by Deon Meyer
Pa said those were probably not bad skills to have.
Her mother had been old and frail and one of the first victims of the Fever. Beryl went to Humansdorp to bury her. Then she went back to work, to keep busy, and process the loss, what else was there to do? The country was paralysed; chaotic. She had watched her colleagues and the hotel guests fall ill, while she remained well. She helped where she could, kept vigil, and watched them die, one after the other. Till she was the sole survivor. Then she felt the urge to go back to Humansdorp, where she had grown up. That was where she wanted to hide or die, or make a new start; everything was so horrible, painful and uncertain.
Beryl’s voice was burdened that night at the campfire by the trauma of her journey, you could hear the hardship in every word.
She took an old, white Nissan 1400 pick-up truck; she had felt too guilty to take someone else’s luxury car without their say-so. The first of the children was standing at the roadside at Harkerville. Six years old, hungry and thirsty, and completely alone. She stopped, and heard heart-rending weeping in a wooden house nearby. She found two more children there, family apparently, one sister, one cousin, or something like that, they looked so alike. They were too small to explain their relationship to each other. She thought the resistance to the virus must be genetic, because there was a woman who had survived the Fever as well. The mother, perhaps. Beryl found her two hundred metres into the Knysna forest. She had hanged herself from a tree.
Beryl Fortuin
As recorded by Willem Storm. The Amanzi History Project.
It was a very dangerous time, that time. The Fever wasn’t completely burned out, you still found sick people on the roads, and sick people in the towns and so on. You couldn’t yet tell who was going to survive and who wasn’t. I think it was also because it was the Tsitsikamma, where people in the forest lived so isolated from each other that they only picked up the virus when they came out. Having the children with me, I had to upgrade to a bigger car. It was awful for me, it always bothered me to just take other people’s stuff. How could you know that someone wasn’t coming back to look for their car? But I took a minibus outside Plett.
So many odd things happened, so many things that you could never forget. Just before Storms River there was a man who was very sick, he drove his BMW right across our lane, as if he wanted to hit us. I think it was attempted suicide, and a case of ‘I’m not going to die alone’. Luckily for us he missed, and veered into the forest, where he hit a tree and the car caught fire. I told the children not to look, but they did anyway.
I understand that people go out of their minds, really, I understand. But do you want to take a minibus full of children to the grave with you? That is seriously messed up, even under those conditions.
At the big filling station by the bridge at Storms River, there was a woman in a Fortuner; she came up to me, she could barely walk. You could see the Fever had her. And she said, come, see. I went to look. In her car Lizzie was lying asleep, four years old. And she said, I’m going to die, but there’s nothing wrong with Lizzie; please, you already have three children with you, take Lizzie. And she turned around and wept terribly and walked into the forest, stumbling and falling. She left her child in the car. So then I had four. Me. I never wanted children, and then suddenly I had four. And I only knew the name of one.
Humansdorp in the immediate aftermath of the Fever was not a good place for children, not with all the decaying corpses and the madness of the few remaining survivors. For weeks she and the four little ones lived on a farm beside the Gamtoos River, until the worst was over. Then they went to Humansdorp, and all she found there was yet another child. And then on to Jeffreys Bay and Port Elizabeth, where the collection of children grew and grew. She said they became a sort of composite Pied Piper of Hamelin, because the voices of the children with her kept luring other orphans out of their hiding places. In Motherwell two men had five Xhosa children in their care. They pretended they were going to join forces with her, but the next morning the men were gone, and the children were still there.
Nobody wanted the children. Everyone was too busy trying to survive.
She just kept on the move.
5 April
Pa let the Discoverer 6 drive in front, because the camper was slow, it struggled to reach eighty in the head wind. We followed about a hundred metres behind. Pa gave Beryl a small Zartec two-way radio, so we could talk to each other. Just before Graaff-Reinet, he asked her to let us pass, to make sure the town was safe.
In the middle of the village Pa said, ‘Good Lord,’ and he stopped in the street and pointed.
