by Deon Meyer
I should have left it there. I should have stood up and walked away. But no. Like an imbecile, I added, ‘I’m not like you, Pa. I never want to be like that.’
He looked at me in bewilderment. I expected him to lose his temper, to shout at me, forbid me to join the Special Ops Team. I was ready for all that.
He didn’t do it. His face registered pain, as if I had physically wounded him. Pa sat at the breakfast table and tears ran down his cheeks. Okkie looked at Pa, and he looked at me, and he began to cry too. He got up, walked around the table to my father, grabbed him round the neck and comforted him, saying, ‘Don’t cry, Pappa. Don’t cry. I want to be like you.’
I hobbled away on my crutches.
On the way to school I felt guilty. Perhaps, thought the nearly-sixteen-year-old me, it was necessary to say that. Then, to my greater shame, I consoled myself. I thought, we are animals. None of this really matters.
Chapter 57
Sofia Bergman
Let me just go on a little bit more about the last day’s walk, as far as Hanover, because an interesting thing happened, which had quite a surprising result.
I was walking down the farm road. A farm road. In the days before the Fever we talked about a farm road as a road that wasn’t a provincial or a regional road. The farmers usually maintained them themselves, because they led to remote sheds or camps. Most of the time they were not wide enough for two vehicles to pass comfortably, and every few kilometres there would be farm gates.
The veld between the road and the fence was usually denser and greener than the other side of the fence, and often duikers or steenbuck would graze there, and when you approached in a car they would run away along the fences. Springhares too. At night many of them were run over.
I walked to Hanover on the farm road because it was shorter. And prettier, the road roughly following a small river. My feet were sore, but the plasters and the underwear in the boots and the Disprins helped. I can’t say I looked around much. I can’t remember if I looked behind me at all in those three days of walking and cycling. Why would you look behind you when you knew you were the only one in your world?
It was about eleven in the morning, such a beautiful day in the Karoo, not very hot yet. And something made me look back.
There was a jackal behind me. A black-backed jackal, a rooijakkals. My father hated the black-backed jackal with a passion, they were sheep killers, but more than that, they would kill a whole string of sheep and only eat a bite here and a bite there from the sheep. They were wasteful, Pa said, and in the Karoo you just can’t afford to waste. But my father had a peculiar respect for those jackals. He always said it was our fault the jackals became so clever. Because the people, the farmers, shot out all the dumb jackal, and only the clever ones survived, and they bred with each other, and so the farmers unintentionally applied their own genetic manipulation and bred a super-jackal. That’s why it became impossible to eradicate jackal in the Karoo.
When I looked back, the jackal was behind me in the road. Less than a hundred metres. A beautiful big rooijakkals, his neck and back pitch-black, the rest a shade of russet like the hair I always believed Esau in the Bible must have had. And that bushy tail. If you’ve seen a jackal then you know what a jakkalsdraffie is, the way they trot so effortlessly, sometimes at an angle, half skew. He was following me like that. All down the road.
I didn’t have the feeling that he was anything more than curious. Really. And so we went on – I limped along, and he did his jakkalsdraffie – for more than an hour, all along the farm road. As if we were fellow travellers.
And when I looked back again, he was just gone, and I felt a little bit alone. But also blessed that we had spent that time together. What had been going through the jackal’s mind for that hour? I still wonder today.
And here’s the surprising result of that hour or so: when Nico and I began naming the years, I remembered the jackal. The Year of the Jackal was named after him; even though Nico and the Amanzi people had jackal losses in the flocks in the reserve that same year, it was the jackal on the road we named the year after.
It was Nico and I who began naming the years like that, mostly animal names. We told each other our stories of what happened to us after the Fever. And then we couldn’t remember which year it was, and we would say: ‘Man, that year of the crows.’ And I think it also had to do with the fact that we and our generation were part of something new. We weren’t simply an extension of the old era, we were the post-Fever children.
Oh, we had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica that they found in a storeroom of the school library in Philippolis. The encyclopedia said the Chinese also named years after animals, according to their zodiac. Every twelve years they repeated it. They had the Year of the Rat, and then came the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Cock, Dog and Pig.
It inspired us to keep on with our own zodiac.
Our zodiac, mine and Nico’s, doesn’t repeat. It helps us to remember our life. And today everyone in Amanzi uses it. It’s unique to us.
Chapter 58
Sofia Bergman
The N1 was a main artery, before the Fever. A ‘mad house’.
When we drove to Bloemfontein and Pa was in a hurry, he would drive to the N9 and from there via Middelburg to Colesberg. He always said you stay off the N1 as long as possible because ‘it’s a mad house’. That’s how I remember the N1 as child-before-the-Fever: a very wide, busy highway with people racing between Cape Town and Johannesburg in cars, lorries, buses and vans. You could never be on the N1 and not see another vehicle, it was that busy, day and night.
By sunset on the Day of the Jackal I arrived in Hanover on the N1 and it was as quiet as the grave. It took me by surprise; somehow I believed there would be people there. I knew I hadn’t thought it through properly, but still it took time to realise that nothing you remember is as it once was.
Nothing.
