by Wilbur Smith
Sometime later, we staggered down a steep, scrubby escarpment—and stretched out before us was the watering hole. Like madmen, we reeled down to the edge and dropped our heads to drink. Barry was the first to taste that sweet water, with all its promises of life. Moments later, he recoiled, retching.
“What is it?”
“Elephants,” he spluttered. “There have been elephants here . . .”
I scanned the watering hole, but there were no signs of elephants, no signs of any living creatures but two boys, desperate to drink. I cupped my hands, filled them with water, and bent my head to take my first mouthful. Only now did I know what Barry meant. The water tasted stagnant, with the faintest hint of ammonia. Elephants have a habit of finding a watering hole, submerging themselves and emptying their enormous bladders in the fresh water. What we had hoped was water was mostly dilute elephant pee.
You would have to be dying of thirst, really craving liquid, to consider drinking it. I dropped my head and drank and drank.
Soon, night had returned. Barry and I found shelter in the bush and lay awake until morning brought us back to our senses. It was as dawn broke on the third day that I heard the Tiger Moth again. This would be our final chance. Ripping off our shirts, Barry and I scrambled for higher ground and began waving them furiously back and forth. Then came the signal we had been praying for. Far above, my father tipped the airplane’s wings back and forth to acknowledge us, extended his hand from the cockpit in an instruction I understood immediately to mean “stay where you are!” and banked around. There was no place for him to land in bush this thick, but he had located us and he knew we were alive. Barry and I settled down for a long wait.
Time went by and another sound reached us through the bush. It was my father’s truck, grinding its way toward us. At long last, it materialized out of the scrub. My father sat impassively behind the wheel and motioned for us to climb into the back. Relieved at our rescue, it wasn’t until I saw the stony set of his face that I knew how much trouble we were in. The truck wheeled around and, at last, we were on our way home.
We dropped Barry at his house first, to face the wrath of his parents. Then, we made the long, jarring drive back to our own ranch. Outside the farmhouse, my father climbed out of the cab and came around to face me. The bigger part of him, I knew, was grateful I was alive. Only now did I think of the panicked nights my mother had spent, the terrible calamities she must have imagined had happened to me. I watched as my father pulled the belt out of his pants to give me a well-deserved thrashing. What we had done was reckless and foolish, and the guilt I felt at putting them through such worrisome times was overwhelming—but there was another part of me that reveled in the adventure. Lost in the wilderness. Two nights without food or fire. Only a rifle to keep the wild world at bay. This was a tale of survival to rank with the best of them, and one of my own. Experience was beginning to shape me, to show me what I was made of and if I could stand up after a fall.
That night my father came into my room. I was wide awake, unable to sleep after the terrors of the last few days and my father’s anger. He sat on the bed next to me. I was expecting a stern talk about lessons to be learned, cautions to be taken, but he didn’t say a word. He stared beyond me for a while, as if considering a difficult problem. Then he touched my forehead briefly and left the room.
•••
I had another near-death experience in my late teens when I was the budding hunter determined to prove myself and shoot a buffalo. The African or Cape buffalo is one of the “Big Five” group of animals and is a sought-after trophy for hunters. It is known as “the Black Death” or “widowmaker” because it’s a very dangerous animal, reportedly goring and killing over two hundred people every year. Hunting the buffalo demands considerable skill and vigilance because they have a devious habit of circling back on their pursuers and counter-attacking, especially when wounded. It’s a stocky beast with the stance of a sumo wrestler, all pumped-up muscular menace and aggression. They are black or charcoal gray with short, coarse hair. Their formidable horns curve downward and then upward and outward and have fused bases forming a continuous bone shield across the top of the head known as a “boss.” When two 800 kg African buffalo bulls charge each other head on, the collision is equivalent to a car hitting a wall at 50 kmph. I’ll never forget my first attempt at hunting a buffalo because it was very nearly my last.
