by Deon Meyer
Nero looked at his watch, and he waited.
Behind him the sun dipped behind the dam wall. The western horizon was a pageant of colour. Nero lifted his arm, his eyes still on the watch, and then he dropped it.
Beryl pulled the tarpaulin off.
Then came the music.
The notes moved over us, first the dystopic double bass, the ominous drum rolls, and the violins hinting at the beauty to come, like a battle between good and evil, until the good gradually overcame – all this emanating from the massive nightclub amplifiers that stood revealed there now. Those people who knew music gasped. We were dumbstruck, carried away, even the smaller of the children felt it was a sacred, charged moment, and they didn’t make a peep. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the fourth movement, the chorale, the most beautiful music that I had ever heard in my whole life, like a thousand night birds flying over us, up to the stars which began, one after the other, to twinkle.
I sat beside my father and I heard him sniff. I looked and saw he was weeping. I wanted to give in to tears as well then, but I resisted, in case Lizette saw me . . .
We sat there, the music rising and falling, over and over, the orchestra, the choir, it was overwhelming and perfect.
And as the last note faded over the dam and the hills and the plains far away, there was another sound, a single deep mechanical sound, and then the lights of Amanzi went on, behind us, and in front of us, the length of the dam wall, and down there by the substation; for the first time in nearly two years after the Fever there was electricity again.
‘Tonight we honour Cairistine Canary,’ said Nero Dlamini. ‘Our bringer of light.’
‘Birdy Day,’ shouted, of all people, Domingo, in a happy voice.
‘Birdy Day,’ the small crowd of Amanzi people cheered.
And so it was called from that day on.
(It may be the only thing that my father overlooked when he said what lasts: I remember those moments of great joy just as well as those of great fear and humiliation.)
Chapter 31
Bits and pieces I: about Willem Storm
Nostalgia is the memoirist’s great seductress.
I want to talk about the day the lights came on. It was a moment, and a day, that made a huge impression on me as a fourteen-year-old. It was a redemptive moment and a day of jubilation and huge significance for everyone in Amanzi: it literally and figuratively drove out the darkness. That winter’s hardship was debilitating. The adults endured hunger for weeks on end, and there was the cold that crept into the marrow of your bones, the hours of back-breaking labour, the discouragement and eventual despair. And when the bishop and Granny Nandi Mahlangu passed away, there was fear of an outbreak of fever, of a new viral mutation, of another wave of death coming to engulf us.
Electricity changed all that. We moved with one flick of a switch from the Middle Ages to the era of technology. Among other things it brought more pure physical comfort. Lights, right through the night. Heaters. Electric stoves. Fridges. Oven-roasted leg of lamb! It made labour immeasurably easier: electric irrigation, electric saws and drills and food processors and vacuum cleaners. And a PlayStation in the Orphanage playroom.
But above all it brought new prospects. And that one ingredient that we needed more than any other: hope.
Cairistine Canary
As recorded by Sofia Bergman. The Amanzi History Project, continued – in memory of Willem Storm.
I want to say to you, that day the power came on should have been called Willem Storm Day. ’Cause, first of all, he had the vision. Not the short-term, small-time vision of flicking a switch and lighting up the ceiling. No, the long-term vision of progress, of reclaiming some of the lost time and technology. Sometimes I would think that Willem Storm viewed Amanzi as a struggle between man and virus, or at least between man and the devastation of the virus. And the hydro-electricity was a big score against the virus. He had so much drive. I won’t forget that. Look, Willem wasn’t a big man, but that drive gave him presence. He was everywhere, on that official bicycle of his – I’m the one who christened it Bike Force One – he was the chairperson, our Fearless Leader, but he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, he was just as happy to unblock a woman’s drains, or dig potatoes on the farms, or to untangle electrical cables for me at the substation. And those cables were no joke, they cost us a whole lot of sweat. And then he’d go home at night and raise a child too. That night when we turned on the power, he was so on edge, I said to him, Willem, chill, what’s the worst that could happen? If it doesn’t work tonight, then it will work tomorrow or the next day.
But he said, it has to work. We can’t let the people down. That’s the kind of man he was. He didn’t want to disappoint his people.
But what I loved most about him, he was so happy for someone else to get the glory.
In that first year I stayed with my father in a room at the Orphanage. A big room – only just big enough for a father with a son of thirteen or fourteen. It was purely an extension of our way of life before Amanzi, when we shared the Volvo cab, or rooms in empty houses in deserted towns.
Pa would fall asleep after me, and get up before me. Now and then I would still be awake when he came to bed. I would watch him making lists in his notebook, of all the things that had to be done in the next week or month or year. Some mornings I would wake before him, and see him lying there with his notebook, just as he had fallen asleep the night before. At the time I didn’t think much of it, I didn’t add up the clues to come to the conclusion that ‘Pa was dead tired’.
It’s too long ago to remember exactly what I felt for my father at that time. But I do remember the growing jealousy. It was irrational, as selfish as any teenager’s, but in some way it was understandable. Before Melinda and Beryl and the children and Domingo, before the arrival of the 256, my father had been mine alone for nearly two years. Exclusively and totally mine. Not because I demanded it, but because circumstances dictated it. And suddenly I had to share him with everyone.