First I went to the Caltex garage beside the N1, on the southern end of town. There used to be a woman who made hamburgers, delicious hamburgers. Now there was nobody, but I could see people had been there, someone had made a fire not that long ago, right where the cars stopped to fill up, and I thought, boy, that’s risky. I had no idea that the petrol had all been used up a long time ago.
There was nothing to eat, the little roadside café was entirely empty, just a lot of broken cold drink bottles in the corner.
Then I went into town, to the Exel diesel depot where the big trucks stopped, and there it was the same story, there was nothing, nothing but trash.
The sun set, and I saw the signboard, Hanover Lodge Hotel, and I went there. The hotel was on the corner, opposite the Pop-In supermarket. I went into the hotel. There wasn’t any rubbish, everything was tidy, though dusty. I picked a room. It was deep dusk outside, I wanted to take off my shoes, rest my feet. The double bed was beautifully made up, all in white. I sat down on the bed, took off the rucksack, took out my torch and clicked it on. I pulled off the boots, that was a huge relief, and the bed was so soft.
I did a foolish thing. I switched on Pa’s cellphone.
It said: No signal.
You don’t think, you just keep going. I went into the bathroom. There was a little bar of purple soap, and shampoo and shower gel. I opened a tap at the basin and water gushed out. I turned it off straight away, and thought, I could have a really good shower, for as long as the water lasted.
I closed the door, undressed, and jumped under the shower. I washed quickly, the water was ice-cold, but it had been a hot day. I shampooed my hair, washed my body. I smelled fresh, and I realised that my clothes and socks did not.
I sat down on the bed, and then it hit me: there was nobody on the N1, and there was nobody in Hanover. I didn’t have enough food to walk to Bloemfontein. If there was nothing to eat in the Pop-In supermarket or in the hotel or any of the houses in the town, I would have to make another plan.
There must be more people who surviv
ed, I knew there must. At Colesberg, perhaps? At the massive Gariep Dam on the other side of Colesberg – water was always something that attracted people, that helped people survive, make a life.
I didn’t know . . .
What I didn’t know, was that was the last night of my life that I would be so completely alone.
Chapter 59
The first KTM war: I
We were a divided community after the second KTM attack. Divided into two camps, Free Amanzi and the Mighty Warrior Party, and nobody was happy because our precious unity had been fragmented.
‘Paradise lost,’ Nero Dlamini called it.
And Pa and I had lost each other too.
Pa kept on reaching out to me, but I was an idiot. A sixteen-year-old idiot.
At least we were united in our urge to build the new gates of the town. Every able person helped: mixing cement, making bricks, collecting sand and stone, digging foundations, and building. The main gate rose up, an imposing structure where the old bus gate had been. People said it would take a tank to break through it.
Early in July – and in consultation with Domingo – the Committee appointed the former police sergeant Sizwe Xaba as head of the Amanzi defence force, so that Domingo could concentrate on the training of SpOT, as the Specials Operations Team soon became known. And the members of the attack force soon became known as the ‘Spotters’. Although Birdy called them the Spotties, just to rile Domingo.
Their relationship was stormy; they had loud arguments that the whole Orphanage could hear, mostly over Domingo’s attitude. And then they’d be seen later sitting on a rock on the ridge chatting calmly as though nothing had happened. Their relationship was still unusual, with its own unique logic: he asked her out, she said ‘no’ in a way that led him to believe she might say ‘yes’ tomorrow.
Nearly seventy people reported for selection for the Spotters. Domingo made them run, all the way up to the reserve, down the other side, along the shore of the dam back to town, over thirty kilometres, steep ups and downs, difficult terrain.
Half of them threw in the towel before they reached the halfway mark. Only twenty-six completed the course.
Domingo made them shoot. One of the strongest candidates, a big, strong Namibian, missed every target.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Domingo asked angrily.
‘I lost my glasses, a year ago.’
‘So you can’t even see the target?’
‘No.’
Domingo sent him away.
Twenty-one qualified. Three fewer than Domingo required. It made me excited. I wanted to fill one of those three vacancies. I couldn’t wait until I was sixteen. I exercised my injured leg, I had less than two months to go. I knew I could shoot better than anyone except Domingo.
Outside the main gate, between the large traffic circle and the river, is a hill where the Department of Water Affairs’ offices and stores used to be. It was now the headquarters and barracks of SpOT. On 22 August at six in the morning I reported at the front door of the large ugly old building, with my R4 DM and my R6.
The guard at the door looked irritated. ‘What do you want, Nico?’
‘I turned sixteen today.’
He nodded. He understood. ‘Wait here.’
I waited a whole hour, until both the SpOT teams came running out in step, in uniform, with backpacks, rifles. Domingo ran in front. He saw me. He called halt.
‘I hear you’re sixteen today?’
He already knew that. I had told him the night before that I would see him in the morning. He had nodded. Why was he asking me now? ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, Domingo.’
The Spotters laughed. But Domingo didn’t. ‘You address me as “Captain”.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ I couldn’t understand why he was being so fierce with me. We knew each other, we saw each other every night in the Orphanage. At home we were friends.
