O’Brien nodded. “We might be twenty miles from help right this moment. Or five hundred and twenty. Sturdevant was just unlucky. The next guy may not be. Maybe Smith made it. He had a lot of water and maybe he’ll get lucky.” The sun grew hotter; swarms of black flies gathered on the meat.
“Let’s bury it and find some shelter,” O’Brien said. “I can’t eat any more for a while anyway.”
They got up and groaned. They had stuffed themselves with the meat and now they had to bury it before the sun and the flies spoiled it completely. They scraped a shallow hole in the sand, pulled the carcass into it and covered it. The flies fought for it until the last, dying with the meat they sought, suffocating under the sand. O’Brien cursed them.
“I saw something when I was getting wood,” Bain said.
They picked up their packboards and walked on. A rock angled up from the stony soil creating a pocket of shade, enough for their bodies and the precious water. They crawled under it and fell asleep almost instantly.
The sun ruled the land and nothing moved. The ants fled underground to their cool caverns, to their cisterns of water. The heat shimmered across the baked land. The sun descended, grew weak, made long shadows. Evening came. A slight breeze.
In the shadow of the rock the two men slept.
CHAPTER VII
GRACE MONCKTON and Grimmelmann were eating breakfast when they looked up and saw O’Brien. He came up the canyon with a great burden on his back. For an instant they thought it was Bain but as he came closer they saw that it was a heavy load of raw meat. The big man’s shoulders and arms were caked with blood, sticky with sand. A swarm of small gnats and flies worried him.
He was too tired to speak. He went past them into the cave and they followed, helped him cover up the precious meat to protect it from the sun and the egg-laying flies.
He stretched out on a torn blanket, groaned. They brought him water, honeycomb.
“Bain left me,” he said. “Left. Gone. Just like that crazy Smith …”
“You came back alone?” Grimmelmann asked. “You permitted him to leave you?”
O’Brien closed his eyes. “He left while I was sleeping. Took all the eggshells but one. I just made it back to the last station. I followed his tracks for two, three hours. Had no water for much more. Lucky he left me the rifle.”
Grace Monckton began to cry. She walked away and went to her bed. She wanted to lie in the darkness. Think. Mike Bain now. One of them. Throwing his life away on a slim gamble of finding the outside. She could hear Grimmelmann talking with O’Brien and then the talking stopped and the old man went outside.
Now there were three of them.
They gorged themselves on the gemsbok that O’Brien had brought back with him, dried much of it and hung it in the larder at the back of the cave.
O’Brien went off each morning and came back in the late afternoon with lizards he found in the far canyons. Grace and Grimmelmann went together and searched the nearby cliffs and the old haunts they knew so well.
Another dawn. Another breakfast at the cave’s mouth after they had carried out the night fire and gathered their food before it. O’Brien had found nothing in the last two days. The meat was gone. They ate melons and honey and drank warm water. In the evening perhaps they would have lizards.
“I saw bees the other day,” O’Brien said.
“Where?” Grace asked.
“In the far canyon,” he said. “I’d like to find another big store of honey. It’s probably keeping us alive, more than the lizard meat and the other stuff.”
“I’ll go with you,” Grimmelmann said. “We’ll bring some comb and see if we can’t find the hive. When the sun is just right you can see them flying, follow them.”
“Good,” O’Brien said. “You coming, Grace?”
She looked at him. “No, it’s too far to walk and climb. I’ll stay here this time.”
Grimmelmann waved his hand, nodded. “It is far. Even for me it is too far but I shall go. I am good with bees, I have a feeling for them.”
“If this doesn’t work I’ll have to start going off into the desert,” O’Brien said. “We need some more gemsbok. If only one of them would come around …”
“Maybe Bain will come back in a plane,” Grace said.
O’Brien nodded. “I hope so. I feel guilty about him, and . Smith too. When you get out there you get the feeling that there’s a fence or road beyond the next hill, over the next rise. It’s sort of a strange disease that grips you.”
