Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Hey!’ called Barney.

  The kaffir squinted up at him.

  ‘Where’s your bossman?’ demanded Barney.

  The kaffir shrugged.

  ‘Mr Havemann, your boss. Where is he? He come back?’

  The kaffir shook his head again, and went on sorting through the dirt.

  Barney waited for a moment – then stroke impatiently down the slope and pushed the kaffir hard on the shoulder.

  ‘I’m talking to you,’ he snapped. ‘I’m looking for Mr Havemann and I want to know where he is.’

  Again, the kaffir looked blank.

  ‘You speak English?’ said Barney. ‘Afrikaans? What? You speak Bantu?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ put in a dry voice, from behind him.

  Barney turned around. At the top of the ridge which divided Claim 172 from Claim 173 stood a grey-haired suntanned man in a striped shirt and tinted eyeglasses. He came down, his feet sliding sidewise on the loose yellowish soil, and held out his hand.

  ‘My name’s Stewart,’ he said. ‘Have you had trouble with Havemann, too?’

  ‘Barney,’ said Barney, introducing himself. ‘What do you mean by trouble?’

  Stewart looked around the claim. ‘Whatever he is, or was, Havemann was not what you might call your natural-born digger. They caught him yesterday, at last, and well deserved it was too.’

  ‘They caught him? What was he doing?’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear,’ said Stewart, still casting his eyes around. ‘He’d bribed two or three of the kaffirs from the British Mining Company’s claim, next door. Whenever they found a reasonable stone, they were passing it secretly to him, and he was giving them half of whatever he got paid by the IDB boys outside of town. Well, you can call it IDB. I always call it thieving.’

  ‘He was stealing diamonds?’ asked Barney.

  Stewart rubbed grit from his eye, and examined it on the end of his finger. ‘It’s common enough. Stealing’s easier than digging. And you can’t trust these damned blackies an inch. They swallow more diamonds than they hand over. Last year, in Klipdrift, I caught one of my fellows with two thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds pushed up his arse. At least I let him give them back to me the natural way. There was a Dutch digger on the Vaal who caught one of his kaffirs doing that, and he was so wild that he thrust his hand up the fellow’s backside and dragged down three feet of intestine. All blood and diamonds. I saw it.’

  Barney took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘What’s happened to Havemann?’ he said.

  ‘Stafford Parker was here, so he dealt with it himself. Questioned the witnesses, everything. Three kaffirs said that Havemann had bribed them, so Stafford Parker ordered him to be staked out.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Why should I be joking? The man’s a thief. What else do you think we ought to do with thieves? Shake them by the hand and buy them a springbok steak dinner at Groot’s?’

  Riboyne Shel O’lem, thought Barney, with real terror. He knew what staking-out meant. It was the worst of the rough-and-ready punishments that Stafford Parker and his unofficial magistrates meted out on diggers who jumped claims or tried to sell diamonds illegally. Worse than flogging, even worse than being dragged over the bed of the Vaal. Staking-out meant that a man was pegged to the ground without food and water, naked or half-naked, at the mercy of the sun and the wind and the ants.

  Staking-out was almost always fatal. And if Joel Havemann was really Joel Blitz, that could mean that Barney’s brother was already dead.

  Barney tried to swallow, but his throat was constricted and dry. ‘I, er, where did they do it?’ he asked Stewart.

  ‘Where did they do what?’

  ‘Stake him out. Do you know where they did it?’

  Stewart looked at him curiously. ‘You want to go and see him? He must have taken you for something of a ride.’

  ‘Well, yes, he – he walked out on me once. A long time ago.’

  Stewart pointed out towards the south-east corner of the mine. ‘They took him out there, as far as I know. About a quarter-mile south of Haarhoff’s claim. Ask Haarhoff when you see him, he’ll know. He shares part of 190 with a man called Marais.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Barney, in a unsteady voice. ‘Can you tell me what’s going to happen to this claim?’

  ‘They’ll resell it. There won’t be any shortage of takers.’

  ‘I see. All right. Thank you again.’

