Fever

by Deon Meyer

  ‘Okay.’

  We sat there for a long time, side by side in silence. Until a butcher bird came and sat shrilling in a thorn tree right next to us.

  ‘What must we do when the KTM come?’ I asked him.

  ‘We mustn’t wait until they come, that’s what we must do. But the Committee . . . They just don’t understand the animal.’

  Chapter 42

  Lizette Schoeman

  As recorded by Willem Storm. The Amanzi History Project.

  Romain Puértolas’s books. And chocolate. And lipstick. And my iPhone. That’s what I miss.

  Cairistine Canary

  I feel the way you do, Willem. I miss the potential . . .

  Okay, I’ll try to explain. The world before the Fever was a complex one. We had major problems, in our country, and in our world. The biggest one was global warming, because it would have a big impact on all the other problems – the poverty, the inequality, the extremism.

  We were already at the eleventh hour when it came to global warming, but the thing is, we were getting closer and closer to a solution. There was the potential for fixing it all.

  Now, you can say, yes, but that was just the potential for a solution, we were actually in very deep trouble. But look at our track record. Look what we’ve already done, mankind. Look at all the diseases we’ve eradicated. Look at the theory of relativity. Quantum theory. We mapped the human genome, we had it in us to solve all the problems, we had the potential.

  So, that loss of potential, that’s what I miss the most. The Fever robbed us of that potential. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, it put human and scientific development back at least a hundred years. If not more.

  Less lofty stuff? Okay . . . I miss the Internet the most. Not the stuff like Facebook or Instagram, but access to information. I miss that badly. Okay, and You magazine. And . . . this is probably not for public consumption, but it’s the truth. I miss tampons. Lil-lets Nano Tampons.

  Pastor Nkosi Sebego

  Isidingo on SABC1. I loved that show.

  And Saturday mornings at the Menlyn Mall. Me and my wife used to go and do our grocery shopping at the Checkers Hyper, and then we would wander around, that was one big mall. I loved Coricraft, and she loved @Home . . . I wanted one of those recliners at Coricraft, I wanted it real bad. We could never justify the cost, but I would go to look at it every Saturday morning. And we would have lunch at Panarotti’s, and we would just sit and watch people.

  Ravi Pillay

  Newspapers. Especially the motor supplements. And new cars. New models, I mean, I loved to see what they improve on next. And fish tikka. I tell you now, that was the single biggest achievement of civilisation.

  Melinda Swanevelder

  RSG.

  (RSG was a radio station before the Fever – W.S.)

  Hennie (Fly) Laas

  To be brutally honest, there’s nothing that I really miss. I know the Fever was hugely tragic, but I’m very happy now. Rugby, maybe, Saturday afternoons in front of the TV. That’s all I can think of now.

  Beryl Fortuin

  Oysters. With lemon and Tabasco, straight from the shell. My mouth is watering right now. Obviously a good round of golf on a clever, challenging, perfectly manicured course. And magazines. Fair Lady. Cosmo.

  Nero Dlamini

  Shopping for clothes? Okay, okay, seriously: the city. I loved the city. Friday nights in Sandton, man that place was alive . . . And I miss craft beer. Imported cheese. Good cheese in general. No offence to Maureen and Andy, of course, they are doing great work. And those first few years, I really missed fresh croissants. Until our own bakery started doing them. That’s when I knew we were going to be all right.

  Domingo

  You really want to know?

  Friends reruns. And a good bunny chow. And Bundesliga football. I was a Dortmund fan. ’Cause I like the underdog, and I liked their style. There is no justice in the universe: when the Fever came, Dortmund was in second place in the league, they could have won. That Thomas Tuchel, he was their coach. Man’s a genius.

  Chapter 43

  The Committee meetings took place in the dining room of the Orphanage, just because it had been that way from the beginning, and nobody thought of changing it.

  It was a spacious room, with square tables that could be arranged in different ways. Up to November in the Year of the Crow I attended all the meetings, unofficially, uninvited, invisible and silent. Because I was Pa’s son, but also because it had been like that from the beginning, and nobody thought of changing it.

