He had been given a tattered pair of pants and a squashed straw hat and he looked now like the others, for they had lost the skill of making their own clothes and wore castoff Western clothes and rags, except for some of the ancient women who covered themselves with crude leather aprons. He withdrew into himself. He did his work and waited for the day to end. They were not guarded at night but he no longer thought of fleeing. He was glad to be alive.
He slept in one of the hovels with the old man and the light-skinned boy and the feeble-minded Bushman. Supper was brought to them by one of the village boys, a soup usually or porridge with scraps of meat in it and some kind of bread. It was enough. It filled his stomach and allowed him to sleep and think. He wished for paper and a pen, for the urge to write was still strong in him. He longed for his diary. Sometimes in the night he would visualize a white sheet of paper and he would write neat black words on it, fill an imaginary page with recorded thoughts.
Could I find the mountain again? Was there really such a place? We relived the whole drama of existence there. Would I kill O’Brien now? Think not. Don’t believe any of us would have lasted long without him and his hunter’s instincts and his gun. Yet he might destroy us all in the long run. I think now that I shall be here for a long time. Perhaps I can discover something here, learn something. There are no ideas in the village, no books. Only people and work.
Then he would fall into a dreamless sleep knowing that soon another dawn would come and another endless day of toil.
One evening, when there was yet another hour of light left, he walked through the village. No one bothered him; the people knew him as a speechless slave and did no more than glance at him. He came to the outskirts of the settlement, to the last house, and stood for a time looking off toward the flat horizon. Should he try to escape, run, find someone and tell them of the plane crash? No. He would not run. He couldn’t expect any more luck. He’d survived the crash itself, the black mountain, the desert, the Bushmen and now these people.
The sound of a crying child came to him as he turned and walked back past the mud house. A young woman sat outside it holding a child in her arms and the child cried and held forth a thin arm. There was a dirty rag wrapped around the end of the thumb; the arm thrashed and the rag fell to the dust and Smith saw that the child’s thumb was swollen and inflamed, infected. He came closer, interested.
The woman looked up at him, a soiled bandanna wrapped around her head. She rocked the child, hummed to it.
He knelt before her and took the child’s tiny hand and studied it. The thumb should be lanced and drained and cleaned. The woman was frightened. She turned her head toward the low door and shouted. A man appeared, angry and sleepy. Smith quickly pointed to the child’s hand, then to his forehead, then to his chest, nodding and smiling. I can make the child well.
The man looked at his wife. Hesitation. Wonder. Agreement. Smith got up and pushed past the man, through the door, into the mud house. He began to search for things: a bowl for boiling water, a pin or knife or needle, clean rags.
By the time he had finished, a crowd had gathered. The little girl had stopped crying and clung to her mother. The infected thumb had been cleaned and drained and wrapped in a clean strip of cloth that he had boiled and wrung dry in his hands. He would come back in the morning and look at it.
No one had bothered him or tried to stop him. They had seen that he was trying to help, that he was adept. He stood up to go but a young boy touched his arm gently, pointed to his foot and then raised it carefully. It too was swollen. Smith motioned for the boy to sit down. He washed off the dark-skinned foot. It had been punctured by a sharp thorn.
He began to work on it, motioned for more hot water. Was it possible that these people were without the knowledge of rudimentary medicine? Perhaps their village doctor was away or dead. He looked up at the faces around him. They seemed less abject, less cruel; he did not hate them now. They were backward and primitive. They were, in a sense, prisoners themselves, trapped in the desert like Grimmelmann and Bain and the girl. If he would help anyone he should help these people. The fact that he was their slave did not matter.
A woman brought him a new bowl of hot water. A man came with a torch and stood close to him.
He began to wash the boy’s swollen foot.
Grimmelmann remembered the big lizard he had seen and one morning he took O’Brien to the place. It was across the canyon and closer to the peak than the cave was. They searched among the rock slabs in the shadow of the cliff for the reptile’s lair. Grimmelmann found it and O’Brien nodded.
