Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  The leopard’s next bite was to her throat, and now her scream became a gurgle, blood frothing as the air left her lungs. She was wriggling frantically, and her attacker—who had not had a piece of prey worth playing with in longer than he could remember—was loath to let her die. Only the scent of the hyenas spurred him to action. He did not wish them to doubt his capacity to finish off a hairless ape on his own. In the joy of the struggle he had resisted the early training of all leopards—to break the prey’s neck swiftly. A hairless ape with a broken neck could not struggle, and her efforts to save herself were fuel to his vanity. In his younger days, he had played for hours with injured gazelles and bushpigs, for the pumping blood of a living creature is sweeter than the pooled blood of a dead one. At length, and regretfully, he bit the nape of Bela’s neck, in the place Ntsina had most loved to kiss it, and snapped the vertebrae at the top of her spine. She was still alive, but this stopped her struggling. He took a mouthful of flesh from the top of her collarbone, exposing the white shining bone. The blood gushed, the hyenas approached, Bela’s eye found Piet’s again, and in its gaze was a question.

  —

  STACEY STRETCHED, luxuriantly. This was a most magnificent bed. Her husband’s touch had left her body in a very pleasant state. She decided to prolong it while she waited for him. She lay back on the pillows. As she took in the subtle details of Piet’s craftsmanship, she felt the lifting of her anger as a physical lightening. It left her better able to see things from his point of view. Piet was not a scoundrel. She loved his good nature, and if it led him occasionally to impulsive, foolish generosity, that was a fault she could live with—so long as she held the purse strings. She had concluded a satisfactory negotiation in that regard, and this pleased her too. There would no longer be any friction between them over money. She stroked herself gently, heightening her anticipation for Piet’s return.

  But Piet did not return.

  She brought herself to the brink of climax and waited for him. Kept herself there, and waited some more. And now a certain irritation crept through her. No woman, ready for love, appreciates being made to wait too long.

  She called for him, and heard nothing but the echo of her own voice. Eventually she got out of bed. With distaste, she put on her dirty, sweaty dress and opened the door. It had been glorious afternoon when Piet closed it. She was shocked to find it was pitch dark. She took a lantern and made her way back across the clearing. Arthur had lit a paraffin lamp, and was still doing sums. Luvo had taught him that numbers are our friends, and he took pleasure in leading them in their dances. At the sight of his mother, he looked up and smiled and said: “I’m hungry, Mummy.”

  “Where’s Papa?”

  “With you, I thought.”

  He went back to his exercises. She did not wish to alarm him. Now that Arthur mentioned it, she was hungry too. She opened her mouth to call Luvo—but of course he was not there. Neither was anyone else. “I’ll see to some dinner for us,” she said, repressing her body’s frustration at being denied the conclusion of its pleasures. “And find your papa.”

  She took a lamp. The clearing was riddled with trenches and dangerous in the dark. She crossed it gingerly, fearful of breaking her ankle. She called Piet’s name, but no answer came save the roar of insects. A bat swooped and she ducked and the lantern fell to the ground and went out. There were lanterns in the kitchen, and she made her way forward. The sensation of lowering your foot into a black hole in the centre of a forest clearing is disquieting. She was compelled to do it several times before she reached the kitchen hut. She had no idea where the matches were, and touched every place she could think of with no luck. Her fingers alighted eventually on a bunch of bananas, and more groping yielded the bread tin and a pot of jam. She put the banana and the jam into the tin and went outside.

  On moonless nights at Gwadana, the stars are bright enough to light a person’s way—when they are visible. But a low cloud had crept in. All she had to guide her was the glow from Arthur’s lantern, a long way off, and she shouted for her husband at the top of her voice.

  Had a leopard found Piet? Or a snake? She listened. The wild mint grew close to the clearing. If he was injured, he would be close by. She felt sure he would be shouting for her. But the insects’ cacophony grew louder, and a million leaves rustled, and she could hear no human voice but her own.