  He climbed out of the claim and began to toil his way southwards in the oppressive afternoon heat. He was painfully thirsty now, his tongue sore and swollen, and he stopped by one claim to beg a for a drink. A prickly-headed German digger with a face the colour of raw pork sold him a tin mug of warm brown water for 1s 3d. Barney did not blame him: out here in the middle of the Kimberley Mine, a bucket of water was fetching anything up to 5s 6d. The German watched him drink with fat-embedded eyes, and said, ‘I dream of cold beer, myself.’

  At the edge of the mine, where the wild scrub still grew, the man called Marais paused in his shovelling for a moment to give Barney directions to the place where he believed Havemann was staked out. He was mournful, and French, and through a mouthful of sausage he told Barney gratuitously that he had once served in the French Foreign Legion. ‘It was the same as this, the Legion. All digging.’

  Barney reached the place as if he were arriving in one of those small stagey clearings of which the set-designers for grand operas are so fond.

  Siegmund: ‘A drink! A drink!’

  Sieglinde: ‘Lo, the water

  Thy thirsting lips longed for.’

  The clearing was screened from the diamond mine by a thicket of thorns, and from the wider horizons of the veld by a row of stubby monkey-orange trees. A solitary Guiqua was standing nearby in a baggy white shirt and home-made cotton breeches, with a Bible under his arm. He raised his head as Barney came stumbling through the thicket, but he turned back almost immediately to the man who was pegged out naked on the ground, as if he were praying for him.

  The man on the ground was silent, but not asleep. His wrists and ankles were bound tightly with thongs, and he had been stretched out in the shape of an X. His chest and his legs were already crimson with sunburn, and he was blotched and swollen with hundreds of insect bites. He was full-bearded, and his black hair was grown long, but bearded and disfigured as he was, Barney knew at once that it was his brother.

  He stepped closer, treading for some reason with respectful softness through the grass. Now he could see the orange ants which teemed over the man’s body in thousands – over his bruised thighs, over his penis, which was already swollen and distorted with bites; over his stomach; and even over his lips. He knelt as close as he could, and whispered, ‘Joel?’

  Joel, his face alive with ants, stared back at him. He tried to say something, but the ants wriggled into his mouth, and he had to try to spit them out. Barney turned around to the Griqua and asked, ‘How long has he been here?’

  ‘One night,’ said the Griqua, in a careful Afrikaans accent. He raised the Bible which he had been carrying under his arm. ‘I was reading to him. It says in the Bible to comfort the afflicted.’

  ‘You can read?’

  ‘I was schooled by the British missionaries, the same way Jan Bloem was.’

  Barney reached into his pocket and took out his clasp-knife. Without a word, he began to cut Joel free. The Griqua stood and watched him for a while and made no effort to help; but when all the thongs were cut, he laid down his Bible in the grass, and assisted Barney in tugging Joel on to his feet. While the Griqua held him steady, Barney slapped the ants from Joel’s body, and raked them, jerking and wriggling, out of his hair.

  ‘Where can we take him?’ asked Barney. ‘None of the people in Kimberley will have him. Not even my friends.’

  ‘This was Mr Stafford Parker’s justice, you know,’ said the Griqua solemnly. ‘He will not let you escape him.’

 
; ‘The name of Stafford Parker doesn’t impress me at all,’ retorted Barney. ‘And, besides, this happens to be my brother.’

  ‘Water,’ pleaded Joel, in a thick whisper.

  ‘I’ll get you water,’ Barney comforted him. ‘Let’s just get you out of this place first. Do you have any kind of transport?’ he asked the Griqua.

  ‘A donkey-cart. It’s tied up by the monkey-orange trees.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ Barney told him.

  Together, Barney and the Griqua half-carried Joel through the grass to the stunted monkey-orange trees, heavy with green and blotchy-orange fruit. The Griqua’s cart was small, and the donkey looked at the three of them with misgiving as they approached; but they were able to lift Joel into the back, and cover him with a frayed plaid blanket.

  ‘All right, let’s go,’ said Barney; and as quickly as they could, they bumped and wheeled their way across the rocky ground towards the north side of Kimberley’s collection of shacks. Hardly anybody gave them a second glance, although Joel began to groan loudly for water again when they were passing the end of the main street.

