The years passed; the tree was mature now, its growth slowed, almost stopped. And each year the birds came and it groaned under their weight as they roosted on the heavy branches. The tree became a focus of life, of birth and homecoming, of mating; grass grew now in the shade under the great nest and little yellow flowers bloomed briefly after the rains; beetles found nourishment and their parasites followed them. The shade and the bird droppings had made the bitter soil soft and potent.
And then the nest grew too large. The myriad communal nests, all under one roof, had multiplied each year until now scores of nesting weaverbirds came. Old nests were abandoned to the other species, to the mice and the lone snake; new couples brought sticks and nesting material from far away.
Some fiber within the heart of the old tree broke; it sagged and the weight of the great nest bore more heavily upon it. It leaned sideways and the weaker surface roots broke and pulled loose from their grip in the hard soil. Bit by bit the tree bent, its trunk fibers taut and twisted; the sun found the grass that had once been shielded by the nest and burned it away; the beetles and soil organisms retreated. In the new areas of shade nothing grew: the droppings of the birds were too thick now, a hard shield over the earth.
The great flock of weaverbirds came back; they roosted on the branches and began building new nests. Each day more birds appeared and the tree shivered under the weight; it had stopped growing long ago; now its whole purpose was to endure, to fight the dead pressure that bore down upon it. Its roots shifted and sought new holds; its trunk thickened to sustain the growing weight; new branches sprouted in an effort to counterbalance the pull of the great pile of sticks to which the birds kept adding.
The rain came, a sudden great shower amidst thunder and lightning and a cold wind. Water fell upon the dry faggots and made them soggy and heavy; water fell upon the ground, made it soft around the straining roots. The wind found the tree and it began to sway. Inside the great nest, hundreds of weaverbirds huddled and waited.
The tree collapsed. The nest smashed against the earth, and crushed many of the birds. The trunk of the tree was split; it protruded from the earth like the broken shaft of a spear. All the creatures that had lived in the nest cowered close to it and under the branches. The rain stopped and the sun came out and the surviving birds flew away. The snake slid from the debris and made his way slowly across the land, bleeding, dying from the great crush of the sticks. An eagle found him a mile from the tree, scooped him up, and brought him to the sharp beaks of her young.
The stump died and the roots decayed; the ants began to devour the dried limbs and one by one the mice and lizards fled. The grass burned up without shade and the life in the good soil died or went away.
After some years there was nothing left except the rotten husk of the trunk rising from the ground. Now that was gone.
Sturdevant walked on. He did not hurry and his steps were methodical. He was five days from the place where he had dug for water and the two tins were still heavy; he had found melons and had killed and eaten a rodent of some sort.
There was only the sky and the land. His enemy was distance and the feeling that he was the only man alive, walking the earth.
The Great Thirst.
Grace waited for O’Brien to come down the canyon.
It was late afternoon and the others had come back to the cave after hours of foraging in the hot sun. Mike Bain and the old man slept. She had taken some of the bottles and quietly left them, headed up the canyon toward the pool. She had rested there for a while, filled one of the bottles and gone on. Soon, O’Brien would come. He almost always came back by climbing out of the gorges where they met the mountain and descending the path that they had climbed long ago when they scaled the peak.
She had to be alone with him. All he thought about was the hunting, the questing, food. He barely noticed her as a woman, a beautiful woman. She couldn’t wait another day, another night. She had to be with him. Now. Alone.
She walked on. He would hold her soon, kiss her… .
She saw him coming toward her, walking barefooted and easily, shirtless, wearing only his dirty white tennis shorts. He saw her, scowled, came on. She felt her heart beating.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. They stood looking at each other.
“Where’re the others?” he asked.
“Back at the cave. I went out for water and then started walking.” She held up the bottle of cool water. “Want some?”
He came toward her and took the bottle, drank from it. She walked away to the shade under the black wall of rock and sat down in the warm sand. O’Brien followed, put his rifle on top of a big boulder, sat down next to her.
She leaned back against the rock, closed her eyes.
O’Brien kissed her. Her arms came up, found his shoulders, held him, pushed him away; she was dizzy.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Because you wanted me to, Mrs. Monckton.”
She smiled. “I suppose I did, in a way. I’ve never been kissed by a man with a beard.” She tried to laugh but nothing came.
He kissed her again, harder. She struggled for a time and then surrendered. She no longer cared. He was hers. “O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me?”
“I’ve got you,” he said.
She kissed him lightly. “I mean do you like me? I think I’m in love with you.” She’d said it now. It had been easy.
“You want me like you’ve never wanted anything,” he said.
“Yes, it’s true. Do you love me?”
“No.”
“A little bit?”
“Don’t be silly, Mrs. Monckton.” His hands were hot on her back now, his fingers digging in, hurting her.
“Please … you want to, don’t you? You want me?”
“Not any more, Mrs. Monckton. I want what I haven’t got and I’ve already got you.” He picked her up like a child and put her on the sand. His bearded face was on hers, her neck. His hands were on the buttons of her skirt, the zipper. She was wide-eyed with fear and disbelief. She began fighting, squirming, punching, infuriated now, screaming, crying.