“I’ll get him,” he told the old man.
“Can I help?”
O’Brien considered it, then shook his head. “You might do better at something else. It may be a long wait.”
The German nodded. He’d go farther up the canyon and hunt smaller lizards and then maybe he would cross over to the other cliff and work his way down to the pool. He could stay out of the sun that way.
O’Brien watched him go, then turned and studied the crevice where the big lizard was supposed to live. There was nothing to do but wait. He hefted the rifle and walked back until he found a vantage spot. He made himself comfortable, drank from his water bottle and set it carefully in the shade. Using a bullet to kill a lizard, even a big one, did not appeal to him but if it was as big as Grimmelmann said it was, it might be worth it. He would see.
He watched the crevice.
An hour passed. Something moved. The lizard came halfway out of the hole and turned its reptilian head from one side to the other. O’Brien raised his rifle very slowly. The lizard was huge as Grimmelmann had said—a yard long, heavy and dragonlike. It would provide them with many meals.
He waited until it crawled ten feet from its hole and then squeezed the trigger. The lizard jumped and then flipped over on its back, its short legs clawing the air, its long tail whipping the sand.
He put the rifle down and walked toward it, hunting knife in hand. Then suddenly the lizard rolled over and began moving toward the hole in erratic strides. It was hurt and bleeding but it was moving too fast for him. He cursed and leapt for it, tried to turn it, flip it over, slow it down so he could stab it. But it was incredibly strong and he could not halt it. He felt the slippery tail slipping from his grasp. He dropped the knife and touched his sweaty hand to the sand and grabbed just in time. The lizard’s head vanished into the hole, its front legs found purchase on the hard rock, the heavy, meaty body began to move deeper into the crevice. O’Brien grunted and heaved; felt victory for one brief instant and then defeat as his pull slackened. In a moment only its long tail was visible. O’Brien let himself fall backwards in the sand and braced both feet against the cliff. He straightened his arms and leaned back, resting his muscles, letting the lizard fight his weight. The reptile fought and squirmed for a moment and then it too rested. They had reached a stalemate.
O’Brien studied the heavy tail that he grasped. It was tough and covered with a scaly armor. He gave it a sudden jerk but nothing gave. He knew now that the lizard had inflated its body with air, that it was bigger than the opening, wedged into its narrow home. Getting it loose now would be difficult, a matter of stamina. He would have to wait until it bled to death or weakened from the strain of his constant pull.
The sun grew hot on his almost naked body. Insects, drawn by the blood, came and annoyed him. Ten minutes passed, a half an hour. His arms ached. Sweat ran into his eyes. A fly stung his arched back.
Die, he told the lizard. Get it over with. Hurry.
His bullet must have missed the head entirely and passed through a less important place, the heavy folds of flesh under the neck perhaps. He had not checked the sights on the rifle. But he had spent a precious bullet on it nevertheless and he could not let it slither away into a hole to die and rot. He needed the meat.
The sun rose higher and burned down on his motionless body, on his bare head. He relaxed once and felt the lizard pulling away but he fought it a
nd gained the lost inch. He could not relax. Never. He thought of the rifle and the knife six feet behind him on the sand. He had been careless.
And he was thirsty and thought of his water bottle sitting in the shade. He closed his eyes, shielding them from the glare. Let go, you son-of-a-bitch, he whispered. Bleed and go weak and quit. I’ll never let you go, never.
More insects came and swirled around his sweaty face, gnats and heavy flies. They tortured him, crawling close to his eyes and into his nostrils, stinging him. He shook his head, tossing his long hair. He found himself shouting at them, trying to blow them away, cursing them. Once the torment was such that he used one hand to slap and squash them but the lizard began to pull against the one arm and he almost lost it.
He hung on, trying to rest one arm and then the other by letting each one bear the most pull in turn. He shifted his feet and his cramped legs. He kept his eyes shut all the time now, for he had no need of them and they were safe from the salty sweat and the tiny bugs. He began to tug and fight with the lizard and saw it in his mind: scaly and puffed with air, snake-eyes glinting with an ancient fire. Grimmelmann had said they were old creatures. The old man had talked to Smith about how perfect these big lizards were after eons of adaptation and selection.