  The Griqua encampment was a mile or so beyond Kimberley, a small gathering of neat British Army tents on the long slope of a grassy hillside. The afternoon was already taking on the smoky gold of a north Cape Colony evening as Barney and his Griqua friend rolled through the lines of cooking-fires to the grandest tent of all, a one-time military band marquee which was now the travelling palace of Jan Bloem.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the Griqua, reining back the donkey, and swinging himself down from the cart. ‘I must first of all tell the chief what has happened. It is his decision whether you can stay here or not.’

  Barney climbed down from the cart himself as the Griqua strode over to Jan Bloem’s marquee. He lifted the blanket from Joel, and folded it up to make a pillow. Then he walked across to one of the Griqua women who was standing in a plain grey Dutch farmhouse dress, cradling a baby in her arms, and he asked her for water.

  The woman called to a girl who sat stirring the black iron cooking pot over the fire. The girl nodded, and stood up, and went to a keg beside the tent. She came up to Barney with a dipper brimming with clear water, and followed him back to the cart.

  ‘Joel, I’ve brought you water,’ said Barney, gently. He raised his brother’s head while the Griqua girl held the dipper to his dry, swollen lips. Joel sipped as much as he could, and then sank back on the blanket.

  The Griqua girl looked at Barney with wide, dark-brown eyes. Some of the half-caste Dutch-Hottentots were remarkably ugly; but this girl had soft curly hair, the colour of brown chimney-soot, and a pretty, oval face. She wore the same plain grey dress as the woman with the baby; but her body had a natural grace which gave it a simple attractiveness and charm.

  ‘This is your friend?’ she asked, in halting English.

  ‘No, my brother. Broeder,’ Barney explained.

  The girl said, ‘He should … get down. Sleep.’

  ‘Is there any place for him to lie? A bed?’

  The girl pointed to her tent. ‘There … is good.’

  At that moment, in a black opera hat, a monocle, a brown striped racing suit and spats, Jan Bloem appeared from his marquee, with Barney’s Griqua friend and two other Griquas behind him.

  ‘Well, well,’ he declared. ‘It’s you again. The kike.’

  ‘I found my brother,’ said Barney, with simplicity.

  Jan Bloem peered at Joel. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Piet Steyn here told me all about it.’

  ‘Can we get him to a bed?’ asked Barney. ‘He’s in real bad shape.’

  ‘He’s a thief,’ said Jan Bloem, trying to screw his monocle into his left eye.

  ‘Stafford Parker says so,’ replied Barney. ‘But I know Joel better than Stafford Parker. My brother never stole anything.’

  ‘They were prepared to stake him out. To let him die,’ commented Jan Bloem. His monocle dropped out again. ‘He must have done something to warrant that kind of punishment. Or don’t you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just want to get him to bed.’

  Jan Bloem linked his arms behind his back and walked around Barney as if he were inspecting a piece of garden statuary. Joel, on the back of the cart, let out a breathy groan. But Bloem ignored him, and continued to pace around Barney with his eyes fixed on him unwaveringly. The smoke from the cooking fires drifted between the tents.

  ‘If I take your brother in – give him succour, as they call it, then in British colonial law I’ll be an accessory to his crime. They might try staking me out, too.’

  ‘This is your land. They wouldn’t dare. If the British upset you, you might take up with the Boers; and if you did that, they’d lose all these diamond mines to the Orange Free State. No, Mr Bloem. There’s no risk of that.’

  Jan Bloem abruptly stopped pacing. ‘The British are unpredictable,’ he said. ‘You never know what they’re going to do next. Their politics are almost entirely dependent on the opinions of their newspaper readers.’

  ‘My brother may be dying, Mr Bloem. If you won’t take him in, then I’ll just have to take him elsewhere.’

  Donald emerged just then from a tent nearby, followed by a fat middle-aged Griqua woman who was pinning up her hair.

  ‘Mr Blitz!’ he called, and came over. ‘What happen here, Mr Blitz?’

  Barney explained, keeping his gaze steadily and cynically on Jan Bloem. ‘The situation is that Joel’s dying, but our Griqua chum here is more worried about politics, and the British Colonial Office, and the niceties of law.’

  Donald bent over the donkey-cart and examined Joel closely. Then he pointed at Joel with a long finger and asked, ‘This is he? This is really your brother?’