“I’ll kill you, kill you, kill you . .
She was sobbing hysterically.
Grace was aware that she was alone; O’Brien was gone.
She began brushing sand out of her hair, and after a while she got up and fixed her clothes and started down the canyon. The fierceness was gone from the sun now; evening was coming; it was cooler.
She came to the pool. O’Brien was there, pouring water over his head, rubbing his face, his neck. She went to him and kissed him, standing tiptoed, and he reached down and picked her up and carried her to a rock slab, his fingers hard on her thigh.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The things I said . .
He kissed her face, her eyes.
“I deserved it,” she said. “I went looking for you. I suppose that isn’t wrong. I want you so much, so much …”
“I want you too, Mrs. Monckton. But no cat-and-mouse games.”
“Why do you want me?”
“You’re a woman, Mrs. Monckton.”
“Stop calling me that. I’m divorced, I’m free. I just wished you loved me.”
“I love all women,” O’Brien said.
She lay in his arms. The great ache in her was gone. Someday O’Brien would love her; there were things about him she feared and didn’t understand but someday, when they were saved and away from the mountain, he would be like other men and he would love her and take care of her.
Bain came out of the cave and blinked at the light. His legs felt weak but he was no longer sick.
He walked up the canyon toward the pool. The air was fresh and cool from the night; soon the sun would blister down but there was a morning freshness now which he enjoyed.
He reached the pool and frightened some small shrill birds. He drank and then took off his clothes. He took
the coffee can and washed himself methodically, using the fine sand as an abrasive. He did not get into the pool or allow the dirty water to run into it, for it was one of their rules. He sloshed the water on his body and rubbed sand on it. He was filthy, bestial. And his body was strange and new to him: thin and anatomical; the bulk gone, the fat gone, the heavy bones visible. Suddenly he envied O’Brien, so big and powerful and healthy. O’Brien fitted in with the cliffs and gorges and the sun, walking around barefooted, shirtless, hatless with the thick black hair protecting his skull and his skin already tanned deep mahogany.
He dug a hollow in the hard wet sand, threw his clothes in it and began to fill it with water; next time he’d bring a container of some sort (Smith had had one) and boil his clothes. The hollow was full and the dirty pants and shirt and socks and underclothes floated for a time and then the water sank into the sand and he repeated the process.
He was hungry and in all the days he’d been here he hadn’t contributed to the food supply. Grimmelmann and O’Brien were carrying them all; but they were on the verge of starvation, an arm’s length away from death. The melons and the dried meat couldn’t last forever.
The hole was dry again. He picked the clothes up, squeezed them and spread them on the rocks, already warm from the sun. He sat down near them, the sun pleasant on his back and arms.
The coffee can glinted in the sun; parts of it were already rusty. American coffee. Maxwell House. The can was still wet; globules of water hung to the sides. A bee circled and settled on the knife edge, drank from one of the drops, flew away.
He reached for the shirt and turned it over. Almost dry. The sun was hotter now.
Where was the bee going?
To its hive. Honey. Once when Grimmelmann was talking about the Bushmen he’d mentioned honey. Somewhere there had to be a hive and honey.
He got up and put on the clothes, which were still clammy. He took the coffee can and dipped it into the pool, scooping up two inches of water in the bottom. He was excited now and he noticed that he was barefooted. The hell with the shoes, he’d come back for them.
He walked up the canyon, concentrating on the flight of bees. There seemed to be more than he’d noticed before but it was probably because he’d never bothered to look. He came to an overhang and rested in the shade. A bee-loud glade… some poet wrote that once.
He went on, stopping every few yards to look and listen. It seemed that a lot of bee traffic was headed down the canyon, past him. It might mean he was going the wrong way and it might mean that the bees were flying away from their secret hive. There was no way of knowing.
At last he found a place that suited him. A head-high niche in the smooth rock protected from the sun. He found a flat stick and placed it in the can, a landing place for the honeybees. He set the can in the niche and backed away. A new watering place for the bees. He should have filled the can to allow for evaporation but he would come again and fill it with a canteen.
There was nothing to do now except wait and there was plenty of time. He turned around and headed back for the cave. The sun was high now, the sand and the rocks burning his bare feet.
Grimmelmann spotted a big lizard in a pile of debris on the far side of the canyon. He moved toward it slowly and it flashed away to its underground lair, which he located some ten minutes later when it reappeared.
It did not see him this time, for he was hidden in the rocks above, motionless. The big reptile came out of its hole slowly in sudden jerky motions. It was three feet long. Grimmelmann knew he must catch it somehow. He had eaten one long ago with another soldier. They had come upon some wild Klipkaffirs and the natives invited them to sit and eat and they did so because they were lost and hungry. The meat, he remembered, was firm and white, tasting almost like salmon.
He sat in the sun and the lizard vanished into the rocks. It too was a forager, a hunter, a scavenger, a dwarfish dragon living in a world without men or history, a scaly antediluvian whose form was the same as it had been millions of years before, a creature that could live in the black mountain and survive with almost no effort. He almost envied it.