I saw a painting, gigantic and colourful, spread across three old buildings. It was a herd of Nguni cattle on the veld, incredibly lifelike.
Pa raised the radio to his mouth. ‘Do you see the painting?’
‘It’s amazing. Was it always here?’
‘No,’ said Pa. ‘These are historical buildings. The Wijnkamer wine shop and the hotel. They always had white walls.’
I could see more scenes painted across the buildings ahead, to the left and right of the main street. And then I saw the church, half a kilometre further on, in the middle of the street, with its tall spire. The church building was now the shoulders of another Nguni cow, the tower was turning into a head and a single horn. There was a long ladder propped against the church spire, and a small figure at the top of the ladder. I pointed it out to Pa.
We stopped at the church. There was a man up the ladder busy with a big brush. He was a black man, tall and wiry. The only piece of clothing he wore was a pair of bright green gym shorts and he had brown sandals on his feet. He waved at us with the brush, his white teeth exposed in a grin, his left hand held tight to the ladder.
‘You like?’ he asked and gestured at his artwork.
‘Yes!’ Pa shouted back.
Beryl stopped behind us. The sixteen children burst out of the camper to have a look.
Later on, the painter turned down the invitation to go with us to Vanderkloof. He wanted to stay here, with his art. There were still a lot of paintings to do.
When we left, Pa said, be careful of the dogs.
Chapter 20
Domingo
It’s more than three decades since I saw Domingo for the first time. I think my memories today are strongly coloured by the huge impression he made on me as a thirteen-year-old. The reality was probably less dramatic and romantic, but allow me to tell it precisely as I remember it. At least I’m absolutely certain of the date: 7 April in the Year of the Dog.
I remember the dates, because I wrote them down in my diary. This journal dates from the first weeks of the Fever, when Pa and I lived in the caves of the Vredefort Dome. Or rather, hid there. I’m not sure how to describe it. Pa gave me the book, a yellow Moleskine journal, and a black pen. He told me that all the great explorers kept a travel journal. ‘Just a few words every day, Nico, so that you will remember it later.’
On the evening of 7 April I wrote only one word: Domingo. It was all I needed to remember.
Late in the afternoon on 5 April we brought Beryl and the children and the camper to Vanderkloof. There was no one there. Absolutely no reaction to the hundreds of pamphlets we had distributed.
Pa hid his disappointment in frenetic activity. He decided we would move into the former Pride Rock guest house – it was simply easier to protect, care for and manage everyone that way. Early next morning he pumped the green, dirty water out of the half-empty swimming pool to make it safer for the little ones. I had to help him to connect a petrol generator, so the children could take a hot bath. It took a few hours to get all sixteen clean and dressed – it was weeks since some of them had had a proper bath.
We lugged cartons of food into the kitchen, carted books to the sitting room, packed them neatly, and cleaned the whole place.
Pa and I searched the houses in town for children’s clothing, and for more food. We found a quadbike under a shed and push-started it by towing it
behind the Volvo. Pa spent fifteen minutes teaching me how to ride the thing, and another hour to explain how easy it was to overturn the vehicle. He let me practise over and over, on the road and in the veld.
That night Melinda cooked pasta with a sauce of tinned tomatoes and meatballs. It was more delicious than anything that Pa had made us so far. We pushed all the four-seater tables in the guest house together. We ate together, as a community.
On the morning of 6 April Pa took me to sit with him in the garden, beside the empty swimming pool. He spoke earnestly. The Rolfontein Nature Reserve is here behind us, high in the hills, he said. It was two-thirds encircled by water, one-third by cliffs, superbly fenced, and almost unreachable by any road besides the one that ran through Vanderkloof. There were gemsbuck and kudu, springbok and impala in it. It would be our game farm, but soon our stock farm too. Because the dogs were busy exterminating sheep and cattle. The pair of us, father and son, would have to take a truck or something within the next week, and go and capture sheep and bring them here while there still were some left. Cattle too. But for those we would need help. Maybe Hennie Fly. Perhaps someone else . . .