  The meeting of 19 November was my last in this privileged position. It was my own fault when Pa sent me out and banned me.

  The first item on the agenda was Domingo. They called him in, invited him to sit down. No, said Domingo, thank you, but he would stand.

  It pleased me that he was like that. I don’t know why. I sat to one side, far enough away so as not to be part of the proceedings, but near enough to hear every word. I slumped in my chair like any typical fifteen-year-old who wants to remain invisible, looking bored and disinterested.

  ‘Domingo,’ Pa said, ‘thank you for coming.’

  Domingo was silent.

  ‘You wanted to address us about Amanzi’s security.’

  ‘That’s right, I—’

  ‘After driving us crazy for weeks,’ snapped Birdy, ‘with all your scare stories.’

  ‘Birdy . . .’ Pa soothed.

  ‘They are not scare stories,’ Domingo said. His voice was calm and reasonable.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Pastor Nkosi, who was happy to gain an ally in his constant battle with Domingo. ‘You’ve been trying to influence us one by one, despite the fact that we have asked you to make a formal presentation to the Committee.’

  ‘It’s called canvassing. Age-old democratic practice,’ said Domingo.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen . . .’ Pa admonished.

  ‘You’re starting to sound like the old apartheid government,’ said the pastor. ‘The Black Menace, the Red Menace, and now the KTM Menace . . .’

  ‘And you don’t believe in democracy,’ said Nero Dlamini, tongue-in-cheek.

  ‘Please, enough.’ Pa called the meeting to order. ‘We’ll have to give Domingo the opportunity to state his case.’

  The Committee members’ body language said they probably had no choice. But they were quiet.

  ‘The floor is yours, Domingo,’ said Pa.

  He nodded, and began to speak, with no notes. ‘Like it or not, if I sound like the apartheid regime or not, the KTM are coming—’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ asked Beryl.

  ‘Give him a chance,’ said Pa.

  ‘No, fair question,’ said Domingo. ‘Let me give you the facts. Fact one: we know they’re robbers and marauders. They’ve staged an armed robbery of Amanzi itself, they keep attacking and plundering our expeditions, surely I don’t have to provide more evidence than that. Fact two: they don’t plant, don’t farm, don’t build anything, they don’t save anything. They are the modern-day equivalent of hunter-gatherers, but they hunt and gather other people’s stuff. Fact three: we plant, we farm, we build and we store up for the winter. We’ve got a lot of stuff that they want. Birdy, what’s that guy with the razor you talk about, that one who says the simplest explanation is the right one?’

  ‘Occam’s Razor, but that doesn’t really apply . . .’

  ‘Don’t matter, this is very simple. We’ve got what the KTM want. And they’re going to come and take it, unless we are prepared.’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure,’ said the pastor. ‘Their attacks on our expeditions have decreased. We haven’t had one in more than a month. Everybody knows the roads are getting worse, especially for motorbikes. The petrol is growing increasingly useless, so they can’t use the bikes anyway. And we now have a gate to keep them out.’

  Domingo looked at the pastor, that cold stare of his. ‘There are fewer attacks because it’s summer now. Lots of low-h
anging fruit. Maybe they’re focused on robbing other, more vulnerable communities. And the roads are worse, but they ride dual-purpose motorcycles, they can go anywhere. And who knows how long they’ll stick to motorbikes? There are a lot of diesel trucks and cars and pick-ups out there.’

  ‘What do you want, Domingo?’

  ‘Another fifty people for our army. Fifty full-time people, selected and trained. And no old farts, I want young and able people. And radios for them all. And we must close the road over the dam wall, ’cause I’m worried about the security of the power station. That is our most strategic asset. There’s just too much traffic past there. And I want another secret arsenal for the majority of our weapons, and a seed bank. And a back-up herd of cattle and sheep on Heart’s Island. We don’t have any insurance in that regard.’

