by Deon Meyer
I tried to aim my pistol at the door. My mind said no, I can’t do it.
I didn’t want to shoot a man.
I lowered the pistol again and squeezed my eyes shut. Let him come in. He would have to tie me up in the Jeep as well, with the woman. Maybe he wouldn’t look further into the house. Maybe Pa would come to rescue me, if he didn’t die from the Fever.
I waited for the shot, my eyes shut.
I felt a hand cover my lips. Startled, I tried to scream, but the hand was clamped tight over my mouth.
It was Pa. He took the pistol out of my hand, put his mouth close to my ear and whispered, ‘Shhh.’
‘What?’ yelled Muscles outside the door, and looked across the street. He lowered the silver revolver.
Long Hair shouted something we couldn’t hear.
‘No, the whole place is locked,’ shouted Muscles.
Pa lifted the pistol, as though it were very heavy. He aimed at the front door. I felt his whole body tremble, burning, behind me. I wondered if Pa would shoot a man like he had shot the dogs. After Bultfontein Pa had said, ‘To shoot someone . . .’ and then just shook his head, as if he wouldn’t be able to do it.
The man with the muscles turned back towards the street. ‘Ja, ja . . . No, I haven’t got the . . .’ he said. He didn’t finish the sentence, listening to what Long Hair said.
‘Okay,’ said Muscles, and lifted his revolver again.
He shot at our front door lock. A loud bang, wood splintering, plaster spraying.
Pa kept the pistol trained on the door, and his hand on my mouth.
Muscles just turned on his heel and walked away, down the steps, to the Jeep. Long Hair came from the other side of the street to meet him. Muscles smacked the woman on the head, then they got into the Jeep, started it, and drove away.
We just lay there, in the sitting room, for a while. Pa’s breathing was rapid. ‘I’m sorry, Nico, I heard you calling me, but I thought it was a dream.’ He whispered. He had taught me, sound always carried further than you thought. Especially now, after the Fever, because there was no other noise about.
He said, ‘You did very well. You can be proud of yourself.’
Later we got up. He drank lots of water from the tap, I heated the soup on the gas stove. Baxters Cream of Chicken.
While we ate, Pa said, ‘We can’t make any light tonight, we don’t know how close they are.’
‘And we won’t be able to have coffee tomorrow morning,’ I said. The smell of coffee betrayed the presence of people. Pa had taught me that too.
‘That’s right.’ He tried to smile, but it seemed as if he just didn’t have the strength.
I finished my soup.
‘I feel better,’ said Pa.
He was fibbing. He could see I didn’t believe him.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Those men had a lady tied to the Jeep.’
‘I saw. We’ll do something about that tomorrow.’
I lay beside him, throughout the night. He talked a lot in his sleep. Twice he cried out, my mother’s name: Amelia.
Chapter 6
The past is a river
It was Pa who said, the past is like a river. (That was in the Year of the Pig, if I remember rightly. I was seventeen.)
We were part of a greater group of people who talked till late one Sunday evening in the Forum and when he and I and Okkie walked home, I asked him, why does everyone still talk like that about the Fever, it’s past after all, five years already.
Then he said, ‘The past is like a river, Nico. We can’t remember all the water that has flowed past. So, when we look back, we first look at all the driftwood, those bits of detritus that the storms and floods left behind washed up high on the riverbanks.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Pa,’ annoyed. My relationship with my father was already fractured, and I was a teenager. Adults in general irritated me.
‘We remember the moments of great trauma the best. Fear, loss, humiliation . . . You will see, one day.’
Now I see. Now, as I try to write this memoir, now that I want to recall everything, not just the trauma. Also the events in between. It’s not that easy. I quoted Auden and Heinlein on the question of autobiography, because the pitfalls they point out are genuine: when it comes to the memory river’s more troubled waters, you are reliant on your own, sometimes unreliable and prejudiced memories, and the stories of others. You are exposed to the urges (and fears) of the ego, which wishes to include only select events. And exclude others.
