by Deon Meyer
In summer we moved around for grazing, to the Olifants River, but in winter the grazing was good in and around the hills, so we trekked with the cattle; we weren’t more than, say, an hour or two from the house. And that was last July, it wasn’t a very wet year, but the grazing was good, and I . . . It was just a few weeks after the Lamberts Bay people told us about the submarine. We were just this side of the old gravel road that goes to Skurfkop, we had made camp for the night, and two of the children and I were with the cattle, we took turns. Everything was peaceful, man and beast, we had gone to bed long before, but I was the light sleeper. Must have been one in the morning. I woke up, and I heard the helicopters. No, not one. Two, or more. Who doesn’t know the sound of helicopters? I heard them, but they flew over by the tarmac road. That’s the main road, the one that runs from Lamberts Bay to Clanwilliam.
I’m not good with estimating distance and direction and such, but I think the tarmac road was about five kilometres from us. So the noise wasn’t overpowering, it was sort of half in the distance. But it was clear enough.
Now you know, you don’t want to wake the children, just now they get scared, but you also don’t want to be the only one hearing the noise, you hope it comes nearer . . . long story short, I listened to those helicopters for a good fifteen minutes. It’s not like I was dreaming or anything. Precisely because it was so strange, I got up, and I walked into the darkness, a bit away from the children and cattle, to listen carefully. And I heard, yes, those were helicopters. For about fifteen minutes, and then the sound faded, as if they flew away. And the next day, I took a horse and went to look. And I found it there beside the tarmac road, more or less where I thought I heard the helicopters: I found the trader’s wagon.
Let me say something about the traders, the pedlars and the wagons. There were seven pedlars. Three of them travelled alone with donkeys or horses and a cart, and there were the other four, who were a few people working together. Old Jan Swartz and company were five people who travelled together, they had a sheep lorry that they stripped, and they had eight pretty horses that pulled the truck. He was the big rooibos tea pedlar, and they also sold furniture, but pretty stuff, you could see they were antiques. And old Jan Swartz and his team would come and trade those for a few blocks of butter in town. The world was turned upside down, hey? Now, the pedlars that I found that morning beside the road, after the helicopters, it was Lionel Phillips’s wagon. He had the dwarf who travelled with him, who was his helper, funny little man. And Lionel was a big strong man, handsome, with a thick black moustache; he came from Vredendal originally, and the dwarf from the Cape, when everyone ran away from the nuclear. Lionel and the dwarf went everywhere together trading with their wagon. They had stripped a Ford Ranger to make it light and they harnessed six horses in front; every now and then the horses would be bigger and more flashy and then they would be towing a little Venter trailer as well.
So I knew Lionel’s wagon.
I found the wagon there, and the horses were unharnessed, they were grazing in the veld. Peacefully, nothing wrong with the animals. But Lionel and the dwarf – I can’t remember his name – Lionel and co were just missing. No sign of them. And the wagon was empty, completely empty. And blood, on the wagon door, there where the driver would sit, behind the steering wheel. And the little hat the dwarf always wore, with a long peacock feather, the hat was lying in the dust.
Those helicopters must have stolen all their goods, and taken Lionel and him away.
I wouldn’t have said anything about the helicopters if the Lamberts Bay people hadn’t told us about the submarine.
I mean, that’s funny, isn’t it?
And I still wonder: what happened to Lionel Phillips? And the dwarf. It was like they had been snatched away.
Joe Drake
So, that was the funny thing, for me: this Lionel Phillips, the travelling trader, he was the one who started bringing in the suspicious . . . I suppose suspicious isn’t the right word, but I was pretty sure the stuff was coming from the contaminated zone. I mean, why else would it still be available four years after the Fever, with every town and village pillaged?
And fruit juice. That was the kind of stuff that went first. Or went bad.
Beginning of last year, this Lionel Phillips started coming round with this merchandise, out of the blue. Reluctant to tell us where he got it.