  Now she began to be afraid. Were beasts feasting on Piet in the darkness? The thought was unbearable. She fought against her fear. She must rescue him. But for that she needed light and a gun. She moved faster, scrambling across the trenches, banging the ground with her feet to send the snakes away, as she had been told to do. There were two vipers in the clearing, and Stacey’s stamping had the desired effect. They slithered away, down a forest track, and one of them smelt human blood.

  —

  MANY CREATURES WERE TEMPTED by Bela’s screams—and her silence was more tempting still. The leopard left her heart for last, and as her blood frothed her remaining eye never left Piet. It was still trained on him when the hyenas appeared. He was paralyzed by adrenaline and the judgement of that eye. A battle was brewing around the carcass. The hyenas formed a circle, not daring to defy the leopard in his newly invigorated state. But now other leopards came—two leopardesses and a male. One of them wrenched Bela’s hip out of its socket and pulled her leg some distance off, burying her muzzle in the delicious blood. Her growl deterred the male, who set himself at Bela’s belly and began tearing great chunks of meat from her rib cage. Bela’s entrails were spectrally white—as white as her brain, which was the favoured delicacy of the second leopardess, who had sophisticated tastes.

  Bela was so plump and well rounded that no creature, for the moment, thought of troubling herself with the male hairless ape. It is part of the etiquette of the forest that when one gazelle is taken, the others are allowed to flee. None of the fearsome beasts intervened to stop Piet as he edged away. He knew not to expose the nape of his neck and went backwards, terrified of stumbling on a root.

  Night now cast its curtain between him and this drama of life and death. He began shaking so violently he could not walk. He dragged himself some distance off the path, the sounds of predators pursuing him. He heard growls, then scuffling, and then an almighty fight broke out, the hyenas shrieking. Some distance into the wood he found a log, and sat on it. Bela’s eye pursued him. He told himself he had risked his life for her, charged a leopard for her sake. But the insistent voice that had whispered the convenience of her death now turned on him, and told him the price he must pay for that convenience.

  It was a terrible price.

  He rocked to and fro, trying to be quiet but whimpering despite himself. His teeth were chattering. Why had Bela come into the forest? A fire of rage kindled in him. Had the witch doctor not decreed that no one was to venture beyond the village? He did his best to cling to his anger, but the ice water of guilt doused its comforting flames, and its coals sizzled and lost their heat.

  The necessity of finding his own family, and the shelter of his wife’s arms, helped him to stand. He went in the direction of the path, but with every step a leaf cracked or a twig snapped, and now he became conscious of the fact that his feet were bleeding. His heart raced, his eyes watered, his adrenaline levels spiraled again, took him beyond heightened responsiveness into a state of near-total immobility. He now knew at first hand what it is to be eaten by a wild animal. He tried to run, but the undergrowth was too thick. Where the path should have been there was only thorny bush, which ripped his clothes and scratched his skin.

  A sense of direction had never been one of Piet’s gifts, and the vastness of the wood and the darkness of the night drastically heightened the challenge of finding his way home. He called Stacey’s name, but something rustled in the grass beside him and he stopped. Deep impulses, at the core of the hairless ape’s central nervous system, whispered against advertising his distress too widely in a forest at night. He took five steps in one direction, th
en thought better of it and tried another; then doubted his choice and struck off a third way.

  Soon he was utterly lost.

  Life had presented Piet Barol with many challenges, and he had risen to most of them. None of them had prepared him for this one. In the wild, in the dark, all his past successes counted for nothing. He did his best to focus his thoughts, but panic blurred them. Bela’s eye followed him. He cursed the absence of the stars, but the more he railed at the clouds the less inclined they seemed to budge. At length, deep instinct prevailed and told him to hide. He weighed the merits of earth or tree and decided on a tree. Snakes and leopards were the only tree prowlers who alarmed him, and most snakes are shy. The risk was disturbing one if he chose the wrong branch. He crept from trunk to trunk, looking for one to climb. Gradually, his eyes grew better accustomed to the darkness. He was able to discern the shapes of things. All around him were twitchings and rustlings, and every one stopped him dead.