Let me be frank: this is the story of what happened after the Fever, as I remember it. My truth. Subjective maybe, perhaps a little slanted. But I owe it to everyone who is part of this story to be as factual and honest as memory allows, especially those who are not here to share their testimony.
Truth was my single greatest incentive. I swear that.
Chapter 7
22 March
I slept beside my father. He woke in the early morning, startled, bewildered, his hair unkempt and his eyes wild. It took him a moment to recognise me. He looked smaller, thinner, and in this sudden revealing moment he seemed vulnerable and fragile. Fallible. But it was as if I could not see that yet. Would not see it.
I made porridge oats for us, and Pa ate his in bed. Grateful. He said, ‘One day we’ll taste fresh milk again.’
He said that a lot.
And: ‘I should be well tomorrow morning, Nico.’
‘Will we leave again then, Pa?’
He shook his head, slowly. ‘No. This is where we’re going to come and live.’
‘Here?’
‘Not in this house, specifically. There are many to choose from. I mean, this place, this town.’
‘But what about those men?’ and I pointed towards the street, where the Jeep had been. We still spoke in low voices, as though they were close by.
‘They are a . . . a complication.’
‘A complication?’
‘That’s an interesting word. We get it from the Latin. Complicare . . .’ Pa drew a few breaths, as if gathering his strength. ‘It means “to fold together”. You know, when you fold something, then you make it more complicated.’ He tried to drum up his old enthusiasm: ‘Neat, hey, the way language works. “Complicate” means “to make more involved” . . .’
‘Why don’t we just go to another place?’
‘Because I think Vanderkloof is the best place in the whole country. For a new beginning.’
‘Why?’
Pa ate the last of his porridge before continuing. ‘Maslow . . . All the basic needs. Here we have structure and texture . . .’ He sighed. He was tired. ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you tomorrow. I promise. Deal?’
‘Okay.’
He handed me his empty porridge bowl, and shook the pills out of the bottle. ‘I’m going to lie down again. Remember to brush your teeth.’
In the afternoon I heard Pa talking. I went into the room to check on him. He had thrown all the blankets off, he was sweating, speaking wildly, his voice frightened.
Then he woke up. He sat up suddenly, turned his body so as not soil the bed and vomited on the floor.
I helped him to clean up. ‘Sorry, Nico, sorry, my boy,’ he said.
That night I made hot soup, but Pa slept through all of it.
The Jeep didn’t return.
It was terribly hot and stuffy in the house.
Chapter 8
23 March
In the morning my father slept long after I woke.
I ate rusks, drank water, looked out of the windows. I listened and couldn’t sit still, something made me wander up and down, something more than boredom, more than the vague anxiety I had felt yesterday. I was thirteen, I didn’t know how to process this.
I stood at the sitting-room window. My heart began to beat faster, my hands perspired, the earth was swallowing me up, the air, the walls; the day pressed heavily on me. I sat down and jumped up again, agitated. I didn’t understand what was
happening, but I didn’t want to wake Pa, he had to get well.
I lay down in the other bedroom and the room shrank in on me. I squeezed my eyes shut. The dogs, the night of the dogs was in my mind, I saw it all again. The dogs, Pa’s fever, the two men in front of the house, the shots though our door, the captive woman, I relived it all, the images, the smells, the fear, the distress. My father, two days ago, how he climbed out of the truck with his sore and injured body, how he looked scared, for the first time. Scared. The way he looked, the way he reluctantly touched the stiff, grisly carcasses as he dragged the dogs away. My heart wanted to burst out of my chest, my breath was not enough, it was all overwhelming me. There was a rage inside me, at the whole world. At the dogs that wanted to murder, who were so determined to kill us. Us, who after the Fever, out of compassion cut the fences of so many game farms and parks, who opened all the cages in the Bloemfontein zoo. We were animal lovers, why did the dogs want to kill us? Anger burned through me, an irrational fury. At everything, at the Fever that had destroyed my entire life. I balled my fists, I wanted to shout at someone or something for the injustice, while the room, the world, the universe became narrower and smaller and heavier, the pressure on me greater and greater and greater.