Domingo called a team member. ‘Take him to the Q-store. He can leave those rifles there.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ the soldier said. And then to me: ‘Come.’
He ran, and I ran behind him. The Quartermaster’s store was on the first floor. The soldier opened the door and pointed inside. ‘Get yourself trousers and shirt, socks and boots. Don’t mess up the store. Leave your firearms on the table.’
Everything was stacked on shelves in tidy rows. There were clothes and boots that Domingo had brought from the big army depot in De Aar. I began to look for my size.
‘Hurry up,’ said the soldier.
I wanted to tell him he was just a private. I was the chairman’s son and Domingo’s friend. I held my tongue, found things that fitted.
‘No, put them on here and leave your clothes on the table. If you don’t make it, you must fetch them here tonight.’
‘I’ll make it.’
He laughed quietly. He was three years older than me, but not much taller. And I knew I could run further than he could, and shoot much better. If he could do it . . .
At that moment I actually knew nothing about the Special Operations Team and their training. They were separated from the rest of Amanzi, and when they came to town at weekends, they didn’t talk about Domingo or what they did each day. We civilians only saw them in their uniforms sometimes running off in step somewhere, or we would hear them shooting, both day and night.
It didn’t matter. I was full of confidence. I was the hero of the Great Diesel Expedition, the eliminator of twelve KTM bikers.
I folded my clothes, put on the new kit. The starched green and brown camos were tight against my skin and smelled of mothballs. We walked out and he closed the door behind me. The private and I ran down the stairs again and outside. The two SpOT teams were practising drills in front of the building. We ran to Domingo.
‘That one is yours.’ Domingo pointed at a rucksack and R4 that were leaning against the wall.
‘Yes, Captain.’
I picked up the rucksack and rifle. It was a common R4, scratched and dented and neglected. The rucksack was heavy.
Domingo took a stopwatch out of his pocket. He turned to the two teams. He shouted, ‘It’s now seven o’clock.’
Both SpOT teams shouted back, loudly, in perfect time, ‘Yes, Captain.’
‘How far is Luckhoff?’
‘Thirty kilometres, Captain.’
‘How much time does he have?’
‘Seven hours, Captain.’
Domingo looked at me. ‘You heard that?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘You have to run to Luckhoff, and back again. To here. Sixty kilometres. In seven hours.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Seven hours.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘You may not use the road. If anyone sees you on or near the road, you’ll be disqualified. Understand? If you disqualify yourself, you can come back when you’re seventeen.’
Why was Domingo talking to me formally now? He’d always talked to me like best buddies, now he seemed to want to exclude me from something.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘On the corner of Fowler and Barnard in Luckhoff there’s a stone. Under the stone is a letter. Read the letter, put it back as you found it. Come and tell us what the letter says.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ I shouted, like the Spotters shouted, but I was hurt. ‘Come and tell us,’ Domingo had said. He was with them, against me.
‘What are you waiting for?’
I stood, unsure that he meant me to start running. The Spotters laughed.
I swung the rucksack on to my back. I picked up the rifle. I began to run.
‘You can use the bridge,’ said Domingo, and pointed at the single-lane bridge below the dam wall.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘The stones in your rucksack are marked.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Seven hours.’ He clicked the stopwatch.
The Year of the Jackal, 22 August. It was late wi
nter, that was the only thing in my favour. Summer heat would have made it impossible. Because the sixty kilometres between Amanzi and Luckhoff wasn’t really sixty kilometres. It was sixty kilometres if you looked on the one-dimensional map. It’s more like seventy if you take the terrain into consideration. A difficult seventy, if you can’t use the roads. It was a rough landscape, hills and stream beds, up and down, stones and rocks, thorn bushes, gullies and sometimes soft sand. It wasn’t a straight line and I didn’t have a compass. And I was carrying a loaded rucksack and a rifle and heavy military boots.
For the first fifteen kilometres my anger at Domingo spurred me on.
Why was he treating me this way? I was the one he took to look out over the dam from the reserve, I was the one he had talked to there about social animals. I was the one to whom he had first taught military tactics, when I had to go with Hennie Fly. I was the one he had told, ‘You have the restlessness. And the heart. There inside you are predator, a warrior . . .’ He had shared his mantra with me: ‘The other guy wants to kill me. If I hesitate, I die.’ And now he treated me like this?
The greatest injustice of all: I had to run sixty kilometres. All those troops had only done thirty. And I had to do sixty?
I would show him.
For fifteen kilometres I ran as I had practised, one foot in front of the other, my focus ten paces ahead of me, not looking further, just running the next ten steps. The rifle rested on the back of my neck, I watched my step, trying for the most direct line. I was doing nearly nine kilometres per hour. I would make it.
The rucksack grew heavier. The rifle too.
I had run thirty kilometres before, two weeks ago, as part of my preparation, but then I had water with me. And I ran on Jeep tracks. After twenty-five kilometres I realised how clever Domingo was. The R48, the tarmac road to Luckhoff, ran past a large hill. If there were people on that road, they would see me, whether I ran over the hill, or around it. Over was tough, it was high. Around was far, it would add another five or six kilometres.