by Deon Meyer
We trekked, looking for you. But what with the drought this past year . . . Lots of children and old people died on the road. And one of Andrew Nell’s pregnant wives. You know, the polygamist.
Andrew Nell
Yes, some of us were polygamists. Not all. I was one. I am one. Amanzi’s constitution says I may be one. Do you have a problem with it?
It just happened that way. There were more women than men, and it just happened like that. I don’t think we have to say anything more about it.
You should rather ask me about Wupperthal. I believe Wupperthal is crucial. I believe Wupperthal could be the reason why so many things happened to us.
Yes. Things. Let me tell you about Wupperthal. I think the people who drove us out of Bushmans Kloof with whips and cudgels thought we had something to do with Wupperthal.
We didn’t. I give you my word on that. We had nothing to do with those people. But we knew about them.
In the old days Wupperthal was a little place, a very pretty town and old mission station. If you drove up from Clanwilliam the road ended there, deep in the Cederberg. For most cars the road ended there.
But in truth it didn’t really end there. There is a rough Jeep track that runs over the Eselsbank, and over the mountain. Down the other side and eventually to Ceres, and on to Cape Town. It’s a kind of secret route, that Jeep track. There were so many other roads to Cape Town, main roads, tarmac roads, gravel roads. So very few people knew about the road behind Wupperthal, over the Eselsbank.
In Bushmans Kloof there were times of starvation, we had no choice, we were forced to make a plan. About two years ago I thought there might be something in Wupperthal, it was such a tiny place, maybe it was overlooked, maybe there’d still be some canned food or something. Three of us made the trek to Wupperthal with the donkeys. It was about twenty kilometres.
The main road to Wupperthal runs over a pass, or at least, a winding mountain road, until you see the place down below you in the valley. We walked all the way, and it was late afternoon, and we smelled the fires first, so we stopped, and hid away. When darkness fell, we saw the fires.
I left the other two with the donkeys, and crawled through the riverbed, to where the little hall was, and I saw a group of pedlars. One pedlar I had seen before, but the others, there must have been five others, I didn’t know. But they all had old trucks or pick-ups and they had taken out the engines and stuff, and they pulled them with horses or donkeys. And all those trucks were parked there.
I heard the pedlars call someone. Then I saw there were four men walking away to the other side, with a string of pack donkeys, eight or ten, I suppose, and they were walking in the direction of Eselsbank. They were taking the secret path over the mountain, towards Cape Town.
We went back to Bushmans Kloof, because those people, those pedlars . . . I think they were smuggling. They were going into the radioactive places and bringing goods out, things that could make you sick.
People like that were dangerous people. That’s why I just walked away and went home.
The people with the boots who came and whipped us and drove us away, the whip men, they thought we were some of the Wupperthal smugglers.
Think about what they said to us: ‘We told you, stay away from Wupperthal.’ And: ‘You damn thieving bastards.’
We never stole a thing, why would they say that to us? It was because of the Wupperthal smugglers.
Chapter 94
Pa
I want to slow down a bit at this point in my story. I want to waste some time; my courage fails me for the final part of this journey.
I also want to pause so that I can delve into my memory one last time, use that to draw the most accurate sketch of my father as he was in life. I want to describe his character in full, make him live again for the reader, so they can experience the same unbearable pain when I describe my father’s death.
Shared pain is lessened pain, I think.
Perhaps I want the reader to understand me and have more empathy for my reaction to the death of my father, and my behaviour afterwards. I have never been able to rise above the sinful weakness of searching for sympathy.
The trouble is that I don’t have the means to reveal my father’s character fully. When I knew him, I was just a child.
I know that sounds like a poor excuse, an evasion of my duty as memoirist. But there’s truth in it. I don’t believe children want to analyse their parents’ characters. I don’t think they’re interested in that. As a child I was much too self-absorbed, and now looking at my own children, I see it with them too. A child’s obsession with self leaves little room for the study of others.
When I look back as a middle-aged man, it is still through the eyes of a child, so it’s really hard for me to remember my father objectively. Take the moment I caught him in the act with Beryl. Even here, now, I have to force myself to get my head around their relationship. It was absolutely not about the fact that he was white and she was coloured, or that they hid their affair and everyone strongly suspected that she was a lesbian. It was simply that he was my father, and I didn’t think of my father in that way.
There is the dilemma of perspective too. Daily I realise – more and more – that we are eternal prisoners of our own unique view. We try to see others equally and fairly, we truly believe we’re objective enough to do that, but in the end it’s largely an illusion. We can only see through our own eyes. Even as adults, objectivity remains elusive.
The final factor that made it impossible for me, was that all my life I wanted to be like my father. Even now.
And I will never achieve that.
On the one hand because in my mind my father is just as much an idea, a concept, an icon, as he is human being. The dead have that advantage, a life, terminated and summed up. And I am an incomplete, ongoing project, I am a personality and character still in search of himself, as yet undefined, still in development, still striving to be just a fraction of what Willem Storm was.
Even now, in my forties.