‘Nico!’
Pa was suddenly beside me, and the heaviness was gone.
I looked at him as he sat down beside me. ‘You were shouting. I think you’re suffering from shock.’
My entire body was taut, cocked like a rifle.
‘I’m here,’ said Pa.
I had no words to say.
‘My fever’s broken,’ said Pa.
Chapter 9
24 March
In the early morning hours it rained, thunder and lightning, a drumming on the galvanised iron roof of the house.
There was a lot of moisture in the air, a certain pressure, as if something were brewing or fermenting. Inside me as well, yesterday’s anger and fear had not disappeared completely, they were still lurking somewhere in the back of my mind.
Pa said, it’s safe to make coffee when it rains, the aroma won’t be detected that far. But we still had to keep the windows shut. We drank our coffee in the kitchen. He told me about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Pa never talked down to me. He gave me almost all the information; I had to decide myself what I didn’t understand. (Years later I realised he left sex out when he came to Maslow’s list of physiological needs. I don’t blame him.) He explained that Vanderkloof was ideal on the physiological level: all the water we needed, and good potential for the important forms of agriculture. The climate was reasonably good, irrigation was easy, and in addition there was hydro-electric power that we could redirect, if we could just find the right people with the right knowledge to change the system and maintain it.
He knew exactly what the question was on the tip of my tongue. He said of course there were other places, other dams and rivers, that offered more or less the same. But he knew this area so well; he had been here a few years ago. He knew: Vanderkloof was unique when it came to Maslow’s hierarchy of security. Vanderkloof was a settlement, a burg, a natural fort, thanks to the hills with their cliffs, and the dam. There was only one easily negotiable road in, up the steep hill. There was only one flank to defend, unless the enemy arrived with a fleet of ships, which was most unlikely on the Orange River. Pa laughed. That was when I could see that he still wasn’t fully recovered from his fever. His laugh sounded hollow. It was as if a part of him had not returned.
‘But what about those two men in the Jeep? They live here.’
‘Yes. The complication . . . I’m still thinking about that.’
The feeling of oppression in my head was an omen. ‘I think we should leave, Pa.’
Pa didn’t listen.
‘They aren’t going to drive around in that Jeep when it’s raining,’ said Pa. ‘Let’s go and fetch the arsenal.’
First we looked and listened carefully from the veranda before a dash to the Volvo to fetch our weapons and cleaning materials. We called our store in the truck ‘the arsenal’ ever since Pa explained to me where the word came from – ‘warehouse’ in the original Arabic, to Venetian Italian, to English and eventually to Afrikaans.
We laid out the couple of pistols and the hunting rifles on the kitchen counter. I wiped the raindrops from the dark grey steel. We sat side by side, and we cleaned and oiled the weapons thoroughly, one by one.
‘We’ll take a look tonight in the dark, if we can see their lights,’ said Pa. ‘Then we’ll know how at ease they feel, and how near they are.’
I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Then we’ll do a little recce.’ He thought a moment more. ‘There might be more than those two men and the woman.’
‘What will we do then?’
‘Then we had better leave for now. The risk . . .’
‘Why don’t we just leave, Pa? Now. Tonight.’
Pa was quiet for such a long time I wondered if he had heard my question. Then he said, ‘We want to make a new start here. We want to establish a community with morality, with the right principles, that cares for each other. So we had better get off on the right foot. We can’t leave that poor woman like that. If there are just the two of them, we have at least to try. Even if it is just you and me.’
That was the first time that Pa talked about ‘establishing a community’. My thoughts were on other things at that moment, so it didn’t really register. Only much later did I realise he had thought everything through already. He had a vision, before the day of the dogs, before we arrived here.