They would have to devise a way of catching and killing it. O’Brien would have been able to think up a plan perhaps; he had the hunter’s instincts, a strange man to be an American in the twentieth century. He seemed to belong to another place, another time. But the others were clever too in their own way. Smith had a scholar’s mind so that nothing was really new or strange to him; he was inventive and discerning and far-ranging. Bain was smart too; he just wasn’t trying hard enough.
He sat in the sun enjoying the glare, wondering where the lizard was. Maybe Sturdevant was alive, maybe he’d been wrong… .
Trapped in a sea of sand. Condemned to a slow death of starvation. Perhaps it was justice … maybe they all deserved to be here. It could be a final punishment for them all, an old way of death by abandonment.
It would be just for him to die here. He had done nothing for the outside world, added nothing to it. All that he had ever done was to obey and obey and obey and it had led to nothing except futility and now, at the end of his life, a profound despair. The world would be better without him; it would have been a little better if he had never been born.
Ten years after the Herero War ended, the First World War was under way. Of that period he had spent one year recuperating from the ills and wounds of the African War and the rest working at nondescript jobs in the Ruhr. When the war came he enlisted and became a sergeant almost overnight. And it was a relief to get back into uniform; everyone had known that a war was coming and when it started, a great wave of relief and happiness flooded Europe for a few months. It was the end of one century, one time, and the terrible beginnings of another.
On the Russian front he had murdered three men: wild-eyed peasants wearing the rags of their uniforms who had been caught by a patrol, stealing frozen potatoes from a battalion wagon. They were brought to the company commander and the young captain had called to him.
“Sergeant Grimmelmann, take these looters and shoot them.”
He would never forget those words. His whole life had started there or ended there, he never knew which.
“Sir, the prisoners are Russian soldiers. They are war prisoners, not civilians.”
“Are you questioning my orders, Sergeant?”
“Does the Captain wish me to shoot war prisoners?”
“They’re looters, the uniforms are probably stolen. I’m ordering you to shoot them.”
He had taken the three men into the woods and shot them as they knelt in the snow, crying and begging. He told himself that he’d had no choice, that a superior had ordered him to shoot the men, that he himself might have faced a firing squad if he had refused. Ever since he had told himself these things but he never believed them.
The physical act of killing the men had been easy. Blood and horror and brutality had been the order of the day in Africa, and it was for this reason that the captain had singled him out. He was a veteran. He had walked in back of the kneeling men and shot each one through the head with his pistol. They were left there in the snow, in the gloomy forest, their pockets still bulging with the stolen potatoes.
To have resisted the order was beyond him. One did not argue with superior officers even when they were wrong, even when they used you to sin. The soldier obeyed. The soldier was exempt from good and evil.
The war went on. Europe became very old and very sick from the plague of killing. He lived through it, winning an Iron Cross, Second Class. He did his duty.
Bain returned to the coffee can that he had filled with water and left for the bees. They were drinking from it. He sat for an hour and watched several of them come and go. They went up the canyon. He got up and began following them until he was far from the can, too far to be sure what bees he followed. He went back and got the can and brought it back to where he had lost the bees. He found a place against the cliff wall, out of the sun, filled the can with water from the cant
een and walked slowly back to the cave. He had told none of the others about the bees. He wanted to find the hive and the honey alone.
O’Brien was at the pool, sitting on one of the flat rocks, naked in the sun. His ragged tennis shorts were spread carefully nearby, drying. Bain sat down next to him.
“We’ve got to go back to the plane,” O’Brien said after a while. He yawned.
Bain thought about it. There were things in the plane they could make use of. Clothes, tools, almost anything they could carry back.
“When do you want to go?” he asked.
“I’m ready as soon as the sun gets weak. We can sleep until then if you want to. Fill up on melons. Take a bunch of ostrich shells.”
“I wonder how far Sturdevant got,” Bain said.
“You think he’s dead?” O’Brien asked.
“Yes. Both of them.”
“The Dutchman’s a tough guy,” O’Brien said. “Lots of guts. And he had plenty of water, remember that. I think he’s still out there, myself. And Smith too.”
Bain said nothing. He watched O’Brien get up and put on his half-dry shorts. The sun would dry them completely within minutes.
“Shall we go in the evening then?” O’Brien asked.
“Okay,” Bain said. “We might as well go. It’ll take all night to get out there.”
“Maybe longer,” the big man said. “Hard to compare it with the last time. The others slowed us down.”
“I slowed you down,” Bain said. “I wanted to die that night right out there in the sand.”
“You were sick,” O’Brien said. He began to walk back to the cave. Bain got up and followed.
“We’ll sleep most of the next day and then take off when the sun goes down again,” O’Brien said. “Three days for a couple bags of stuff. But there are things we need out there, things we didn’t think we’d need. Containers and basic tools and lenses from broken flashlights and cord for making snares. If the trip took ten days it would be worth it. Let’s be thankful that we have a place to get it.”
The Sands of Kalahari Page 12