  Finally, he found a tree with a thick, sturdy bush growing close beside it. Using the bush as support, he could perhaps make it into the branches of the tree. He shook himself. His limbs felt rubbery. He made two attempts, and failed. He lacked the strength to haul himself up. He hit himself hard in the face. Twice. He had seen men do this to women in films, when the ladies were having hysterics. It worked. He pulled himself together and got into the tree. The pain of the bark on his hands restored him to himself. He banged the branch, to send off any snakes that might be sleeping on it. The bright green boomslang is extremely poisonous, and the possibility of encountering one made him start shaking again. He hit himself a third time, as hard as he could, and pressed on. He tried to ignore an uncomfortable fact: that there are snakes who cannot be chased off by the rattling of a branch, and who welcome the chance to take prey as large, or larger, than themselves.

  At length, Piet found a branch wide enough to sit on. He did his best to stay awake, but weariness crept over him like a shroud. After the horrors of the day, his body’s strong impulse was to sleep. Twice he nearly fell off, and each time he glimpsed Bela’s wedding in a dream, and woke to the appalling truth that the woman whose marriage he had witnessed, who had conducted herself with such perfection, the wife of his dear friend, the man whose sacrifices had made his own fortune, had been eaten by a leopard. In 1915! This was not, after all, the Stone Age. He regretted bitterly not throwing himself at that leopard. The quiet voice of honesty in his head reminded him that the beast had looked frail. The pain of these thoughts was so extreme that his body, against its better interests, sent sleep to anaesthetize him. He began to see that it would not be possible to stay awake all night, and now he faced a choice between wearing his clothes to guard against the cold, or using them as a safety harness.

  He chose safety.

  He took off his trousers and his shirt, and tied them together, wishing he had paid more attention to the mysteries of knots. He had quite forgotten the lessons of his childhood. He did as well as he could and wrapped the rope around the branch and knotted it tightly over his waist. He lay down, and locked his hands under the branch.

  The naked, sweaty flesh of the legs, chest, arms, face and feet of a hairless ape summoned insects from far and wide. The blood on his feet welcomed them, and set them the delightful challenge of keeping his wounds open. It was now very, very cold, and fear no longer blocked his awareness of the temperature. Self-pity twisted through his other feelings, but he was honest enough to banish it. The sounds of the insects, the sensation of being feasted on, kept him awake for half a tortured hour.

  Then he fell dead asleep.

  —

  STACEY DID NOT SLEEP. Not one wink.

  She had locked the door and looked for the gun.

  It was missing.

  She put Arthur to bed, and told him his daddy was working and not to be disturbed. She went to the window. Her imagination populated the clearing with murderous beasts—or, worse, murderous darkies. She had heard tales of whites in outlying places being punished for the superiority of their race. Her mind ran over many moments with their Bantu workers when she had been rather less than charming. She thought of Luvo—surely he would not? No. He wouldn’t. But Ntsina? She knew Ntsina had no love for her. She thought of Blessing, Wisdom, Grace, Happiness, Brightness. She could not imagine any of them having the nerve to enter her shack and steal her gun. But Ntsina…She had often caught him looking at her with hatred. She flew to the gun box, hoping against hope that Piet had returned the weapon there.

  It was empty.

  Her diamonds gone! Now she suspected a plot. The darkies had robbed her, kidnapped Piet. They would return for her…She found she could easily imagine Ntsina stealing both the gun and her jewels. Perhaps he was in Butterworth, already celebrating with the proceeds of his theft. Or, worse, lurking in the forest, waiting for her to sleep.

  Her worry for Piet reacted with fear to intensify her anger. Her grievances against her husband, so recently lifted from her, returned in full force. She found that the possibility that he was dead, or lying injured, did not neutralize her rage at him for bringing them to this hellish place, exposing her and Arthur to such danger.