  Barney nodded.

  Donald turned on Jan Bloem, still pointing rigidly at Joel, and let fly with a fierce, guttural burst of Griqua. Jan Bloem flushed, and stamped his foot, and shouted back. But then Donald lifted one finger, and pointed upwards, and barked out a whole litany of expletives, until Jan Bloem waved his hand at him to stop.

  ‘I give in,’ he told Barney. ‘Just tell this mad dog of yours to stop snapping at my ankles.’

  ‘Donald,’ cautioned Barney, and Donald felt silent, although he was still twitching with temper.

  ‘This girl here will take care of your brother for you,’ said Jan Bloem. ‘Her name is Natalia Marneweck. She’s a good girl.’

  ‘What about Stafford Parker?’ asked Barney. ‘And the British authorities?’

  ‘Well, I’ll think about them when the time comes,’ Jan Bloem told him, although with very little grace. Then he marched back to his tent with his followers in tow, clearing his throat every now and then as if he was on his way to do something extremely important.

  ‘Natalia?’ said Barney, turning to the Griqua girl. The girl smiled, and came forward to help Barney and Donald lift Joel down from the back of the cart. Another Griqua man walked across and took the weight of Joel’s legs, and between them they carried Joel past the cooking fire and into the tent, where they laid him gently on a pallet of woven grass, covered with a blanket. Joel opened his eyes momentarily in the dim light inside the tent, and gave Barney a small, swollen smile.

  Barney stood up. Apart from the pallet, the tent was furnished with nothing more than a brass-bound military chest, which had been spread with a white lace-edged cloth. There was a plain wooden cross standing on it, and a brush and comb.

  The girl Natalia said, ‘I will help … your brother. Go now. Please. It is good he sleeps.’

  Barney stayed where he was for a moment, looking down at Joel. For the first time since he had found his brother, he had time to think about New York, and Blitz the tailors, and the long years he had been searching since he had come to South Africa. He held the back of his hand across his mouth, and the tears ran down his cheeks. Donald hesitated by the tent-flap, and the girl Natalia looked up at him with an expression of such gentleness and sympathy that he could do nothing else but s
mile at her.

  ‘I’ll come back in an hour,’ he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

  Outside the tent, in the cooler breeze of the early evening, he asked Donald, ‘What did you say to Jan Bloem? What made him change his mind?’

  Donald shrugged, and turned the other way, across the warm shadowy reaches of the valley. The sun was glowering behind the wild syringa trees, and there was a smell of dry grass in the air.

  ‘Oh, not much. I tell him to remember that Jew people and Griqua people are just one people under the Lord. I tell him to remember his Christian vows. I tell him also a great chief like himself has no dignity if he show fear for the British, or for white-beard Stafford Parker.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Barney.

  Donald still did not turn around. ‘Well, maybe I tell him I know of one time when he is not faithful to his wife. Maybe I say that if he does not take in your brother, his wife will find out all about his hanky-panky doublequick.’

  Barney said, ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘Oh, no sir. Friendly reminder.’

  Barney stood for a while with his hands on his hips, admiring the valley. ‘You know something, Donald,’ he said warmly, ‘I think I’m beginning to understand the basic ethics of Christianity.’

  Barney considered cancelling his dinner engagement with the Knight family that evening, but by seven o’clock Joel was still immersed in the deepest of sleeps, his eyes as red and swollen as ripe wild figs, and Natalia thought it unlikely that he would wake before morning.

  ‘He won’t die, though, will he?’ asked Barney, standing over his bruised and slumbering brother.

  Natalia shook her head vigorously, so that her curls flew. ‘He not die. I promise.’

  Barney held her arm for a moment. ‘You’ve been good to him. Thank you.’

  Natalia said, ‘All Griqua good people.’

  ‘I’m beginning to find that out,’ said Barney.

  Donald was waiting for him outside, holding the reins of the horses, and idly twitching the carriage-whip at the furry insects which flew aimlessly around him in the evening air. Not far away, beside one of the cooking fires, one of the Griqua men was playing an instrument which sounded as plangent as a Jew’s harp, while a sturdy woman in a red wrap-around dress sang loud sallies from the Psalms.