jasmine oil his mother used in his hair.

  “I am going to make us a great fortune,” Piet told him. “You must look after your mama while I am gone.”

  He did not look back as he went down the hill towards the bus station, where he had sent Luvo and Ntsina to purchase tickets. At the bottom he turned. Stacey had taken Arthur indoors and there was no one to wave. He collected himself and shook free of his sorrow, his spirits responding to the lure of adventure.

  The presence of an mlungu on the native bus caused a sensation. There was much disquiet, and then exuberant approval when Piet lifted his hat to the ladies. As he prepared to plunge into the crowd of black faces, he felt an unaccustomed shyness. The friendlier people were, the shier he became, as had sometimes happened when grown-up strangers fussed over him in his boyhood.

  Ntsina cleared the front seat for Piet, and was very polite to the young lady he dislodged from this prime position. His grandmother disapproved of the metal beasts that hurtled from one end of the country to the other, at speeds that could not be healthy for a human digestion. He held her in high regard, but now that he was in one he felt the young man’s thrill at taking a risk. He knew he was in the grip of a powerful Good Magic again.

  “I wish you a pleasant journey, sir,” said Luvo.

  “Call me Piet,” said Piet. “Let there be no sirs between us.”

  Luvo began to think more sympathetically of his new employer. He settled at the window seat Ntsina had given him. He found the stink of bodies distasteful. He leaned on his hands, looking out of the window, seeking his own smell. He thought of the rose soap the Shabrills stocked in their guest bathrooms, which Mrs. Mafuduka had rationed carefully among the refugees. He had been sorely tempted to take some, but he had not. In his heart he felt a superstitious fear that something would befall him before he embraced his mother again. Before he stayed up till dawn with his sister, learning what had happened. He thought of his father and blinked. That his father’s many sacrifices should have come to nothing tempted Luvo to the grave sin of bitterness. He turned from it and prayed for the safe carriage of the bus. It had twenty seats and forty-eight people were inside it. Some of the ladies were so large they weighed as much as three men.

  It was dark when they set out, along the road that leads from Cape Town towards the Eastern Cape. In the seat beside Piet Barol, Ntsina gave thanks to Amarire, the daughter of the mother of the Universe. His itch had gone. In even this detail, his ancestors had gone to trouble on his behalf. He wondered what the purpose of his life was to be and looked at the Strange One, who had closed his eyes. He remembered tales of the first Strange Ones, who had appeared hundreds of moon cycles before, and seemed friendly; and in fact brought with them alcohol and guns. His granny had told him all about them. He made a decision then and there to decide, in consultation with Luvo, whether to abscond with the Strange One’s money and leave him behind in Cradock, or to take him further as they had promised. The refugees’ stories had tempted him strongly to steal from a white man who was foolish enough to sleep in a public bus.

  Piet had closed his eyes because he found it embarrassing to sit beside someone he could not speak to. The good manners of his youth had stressed the importance of keeping up a pleasant flow of talk with any person in his immediate vicinity. Since this was not possible with Ntsina, he preferred not to endure a silence. In the dark he became aware of the jolting of the bus. As his bones rattled, he felt that he was being shaken free of the effete and surfeited Pierre de Barol. He was Piet Barol again.

  He started to feel happy.

  It was not the euphoria he had experienced in the empty house Herbert Baker had built for Percy Shabrill. It was the solid, dependable happiness that comes from telling the truth. The bus met a piece of tarred road, one of the new projects of the government. The immediate improvement in personal comfort improved Piet’s mood further. What an inconvenience it would be, he thought, if there were no blacks to build roads such as these. Roads for everyone to use—European and native alike. Surely it was better to build a road than to chisel stone below three hundred metres of rock. Deep within, he was glad these were not his options. Optimism took hold of him. There was a certain swagger in this impetuous journey that made him think well of himself. He and Stacey had outfoxed Percy. What a joy!

  And then the singing started.

  A lone voice, pitched as true as a star. Then everyone joined in, as though they had been practicing all day—in perfect synchrony and eight harmonic lines. By the time the tune was through once he knew it. Back it came, again and again, swirling into different moods, now the men, now the women taking the lead. Ntsina started singing. It shocked Piet that this garden boy should have perfect pitch. He began to feel like an adventurer, leaving for the Unknown—as Magellan had done, or Livingstone. Now that Ntsina was safely singing, Piet opened his eyes. To his left, a sheer mountain cliff disappeared to a vast plain. He got a shock, and inched unconsciously away from the window.

  “Tell the Strange One not to worry. My ancestors are protecting us,” said Ntsina to Luvo.