Barry was once again my co-conspirator in impetuous bravado. My father was away at the time, so without asking permission I borrowed his rifle and we headed into the bush. In those days, you could hunt wherever you liked and we roamed for miles without seeing a single buffalo before we came upon an African village. The locals didn’t particularly welcome a couple of dusty, exhausted teenagers toting an enormous gun, but I flashed some cash and they let us camp overnight. The next morning, we asked them if there were any buffalo around and they said, “Ja, there are buffalo down on the river.” I asked one of the men if he would take us there if I gave him five pounds and he jumped at the chance.
Two hours later I was crawling through thick kasakasaka bush, which is so dense you can only see a few yards ahead of you. Suddenly our guide froze. He pointed: “There it is.” I peered into the bush but my spectacles were so streaked with sweat that everything was blurred. I carefully took them off and wiped them but that only made it worse. Squinting, I thought I could see four hooves, but I had no idea which way the animal was facing. I calculated that the buffalo must be going toward the water so its head would be on the left side. I fired a shot and the beast thundered off like a runaway express train. I said to the guide in Fanakalo: “His head was definitely on the left.” He replied, “Aikona (no), his head was on the right.”
I’d shot the buffalo in the hip.
We followed the blood trail for about an hour. There was blood spoor all over the place but no sign of the animal. I suddenly remembered what my grandfather had told me: the buffalo will always circle and come up behind you. I started walking with my head askew, constantly looking over my shoulder like I was anticipating a jump scare in a horror movie.
I looked. Nothing. I looked again, and there he was behind me, several hundred kilos of red rage intent on pulverizing me, extracting their revenge. As soon as I made eye-contact, he charged. I fired and I fired but he just kept coming, I didn’t know where to shoot him properly, and when he was almost within touching distance I knew it was all over, I was never going to be a famous hunter and my father would kill me anyway if he found out, and then Barry shot him in the brain and the animal dropped instantly. You could hear my heartbeat from a mile away and my ears rang with all the shooting, but when I stopped shaking I took one step forward and touched the buffalo on the nose with the barrel of my rifle. It was a small gesture of respect. Despite my cack-handedness, I got my buffalo but he’d almost got me.
•••
Life and stories are inextricably intertwined. We create narratives to make sense of the world, rebuild it to bring joy and wonder. My writing instincts were being honed. In my nondescript bachelor’s mess in Salisbury, I had lost sight of the fact that my life was already storied, full and rich with history, peopled by characters more exciting than a novice writer could ever pluck out of their imagination. My father, my mother, my grandfather, all the countless people of my own corner of Africa. In them were the key to writing my first successful novel.
•••
I put down my pen. When the Lion Feeds was written, its fate for the first time out of my hands. In those pages, I had chronicled the stories of Sean and Garrick Courtney. The brothers had inherited my grandfather’s name, and their father Waite was modeled on my grandfather himself. Their tale of growing up on a cattle ranch in Natal at the end of the nineteenth century was inspired by my own wild boyhood. Garrick’s disability, first as a result of a hunting accident, and later because of his inadvertent heroism in the Zulu War, was a reflection of my boyhood polio, which would forever leave me with a weak rig
ht leg. Sean’s adventures in the gold rush of the Witwatersrand, his journey as an ivory hunter in the Bushveld, even the dramatic highs and lows of his love life—these all emerged directly from my own past. The genesis of the two boys came from deep within my own personality; they are the two contrasting sides of me: Sean with his robust, driven, heroic ambitions, and Garrick, who is more reflective, sensitive, someone who understands his own fallibility.
I thought it was a good novel—it was real and grounded and true—but, as I sent it off to my agent in London, the doubts every young writer faces began to creep inside.
In the weeks that followed I was determined to forget about it. I tried not to imagine my novel’s journey into the world: my agent composing a killer submission letter to accompany the novel, the pitch phone calls. I tried not to think of it sitting on the desks of commissioning editors in London or New York, the bulky manuscript a tower of expectation among so many other hopeful first novels. I tried not to picture the editors in their arm-chairs reading it, frowning, dismissing it. And when, at last, a telegram arrived from London, I did not want to open it.
