by Deon Meyer
Sofia came to me that evening. She had a first-aid kit with her, and said, ‘We must bandage that hand of yours.’
‘How did you know?’ Because I thought I was hiding the swelling and pain of the broken knuckle very well.
‘I saw it the other morning, when you and Birdy were sitting on the couch. Every time Birdy touched that hand . . .’
She must have seen my concern, I didn’t want to give the Cabinet a reason to delay our expedition. She said, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Will you be able to shoot?’
‘Yes. I just can’t fight.’
‘I promise you I won’t hit you first.’
I smiled for the first time in days.
She sat down, opened the first-aid bag, took out the hand splint and bandages.
‘They’ll see the bandage,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘But nobody will know what’s going on under it . . .’
‘Thanks, Sofia.’
She blushed. And then she focused intently on applying the splint and bandage, and we didn’t say any more. When she had finished she jumped up and walked swiftly out of the room.
I sat there thinking I would never understand women.
Chapter 111
The investigation of my father’s murder: VIII
The Cabinet and the Spotters came to see us off. They were the only ones who knew about our expedition. There was something subdued about our departure. When Hennie Fly took off and banked and flew back over them, I thought they looked lost down below – the Cabinet without Pa, Special Ops without Domingo. As if we were all waiting for them to come back and lead us again.
The weather was perfect, the morning was crisp, but the sky was clear. Hennie Fly talked up a storm, as usual. Sofia sat beside him. He asked if she’d flown before. She said she had. In the old days when she was in the Free State cross-country team, they would sometimes fly to Cape Town for competitions.
Had she ever flown in a small plane before?
No, never.
Did she like it?
No.
He laughed.
We flew over the wide expanse of the Karoo. Just before Carnarvon we saw springbok, a massive herd of thousands racing across the plains. We saw the dust from their hooves rising up like red-grey smoke in the morning air.
We flew with the R63 either just to the left or the right of us. There was no traffic. None. Not even a horse wagon or donkey cart. We flew over Williston, and the Karoo flattened out and we could see the Cederberg for the first time on the distant horizon.
Two and a half hours later we flew low over Calvinia’s single tarred landing strip. It seemed to be in good shape still.
Seven minutes later we were on the ground and picked up our rucksacks and weapons. Hennie Fly stood beside the aeroplane and he hugged us, first Sofia and then me.
‘I’ll come back in nine days, you hear. You better be standing here. I beg you. And if you’re not here, I’ll come back a week later. Okay?’
It was strange to see the little Cessna fly away, and leave us standing there, Sofia and me in the middle of this arid country, five hundred kilometres from home.
We stood gazing after it until we couldn’t see or hear the plane any more.
‘Come on,’ I said. I hoped she wouldn’t hear the uncertainty that I suddenly felt.
She just nodded, and then she swung the rucksack over her shoulders, picked up her rifle and began walking.
Our conversation began awkwardly, with vague, neutral subjects and pregnant silences, and then both of us would talk at once, and then fall silent again. We were both burdened by self-consciousness, and the trauma of the past week, and I was struggling to disguise my feelings for her. Despite everything I still knew she was my future wife, but I had given up hope of making it happen. And now, on the crumbling R27, all my desires surfaced again, and I was terrified she would notice.
But slowly things began to flow, as we found our walking rhythm, and as we moved, and felt, further from our Amanzi reality. Sofia deserves most of the credit for that. She had a way, I found, of asking questions as though she were truly curious, and as though my answers were interesting and worth listening to.
Just before we turned off onto the rutted, overgrown gravel road of the old R364, we looked for shelter from the sun in the old white shed beside the road. As we ate, she asked me how it was, before Amanzi? How was the coming of the Fever for me?
And I told her that in comparison to other stories mine was easy. Sometimes I felt ashamed when people began talking about it. But it was my father who made our experience much less traumatic.
‘Why?’
‘Because my father . . . We were quite lucky too, we were in a secluded place, but I think what saved us was that my father remained calm and made the right decisions. And one of those decisions must have been very difficult for him.’
‘Why?’
‘You sound like Okkie . . .’
She smiled. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’
I said I didn’t mind telling her. But so that it all made sense, I had to start at the beginning.
She said we had a hundred and twenty kilometres still to go.
Okay, then, I said. And I told her about my father who would read to me at night, ever since I was tiny. Not story books. Non-fiction books about this wonderful world we live in. Books about moon landings and voyages of discovery, books about animals and geographic regions, philosophers and history. Sometimes he just brought an atlas or a news magazine to my bedroom. He would read to me with all the passion and fascination he had for things that excited him, and that he wanted to share with me.
From my ninth year we had those conversations in the kitchen, every evening after supper. Books and maps, an iPad or a laptop on the table, and Pa showing, reading, explaining. Ma and I listened and learned, laughed and chatted.
I could choose any of these things I wanted to see.
NASA and Trafalgar Square, the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall of China would have to wait until I was older, he said. But in southern Africa I could choose. Almost every holiday.