Then the insight: Pa must have felt this way too. Perhaps he lived in the shadow of his father. Or in the memories of his wife and their relationship, and all the pain that went with it. Inside he was unquestionably much more complex than I knew or understood. Pa must have had moments of self-doubt too, he must have been ever-changing, growing and seeking too. Pa was both more, and less, than the man I got to know with a child’s and teenager’s understanding, but how much more or less I will never know.
My attempt at a complete, balanced and insightful character sketch would be at best disrespectful, at worst a crime against his legacy.
And yet in moments of weakness I wonder: did he have an affair with Beryl because he loved her? Or was she a substitute because he had a weakness for muscular women, as my hockey-playing mother was – athletic, fit and supple? Or were he and Beryl consoling each other, making physical connections in the sense of Nero Dlamini’s explanation of what we as social animals needed?
I want to believe it was love. And I believe it happened by chance. I think in those first Amanzi years they worked so incredibly hard for the children and the community, despite the threats and the setbacks, and I think one night, exhausted, they sought physical comfort from each other, and it became a matter of convenience and habit that eventually grew into love.
If I remember the way they were together – the genuine friendship, the kind that accepts and forgives everything, the respect and admiring mutual recognition – then it all made sense. Then they have my blessing, I am glad it happened. Now, as I’m writing this.
But when I was seventeen, when I was Sergeant Nico Storm of Team Bravo of the Spotters, the knowledge of my father and Beryl’s liaison was like a big awkward reptile wriggling and writhing in my guts, and so I lost out on the last months of his life.
The Sunday after the West Coasters came, I was called to the front door of the barracks. ‘Your father is here.’
I went down. He was standing there, w
ith Okkie. It was the first time I had seen him since the day I had burst through the door at the Orphanage.
I was angry with him for bringing Okkie. I saw it as cowardice, as his way of avoiding an explanation or any discussion of his indiscretion.
He stood there with an air of embarrassment about him, like a child who has broken a minor household rule, his face full of unspoken apology, ready to break into a smile of relief if I gave the lead in amused forgiveness, to show it wasn’t so bad, that my anger was just for show, tempered with compassion, understanding and love.
I can recall that scene with intense clarity, because we remember the moments of fear, loss and humiliation the best. And in this case it is humiliation. My humiliation, because I wasn’t big enough to show him that compassion, understanding and love.
And so I can see them before me now: Pa and Okkie, hand in hand, silhouetted against the light outside. Pa looked smaller, each time I saw him he seemed smaller, as Okkie and I grew and his responsibilities and the political and social questions grew bigger and more burdensome. Pa searched my face for understanding and empathy. And I looked away, with disdain. I looked at Okkie, I said hello to Okkie, picked him up and held him and ignored my father.
‘Do you want to walk down to the river with us?’ Pa asked. His tone was a peace offering.
I lied and said, ‘I can’t.’ I didn’t look at him. I abused my power to the maximum.
Okkie begged too: ‘Come on, Nico. We can shoot catties.’
‘Another time,’ I said. ‘I have to work.’
Pa knew that was a lie.
‘All right,’ he said in resignation. ‘Another time.’
Chapter 95
April: I
Domingo sent for me. He said, ‘Shut the door,’ and then: ‘Sit.’
I wondered if it was about my father, had he seen me turn my father away at the door yesterday?
‘How much have you heard of the West Coasters’ stories?’ he asked.
‘I know they’ve had a hard time. On the road—’
‘Did they tell you about the helicopters?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. Short version: they said they lived at Lamberts Bay. They say first there was this boat with people with festering boils all over them, who came to tell them they must leave, because there was another fever spreading. And when they didn’t leave, helicopters full of troops arrived to tell them to leave. A whole fish factory was blown up.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Remember the Marauders?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Remember Leon Calitz and the sparky, there where they kept the women locked up?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Remember how the sparky went on about the “chopper”?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘We have to revisit that. For obvious reasons. And my problem is, I can’t remember so well, I was pissed off that day. As you well know. I didn’t pay attention. And you and I are the only survivors of the Special Ops there that day. So I want to know, what can you remember?’
I nodded, trying to recall. It was more than a year ago, but they were events that had made a big impression on me.
‘Take your time,’ said Domingo.
‘He talked about the chopper. One chopper. That’s how I recall it.’
‘Check,’ said Domingo.
‘He said guys with rifles jumped out, and the rifles had lasers.’
‘Check,’ said Domingo. ‘Laser sights. I remember that too. But how many men jumped out?’
I did my best, but I couldn’t remember. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Not important. Okay, what else?’
‘He pointed at the bullet holes above the door, then said the guys shot at him while he was standing in the doorway.’
‘Check,’ said Domingo. ‘They shot at him with laser sights, and they all missed him. That’s why I schemed he was high. I mean, arriving in a chopper, the assumption is you know what you’re doing. Arriving in a chopper with laser sights, and the assumption is you’re really hot shit. And then you miss the target? But now these West Coast people say they were attacked with whips and sticks. Guys who blew up a fish factory with a missile and then jumped out of helicopters and hit them with sticks . . . It also sounds to me like a pothead dream, only problem is, all four hundred West Coast people couldn’t have been high at once. So maybe those laser-sighted chopper troops missed on purpose. But why?’