I was trembling. Get it over with, I said to myself. I opened the telegram. Inside were the words that would change my life. When the Lion Feeds had found a publisher. Charles Pick, a deputy MD who had recently joined the prestigious London publishing house William Heinemann, had made a bid to acquire the novel. This was a man who had accompanied John Steinbeck to his Nobel Prize dinner, a man who drank vermouths with Graham Greene in Antibes. Now, he wanted to publish an unknown writer named Wilbur Smith.
It felt like I was falling again, the granite of the koppie slipping out of my grasp, leaving me dangling three hundred feet above the ground. It was the defining moment of my young life.
When the Lion Feeds would go on to be a bestseller, to ensnare readers across the world, and begin the career that would bring me so many adventures in my long life.
4
THIS BOY’S LIFE
Schooldays leave an indelible mark on any young boy, lessons learned can shape a destiny or distort a growing mind, and one can spend a lifetime repairing the damage a school can inflict on you. I made some great friends at school and had experiences I’ll never forget, but when I recall those days I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s line: “My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.”
I was eight years old when my idyll on an African farm came to an abrupt end. My friend, Barry, had been sent south to boarding school and I thought I should follow him. He was, after all, my brother-in-arms on my adventures, my loyal lieutenant during our reckless escapades, so I asked my parents if I could go too. My mother burst into tears at the prospect of her boy leaving home, which confused me. What did she know that was so upsetting that I had no conception of? My father had no doubts; he had learned his trade in Maritzburg and, though no bookworm, he knew the kind of education he wanted for his son. Stories may have meant nothing to my father, but knowledge was the key to success. “I think that’s a good idea!” he said. I was duly enrolled at Cordwalles boarding school in Pietermaritzburg in Natal, South Africa, a preparatory school for that little “Eton on the Veld,” Michaelhouse in the Natal Midlands.
The Cordwalles school motto was “courage builds character,” which I thought was pretty good. The buildings were attractive redbrick and there were extensive playing fields and forested grounds to get lost in. The first week was exciting, but the novelty soon wore off. The cold showers, the discipline, the terrible food and interminable church services soon dampened my youthful enthusiasm. And then, in the parlance of South African boarding schools, I got jacked, given three “cuts” across the backside with a Malacca cane for the unforgivable crime of talking after lights out. My father would never have been so unjust. He administered tough justice but it was fair.
I asked to see the headmaster. When I was finally granted a meeting in his office I explained that it would be a good idea if I returned home to the family ranch; the school didn’t appear to be fulfilling my needs. The headmaster peered over his spectacles and explained that he didn’t share my opinion. I left the office disconsolate. There was no turning back, I would have to serve out my full sentence of five years here, in drudgery and misery.
The train trip from Zambia back to school after every vacation became purgatory. My mother would be fighting back the tears as I said goodbye, and the dread in the pit of my stomach would feel like lead as I boarded at Lusaka. I would change trains at Bulawayo in what is now Zimbabwe, and then again at Johannesburg to catch the train to Natal. It was a journey of two nights and three days, and I would spend that time staring out of the window, yearning to be free as I watched the countryside I loved disappear into the distance. The school was a constant torment. It was maybe a small thing, but before the first year was out, my prized Joseph Rodgers clasp knife had been stolen, a theft that left me inconsolable. Grandpa Courtney had given me that knife when I turned seven. I’d watched him slaughter pigs with it, he’d used it with astonishing expertise, and it was my link to home, that rough, tough devil-may-care world I’d left behind. Now it belonged to somebody else, just another stolen item, and I would never see it again. I was homesick, I would cry myself to sleep every night, burying my tears in the pillow because if you were caught blubbing, you were an outcast. You could never show weakness, admit to feeling hurt or missing the warm embrace of your family. I learned stoicism and endurance, hardening my heart by trying to cauterize the small parts inside that bled. My escape became books, and at boarding school stories were my only companions through those long days and nights. They gave me new worlds to explore, characters I could befriend and love, adventures that had meaning and purpose, places that were exotic, exciting and full of wonder. They gave me hours of release from the austere dormitories, the bellowing classrooms, the frigid lavatories or punishing gymnasiums. Getting lost in stories became an essential survival skill—and they have stayed that way ever since.