It wasn’t a conscious jealousy, there wasn’t a moment of realisation, of awareness of his general absence. It was a slowly developing abscess. It took a long time before it burst. Because, despite everything, I was secretly very proud of him.
When I think back, if I try to assemble the bits and pieces from memory, I can better understand Pa’s sudden absence, his abrupt neglect of me. Birdy was right, he saw Amanzi as a battle between man and virus. And I believe on some level he believed he would personally determine the outcome of the battle. It was the reason he worked so hard, from early morning to late at night. It was his magnificent obsession.
Birdy was also correct when she said that Pa brought up his son in the evenings. Even though it didn’t feel like enough to me, he did make time to sit with me, eat with me, talk with me. He asked questions about my day, my experiences, my feelings. At thirteen, and in the afterglow of our wandering Volvo days, I still had good conversations with him. Today I feel grieved and ashamed about the subsequent years when I did so much to damage our relationship.
If only I had known we would have so little time.
Hennie Fly
As recorded by Sofia Bergman. The Amanzi History Project, continued – in memory of Willem Storm.
At the time I was the manager of the hothouse with its tomatoes, salad greens and cabbage, and the chicken-keeping project, everything in the prefab buildings of the old Vanderkloof Holiday Resort. Later, we had to move it all – we were producing enough food, but living space had become a problem – but in the early days it was me and four other people who farmed the chickens and vegetables. Every second Tuesday we loaded chicken manure into the wheelbarrows with spades and pushed them over to the tomatoes. First thing in the morning. Now, Willem knew that, and he would arrive on his bicycle, and put on a pair of blue overalls, grab a spade and pitch in. He wasn’t very handy with a spade, you could see that wasn’t his strong point. But he came to help with the second-smelliest job in Amanzi. He never made
a song and dance about it. As far as I know, he never announced to anyone that he shovelled chicken shit every second Tuesday. So it wasn’t a case of a politician wanting to show that he could get his hands dirty. I think he did it so that he . . . When the tomatoes were ripe, then he would come, and pick one – always just one – from the vine and take a bite, with his eyes shut, and you could see the great pleasure it gave him. I think he came to cart chicken manure because it made him feel that he had a share in that tomato. He had helped to take us one more small step away from hunger and closer to civilisation.
Beryl Fortuin
As recorded by Sofia Bergman. The Amanzi History Project, continued – in memory of Willem Storm.
It was shortly after we got power, one of the expeditions returned with the box of digital voice recorders, must have been twenty in the box, all with rechargeable batteries. When they were off-loading they wanted to throw the box out, but Willem said no, and he took them, and brought them to the Committee meeting, and he said he was keen on having them, the voice recorders. He wanted to collect people’s stories. He called it the Amanzi History Project. And he started carrying one with him at all times, in his pocket. And when he could, he would talk to people, and ask them, now tell us . . .
Chapter 32
Bits and pieces II: about Baruch Spinoza
The end of the Year of the Dog.
In less than five years my father would be murdered.
The guilty party has already appeared in these pages. And those that I view as accomplices, however small their role. And everyone that I would suspect, some to my later great shame.
I promised the reader that I would write this memoir with honesty – as much honesty as the pain and anger allowed, even now, after many decades. This honesty also includes the mitigating circumstances for those that I would accuse, and find guilty.
And the mitigating circumstances, both for me and my mistakes. My unforgivable mistakes.
So I would like to interrupt the sequence of events. In my haste and enthusiasm to get to the first great joyful event of Amanzi, to recall and relive the day the lights went on, on Birdy Day, in my concession to nostalgia, I skipped one of the smaller events. Things seeming unimportant on the surface, things that would become pointers to our future, our coming troubles, and the motive and motivation for murder.
Like the conversation on the night after we’d buried Granny Nandi Mahlangu.
It was in the darkest depths of that murderous winter, before the maize meal find at Warrenton, before Birdy’s arrival. The Committee meeting was over, the members were still sitting around the ashes cooling in the hearth of the Orphanage sitting room. Nero Dlamini was trying to cheer everyone up. He brought the few flickering candles closer to us, and fetched a bottle of brandy on a tray, poured some for all the adults and passed out the glasses. As he did every evening, he raised the bottle and said, ‘Domingo?’
And as he did every evening, Domingo just shook his head. He didn’t drink. I lay on the sofa on one side and watched Domingo clean rifles, and thought, when I grow up, I won’t drink either.
Pa stared straight ahead, tense and grim, cold and weary. And hungry too, I thought.
‘Are you all right, Willem?’ Beryl asked.
Pa sighed. ‘It’s my fault.’
‘No, Willem, she was old and frail,’ said Ravi. ‘Nobody knew she wasn’t eating her rations.’
‘No,’ Pa said. ‘Not Nandi. This place. I chose this place. I lured everyone here with pamphlets. And I made a mistake, because I was so self-satisfied, too taken with my own reasoning . . .’
‘What are you talking about?’ Beryl asked.