Grimmelmann got up. “Let us find the bees,” he said.
They left.
Grace cleaned up around the rock, washed away the grease stains, covered them with clean sand to keep the flies away. She fed the fire scraps of wood and carried the melon rinds away and buried them.
She was hot, sweaty. She went into the cave and found the small laundry bag with her clean clothes, her brushes and combs, all that she had taken with her from the plane.
She walked to the pool and took off her clothes. She took one of the cans, dipped it into the cool water and poured it over her until she was completely wet. The few bars of soap were only memories now and so she walked a few yards to where there was a sandy spot and rubbed handfuls of it over her, scouring the bronzed skin. She went back to the pool and doused herself, washed the sand away. She felt wonderfully clean and new.
She sat on the wet slab of stone and combed her hair, let the sun warm her. Her comb found snarls in the heavy blond hair but after a time it was neat, orderly. She searched for her scissors and trimmed her hair until it fell just short of her brown shoulders.
The sun had dried her. She found clean clothes in the bag, underwear that was shrunken and threadbare, a rumpled blouse, a skirt that was too large for her now. Her feet were bare; her flimsy shoes and loafers had fallen apart long ago.
She wished O’Brien were with her now. She wanted him to see her fresh and clean and beautiful.
She was hungry. She drank all the water she could, picked up her bag and walked back to the cave. She ate some honey and part of a melon and then fell asleep in the cool sand waiting for the men to come back.
It took O’Brien and Grimmelmann two hours to get to the place that O’Brien had described; they had to cross the main canyon floor, climb the cliff and walk along it until they found a way down. Then they rested for a time in the shade and walked in the opposite direction down the third canyon until they were able to ascend the next ridge. At last they found themselves in the most distant canyon, the one they had started calling Lizard Canyon. It was half as broad as the main one and the least known. The two men rested again in the shade close to the spot where they had descended.
“It was foolish for me to come,” Grimmelmann said. “An old man should have more sense.” He fanned himself with his hand.
O’Brien said nothing. He sat upright, not quite relaxed, trying to make out something far away on the opposite ridge. It might be a gemsbok. A baboon. Grimmelmann knew that the big man hadn’t heard a word he’d said. He stood up.
“Well, where are all these bees of yours?”
O’Brien was on his feet, moving away, ahead of him. “This way, only a few hundred feet.” Grimmelmann followed, not hurrying. There was no need to hurry and he knew that his slowness upset O’Brien. And he was irked now with the hunter for not listening to him.
O’Brien stopped and waited for him. Grimmelmann came and stopped. Close to the rock wall in the clean sand, in a spot that was always protected from the sun, was the bottom of one of the suitcases that they had brought with them from the plane. It had been made into a packboard and contained several ostrich eggs held in place by thin strips of leather and cord. The two leather straps had been fixed to slip over each shoulder. It was much like the other packs he had made for Smith and Bain, like the one O’Brien had fashioned for himself.
“It’s for you,” O’Brien said.
The old man looked at the pack for a long minute.
“I had a feeling about you,” he said. “Did you force Bain to go, and Smith? I thought of that once. We only heard your version of what happened. But I will tell you this. I am not going.”
“I made them go and I’m making you go,” O’Brien said. “You will go in an entirely new direction; you are the fourth and you will make it. I have a map for you which will lead you to three more shells I planted out there on the hunting trips. After that you can start on these.”
“Why did you make them go?” Grimmelmann said. “Why are there always those like you who force others to their will, to destruction?”
“We can’t all stay here,” the big man said. “You know that better than any of us.”
“Then let us die,” the old man said. “Let us eat the last melon and the last of the honey and the last lizard or whatever else and then die. There is no need for us to send each other to death in the desert. Sturdevant was a fool and went by himself but the others … you have killed them. Their blood is on your hands.”
“They had to go,” O’Brien said.
“You have no right to decide who shall go.”
“All of you will go,” said O’Brien.
