by Mark Behr
18
A range of beautiful hills; not mountains! The short winding pass had been tarred, up there where the Peugeot — roofracked and piled high — skidded in the mud as we left. Not mountains. Hills! With its dust road and scattering of huts and patches of crops. Kilted sentinels, aloe candelabra blazed against the green foliage and dark of crags and rocks, breaking the skyline where hills met blue sky. Piccanins and ntombis, cupped hands, calling sweeeeets, sweeeets, getting waves and smiles in return. Already five when we left there for Umfolozi. Donkeys with lopsided ears loitering at the roadside, cattle in the road’s centre facing the Alcamino, unconcerned, till we smacked their flanks through open windows and they grudgingly made way for the van to pass. Lena seven. Bernice nine. Less than a decade before and these had been huge mountains shaping a deep dry valley. The Lebombos. Highest point on my horizon. The beginning and end of a world I remembered as my first. Before Tanzania, which had happened before but had left no memories other than those relayed. Beyond the Lebombos lay Mkuzi village in the shadow of Ghost Mountain, the sisal plantations, giants’ sheets the cotton fields hung out in the sun, and then the dust road leading up to the tarmac along which Bokkie and I drove to collect the girls from boarding school in Hluhluwe once every two weeks.
And this is green. Greener and denser than it had ever been in my memory. The only vivid and permanent greens I remembered were the lime of fever trees and the deep shiny bottle green of magic guarri around the house. And! The Forest of Figs. That was always green specked with the red and yellow of fruit, and the shafts of sunlightdappling the sandy floor where the blackseed grass stayed green. Other than that I remembered only browns, yellow, ochre, the mustard of dry Themeda triandra and the white sand and stone of the roads we drove, the tracks I walked.
Like the mountains and the valley through which we were driving, the game reserve gate, where Bok stopped for us to have a pee before entering, was smaller and less imposing than I remembered. To my one side Stars of Mkuzi — adenium — still in full white and crimson bloom and on my other, Bok, who said, yes, they should have finished flowering when the rains came; rarely see them this late, as we shook ourselves, dropped legs of shorts, and returned to the Alcamino which he had left idling. And then we drove in through Mkuzi Gate, Bok and I, back there for the first time in so many years. How will we see animals in the long grass? Can it be, Bok, can it be that so much time has passed and that in all this time we have never been back? Yet, it also felt as though I had never left. As if parts of me had been there all along; parts that now came alive. Something had happened in the chemistry of my brain, was sending signals into the skin, the hair of forearms and the nape of my neck, into the eyes. No, we’d never been back. Not after Umfolozi. Not after St Lucia. Never since being in Amanzimtoti. But how I’d been there! This could not, I imagine, be merely the function of nostalgia: surely the other senses are activated during childhood in ways similar to the conditioning of the head, the ears, the tongue, the nose?
The Alcamino’s pick-up was chock a block with the curios we had been purchasing from kraals around the Matubatuba plantations and north, close to the Josini dam. Packed neatly into boxes. Each article wrapped in Natal Mercury or Daily News. Most of the stock on the back consisted of the new Zulu ethnic pipes which would make or break my father’s business. If these didn’t make him rich — or at least provide the capital for him to buy en masse for the export market — he was going into insurance: ‘It’s time to play big,’ he said. ‘Play ball with big money and the place to do that is the insurance industry.’Without fail, his good looks, his charm and certitude overrode in my mind Bokkie’s eternal worries, her silent irritation when to our visitors he gave away as gifts curios that had cost him — us — dearly. ‘He’ll give away the shirt on his back, and the clothes off our bodies,’ she muttered. ‘He still doesn’t know he’s not the fat cat he was in Tanganyika.’ And so I was letting concern go, had decided to enjoy this break, even as I anticipated that within these two days he would tell me that I would not be returning to the Berg the following year. That there was no money. I am not going to think about that now, I told myself, I have no need to immerse myself in that other life of mine when I’m here. In paradise. Anyway, I would find a way to go back. I would not leave Jacques and Dominic. The past ten months had been the happiest of my time at the school. And Jacques would come around. He would, I knew, let go the groundless fear that someone may find out. And here: Bok and I had two days together before he took me back to the Berg.
This, then, was the gift they were giving me for my fourteenth birthday. Nothing I could have imagined could have felt as right as this. Who cared about the silly European tour! About a bad school report!
Two days earlier I had taken The Brothers Karamazov to the bird sanctuary. The place no longer held the attraction it once had. It looked smaller and was better tended: less like the bush, and more like the neighbourhood park it indeed was. The area around the top of the lake, where Lena and I once fished in secret, was gone. Cleared and transformed into lawn with benches and walkways. There were still the ducks, the peacocks, the rabbits and the tortoises. Before the birds and the tortoises seemed to provide for me some link to the very bush where I now was with Bok. But in the bird sanctuary I was seeing the creatures only as unhappy prisoners: sad, in poor condition, trapped between fences. I returned home without having read more than ten pages of the novel. I changed into my Speedo and for a whilescooped leaves off the surface of the pool, watching the shadows dance on the bottom. I fetched my drawing pad and sat sketching, in between working on Dominic’s orange poem. At hearing the postman open our golfball postbox I ran to meet him. Tearing open the envelope I knew contained the dreaded report, I saw at once the letter the school had included. Heart racing — what could it be — fear dissolved into anger and disappointment as my brain took it in:
10 October 1976
Dear Parents and Boys,
Due to pressure front Europe it seems likely that the International Choir’s planned December tour will be cancelled. It has been brought to our attention that a series of protests and demonstrations are in the planning at a number of the venues where the boys are scheduled to perform. While we continue in dialogue with our European hosts in an attempt to resolve certain questions, it is of paramount importance that the safety of our boys be placed first. We trust that you will understand and support the school’s governing body in whatever decision is ultimately taken.