So we went to the Tsitsikamma Forest. Kosi Bay. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Parliament. Kruger National Park. The Apartheid Museum. Aughrabies Falls. The Women’s Memorial. Table Mountain. The Namib Desert. Khatse Dam . . .
Sometimes my mother came too whenever her job allowed. Otherwise it was just me and Pa.
In those months before the Fever, Pa told me they had discovered caves in the mountains of the Vredefort Dome. He showed me the dome on Google Earth, how you could see it from space, it was so big—
I interrupted myself at this point, because we had finished eating and there was a long road ahead. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘we have to go.’
We packed up and walked out of the shed. ‘Were you an only child?’ Sofia asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. For the first time in years I wondered what the real reason for this was. My parents often used to say that when I was born, they knew they didn’t want any more, and I loved hearing them say it. But that was then, when I was still a child.
‘I don’t think my mother wanted another child.’
‘Why?’
‘I remember how busy she was.’
I had nothing more to add. She filled the silence by saying, ‘You were going to tell me about the Vredefort Dome.’
I resumed my story. One of Pa’s many contacts in the geography world whispered in his ear about the discovery of the caves in the Vredefort Dome. And how the discovery was being scientifically investigated first, before the crowds could pollute it. They would have announced the news later that year, but we had the opportunity to go and explore and experience it before the public had access. But we had to go soon.
So I said to him, yes, please, let’s do it.
That was the time when the Fever was in the news every day. But governments kept announcing that they could control it.
Pa woke me up one night a
nd said, come on, we’re leaving now, because with the Fever he didn’t know how soon we would have the opportunity again. And in any case it was nearly school holidays, it wouldn’t affect my school work.
Pa and I drove up with the car – the old Subaru Forester that Pa swore by – from Stellenbosch. Over the radio we heard that Europe had closed its harbours and airports. Experts said the American government was lying about the death toll. Medical people said they were working hard on a vaccine.
I asked Pa, did he think we were going to get sick? Then he said the people would make a plan, the doctors and governments and institutes, I needn’t worry. Humanity always made a plan.
We slept in Bloemfontein. The next morning we bought provisions there. On a local radio station they asked people not to go to the city’s hospitals any more as they were full.
We drove to the campsite beside the Vaal River, just a few kilometres from the caves. We were the only ones there, except for the owners. They didn’t want to come close, asked us were we sick? We said no. We pitched our tent and drove to the caves.
The caves were incredible. We went every day, for over a week.
We tried to phone my mother, every night, but she didn’t answer. Pa said she must be helping out at the hospital in Stellenbosch.
Every night Pa watched the news on his phone. Then he said it looked like the Fever was getting worse.
By the end of the week the campsite owners didn’t come out of their house any more. We went to look for them. They were lying there, dead. I think that must have been when Pa got sick, when we caught the virus.
Pa said he didn’t think it was safe to go home now.
Pa said it might be safer to hide away in the caves, because there was unrest and violence and chaos.
Pa and I fell ill and we lived in the caves. We got the Fever. But we didn’t die. We only came out three weeks later, and Pa tried to call Ma. And then he said, ‘Nico, I think Ma is dead.’
We cried that morning, me and my father, beside the Vaal River.
Chapter 112
The investigation of my father’s murder: IX
When the afternoon cooled down, I suggested we run and see how far we could get tonight. She said that was fine.
We found a pace that suited us both. I thought about the day she ran for selection in Special Ops, when she hit me with the rifle. I laughed out loud. She asked why I was laughing.
I told her.
‘Will you ever be able to forgive me?’
‘I’m working on it,’ I said. And then: ‘It was probably a good thing. I was very full of myself.’
‘Sofia Bergman, therapeutic rifle-clubber,’ she said. ‘Let me know if you need more treatment.’
I smiled and looked at her as I ran. And she looked at me. It felt as though I could see her a bit more deeply and in sharper focus.
The sun just touched the horizon when we reached the top of the Botterkloof Pass. The road zigzagged down ahead of us.
‘Are you still okay?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I’m still okay.’
We jogged down the pass as the sun set. She asked me questions about those months before Amanzi, and I told her about the trips Pa and I made up north, always giving the cities a wide berth, always avoiding other people, to the north of the Kruger Park. And then slowly south again, to Amanzi.
And when she had heard everything she wanted to know, I said, ‘Now it’s your turn.’
And so we ran into the darkness and we ran in the moonlight.
Just before the bridge across the Doring River there was an abandoned farmhouse, where we called a halt for the day, and made a fire in the hearth, and ate and drank.
It will remain with me till the day I die, that scene of Sofia Bergman sitting there. Looking so beautiful in the glow of the firelight. Her voice made music as she spoke, and the motion of her hands and arms so feminine. I felt an overwhelming urge to get up, go over to her and kiss her.
But I didn’t stir.
At first light we were over the Doring River, and Sofia pointed out the tracks on the other side in the dust of the road. ‘I think it’s a leopard. He must have passed here last night.’