But for now, for the foreseeable future, we would use the reserve as a source of fresh meat for the women and children. ‘Take the quadbike, and hunt for us. Take one of the radios . . .’
I was eager and excited. I was thirteen years old and I could go hunting with a quadbike. I leapt up before he had finished talking, but Pa called me back. ‘I can see that you can’t wait to ride the thing. Nico, be careful. It’s a powerful vehicle, with that ratio of power versus weight. You are going to be tempted to do something with that power. But think twice. If you are lying bleeding under a bush up there in the mountain, and I don’t find you . . . Stay on the tracks, so I can come and help you if something happens. And remember, there are white rhino too, some of the last survivors. Don’t take chances.’
He talked me back down to earth. He said we had a whole lot of people that we were responsible for now. He was depending on me. ‘But I know you will handle it with ease.’
Pa still knew how to manage me in those days.
On the morning of 7 April I was making a framework of sturdy sticks on which to stretch the skin of the springbok that I had hunted, just as Pa had explained to me. According to him it was the hunter’s responsibility – the processing of the entire animal. In this new world we would have to use everything, the skins as well. I did not enjoy that part of the hunt. I worked alone in the yard beside the guest house, because the women didn’t want the children to see the bloody hide.
I am sure sound travels further in the morning, before ten o’clock. The air is clear and still.
I heard the sound. It was high-pitched and very far away, but intense, penetrating. I halted my handiwork and straightened up, turning my head to hear better.
It was a man-made sound. The pitch was not constant. It rose and fell, from ecstatic crescendo to a lower, more animal growl, up and down the scales. It echoed over the plains, thirty, forty kilometres away. It disappeared entirely for a moment. And then it returned.
It was the sound of an engine. It was out of place, odd, curiously strange on this sunny, peaceful and perfectly still morning – almost a year after the Fever – in the deserted hills on the edge of the Great Karoo. And because it was the only mechanical music in the air, I could not identify or pinpoint it.
The sound came from the south, this side of the river. From the direction of Petrusville.
It took a few minutes before I realised that the sound was coming closer. I felt excitement stir. Someone had read our pamphlet. Someone was coming.
Instinctively I began walking down what used to be called Madeliefie Street, towards Protea. Because if he was coming to Vanderkloof he would have to drive up Protea Street. I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back. It was Pa. He had been trying to get a Tata Super Ace going, because the Volvo horse was too big to drive around town. We walked to the corner together and stood side by side listening to the noise get louder and louder.
‘It’s a motorbike,’ said Pa.
I listened.
‘Only one,’ said Pa.
‘Boy, it must be a fast one,’ I said.
We waited on the street corner without further discussion, we just listened to the approaching rider. We could hear him shift down through the gears as he neared the traffic circle at the foot of the mountain outside town – about one and a half kilometres from us. The way the sound disappeared for an instant. Perhaps he was pausing to read a road sign? Then the revs rose again, higher and higher through the gears up the gradient. It sang a single note through the two wide curves as the road made a ‘U’, dropped uncertainly at the first fork, and then he was coming, and we saw him, a black apparition: black motorbike, black helmet, black rucksack, black leathers, boots and gloves.
He spotted us late. He braked, and stopped directly opposite us, on the other side of the road. There were thin, bright green contour stripes marked on the black of the bike. Kawasaki was spelled out in silver lettering on the tank. On the tail: Ninja. In a holster on the rider’s right hip there was a big pistol.
The helmet’s visor was dark, the man’s face invisible. He moved slowly, with relaxed movements as he reached to switch off the key in the ignition. The engine hushed, just the tick-tick of the cooling metal between us now. He kicked out the motorbike’s stand with his heel, swung his booted foot over the seat and stood next to the bike. There was, I saw, another pistol, on his right hip.