  Heart’s Island is the biggest island in the dam. Beryl named it that, after the shape of it on the big aerial photo in the old municipal offices. It’s about four hundred hectares in size.

  ‘But you already have eighteen people,’ said Birdy.

  ‘Eighteen? Our total security force is me, and seventeen geriatrics. With all due respect, they’re good people, but they’re not fighting material, and they are not fighting fit: twelve men who are permanently on bus-gate duty, because they’re not strong enough to work on the lands or in the town. Good people, but that sort we call cannon-fodder. Three old ladies on radio room duty. And two reasonably fit sixty-year-olds who do border patrol around the dam and the reserve fence line, but only in daylight. And last week, after the thunderstorm, I had to get four people to help dig border patrol’s pick-up out of the mud. That’s our army. That is our first line of defence, Amanzi’s finest. Last time you said we have too few people, there is nobody to spare. Look where our population numbers are now. Surely we can spare fifty now. Fifty non-fossils.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Ravi Pillay. ‘That’s just too many.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Pastor Nkosi. ‘Way too many.’

  ‘Why another fifty?’ asked Pa.

  ‘Twenty-five for defence. And twenty-five for an assault force. Twenty-five is the smallest unit that I can take if we are going to attack the KTM . . .’

  There was a chorus of objections: attack? Who said we are going to attack the KTM? That would just be provocative, would cause greater trouble. We couldn’t expect our people to risk their lives. The KTM robbed us, but they hadn’t killed us yet. It was belligerent, irresponsible.

  Domingo held his hands up in the air as if to fend off the assault. My father called for order, and when it quietened down, he said, ‘Is there anything else you want to say? About your requests? Before we discuss it?’

  ‘The KTM are coming,’ was all he said.

  ‘Why this obsession, Domingo?’ Nero Dlamini asked, deeply sceptical. ‘Why this obsession?’

  A rhetorical question, I only realised later. Domingo did not respond, the silence lengthened. Until I couldn’t contain myself any longer. ‘Because they’re animals,’ I said.

  Domingo’s lip curled in a hint of a smile.

  ‘Out,’ Pa said to me.

  That was my last Committee meeting as a child.

  They informed Domingo afterwards that he could recruit only four additional men for his security team, but all four could be younger than fifty. They granted permission for him to close the road over the dam wall completely on the Luckhoff side – one less access route to defend. They let him know he could keep a small breeding herd of cattle and sheep on Heart’s Island as an insurance policy. They also approved the seed bank.

  But for the second secret arms cache they simply gave a blunt ‘no’.

  Pastor Nkosi summed up the sentiment of the Committee: ‘We acknowledge certain risks to our community, but we’re not completely paranoid.’

  When I heard what the Committee had decided, I went straight to Domingo. ‘I want to be one of your soldiers,’ I said.

  ‘What soldiers? The Committee gave me four security people.’

  ‘I want to be one of the four.’

  ‘Too soon,’ he said. ‘Go finish school first.’

  ‘But—’

  He put a finger to his lips, looked left and right, as if he were about to share a secret with me. ‘I’ll be needing a few guys I can trust. For a special mission.’

  ‘You know you can trust me,’ my voice just as low and conspiratorial as his.

  He nodded. ‘Can we trust Jacob Mahlangu?’

  ‘Yes. But why?’

  ‘All will be revealed. But it’s going to be hard work.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And if you or Jacob spill the beans, I’ll have to kill you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The ‘special mission’ was a huge disappointment after the excitement and glory of the Great Diesel Expedition. The ‘special mission’ was in direct defiance of the Committee’s decision, because it involved moving a large part of our arsenal to a secret storage place. And the only role Jacob and I had to play was to look the other way when we were on duty as shepherds in the reserve. And to help load and unload the heavy crates from the trailer.

  Over a period of a week Domingo and five of his security men moved hundreds of arms and ammunition crates from storage in the old warehouse in the nature reserve. Step one of the transfer was moving them through the back valley – the one he described as our ‘soft underbelly’ when we had our philosophy chat – to the edge of the dam. Via this route only the shepherds could spot you; and if you picked your shepherds right, they would never breathe a word.