“I am not going,” Grimmelmann said. “I’m going back to the cave. If I die there I have done my best. I will not throw my life away because of a man with a gun. I am tired of your kind. You have already destroyed me… .”
“Go,” O’Brien said softly. “Go or I’ll kill you.”
“I refuse,” the old man told him.
“I’ll shoot you,” O’Brien said. He stepped closer.
“An execution?” Grimmelmann asked.
“Call it what you will,” the hunter said. “It’s all the same. Death.”
The old man almost smiled. Threats, always threats. Always someone in front of him with a gun telling him to do what he didn’t want to do. And always before he had shivered a little inside and then obeyed, telling himself he was not being bullied, telling himself all the lies he had always told himself. The blood that was on his hands now … Herero and Russian and the old SA members …
“I’ll fight you first,” he told O’Brien. He shifted his feet, fixed the brim of his hat. His right hand went into the pocket of his old windbreaker, found something there, something hard, the long flint, the spearhead he’d found among the ostrich shells.
“It’s too late to fight,” O’Brien said.
Grimmelmann nodded. Too late, too late. His fingers curled around the long flint; his fist felt heavy; he felt the sharp point protruding knifelike from his sweaty hand. He had a weapon.
“Pick up the shells,” O’Brien said. He came another step closer, waved the rifle toward the pack.
Grimmelmann nodded. No. Never. He was conscious of being alone, as alone as a man ever could be: the Herero boy standing alone as the officer walked up and carefully leveled his pistol, the Russian Kriegies kneeling in the snow… .
He’d die fighting; he’d get O’Brien’s gun, smash it; he’d hit the big man, scare him, hurt him. He would, not obey.
His clenched fist came out of his pocket. He started forward.
“Stop!” O’Brien screamed. “Stop it!”
But the old man came on, his fist raised, the two inches of sharp stone protruding from his fist; he came like a man drugged, eyes fixed, his old face set in elation and hate.
“Stop!” O’Brien shouted and then the old man was upon him.
He waited until the last instant and then stepped aside, swinging the heavy rifle. The barrel hit the old man’s right arm; Grimmelmann staggered, tried to catch his balance and went down heavily.
“You old fool,” O’Brien said. “Can’t you see that it’s too late to fight?” He stood for a few moments and looked down at the old man. Then he turned and went off up the canyon.
Grimmelmann rested on the ground. His hand was bleeding. He had gripped the spearhead too hard. He sat up and let the flint fall in the sand. He was happy; not because he was alive but because of the great thing he had done. He had fought evil. He was a good man now. A good man.
A wave of dizziness came over him. He must get out of the sun, rest in the shade and then go back to the girl. O’Brien might be waiting somewhere to shoot him but it did not matter. He was old and had survived so much and now he was a good man … good. …
His hand felt numb. He brushed it against his leg, wiped away the bloody sand, studied the half-inch cut in the palm and knew that he was dying; that he would be dead in a matter of minutes.
The palm of his hand was blue black and there were streaks of blackness moving up toward the ends of his numbed fingers and up to his wrist. There was Bushman poison on the flint; he had squeezed it too hard, cut himself. He had beaten O’Brien but he would die now of old poisons.
He sat in the sun and he was not afraid. It was better to die in the sun than in the cold of Europe. The sun was warm; long ago he had been young here, a long time ago.
Long ago. A Bushman sitting cross-legged with his weapons and poisons, readying himself for the hunt or for war against the white man. He daubs poison of great virulence on the stone point of a new spear. Long ago …
He was suddenly blind and there was a ringing in his ears. He let himself down on the sand with his left arm, felt the earth begin to spin under him, faster, faster, faster.
The poison reached his heart; he shuddered and died.
A wasp, brightly barred, metallic, swift, flies low over the shimmering ground looking for spiders. It has a mud-daub nest somewhere in a lost cranny of the black cliff, a nest containing its own grub that it will fill with spiders and then seal.