He pulled off his gloves, first the left, then the right. Put the gloves on the tank. Loosed the strap of the crash helmet under his chin. He put his hands either side of the helmet, and lifted it off his head in one flowing, practised movement. He shook out his long black hair as he put down the helmet on the tank and walked around the bike, to us. His walk was like a predator at the top of the food chain, nonchalant, supremely confident. He took off his dark glasses. His eyes were hypnotic, pale – a grey that reflected the environment like a chameleon, now faintly green, then a hint of blue, in strong contrast to his dark complexion. He walked up to Pa. Put out his hand.
‘Domingo.’ A deep voice. ‘Tempest-tost,’ and his eyes crinkled as though they could smile without his mouth.
Pa’s face lit up. ‘I’m Willem Storm,’ said Pa. ‘And this is Nico.’
Domingo looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. I noticed there was a tattoo on the back of his hand, two curved swords and a rising sun. I felt the heat and cold of his hand at the same time. A shiver went through me, because his smile and his eyes, in fact his entire presence, said he was deadly. I don’t know why I experienced it at that moment. Childlike intuition? Perhaps because Domingo was in such sharp contrast to my father’s peace-loving innocence. But I knew instinctively and without a shadow of a doubt that you wanted Domingo to be on your side.
Everything always happens at once, just when you least expect it. That was when we heard the plane. It came from behind us, over the mountain. Pa and Domingo looked up at the same time. It was Hennie Fly’s Cessna 172. He swooped over us, and waggled his wings.
We drove down past the traffic circle outside town, to where the Cessna would land, on the nearest stretch of straight, level tarmac. We were in the Tata Super Ace pick-up truck that we had had to push-start. Pa drove, Domingo in the passenger seat, and I sat in the middle.
Domingo smelled of sweat and aftershave. Pa asked him where he had heard about us. He said he had seen our pamphlet in the Bethlehem Mall.
Was he from there?
No, he was on the way to Bloemfontein from Durban. That was all he said. But Pa wasn’t deterred. Why? he asked.
Domingo gave Pa a long look, his own eyes invisible behind the dark glasses, but I felt that he was weighing things up. That he knew there was a price to pay if he wanted to stay with us. After a while he said the road surfaces in the wetter parts of the country were too unpredictable after the summer rain, so he came in search of the dry ro
utes for his Ninja. He enjoyed high speed. While the roads and the petrol lasted. It might be the last summer that a man could enjoy a motorbike like that. No traffic, no speed traps. And he smiled that almost-smile, and looked at me.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Pa.
‘Around Hazyview for two months. Those roads . . . Great. But it got rough. Heavy rain, flooding. People at Nelspruit shooting without asking questions. So I rode to Mozambique. Maputo. It’s chaos there. I sat on my bike in the middle of Avenido Vinte e Quatro Julho, and a fellow ran naked across the street, with another man chasing him with a panga. And he . . .’ Domingo looked at me and shook his head. ‘Let’s just say, chaos. And then I went to Durban . . . There must be fifty people living on the beach there. Flower power vibe.’
‘Did you see . . . other communities?’
‘Guy in Harrismith talked about people who started a place near Fouriesburg. In the mountains, whites only. I didn’t go to look.’
‘Were you in Bethlehem yesterday?’
‘No. Four days ago. I went to the Cape first, to see if it was true about the radiation.’
Back then Pa and I had heard over the radio about the nuclear power station at Koeberg blowing up. There had been no one left with the know-how to turn it off.
‘How are things there?’ asked Pa, with great longing in his voice.
‘Bad. Beyond Rawsonville, just before Du Toits Kloof Pass, the burned-out trucks and buses and cars are blocking the road. You can’t get through. Charred bodies, it’s pretty gruesome. And there are hand-painted signs saying danger, radiation, go through and die. The mountains are black, it looks toxic. I can only imagine what the Cape itself looks like . . .’
Pa was silent. Then he asked, ‘Where are you from originally?’
Before Domingo could reply, we saw Hennie Fly and the Cessna. Hennie had already climbed out, and was standing next to the Cessna’s engine; he turned and waved to us.