Sincerely,
Royce Mathison,
Headmaster and Chairman of the Board.
My heart sank. This was not possible. How on earth, how, how, how could this be happening? What had I ever, ever done to deserve this? Bernice: behind the closed door of her room, studying for exams. Bok: in Durban, business. Bokkie: working in the church garden. Lena: at school. I went to the phone. Would have done anything to speak to Jacques, hear from him whether it was true. I called Dominic, in Saxonwold. He was out and I left a message with Prudence, the maid, asking that he call me, urgently. An hour later he called: yes, he hadn’t yet received his report or the letter but Mathison had called his father last night and told them the whole story. It doesn’t sound good. The tour was in all probability off and Dr Webster said it was almost certainly because of the black children being shot in Soweto and other locations all over the country. What does that have to do with our tour, I asked. How can Europe host a bunch of all-white children while hundreds of all-black children are being shot and held in prisons, Dom answered. Dr Webster said that South Africa may as well wipe international contact off its stomach until we learnt to respect black life. He and Mrs Webster were ready to emigrate. Perhaps go to Canada or Australia, but Dominic said he couldn’t see that happening. Just another idle threat his father had been making ever since Dominic could remember. I wanted to scream at Dominic that I wanted to go overseas, that I didn’t care about black kids who sabotage their schools being shot or stupid rich Dr Webster wanting to go and
live in Timbuktu! I asked how piano was going. And so we let overseas go, spoke about other things.
And this, this — scent of dust road and grass through open windows, the silver-green leaves of marulas in pink-white bud, the kaffir trees’ leafless stems, grey bark and red feathers against the blue sky — felt as though I was home. If I emigrate, I will come here, I smiled contentedly to myself. I will emigrate or immigrate home, whichever is the apt term. I was ready to forgive Bok everything. I had not thought of the Berg much since I’d heard we were coming. The blow of the European tour possibly cancelled, had lighted, lifted. When Bok suggested I come on his stock-buying trip I had at first cringed but said nothing of wanting rather to stay home with Bokkie and the girls. My anger at Bok had not subsided, and his invitation to accompany him to Zululand was clearly a sort of pay-off for the selling of my trophies. Then, perhaps sensing my reluctance, they had given me the incentive: your birthday gift a trip to Mkuzi and Mfolozi. Just you and Bok. Two days. Two nights. Yes, who cares if the overseas trip goes down the drain, now!
A yellow-billed hornbill sat almost in the middle of the road, digging with its beak into a heap of dry rhino dung. Bok slowly edged around the bird. I leant: across him to get a better view from the driver s window. The beady yellow eyes rolled at us, head lilting fromside to side, curious, tame, its legs as if covered in long johns hidden in the dung. Bok, his breath smoky in my nose, asked if I could remember the Latin without Roberts. Only the nasutus part, I answered, which I remember from nasal. Check it in Roberts. No. It’s the grey hornbill: Tockus nasutus. This one is flavirostris.
‘Remember the hiding you gave me in Umfolozi, for feeding the hornbills?’ I asked, again lifting myself over him.
‘And for lying about it.’ Our laughter, startling the bird.
‘I was scared of you. That’s why I lied.’
‘Didn’t stop you from feeding the birds. And don’t think you’re too old to stop being scared of me.’
‘I’m almost as tall as you, Bok. Soon I’ll be able to give you a taai klap.’
‘Don’t get too big for your boots, my boy,’ lightly punching my buttock, and we again laughed as I rubbed the spot in mock agony.
Then we saw who remembered: distribution. I checked it in Roberts. Status. Both right. Habitat. Both right. Habits. Food. Breeding. Female lays eggs inside hole in tree stump, male sits on eggs and seals himself in, leaving only slit for feeding from female. Male on eggs for twenty-four days — I said twenty-one — before they hatch, he stays another twenty to twenty-two days after eggs start hatching and then he leaves and I said he reseals the entrance but Bok said no the chicks reseal from the inside and then male and female together feed the chicks. We checked it in Roberts. Bok was right: chicks seal themselves back in. ‘This drawing has more pink beneath the throat than it should.’ I said, looking from the page at the bird on the dung. It was still eyeing us. Back in the book my eyes glimpsed the lilac-breasted roller. Troupand, in Afrikaans, a name I had never understood. We sat for ten minutes, taking in the hornbill. We drove on, slowly, ten kilometres an hour, our eyes scanning the insides of the bush, the veld. Again it was as if I’d never been away. A giraffe’s head above the thorn trees! And quickly we saw them all around us, both sides of the road. Fifteen over a stretch oftwo hundred square metres. He turned off the ignition. We sat in silence. Watched their lips move, strained to hear the sounds of their crunching.