He had never been so hot. He felt himself reeling, saw a thousand colored lights, felt nausea rise in his throat. The soles of his bare feet became raw from pushing against the hot stone. His whole body began to tremble.
Die, you son-of-a-bitch, die.
I’ll never let you go, never.
Grimmelmann found him two hours later muttering and groaning, crouched against the scorching black cliff with a host of insects swirling around his great black-maned head. For a moment the old man could not move. O’Brien appeared to be dying. His drawn sweaty face, swollen from insect bites and bloody with their mashed pulp, was almost unrecognizable.
Grimmelmann picked up the knife and spoke quietly to him, half afraid that the shock of his presence would cause the big man to let go of the lizard. And then something happened which the old man never forgot. O’Brien opened his eyes, looked at him for a few seconds and smiled.
Grimmelmann held the knife in his teeth and bending down grabbed the tail ahead of O’Brien’s white-knuckled fists. It came out of the crevice. Grimmelmann stabbed its underside, cut into its stomach, and the air went out of it and blood came and covered them, spurted in their faces. He stabbed again and again and O’Brien fell backwards as the reptile came free from the hole. Grimmelmann cut its throat and after a time O’Brien let go of it and staggered away toward his water bottle.
The old man carefully butchered the big lizard. He had changed his mind and come back rather than cross the canyon floor farther up and go to the pool. It was a good thing. O’Brien might have died soon from the sun and the great effort.
He wrapped the meat in his shirt and joined O’Brien in the shade of a rock slab. They stayed there the rest of the day resting and sipping their water. When the sun went down they walked slowly back to the cave.
A week passed. There were four of them now and the food that they found lasted longer. O’Brien shot a heron-like bird that he found roosting high on the cliff. And there were still plenty of melons and honey and lizards and good water. One night around the fire Bain suggested a hunting trip to O’Brien.
“I’m willing,” said the big man. “We might get lucky and get a zebra or gemsbok.”
“Anything would satisfy me,” Bain said.
“We need more meat,” Grimmelmann said. “Raw, red meat.”
“You want to go tomorrow night?” O’Brien asked.
“Sure,” Bain said. “I think I’m strong enough now to stick with you. You hunt and I’ll lug the water. I’d like to see a nice sizzling chunk of meat again.”
“We’ll get something,” O’Brien said. “And we might as well be out there hunting. All I can do here is stalk baboons and they’re too smart for me now.”
“I wonder where Smith is?” Bain said.
The others were silent for a time. They watched the fire leap against the blackened rock.
“He’s dead,” Grimmelmann said.
“There’s always a chance that he might be holed up somewhere,” O’Brien said. “After he left me he might have gone on for a few days and then stumbled upon a water hole somewhere. He might be there now.”
“Dead,” Grimmelmann said. “Both of them dead in the sand. I hope you two don’t get such ideas. I tell you there is no way in or out of this place except for Bushmen who know where to suck in the sand for water. For them it is nothing. A hundred years ago this was a busy place. Coming and going. But Bantu and Boers were kept out by the great distances and the lack of surface water. It might well have been one of the last strongholds of the wild Bushmen. Then perhaps some refugees fell sick with smallpox and there was a great dying here, a great dying …”
The others listened and the old man grew suddenly self-conscious. He looked at Bain and O’Brien. “Do not try to get out of here, do not get the idea that Sturdevant got, and Smith. They were brave men but foolish. We are a tiny speck in an ocean of desert and semidesert. If there was a way in, there would be signs of man here. White men would have carved their names on the soft stone near the water; there would be signs. No one between a Bushman and a modem man with an airplane can come here. You must know that by now. No others can cross the sand with wagons and oxen as they did in the old days and no man can carry enough water.”
“They’ll come back,” Grace said.