  It took an eternity for the sky to brighten. When it was light enough to make sure there were no snakes on the ground, she went out into the clearing and called her husband’s name. She went right to its edge and shouted. She screamed until she was hoarse and her throat ached. She screamed and screamed and Arthur woke, and started crying.

  —

  PIET HEARD HER. He would have fallen had he not tied himself to the trunk. He could not make sense of where he was, why there were leaves above him, and ants—there were ants all over his chest. He sat up, scrambling to untie the knot in his shirt. The ants were in warlike spirits and stung him as he swatted them.

  The branch was eight feet from the ground and he jumped, frantically trying to trace the direction of Stacey’s screams. He didn’t land well on his bare feet. He made strange animal noises as he batted the ants away, their venom causing red welts and fierce pain. They clung to his arms, to his hands. They were used to clinging on in a storm. He looked wildly around, saw a pool and threw himself in it. It was unbelievably cold. The water brought him to full consciousness, and instead of lifting, the nightmare around him assumed a solid shape.

  He was in the forest because he had chased Bela. He had seen her eaten by a leopard. He had not saved her. He had lost his way. He picked up his shirt and trousers and hurried towards the sound of Stacey’s voice—just as she stopped.

  He waited, praying she would call him again. He called her name, but a wind rose up and the leaves drowned his voice. He shouted until he could shout no more, but nothing came back. He looked about him. He had none of Ntsina’s subtle observation, and could not distinguish the glade in which he stood from any other in the forest. There were trees, a stream, two termite mounds, two fallen logs, creepers, birds, ants. He began to walk in the direction he thought her voice had come from, and called again, but only a cracked, dry sound emerged. By day, the forest was not as frightening as in the dark, but it was still full of snakes and wild beasts. He reached a vast thicket of ferns and plunged into it. Here he could not see where he was putting his feet, and the possibility of cobras came vividly to him. He pressed on.

  He made it through the ferns and into another glade. Again there was a stream, this time a solitary anthill, leaves, ants, two Lula birds in a tree, who rose, squawking, at his approach. He began to mumble incoherently—half in encouragement to himself, half as a prayer to any deity who might hear. Piet had not troubled God much in his life, and did not imagine that He would be much interested in saving him. Still less so after…He tried to put the horrors of the night before out of his mind, but Bela’s eye would not be banished.

  14

  Frank Albemarle had set out at dawn, to get most of the driving done before it got too hot. The truck’s radiator was inclined to overheat, and there was no point wasting good money on fixin
g it. “You’ve got to do two more trips, my lovely,” he said. “Then I’m going to find you a nice new owner.”

  Like many of the ladies to whom Frank Albemarle addressed endearments, the lorry did not respond. She just got on with the job.

  As he drove through the forest, a conflict arose within Frank Albemarle—the same conflict he experienced at the roulette table, when tempted to put all his winnings on a single number. If the gamble came off, his rewards would be exponentially amplified. If it did not, he would lose what he’d already won. He had most of the wood in Butterworth, and more than enough of Piet’s designs to keep him in business for years. He had the carvers he needed, and had got rid of the Bantu whose loyalty to a Kaffir lover could not be shaken. A sensible man would have taken the Barols’ chequebook and left at once for Johannesburg, and a part of Frank Albemarle found fault with himself for not having done so. And yet…

  He was naturally inclined to place all his winnings on a single large bet. The many occasions on which this had proved to be a foolish course of action heightened his desire for risk, rather than reduced it. He was mighty fond of a well-turned ankle, and Stacey Barol had exceptionally fine ankles. His animal nature told him she was aware of his admiration, and her failure to censure him for it struck him as significant. His gambler’s sense told him that his chances of driving a wedge between the Barols were worth a flutter. He had heard them shouting, and knew from his own experience that a woman who uses such a tone as Stacey had used can be induced to take drastic action. A lady like her did not belong in a forest, surrounded by Kaffirs. Rescuing her from such a predicament would make the joy of riches much keener.

  So he drove on, with two objectives in mind: the wood and the woman. He would try for both. If she would not come, he would take the wood alone. He had bought the six least hungover members of his gang to help.