Pa stared at the ash in the grate, his voice without expression. ‘After the Fever, when Nico and I . . . When I realised we were going to survive, I spent a lot of time considering what would be the best place to take my son. To start a settlement. To . . . rebuild civilisation. It was an interesting exercise for sure, because my first impulse was to choose places that I knew. Places I had a positive connection to. Like Cape St Francis, where I spent holidays as a child. Or beautiful Knysna, a place of substance, texture, wood, shelter, water . . . The challenge, the scientific and intellectual challenge was to eliminate personal preference. I didn’t much like Vanderkloof, back then . . .’
Pa looked at the people around him. ‘You know that bunch of whites who wanted to live separately on their own just down the river from here, about thirty kilometres or so?’
‘Yes,’ said Pastor Nkosi. ‘Orania. The last outpost of apartheid. I wonder if any of them survived?’
‘Well,’ said Pa, ‘before the Fever, when I had the time, I would go by car on business trips to Jo’burg, and take a different route every time. About four years ago, I drove through Vanderkloof. Actually, I spent a whole day in town, because it was . . . different, I suppose. Unique. Like a seaside holiday town with no sea. Odd. A bit run down, a little sad. And sleepy. Very sleepy, two-thirds of the houses empty, just waiting for the holidays. With the vague sense of promise that it would come alive and transform in the summer vacation . . . It fascinated the geographer in me. I spoke to everybody I met. One local whispered to me that most of Vanderkloof’s inhabitants shared the Orania ideology of whites only, or Afrikaner only, or whatever it was that they hoped to achieve. The only difference was, the Vanderkloof inhabitants didn’t want the racist stigma. So, this town, Vanderkloof, was a sort of clandestine Orania, where the more cowardly separatists lived. That’s why I didn’t like the place very much.’
‘But what has that to do with the fact that you say it’s your fault, all the bad things that happened?’ asked Beryl.
‘The past months I have been so smug about my reasoning,’ said Pa. ‘I was so impressed with the fact that I could look beyond the stigma of Vanderkloof, at the bare facts, weigh it up as a place for a new beginning. Intellectual arrogance, because I was so sure that I had taken everything into account: enough substance for survival, security, water, the potential for agriculture, a good chance to generate electricity. I thought the distance from the cities would be an advantage. And it is, in a way. But then I stopped thinking because I was so pleased with myself. I failed to realise that you pay a price for the remote location, for the former low population density of the area. We should have foreseen those risks. As Domingo—’
Beryl gave Domingo a dirty look – which he didn’t catch. ‘Nobody can think of everything. Nobody knew that it would snow this much.’
‘God brought the snow,’ said Pastor Nkosi in his ringing preacher’s voice. ‘God brought the hunger, and the suffering. He’s trying to show us that we’re taking the wrong road again.’
‘And how exactly is he doing that?’ asked Nero Dlamini.
‘Just look at all our troubles. Just look at all the sad things happening. Where is God when we have Forum meetings, Nero? Or Committee meetings? We don’t pray together, we don’t praise together. He is trying to tell us—’
‘That’s why Granny Nandi died?’ asked Domingo, his hands still, his voice as keen as a blade. ‘And the bishop? That’s why the KTM robbed us? And it snowed? Because God wanted to make a point?’
‘Tell us, Domingo,’ said Pastor Nkosi, his eyes full of evangelical fire. ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘Yes, Pastor, I believe in a god. My god is Darwin. I believe in the survival of the most ruthless.’
‘Then you have the devil in you.’ Spat out with so much revulsion that the hairs rose up on the back of my neck.
‘Are you going to exorcise him now?’
‘Perhaps one day we will have to,’ said the pastor, with much more courage than he usually showed in Domingo’s presence.
‘Nobody is going to exorcise anybody,’ said Pa. His voice betrayed his fatigue.
Pastor Nkosi wasn’t yet ready to drop the subject: ‘Do you believe in God, Willem?’
At first Pa seemed to consider the necessity of an answer. Then: ‘Do you know what Einstein said when a rabbi asked hi
m the same question, Nkosi?’
‘No.’
‘Einstein said, “I believe in Spinoza’s god, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a god who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” ’
‘And that’s what you believe?’
‘That’s what I used to believe. Now, I just believe in Spinoza, really.’
‘I see . . .’
‘Spinoza,’ said Nero Dlamini, and sipped his brandy. ‘He’s the guy who first said religion and politics should be kept separate?’
‘Yes, and with all due respect, that’s why Nkosi will not like him,’ said Pa, in an attempt to lighten the tone of the conversation. ‘And the wonderful irony is Domingo won’t like him either.’
‘Why?’ asked Domingo, who didn’t like to imagine that he and the pastor might have anything in common.
‘Because Spinoza believed that democracy is the form of government that would accommodate personal freedom best.’
‘Personal freedom is overrated,’ said Domingo, but his tone was gently mocking, like Pa’s.
Pastor Nkosi was still deadly serious. ‘I will keep fighting for God in this community. And in this Committee. One day, he will be our chairman. I’m willing to bet my life on that.’
Chapter 33
Bits and pieces III: of love and desire