Behind us the sun rose, ahead of us lay the mountains.
We had had a very long day yesterday, we had travelled far and fast, but this morning we were paying the price. We were slower, our adrenalin less too. But our conversation was relaxed. We had become friends.
We walked along the winding road together.
By nine o’clock we heard the bark of a sentinel baboon, then another one, and another. The mountainside to the left of us came alive, and hundreds of them scurried higher up, little ones peering inquisitively from where they clung under their mothers’ backs.
By ten we were back on tarmac road, and at the turn-off to Wupperthal. We had studied the maps carefully in Amanzi. We knew from here it was another thirty kilometres plus to the old mission station.
We stood a moment, as if to take a breather. Then we began to walk, and Sofia said, ‘I heard a helicopter once. After the Fever, I mean.’
‘Where?’
She told me of the night she slept on the veranda of a farmhouse, with the corpse of a woman in the bed inside, of the droning noise she heard, and the fiery stripe in the night sky, and the helicopter later, nothing seen, only heard.
I pondered over this, and she told me that it was that morning that she decided she wanted to live, and it was a decision with a lot of implications, because she wanted to live, but she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life; she had thought she wanted to be a Spotter, but after all maybe not. And I was walking with her in the Cederberg, on the way to Wupperthal, grateful that she was sharing that with me. I felt somehow privileged that she trusted me with it.
And she asked, ‘What do you want to do with your life, Nico?’
‘I knew that last week,’ I answered. ‘But now I don’t know any more,’
She asked me what I thought the helicopters signified.
I told her about the one that landed at the Seven Women in the night.
And I said I had no idea what they signified. Hennie Fly said there aren’t any helicopters that fly on diesel. Just before the Fever they were doing diesel tests on helicopters in Europe, but if there were helicopters still flying today, they must have access to aviation fuel. And that was the big worry.
‘Do you think we will find something at Wupperthal?’ she asked.
‘Maybe not. Then I’ll have to do more searching later. But that will be okay. I just had to get away from Amanzi now. I can’t explain it. I just had to get away.’
‘So you can see clearly?’
I realised then that she understood me.
‘Yes, Sofia, so I can see clearly.’ A look passed between us, something small yet meaningful.
After three in the afternoon we came in sight of Wupperthal. We saw the blackened burned-out skeletons of buildings in the narrow, green valley between the mountains. We saw wild horses grazing near the stream. These were the only signs of life.
We left the road, and climbed up the mountain. Domingo had taught us the advantages of height.
Wupperthal was situated in a ravine in the Cederberg, where three tributaries of the Doring River flowed together. We sat on the side of the eastern mountain, looking down on the centre of the abandoned village, the ruins of the old church and hall. We could see the roofs of the houses on the southern slope of the mountain.
We hid behind rocks and studied the terrain, then moved on, checked things out again.
By half past four we were certain the place was totally deserted. We studied the other side, where the path zigzagged southwards up the mountain. That was where Sicelo Kula said the ‘tracks’ ran. That was where we had to go.
‘Do you want to wait till tomorrow morning?’ Sofia asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Nor do I.’
The old bridge had been washed away, we had to cross the shallow stream to get t
o the other side. We were moving slower now; Sofia’s eyes were searching for tracks, my eyes were watchful, alert to threats.
We walked with our rifles at the ready.
Up the mountain, a kilometre or more, a steep climb, something glittered higher up, at the first hairpin bend.
We were almost upon it before I realised what it was: razor wire, thick rolls cutting off the road. The hand-painted signs attached to it were faded and weathered. All of them were a variation on one theme: Danger. Gevaar. Ingozi. Radiation. Don’t pass this point. You will die. Nuclear Disease!!!!
Sofia studied the area. ‘It’s a few years old,’ she said.
‘No tracks?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You know you can wait here if you want.’
‘I know, thank you. We can go that way to get round the razor wire.’
Nero Dlamini told us the symptoms of radiation sickness showed within two hours after exposure to severe radiation. With moderate exposure it could take up to six hours. We should be on the alert for fever, nausea and vomiting.
We clambered down the cliff, and then up again, so that we could get around the wire. And then we were back on the Jeep track, up and up the twisting hairpin bends. It was ages since the route had been used. It was in a poor state and overgrown.
Every now and then we would ask each other: ‘How do you feel?’
‘Hungry,’ was my last answer, before we reached the top of the mountain, and the track suddenly turned very sandy, and on either side the rocks loomed huge and high. Sofia stopped and called my attention in an urgent whisper: ‘Nico!’
She cocked her rifle and dropped to one knee.
I raised my rifle, looked around, I couldn’t see anything.
‘Tracks,’ she said. ‘Very fresh.’
I saw what she was pointing out. In the path’s white sand, just beyond the big rocks on either side of us, were footprints leading out of the veld on the left. They led into the mountain on the right.
We looked, listened.
Nothing.