By four o’clock the rain had cleared. ‘That’s a pity,’ said Pa. ‘It would have been a help.’
At dusk Pa dressed his dog bites with ointment, bandages and plasters. He swallowed some pain pills. He smeared black stripes on our faces with shoe polish from the kitchen cupboard, and we put on dark clothing. We each loaded a Beretta, and a rifle: the Tikka .222 with its long telescope for me, the .300 CZ for Pa.
‘The sort of people who would treat a lady like that are . . . dangerous. We’re just going to recce, Nico, that’s all.’
‘Okay,’ I said and hoped Pa didn’t hear the relief in my voice, because I just had this feeling things were not right, there was something bad in the air.
By ten o’clock it was pitch black, the moon not yet risen. We left the weapons in the house, and climbed up on the tin roof of the back veranda first. We saw them immediately. Their house was high up on the hill, about three kilometres away. They must have had a strong generator, because those were electric lights that were burning so bright. A big house, three storeys high.
‘So sure of yourselves, hey?’ Pa whispered, even though it was much too far for him to be heard.
Back in the kitchen he asked, ‘You didn’t hear any other vehicle while I was sick?’
‘No, Pa.’
He was deep in thought as he handed the pistol and rifle to me. We walked to the door. ‘Can they really be so careless?’ I knew Pa was not expecting an answer from me.
He found his answer in the road.
Vanderkloof, in the Year of the Dog, was a jumble of a town, still in its pre-Fever form – a small unplanned, unfinished patchwork quilt that had been tossed over the hills. There was only one road leading to the upper suburb, and the Jeep men’s castle of light. We crept quietly and cautiously through the darkness. I kept half a step to the left and behind Pa. Our trainers trod silently on the tar; I could hear my father breathing. At first we mistook the route, and had to turn back and try again. Find the right tarred street.
‘Nico!’ said Pa softly and urgently, startling me with the suddenness. He held out his arm to stop me. I couldn’t see a thing.
‘They’ve strung a wire across here,’ he whispered.
He drew a finger through the air to show me the wire. I had to step closer, and look very carefully before I saw it shining with reflected light from the house up there, still over a kilometre away. Just above my h
ead.
‘No,’ said Pa, ‘it looks like fishing line.’
‘How did you spot it, Pa?’
‘I was thinking, what would I have done if I were in their shoes. If I had the lights on like that, like a candle attracting moths.’
‘Jinne,’ I said in amazement. ‘But how will a fishing line stop anyone?’
‘Come,’ said Pa, and motioned for me to follow. He walked along the length of line, to where it stretched over the emergency rail beside the road.
‘Look.’
I saw that the line was attached to something.
Pa held his mouth close to my ear. ‘It’s a flare. If you touch the fishing line, the flare shoots into the air. Then they know you are coming.’
He gave me time to have a good look. ‘These guys . . . We must be very careful. Make sure you climb under the wire.’
We walked along, much slower now. I tried to be alert too now. I wondered, what did the Jeep guys do when they drove home to their house? Did they lift the line up?
Again Pa saw the next one first. Only a block from their house, scarcely two hundred metres. It was strung low, lower than my knees. He blocked me with his hand, pointed, didn’t speak. I saw a few water droplets hanging from the line – dew or rain. That was how Pa had spotted it. I hadn’t been looking so low down, I had assumed all the flare lines would be strung high.
We stepped over it. Walked on, three, four paces. Pa stopped, held up his hand to show I must stop too. He looked at the House of Light on the side of the ridge, shining so bright. It seemed cheerful, welcoming. But there was no movement or human sounds, no other sign of life.
Pa took the rifle off his shoulder, held it in his hands. He didn’t move forward, just stared fixedly at the Jeep men’s house up there. Then to the left, at the row of smaller, dark houses that were strung along the side. And to the right, where there was only open veld.