  —

  THEY HURTLED ACROSS PLAINS of farmland in the dark and by the morning were in the Karoo desert, and very bruised. The bus stopped once every ten hours for its passengers to relieve themselves. Many found it impossible to wait that long. Arrangements were made, not all of them successful—with the result that when Piet woke, the assault on his nostrils was as painful as his crushed vertebrae. He wanted water, but they were down to half a flask and he dreaded having to hold in his pee. The desert stretched in every direction, fatally beautiful.

  “Teach me how to say ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language,’ ” said Piet to Luvo.

  “Indilusizi isiXhosa sam sincinci,” said Luvo.

 
In the rapid trickle of sounds there was nothing for Piet to cling to. He spoke English and Dutch and French, and could follow German and Spanish. But these sounds were wholly foreign. His attempts to replicate them produced howls of merriment. Everyone was waking. Stale white rolls were shared round. That a Strange One should bother to say anything at all in their language, let alone apologise for not speaking it better, made several of the older people think generously of Piet Barol. A woman in her sixties, observing Luvo’s failure to impart to Piet the art of clicking, made him change places with her and put Piet through an intensive vocalization lesson. Piet had a musician’s ear. Once he understood what each of the strange sounds meant, they began to be more distinct. He took out a notebook and jotted certain phrases down. He asked how to say “My name is Piet Barol” and “Sleep well” and “This is beautiful.” To see a white man fail so utterly was endearing to the other occupants of the bus, who were used to whites keeping their failures secret if they could.

  In this way, half a day passed very pleasantly.

  Of course the desert heat made the radiator boil over. This led to a long wait in the baking sun. The land had grown stranger. For miles in any direction there was nothing but flat golden plain and scrub. And then, suddenly, a single hill. Some were perfect pyramids. Others had flat tops, as straight as the horizon, as though a celestial gardener had made a topiary of landmasses. When the bus continued, Piet was ready for the journey to end—but it did not end. It went on and on, through that afternoon and evening, into another night—at which point the bus broke down again, and everyone on it was very cold. The windows did not close, and the desert wind felt like iron nails drilling into Piet’s skull. After five minutes he got out and looked at the engine. He was no mechanic, but he read the resignation in the driver’s face.

  “We are going to be here for a long time,” he said to Luvo. “Let’s find another way.”

  Luvo was most unwilling to abandon the bus. He had seen it stop a thousand times in Cradock. He trusted that it could take him to his parents and sister, and did not wish to desert it.

  Piet flagged down the first vehicle he saw. It was a small truck, driven by a fertilizer salesman from Humansdorp. This gentleman was glad of some company, and soon he and Piet were ensconced in the cab while Luvo and Ntsina sat on the open back, wrapped in blankets. Piet had taken care that they should have blankets, and had lent Ntsina his own woolen mittens. But he had not once considered giving up his warm place inside for either of them.

  “You think you find a nice one,” said Luvo bitterly, his teeth chattering as he shouted over the whistle of the air. “But they are all the same.”

  Watching Piet in the cab, roaring with laughter, Ntsina decided to abscond with all the Strange One’s money in Cradock, and leave him to beg his way home. The decision gave him peace, and he lay down on the hard belly of the metal beast. It was numbingly cold, but the moon was at her smallest and the stars were magnificent. He cuddled up to Luvo for warmth and the young men lay together, looking up at the vastness above them. A meteorite shower was pelting through the earth’s atmosphere. The heavenly fireworks made Luvo think of the star that had heralded the Saviour’s birth. He tried to read hope in the omen, but there were so many flashes of streaking light that instead of peace he thought of war, and shuddered to think what would happen if the great anger of his people, the justifiable and great anger, should ever be visited on the Strange Ones.

  —

  AT TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Cradock appeared like a mirage from the great plains. It was civilized and pretty, with a church modeled on St.-Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London. Johan van der Westhuizen deposited Piet and his two darkies in front of the Victoria Hotel. It was clear from the colonnaded expanse of the veranda that long clean baths would be available within.

  Piet had rarely been in better spirits. “I am sorry I don’t speak your language better,” he said to the doorman, in isiXhosa, and was led cordially to the receptionist. “Come with me,” he said to his companions. But Luvo knew this establishment and its rules.

  “No, Piet,” he said. “This place is for Europeans only.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Piet went to the desk. The hotel was old-fashioned and well appointed. There was a piano and a gramophone player and books and a great wicker electric fan and elephant ear plants. Piet had total confidence in his ability to hire a room for his employees, and this he wholly intended to do. He did not mind taking a better seat—or, indeed, having a room to himself while making them share—but it did not occur to him to leave them without the opportunity to have a good wash and a good meal and a good sleep.

  But Piet was quite unable to persuade the hotel clerk to let a native sleep in a guest room. “Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll take your largest suite.”