‘Eleven,’ he said softly, almost to himself, but also for me to hear, ‘we had only eleven giraffe when we were here.’ His eyes were slit against the glare on his glasses. Memory, thought, concentration, awe, tenderness, nostalgia, in the lines around his eyes reaching to the spread of grey in his temples. It was in this moment, there, in this way — even with the gold-rimmed glasses that came after the rinkhals spat in his eyes, with the salt and pepper of his temples where before it was dark brown like chocolate — that I remembered him and us together: in his Land Rover or on Vonk’s back, his one hand holding the reins, the other arm pressing my back to his stomach. Nothing that had since happened mattered there. Other than being there, being able to see where we spent those years which were the happiest 1 time I’d had on earth. The beautiful genesis of memory.
At HQ we went in to speak to the camp warden about allowing us to visit Mbanyana. When he and Bok saw each other it was like brothers embracing after a decade-long separation. Hugo Reynolds. He remembers Bok and Dademan from when he was at Fanies Island and Dademan at Charters. They shake hands again and laugh and reminisce about the old times. When Reynolds hears we re going up to Umfolozi tomorrow he grins: ‘Do you know who’s chief warden at Mpila?’
‘No idea,’ Bok answers.
‘Willy Hancox,’ and Bok says, well, Willy’s done well for such a lousy shot and they speak about the culling of ’67, or ’66, no, no it was ’67. Bok tells Mr Reynolds about his business. They talk through the old guard: Ian Player now running the Wilderness Leadership School. Mumdeman at Midmar but retiring and probably remarrying! James White, cancer at only forty-four. Helena, his wife, also leaving the Board now. No, our reed house, Mbanyana, has been demolished.
But he’d love to take us out. Bok says no, we can go alone. Mr Reynolds asks Bok whether he’s sure, because there are quite a few leopard now, and lion, that come and go.
‘Hell, Hugo. I still know this bush like the back of my hand.’
‘There’s no road to the house any more. Will you find it?’
Bok says he’d bet his life and Mr Reynolds says it’s fine if we go alone but he would feel better if Bok took a rifle, just for in case: ‘Not because I’m concerned for you, Ralph,’ he teases, ‘lions don’t like old sinewy meat, but it’s your son I’m worried about.’ Bok takes the rifle and slips a few rounds into his safari suit pocket, thanks Mr Reynolds, who says Bok should come and chew some fat again once we get back from the Mbanyana site. ‘There’s nothing much left there, Ralph. It was levelled about six years ago. Just parts of’ the floor, I think.’
‘No problem,’ Bok answers, ‘I just want to show this Philistine where he grew up.’ At which Mr Reynolds winks at me.
If I remember correctly we do not go to the rondavel to drop off our things.
On the tourist map were given at reception I see rivers and the Msumu pan. I have no recollection of the pan, I tell Bok. And he says that’s quite conceivable, for while it was always there, it often had no water while we lived here. I say that I had somehow thought the dry stretches close to the Forest of Figs were part of the Sand Forest. Now, the map shows me the Sand Forest is way up here, close to the camp. Then I do recall huge surfaces of silver water, surrounded by reeds, with crocodile and hippo and herons. But these I thought were taken from St Lucia, Charters Creek. Maybe I do remember the pan, after all. He drives by Bube and Masinga, saying we’ll stop here on the way back to camp.
He parks the van by the roadside about a kilometre above the Fig Forest. I am relieved that we have the rifle; don’t know why. I have no sense that were walking in the right direction. Through grass andbush, no footpath even. And then were surrounded by enormous bushes of magic guarri, and Bok says, here we are, and at first I think he’s wrong, but then there’s the sisal that Bokkie planted — the only exotics, how they’ve expanded — and the tambotie trees, Bokkie’s rockery overgrown. And pieces of the house’s floor, big slabs of cement, cracked and overgrown with duwweltjies and creepers. The grass is tall, up to my waist, and I say it was never this green and he says no, it wasn’t. He takes me to where the water tank was; over to where the stables were, so much closer to the house than I remember. Here the road came in, you can just make out that the shrubs are a little shorter than those around. Impala and duiker spoor everywhere. The bush takes back its own very quickly. And this is where you shot Vonk, here, close to the road where he slipped and broke his leg, and here is where we put up the tent for when we had visitors, and the little vlei, I ask, where Jonas and Boy lived? Vlei, he asks. Yes, I remember pi
nk lilies and a small marsh. And he says no. I’m wrong. We walk deeper into the bush, no more than a hundred metres, and again I’m agog at how close they were. A loud shouting distance, really. No vlei. But I remember the pink lilies, here, somewhere.
Back to the broken slabs of cement. We stand around, he sits down on an anthill and lights a cigarette. I go into the shade of the tambotie trees and scratch in the grass, looking for jumping beans. Nothing but birds; cicadas — when I was very small I thought it was the magic guarri screaming.