I wasn’t a good pupil. If you had no interest in swinging a cricket bat or kicking a rugby ball, and if you hated Latin and mathematics, you were considered a “slacker.” This was not a good thing to be. It turned you into a social pariah. But I didn’t care, I had my books. The school library had a special section in the upstairs gallery devoted to fiction. There were over a thousand titles. They may have once been organized alphabetically, but now it was a lucky dip of discovery. I started at one end and worked my way through them. In bed, I read under the blankets because it was lights-out at nine, no talking, silence strictly enforced, only the occasional squeak from our sagging, ancient bedsprings as we shivered into the night. I would read by flashlight which probably ruined my eyesight, but not enough to affect my shooting. The first book I ever read under the covers was Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, a risqué historical set in seventeenth-century England that was banned by the Catholic Church for indecency in its day, which did wonders for its popularity. It was a highly rewarding experience.
My English master was a man I’ll call Mr. Forbes, which isn’t his real name. He had a register in which we were required each week to list the books we had read. The average for our class was zero to one per head while in a good week, I would notch up six or seven. My voracious appetite for books caught Mr. Forbes’s attention. He made me his protégé, and would discuss the books I had read that week with me. He encouraged me to think that being a bookworm was praiseworthy, rather than something to be deeply ashamed of. He told me that my essays showed great promise, and we talked about how to achieve dramatic effects, to develop characters and to keep a story moving forward. He pointed out authors who I would enjoy and books I should read.
And, unheard of in those days, he called me “Wilbur” rather than “Smith,” as though I was actually a member of the human race. Fifty years later, I can look back on a career as a best-selling author and it all started under the blankets in a dorm at Cordwalles.
I developed a religious fe
rvor for reading and for the written word, the beauty of the English language, its rhythms and sounds, the music of it. Once I had my mind opened to the richness of language, I could make the first step into my own writing. It started with English class writing projects like “My last vacation,” or “My dog.” Once I’d mastered them, I moved into fiction and let my imagination run free. And after a while, I was achieving A’s, and AA’s and AAA’s for my essays, while my marks for other subjects plummeted through lack of interest and I was getting B’s and C’s for the likes of math and science.
At the end of the year, I won the form prize for best English essay selected by Mr. Forbes. I’d written a story called “The Monarch of the Ilungu”—the adventure of a wounded bull elephant who, upon defeating his hunter, returns to wrest back control of his herd from a young interloper. I wrote it when I was twelve years old. (You can read it yourself in an appendix at the end of this book.)
It was the first accolade my writing had ever received. The book I was given as a prize was chosen by Mr. Forbes in person. I still have it: W. Somerset Maugham’s Introduction to Modern English and American Literature. It sits on the shelf next to C. S. Forester. It is a collection of the great writing of the time, and one of the stories is by Ernest Hemingway: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” I’d never read Hemingway, but I loved this story so much that I immediately tracked down and read The Old Man and the Sea. Ever since I have respected Hemingway as one of the all-time great writers.
Hemingway became my literary god and writing seemed to be the occupation of the gods, the noblest calling, the highest aspiration, the tallest mountain to climb. I recalled Hemingway’s comment that to write well was a “perpetual challenge,” the most difficult thing he had ever done, and yet, how happy it made him when he succeeded.
This was the first time that it entered my head that one day I might join the pantheon of writers, and live on Olympus amongst them. Then at the beginning of one new term I was distraught to learn that Mr. Forbes had left the school staff, hurriedly and unexpectedly. I never learned why.