A brown fly sees it and follows, a big fly, slow-moving, inoffensive. It follows the smaller insect, keeping high, in the sun. It waits. The wasp finds a web glinting in the light. It comes close, hovers in the air hardly moving.
Suddenly the brown fly has the wasp in its great long legs. They struggle as the fly lifts it higher into the air. The wasp tries to turn and reach the fly’s body with its dreadful stinger, to stab it, paralyze it. The fly knows this, holds the wasp far away from its fat abdomen. The wasp, desperate now, tries to pull away, get free. It is no match for the powerful legs.
The long sharp proboscis of the fly comes down, stabs into the wasp’s back. In a moment it is all over. The big brown fly moves away; the wasp’s body falls to the sand and the breeze catches it and rolls it along. It is hollow. The fly has sucked it dry.
O’Brien came back to the cave as the sun was setting. Grace waited for him in the entrance with a few sticks of wood she had found. He was alone.
“Where’s the old man?”
“He’s dead,” O’Brien said.
“I had a feeling when I saw you,” she said. They were alone now, just the two of them. She wondered why Grimmelmann’s death didn’t shock her, and it came to her that she had somehow sensed it. And another thought came to her that she tried to shake away, that shamed her: there would be more food now for her and O’Brien and she would be totally alone with him.
“He cut himself on that Bushman flint of his,” O’Brien said. “There was poison on it and it killed him. We were going along looking for bees and he fell behind. When I looked back he was staggering, reeling, as if he couldn’t see where he was going. His hand was bleeding from a little cut. He sat down and his arm suddenly started to grow black. Five minutes later he was dead. There wasn’t anything I could do. It was terrible, horrible. He found that flint with the ostrich eggs and carried it around in his pocket.” He walked past her into the cave and put his rifle in the niche.
Grace carried the fire into the cave and dumped the glowing coals on the blackened embers of last night’s fire. O’Brien’s bag contained four lizards and a wizened narras cucumber. The lizards had already been cleaned and she cooked them quickly on the wire grill that Smith had invented. They ate the meat with plenty of honey and shared the cucumber.
Night came, bringing the cold. They piled more wood on the fire and hurried into t
he sleeping bag, shivering for a time, seeking the warmth of each other’s body, relaxing.
“How did he happen to cut himself?” she asked. She dug her fingers into his heavy shoulders, felt the great power in them. There was something else about Grimmelmann’s death that he hadn’t told her, something vague and yet fearful that she could not voice.
“There’s nothing more,” he said. His fingers found her face and turned it, he kissed her mouth, her cheek, her neck. She thought of her ex-husband and he seemed so far away … Andrew Monckton, a gentle lover, kind and considerate. And that’s all he had been, kind and considerate.
“We can make it now,” O’Brien was telling her. “You and I can beat this place. Live. The two of us.”
But now she wasn’t concerned. Her arms were around his neck and she didn’t care about Grimmelmann or survival or anything else except him. There was nothing else in the black cold world except O’Brien’s sweaty-hot body enveloping her, loving her, shielding her from the prehistoric night.
The two of them.
The sun rules. The naked rock shivers in the heat. The heat is intense.
A brown fly, old and thin, crawls over a pocket of powdered shale and wind-blown sand high on the narrow ridge. Its wings are frayed, shriveled, worn out, its sight is almost gone. It runs crazily across the hot stone now, wings whirring, leaving the ground briefly, falling back again.
The scorpion sees it, waits, follows. Its lobsterlike claws are readied, its segmented abdomen arched. In the last section of the long body is a sharp and deadly stinger; its enemies know this and are wary, for the potency of its poison is great.
Men have died of it. The fly turns, sees the scorpion too late —a monster at eye level. It flees but the great claws take it, kill it, bring it to the cruel mouth.
The meal satisfies the big scorpion. It lingers in the sun, content, master of its narrow world. Brown flies are rare; ants and tiny red rock spiders are more common or bees overloaded with heavy nectar, resting on their flight to a secret hive.
Now the scorpion dies.
The Sands of Kalahari Page 19