  At first we had no idea what happened to the arsenal after that. But I realised that Domingo left the Orphanage very late some nights, and stayed out till it was almost daylight. Sometimes, when he returned next morning, I could see that his trouser legs were wet. Then I knew they were using boats on the dam. And I knew it had something to do with the ‘special mission’. I burned with curiosity, and made plans to slip out at night, but if you share a room with your father, that’s impossible.

  I heard him say to Birdy Canary one night in the sitting room: ‘Trust is a two-way street, you know.’

  The next morning at breakfast I went to him and said, ‘Do you trust me, Domingo?’

  ‘Of course I trust you.’

  ‘And trust is a two-way street?’

  His eyes narrowed; he knew I was trying to manipulate him, because he himself was a master of the art. ‘So?’

  ‘So, you trust me to keep the secret of the weapons being moved, but you don’t trust me enough to say where to.’

  He carried on eating. I waited.

  Eventually he said, ‘Sicily.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Not even Jacob,’ and he drew the knife he was using to eat slowly across his throat. I knew what he meant.

  Sicily was a smaller island on the dam, just west of Heart’s Island, about two hundred hectares in extent. Pa had christened it that after he stood in front of the municipal aerial photo and the shape reminded him of Sicily.

  Chapter 44

  In the Year of the Crow I turned fifteen. Crows died in an ecological correction. And Amanzi’s population grew past one thousand two hundred. Twenty-four babies were born.

  It was Jacob Mahlangu who said they should each have a label around their necks saying ‘Made in Amanzi’.

  In the Year of the Crow we gained a carpenter and a young geologist among the new arrivals. And a man who grew up on a dairy farm and remembered enough about it. And a plumber’s assistant, a welder, two teachers, a sous chef and an amateur baker. And an electronic engineer, Abraham Frost, who would greatly improve our radio system. And the retired police sergeant Sizwe Xaba, known to all as Sarge X.

  In the Year of the Crow we gained Okkie and the Cessna 172TD.

  In the Year of the Crow Domingo demanded reinforcements, another fifty men. He longed for Birdy, I longed for Lizette. Neither of us made any progress on either of these fronts. The Sex Fest went on, without me and Domingo.
r />   We irrigated the riverbanks with electric and diesel engines. We ploughed and laboured, planted and harvested: maize, beet, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, beans, squash and pumpkin. We planted Hennie Fly’s flown-in seed wheat, and the yield was exceptional.

  We started a little community bottling industry to preserve food for winter.

  We started a small dairy.

  Our sheep, goats and cattle grew in numbers, because our expeditions and breeding programme added more animals than we consumed.

  And the plague of dogs became a thing of the past.

  In the Year of the Crow we sent out expeditions for fertiliser. Hennie Fly rebuilt the chicken and egg farm in the old holiday resort. There were some who called him the Flying Hen. He just laughed it off.

  Our economy was communist – everyone shared in the produce of expeditions and harvests. In October two people asked the Committee if they could start a capitalist, for-their-own-profit bakery in the old Friendly Craft Shoppe. They wanted to bake fresh bread daily to start, and later pies and confectionery too.

  The Committee thought it was a good idea, but the big dilemma of capitalism was that Amanzi didn’t have a monetary unit. Barter wasn’t an option, because in the collective no one had anything to barter.

  It was Pa who suggested we use salt. It was a scarce commodity, and it had a long and wonderful history as a currency. Pa said the word ‘salary’ came from ‘salt’, Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. That was where the term ‘worth his salt’ came from. Salt was as valuable per weight as gold in those days. If you said someone was ‘the salt of the earth’, you meant they were priceless.

  Birdy suggested we measure the salt in the little 125ml containers, the ones in which everyone bought Cerebos salt before the Fever. That’s why the Amanzi monetary unit is still called the cerebos today.

  The Year of the Crow was when we also realised our sugar would eventually run out, although we still had many bags stockpiled.