“We will,” O’Brien said. “This is a hunting trip. I’ve reached about the same idea as you,” he said to Grimmelmann. “I’m going out after meat. When we get some we’ll hurry back. If we have the water we’ll camp and make biltong.”
Grimmelmann nodded.
Bain and O’Brien slept late into the next day and when the sun grew weak they set off, each carrying makeshift pack-boards filled with ostrich eggs. And O’Brien carried his rifle. They walked in a new direction, resting each hour. When the sun came up they dug a wide trench in the sand, covered it with a few scarce lengths of thornbush and draped their clothes over it. They drank as much water as they wanted and lay naked in the relative coolness of the scant shade.
“How do you feel?” O’Brien asked.
“I’m tired but so are you,” Bain said. “I think I can stay with you if you don’t push it.”
“This life agrees with you,” O’Brien said. “You look better every day. You’ve lost the fat and you seem stronger, have better wind.”
“Except for the constant hunger I do feel better,” Bain said. “If we only had more to eat …”
“We can’t last long back there,” O’Brien said. “Too many of us still, even with Sturdevant and Smith gone.”
“Overpopulation,” Bain said.
“I may try to make a break for it soon,” O’Brien said.
“Don’t be nuts,” Bain said. He yawned.
“I might do it,” O’Brien said. “We can’t go on too much longer. Not four people.”
“Maybe a plane will spot us,” Bain said.
“Ten years from now,” said O’Brien.
Bain closed his eyes and felt the weariness in him. He wiggled in the sand and made himself comfortable. He fell asleep with O’Brien talking to him.
Evening.
They got up and began walking across the sand that was still hot. Streaks of orange in the sky and then the sand became purple and a breeze came. They stopped for ten minutes and sipped some water.
“Smith must have been nuts to try it,” Bain said.
“I told him that,” said O’Brien. He squatted in the sand squinting, always alert for movement. For an instant he reminded Bain of the soldiers on Saipan, bearded and filthy and very dangerous in their holes. One of them had almost shot him by mistake.
“He was a good Joe,” Bain said.
O’Brien nodded. He got up and Bain followed and they walked on. It became dark. T
he moon turned the landscape a grayish white.
Bain thought the night would never end. He fell behind O’Brien and then, when the hunter rested and waited for him, they decided it was best to walk apart. O’Brien first, ready with the rifle, and Bain behind.
Just before dawn a miracle happened. O’Brien walked up a rise, peered over it and saw a great herd of gemsbok, hundreds of them standing silently and motionless in the moonlight. He blinked and unslung his rifle just as they began to race away. He fired three shots.
Bain came up and they searched the area as the light came. They found a big animal lying in the sand still alive. They moved away from it; the wound was mortal and the animal would not get away. They could not spare another bullet to put it out of its misery.
Mike Bain wandered off and began to collect thorn branches and O’Brien started to butcher the gemsbok. Flies came from nowhere and gathered on the raw, bloody meat.
They made a small fire and roasted strips of choice meat, bolted them down half-cooked. They drank deeply from the eggshells.
“Two days from the mountain,” O’Brien said.
“How much can we carry?” Bain asked.
“I don’t know,” the big man said, wiping his beard. “Two days’ walk is rough with a heavy load. We’ll have to see.”
“You hit the jackpot,” Bain told him. The hunger pain was going, he could feel strength returning.
“If I’d missed one of them I think I’d have shot myself,” O’Brien said. “All that meat… it’s fantastic that they can live in such large herds. Grimmelmann told me once of seeing great herds of zebra, hundreds, thousands. I believe him now.”
“I keep thinking about Sturdevant,” Bain said. “He had the other rifle. Maybe he’s still going.”
“I’d like to think so,” O’Brien said. “I liked that Dutchman but I think he’s been gone too long. They’d be able to find this mountain of ours if anybody could get to the outside. But nobody knows we’re lost.”
Bain cut another piece of meat with the sharp hunting knife, dropped it in the fire. “You think he’s dead then?”
The Sands of Kalahari Page 18