And then he’s the one that disappears after that cattle woman hears helicopters.
My concern was that the produce might be radioactive. I tried to warn people, but the novelty of fruit juice and peaches in syrup and even bags of sugar . . . Nobody would listen.
Chapter 92
The West Coasters: II
I watched Sofia Bergman mingling with the West Coast refugees. I watched her pause with children and women, and the way she sat on her haunches beside two frail old grey-beards, how she touched them, gently, respectfully, and how they responded.
It was like the sun coming out in their faces when they saw this pretty young woman under the military helmet. The dawning of hope. And relief, as if they knew they were safe now.
I didn’t watch her for long. I didn’t want to get my own hopes up, I didn’t want anyone to see my heart was still lost. Besides, I was a sergeant now. I had more serious matters to attend to: I made sure these refugees were who they said they were. I looked for any concealed weapons, or hidden enemy soldiers. I collected information, interrogated some of the refugees about their origins and history. I was a little impatient, a bit stern and self-important, so I only heard brief snippets about the attacks at sea, of privations during their journey this far, and of their hunger and thirst.
But even if I had taken more time and they had been more talkative, even if I had known their whole story, it would have made no difference. It wouldn’t have saved any lives.
That was my consolation when I later gained access to my father’s historical recordings for the first time. They were some of the last he made, with his usual keen interest, altruism and thirst for knowledge.
And by then it was too late.
Sewes Snijders
I had known Yvonne Pekeur for about three years by then, and I knew she wasn’t one to tell tall stories. If she said she heard helicopters, then she heard helicopters. Certainly in her head, anyway. But deep down you wonder if they were genuine helicopters. But you think, okay, it’s probably what people think about you when you talk about the ghost ship.
Anyway, it wasn’t long after she heard the helicopters that the Bushmans Kloofers came. Bushmans Kloof is deep in the Cederberg, it must be about a hundred kilometres from Lamberts Bay. You drive through Clanwilliam, then you drive up the Pakhuis Pass, and down the other side, and that part is called Bushmans Kloof. There was this grand hotel, in the old days, in a very remote spot, and that’s where these people lived. The Bushmans Kloofers. Hippies. No, wait, let me rather say they were different . . .
Andrew Nell
In the beginning there were only three of us in Bushmans Kloof, but at the end we were between twenty and thirty people living there, at the old retreat. It was a luxurious hotel and spa, deep in the valley, extremely remote. I personally was there for over three years. It was very safe place, with only one road in and we took down the road signs. If you pass it on the main road, you wouldn’t even know it was there.
The crucial element was the good, clean water from the spring. And in time we had a nice flock of sheep, plus there was game, and the fish in the dam. We tried to grow vegetables, but the baboons robbed us blind, so we just tried to harvest some of the citrus fruit from the orchards over the mountain. And firewood from the hills. It wasn’t an easy life. But because we felt safe, we stayed. People passing through talked about the dogs, dogs that ran in packs and attacked people, and of robbers and crazy men. So you stay, because you’re reasonably safe where you are, and you’re surviving.
We knew about the people in Lamberts Bay, because there was this one pedlar who came up the va
lley once, and he found us there. And he told us there were a bunch of people at Lamberts Bay and Graafwater, why didn’t we go there?
We said no thank you. We had our own ways, you know. We knew other people might not like our ways. But we didn’t tell the pedlar that, we just said no thank you.
Then the pedlar said, but those people had a better life than we did. And again we said, no thank you, we are safe here.
Then he said, are we working with the Wupperthalers?
And we said, we don’t know about any Wupperthalers.
That wasn’t actually the truth.
So he left, and we asked him, please don’t tell anyone we’re here. And he looked at us, and said, but there’s nothing here, why would anyone care?