  It was wonderfully cheap. The porter led him through the hotel and onto the street behind it. Charming little houses served as the hotel’s most luxurious apartments. The one he was given was exceptionally comfortable. When he had tipped the porter, and asked him to return with some ice and a gin and tonic, he went round to the front of the hotel to find Luvo and Ntsina. “You two can sleep in my sitting room,” he said. “No one will see you.”

  “It’s alright,” said Luvo, standing. “Ntsina may stay with me. My parents live here, in the German Mission.” And then he looked squarely at Piet, who saw that he was angry, and said: “Sir.”

  —

  THE YAKO FAMILY’S JOY at being unexpectedly reunited created such a commotion that Frau Doktor Ranke, who had been Luvo’s teacher, came downstairs. She had a cold, and liked quiet. In truth, she found the presence of Luvo’s parents and sister, who had nowhere else to go, draining. She was going to remonstrate with her guests, when she saw that the cause of the commotion was Luvo.

  She stood on the stairs, watching him with his parents; remembered his neatness, his attention to detail, the pleasure he took from pleasing others. In thirty years of teaching, he was by far her favourite pupil. With no other had she so relaxed the barrier of formality that should exist between professor and student. It took some time for his mother to let go of him. When she had, Frau Doktor Ranke said: “Willkommen, Herr Yako.”

  Luvo went to her, bowed and shook her hand. In flawless German he said: “There are no words to tell you how happy I am to be in this house once again.”

  Cake was served. Luvo’s mother could not stop crying. Nor would she let go of her son’s hand. She was a large woman, and this meant that only she and Luvo could sit on the sofa. Others clustered on chairs. The Rankes’ maid brought tea and Luvo’s sister Anna helped her, cutting cherry cake as she cried, the yellow sponge dissolving into a golden blob and the cherries into bolts of red.

  —

  PIET’S PLEASURE in the appointments of his suite at the Victoria Hotel was spoiled by the rage he had plainly seen in Luvo. He could not think what might have inspired it. He had a capacity for conscience, and exercised it diligently as he ran a hot bath. He had been polite to the ladies on the bus, had not shown—at least he hoped he had not shown, had he? No—any race superiority. He had got them to Cradock more quickly than if they had stayed in the bus. They might have been cold on the back of the truck, but he had given them blankets, and tried for a room at the hotel. At the hotel! As he got into the bath—which was deliciously too hot—he asked himself which other white man in the whole country would consider paying for two Kaffirs to stay in a comfortable hotel? He lowered himself in slowly, the scalding water sending goose pimples across his skin. By the time he had submerged his knees he was only conscious of the heat. He turned the cold tap on. The perfect temperature was achieved. He put his head under the water and let out a long bubbled sigh.

  In his dressing gown later, listening to the radio, he learned that Germany had declared war on Russia. It made him feel doubly grateful to be in South Africa—a safe distance from a conflagration that could only end terribly for all concerned. He hoped Hol
land would stay out of the war, but he knew how difficult it is for little countries to resist the bad behaviour of their neighbours.

  He walked into the bedroom, thinking of Leiden, where he had been born; and then of Amsterdam, and the family who had changed his life. Egbert Vermeulen-Sickerts would be a young man already. He hoped his formal pupil would not have to fight.

  His bedroom was small but high ceilinged. The walls were a pale ochre to the picture rail, and a lighter shade above. The bed was brass and the lamps beside it shaded in silk. The sheets were divinely clean. He felt a sudden, insuperable weariness. He forgot about Luvo’s anger and Holland’s troubles and crawled into the sheets, rejoicing in their crispness.

  —

  IT WAS LATE at night before Luvo and his sister were alone. “How has it been, Basha?” he asked. Basha was their name for each other, its derivation long lost.

  “Tell me how you have been, Basha,” said Anna. “And why you have come home.”

  Luvo told her about Johannesburg and the Shabrills, his refusal to work in a mine. He told her about the white man who had hired him as translator while Ntsina took him to his village.

  “What can a white man want with Ntsina’s village?”

  “He wants wood, and he does not want to pay for it.”

  To both of them, it felt strange to be making small talk. Both had looked forward intensely to seeing one another again. Up to the disasters of the previous year, their bond had been sustaining, unbreakable. Now Anna found, reading the concern in Luvo’s eyes, that she did not want to speak of her feelings, nor tell him the darkness that weighed on her as she cleaned her saviours’ house. When Luvo told her of his plans to assist in the creation of a delegation to England, to be on it if possible, she thought it unlikely that he would ever achieve these lofty aims. She had always believed in him, utterly. The fact that she no longer did made her sad.

  They held each other tight as they said goodnight. Luvo and Ntsina were to sleep in a classroom of the school.