We pondered that in silence together. We couldn’t find an answer.
‘Okay,’ said Domingo. ‘What else can you remember? About that sparky?’
‘He said they asked him stuff about people he didn’t know.’
‘They asked about people he didn’t know?’
‘That’s what I remember.’
‘But he didn’t say what people?’
‘No.’
‘Check,’ said Domingo. ‘What else?’
‘He said they went to look for the radio. The chopper guys looked for the Marauders’ radio.’
‘I remember that. But then they just left the radio there?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s all a bit strange. Come on, we have to talk to those women too.’
Her name was Anna van der Walt. She was the oldest of the Seven Women we rescued from the storeroom where the Marauders had kept them prisoner. She was forty-something; a year after her rescue she was a cook in the community kitchens, but the experience still seemed to be in her bones – she was still so thin and emotionally fragile. She briskly dried her hands on a cloth, told her colleagues she was just going to talk to me and Domingo, and then she led us out to the garden. We sat down under a pepper tree, on mesh metal chairs with their paint completely worn off.
Domingo said I should do the talking. I think he was afraid he wouldn’t have the necessary sensitivity and diplomacy.
‘Ma’am, we want to talk about the night before we found you, out there on the mountain. We wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important. Please, if it’s okay, ma’am?’
Her eyes betrayed her, revealing how this thought scared her. But she said, ‘All right, Nico. Let’s talk.’
‘We just want to know about the helicopter that came that night. That’s all.’
‘Good.’
‘Ma’am, would you tell us what you can remember.’
Her skinny body tensed slowly, as if she needed to brace herself to revisit that time and night.
‘There were no lights in that storeroom,’ she said.
She thought while the minutes ticked by. We waited, barely breathing.
‘And there was no window. In the day the light, the sunlight, shone through the holes in the roof. And under the door. We . . . We were inside so long, they never let us out. I never really knew when I was sleeping and when I was awake. I heard the helicopter, and I thought it must be a dream. But then I looked up at the roof and saw the light shining through the holes, the long thin beams of light, and they were moving, like tiny searchlights, moving over us. It wasn’t the sun, it was something else. They were pretty . . . And the loud noise of the helicopter . . . And people shouting, and shooting . . . Have you ever been locked up?’
And Domingo said, ‘Yes,’ so quietly that I wasn’t sure he’d actually said it, and I didn’t dare look at him, but Anna van der Walt did, very intently and directly, and she said, ‘You dream of being freed. You dream of someone coming to fetch you. The whole time, you dream you are going to escape that hell. I . . . the little lights in the roof, and the racket and voices and shots, and someone opened the door, the door of our prison, the storeroom door, and I saw the people standing there, they were soldiers, I saw them against the bright light of the helicopter, and I thought I was dreaming that these people had come to rescue us, maybe they were from heaven. I put out my hands to them. And they shouted. Then I thought they were just like the other men. And they closed the door again. And I thought, then, yes, definitely a dream.’
She loo
ked away from Domingo, she looked up, to the blue sky, and slowly the tension drained from her body.
We drove back with Domingo’s Jeep.
‘What sort of people fly in a chopper, look like soldiers and close a door on seven women prisoners? What sort of people?’
I had no answer to that.
‘What sort of people shoot a missile at a fish factory, and then assault the people with whips?’
He made a gesture that said it was a mysterious world.
‘We’ll have to get defences against helicopters,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘I’ll have to think. There were sixteen Starstreak missiles at De Aar, but I’ve never worked with them, and sixteen are not enough for experimenting. The upside is, these chopper guys don’t actually want to kill. If you take the fish factory casualties as collateral damage. So, the question remains: what is their agenda?’
We drove pensively back to base. He parked. Before I could get out he said, ‘You know, all the people who helped me move the lion’s share of our arsenal to Sicily died in the Battle of Sector 3.’
‘No . . .’ I had never realised that.
‘It’s true. All four of those guys were reservists. Which means you and I are the only ones who now know where those guns and ammo are.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re going . . . There’ll be an announcement on 3 April. That announcement might give you divided loyalties. And you are going to wonder if you shouldn’t tell someone where the arsenal is.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
He gave me a long look as though weighing me up. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, Sergeant. Dismissed.’
I climbed out and began jogging back to my team who were practising drill. Domingo called me back. ‘Sergeant!’
I looked back. He beckoned to me. I went back and stood beside the Jeep.
‘I asked Birdy to marry me. And she said “yes”.’
He could see I was going to congratulate him, but he said sternly, ‘No, you’re not going to say anything. You will just listen. The wedding is in three weeks. And you can’t attend. ’Cause why, if I invite you, I’ll have to invite the whole of Special Ops, and that’s going to get a little crowded. The bride is a bit of a pacifist.’ And he grinned his Domingo grin.