We didn’t keep a calendar, so we didn’t know the date precisely. The Lamberts Bay people said it was early September last year. That sounds about right. One night in September, they came for us. Without warning, they broke down our doors in the middle of the night and began hitting us with whips and cudgels, and they said, ‘Go, go, take your stuff and go. We told you, stay away from Wupperthal. We told you.’ And they said, ‘Don’t come back,’ and there was one who said we were thieves, ‘You damn thieving bastards’ or something like that. It was horrible, to be attacked in the night suddenly, and we could only grab a few things, and they were hitting us, we had to run down the road. They said, ‘Don’t ever come back, if we catch you within a hundred kilometres, we’ll kill you.’
Some of our people said the whippers all had the same boots on. They weren’t dressed the same, but they had the same boots.
I don’t know who they were. I think I know why they chased us away from there. I think it was about Wupperthal.
So we walked through the night and through the next day, over the pass, to Lamberts Bay.
Sewes Snijders
The Bushmans Kloofers . . . Really different people . . . they were polygamists; that Andrew Nell who turned up there, he had five wives. The oldest in her fifties, the youngest one eighteen or so, and three of them were pregnant at once. And all five of those women swore they were legitimate, Andrew Nell had married them and they loved him and he was good to them. That skinny man, with grey in his beard. Five wives . . . that takes some doing – I don’t have the strength for even one wife. And there were the other men too, from Bushmans Kloof, some of them had two or three wives. So they were a bit strange to us, we didn’t know what to believe. About the people who came to chase them away with whips and sticks. But then we saw how those Bushmans Kloof people could work, they would be good for our town. So we decided, if they wanted their polygamy, then can have their polygamy. I mean, the world is a different place now.
And then, in November, the boat came into our harbour. In broad daylight.
Last year in November, we rowed out with the bakkies for crayfish and fishing. That’s a little boat, a rowing boat, we call it a bakkie. We rowed out in the bakkies, because it was months since the pedlars had come, and we had finished all the diesel they had sold us.
Yvonne Pekeur
Yes, I meant to say that: once there were seven pedlars. But when Lionel Phillips and the dwarf disappeared when I heard the helicopters, it was the last we saw of any of them.
I don’t know what happened to them all. No idea. But I’m just saying: when Lionel Phillips and the dwarf were snatched away by the helicopters, it was the last time we ever saw a pedlar. It must have something to do with it. I believe it.
Sewes Snijders
Anyway, the boat came and anchored in the bay, just outside the harbour, and the people came to call me and Missus Irene Papers, ’cause I was the seaman, and she was the . . . You could say she was the mayoress. They pointed out the boat out there.
It was big boat, a seventy-five-foot tuna pole boat; her name was the Atlantic Hunter I noticed later when we rowed out with the bakkie, myself and two crew. Missus Irene Papers sent us out to see what this strange boat was.
As we rowed towards it, people came on deck and said, ‘Don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer, we are sick.’ Just like that, in English. Not like South African English, but British. By then we must have been, I don’t know, eight or ten metres from them, so I couldn’t see too well, myself and the oarsmen. We could see the people were covered in boils, all over their faces and necks and arms, everywhere that wasn’t covered by clothing. Ugly boils, they looked like bee stings that were rotting, if you know what I mean. And we just stopped there, ’cause you don’t want to get those sores, and I asked, ‘What do you want?’
And they said, ‘We want water, please, we need fresh water.’
So we rowed back to fetch water for them. We filled bottles, and we tied the bottles in a net, and I tied a rope to the net and a buoy to the rope. We rowed out again, and threw the rope and the buoy in the water. We rowed a distance away, and they came closer and took the buoy and pulled in the net with the bottles. You should have seen how those people drank water, you could see they were extremely thirsty. They said, ‘Thank you very much. We have to warn you, there’s a new fever. Blister fever. We all have the blister fever. It kills you much more slowly. We were living in Saldanha and people came from Cape Town, they came with this fever and they infected us all. They are coming here, they are coming north. You have to flee before they get here. You have to go north. Go very far. Go to Luderitz, or Angola.’
And they had two corpses wrapped in cloth, and they said, ‘Sorry, we have to give two of our people a sea burial, they died of the blister fever, it is a terrible death,’ and they all stood on the deck when they threw those two corpses into the sea, and watched them sink.
I shouted at them, ‘Why did you come bury those people here?’
And they said, ‘We were too thirsty; we didn’t have the energy, you’ll understand, when you get the fever.’
They said thank you again for the water, you have to run away, the blister fever is coming, and they sailed away in the tuna boat, the Atlantic Hunter, out to sea.
Now what seemed very strange to me was that engine, that diesel engine ran like clockwork. As if their diesel were fresh from the oven.
And another thing that was strange to me: that overseas English. Not too strong, but to my ears it sounded foreign.
I didn’t think to ask them where they got the diesel. Maybe they were like you guys. Maybe they planted canola or sunflowers at Saldanha and made their own diesel, who knows?
Anyway, we rowed back to tell Missus Irene Papers and our people that the blister fever was coming. And the whole town, we talked all day and late into the night, and we decided we weren’t going to flee to Angola. We’d watch the roads for blister fever people from the Cape, and we’d tell them to turn back. Go back. And if they wouldn’t go back, we’d have to shoot. But Angola? We were not going to Angola.
Chapter 93
The West Coasters: III
Joe Drake
This might be a good time to mention that we had heard of you. Not the name of your republic, we didn’t know it was called Amanzi. But we had heard there was a settlement on the Orange River, on a dam. I thought it was just a legend, you know, one of those stories that people make up. But then, when we heard it from another travelling trader, I thought it was perhaps at Gariep Dam, that’s the idea I had in my mind.
I can’t remember which trader first told us about you. It happened more than two years ago, he was telling us there’s this community on the river, and they’ve got electricity, and irrigation, and they have a bakery and everything. And I thought it was nonsense. And then, early last year, another trader said he’d heard it was all true, that you made your own diesel, you had tractors and trucks and stuff, and you were even building houses. But it was very dangerous to get to you, because you had these motorcycle patrols to stop people from getting to you.
I think that’s why nobody thought of coming, before the big attack.
Sewes Snijders
December and January we saw nothing. We ha
d sentries out on both the roads, and on the railway, north and south, and there were no blister fever people anywhere.
Then we started wondering, maybe it was a bunch of loonies on that boat with the fresh diesel.
And then, 16 February, all hell broke loose.
Yvonne Pekeur
We heard the explosion as far as Graafwater. That’s thirty kilometres away. After midnight, I’m the light sleeper, we were on top of the mountain with the cattle, and I heard that boom and got up and looked towards the sea. And I saw the glow.
Sewes Snijders
We were five hundred and forty-six souls in Lamberts Bay the night the missile hit the fish factory. Some people saw the missile coming in, from the sea. Like an arrow. And it hit the fish factory bull’s eye. There must have been seventy people living in that factory, they slept there, we never used it as a factory any more, since the Fever it was for housing. Living space. They were all killed.
And then the helicopters came. We heard them coming, not over the sea, they came from the direction of Muisbosskerm, flying low over us, turning over the caravan park, and coming back. I would guess there were twenty helicopters.
They landed on the old school sports fields, and soldiers jumped out, hordes of them, and began hitting us with whips and batons, and firing their rifles in the air, shouting, ‘This area is contaminated, this area is contaminated, in two days we will bomb this place, there is blister fever contamination, get out, get out, you have two days.’
It was terrifying; behind us the fish factory was burning after that helluvan explosion, and now we had soldiers jumping out of helicopters and the women screaming and children crying.
Missus Irene Papers was one of those who lived in the fish factory.
So we lost our mayor. And we left. That was six weeks ago.
Yvonne Pekeur
Yes, that following morning they came walking, streams of them, and they told us what had happened. So we Graafwater people also packed our things.