The Witchdoctor's Bones

by Lisa de Nikolits

  He stopped, taken aback by this entirely new curve ball thrown his way. “What about him?” He was guarded.

  “It’s just that I like Kate a lot,” Helen was earnest, “and I don’t want her to get hurt, so I want to find out if you think he’s a good man, you know, good enough for her. What does he do anyway?”

  Jono looked at her, thinking he knew exactly what she was after. “I do not know much about him,” he shrugged and walked off.

  She bounded up beside him. “But you and Betty seemed to know him well,” she objected, “I saw you both talking to him. Kate said she met him in town, do you know where?”

  “How would I know?” Jono replied. “I was not following her around.” He shrugged again.

  “But you do know,” she insisted, “I know you do. Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Because it is not for me to tell you,” he said shortly, “if you want to steal Kate’s man, do it by yourself.”

  “You’ve got it wrong, it’s not that. I just want to know about him. Maybe he’s married and she doesn’t even know. I don’t want her to get hurt, I keep telling you.”

  They had reached the edge of the campsite and Jono stood still for a moment and then he turned to face her. “Enough,” he said and he held his hand up like a traffic officer. “I am not going to talk to you any more. And by the way, don’t ask Betty any of this nonsense either, because I am going to her now to tell her not to say a word to you. Go back and get drunk with the others and pray tomorrow comes quickly so we can leave each other and go our own ways. I have no idea what job I am going to do once I offload this terrible tour, but it is never, ever going to be this again. In all my years, and they have been many, I have never met such a bunch of crazies like you people. Now please, do not follow me anymore, I do not want anything to do with you.”

  Helen watched him walk away and she sat down, pulling at strands of grass and nibbling on them, thinking. She was suddenly concerned that Kate would change her mind and decide she liked André enough to stay in Namibia and where would that leave Helen?

  She looked up and saw Kate photographing the warthog and she jumped up and went over to her.

  “I like your latest supermodel,” she said casually and Kate mumbled a response, her face squashed up against her camera. “I really don’t feel like drinking with the others tonight,” Helen continued, conversationally. “It’s really not my style at all. Look, there’s Richard, going back to camp to get more beer. They’re chugging it down like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Kate did not say anything. She put her camera down, rubbed her face and sighed. “I couldn’t get a good shot of him,” she said, “such a great opportunity and nothing.” She stared at the warthog who snuffled on, oblivious.

  Helen made no move to leave and she kicked at the grass with her toe. “What are you going to do while they’re all trance dancing tonight?”

  Kate snorted. “They’re still going to do that, are they? What I’m going to do is stay as far away from them as I can.”

  “And phone your hunky man.”

  Kate looked at her and did not reply.

  “Kate,” Helen said, “you’re very lucky to have found him. I thought I had found my knight in shining armour but now I don’t have anything or anyone.”

  Kate continued to ignore her and waved at Lena and Gisela who were on their way back to the fort with Richard. Gisela called out, inviting her to come drinking and dancing and Kate thanked her and shook her head. “I’m admitting defeat on the warthog front,” she said to no-one in particular, and she started to walk back to camp. “I’m going to see if I can help Betty.”

  “She’s fine,” Helen lied, having no idea one way or the other. “You want to go for a walk?”

  “I’m okay, thanks. Aren’t you going running?”

  “Not in the mood,” Helen said. “I feel restless. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I get back to Canada, if I even go back.”

  Kate looked at Helen, at her strong profile and high cheekbones and she thought she could be lovely were it not for her hard expression and scraped-back hair. Give her a dose of happiness, a bit of a makeover and she’d be a real knockout.

  “Kate, have I done something to offend you?” Helen grabbed her by the arm and Kate pulled away, not enjoying Helen’s energy.

  “It’s not you, Helen,” she lied. “I’m tired of this trip, too much bad stuff’s gone on, enough already. I want this to all end.”

  “I don’t know what to do with my life,” Helen blurted out. “I’ve got less idea than ever and I hate being like that. I always known what I’m supposed to do next and now I don’t have a clue.”

  Kate felt sorry for her despite their differences. “Why not go back to Canada for a bit?” she asked. “You could try to get another volunteer job from there; you could get a new visa — how bad could that be?”

  “Worse than you could ever imagine,” Helen’s face fell. “You’ve got everything in life, Kate. You have no idea what it’s like to have nothing, to have worked so hard since the day you were born, fight the odds and end up with nothing.”

  “Don’t I?” Kate asked drily. “I do have the best parents ever, that much is true; I’m very lucky there. But from the time I was twenty-three until two months ago, all I did was wait for this loser guy to marry me and I spent the same eight years working in a dead-end job because my father thought it offered good security, and I didn’t do any of the things I really wanted to in life. I thought I wanted to marry Cam and have a house in the suburbs and a bunch of babies and that’s all I was waiting for.”

  “Why did you break up with him?” Helen asked.

  “What makes you think I broke up with him? He told me he wanted an open relationship and off he went. I fell apart, spent a week in my best friend’s apartment, crying day and night. When I finally got myself out of bed, I went to the mall and I saw a travel store and booked this trip, mainly to try to escape my life. When my boss wouldn’t give me the vacation time I was owed, I resigned. I don’t have anything to go back to either.”

  Kate sat down on the grass and Helen joined her.

  “Yeah, but now you’ve got André,” Helen argued and Kate burst out laughing.

  “Get real, Helen. What do you think, that after seeing him twice, that he’s going to rescue me from my life? That’s the biggest loser fairytale ever.”

  “Aren’t you going to see him in Windhoek?” Helen sounded hopeful.

  “Of course I’m going to see him. He’s going to take me to a proper game lodge for a bit of rest after all this. But as for what happens after that, who knows? I’ll probably end up going back to Canada too, in which case, I’ll stay with my best friend until I find my feet. Don’t you have anybody you can stay with?”

  Helen thought for a moment. “I stayed in my teacher’s basement before I left for Africa and she said she’d keep it free for me, in case.”

  “There you go then,” Kate said. “Life’s not a holiday, Helen, not that this has been much of a holiday either, but you know what I mean. We can’t be on a bus forever, or in a nice mission, or whatever. I’ll tell you what this trip has taught me: that I can live my life my way, meet interesting people, do fun stuff and see the world.” She laughed. “Thank God my boyfriend didn’t marry me and buy us a house in the suburbs. I’d still love kids some day but my life’s going to be very different to the way it was before.”

  “I wish I had your optimism and confidence,” Helen said, bitterly. “I’m out of both.”

  Kate got up. “Can’t help you there, Helen. If you ask me, you’ve got a lot going for you and you’re the one who gets to make the choice. You can choose to live a happy life or you can be a bitter woman because the rewards didn’t drop into your lap when you thought they should. You still get to choose whether your glass is half full or half empty.”

  “I hate that kind o
f clichéd fortune cookie moralizing.” Helen stood up and brushed the dirt off the seat of her shorts. “A load of crap if you ask me.”

  She walked off quickly, turning away from the fort and striding briskly down the road that led out of the camp. Kate watched her, thinking that Helen was playing with fire heading out of the camp. This was not a zoo with caged animals but a real jungle. Kate decided not to worry. When it came to Helen, self-preservation ran stronger in her blood than hemoglobin.

  She headed toward Betty to see if she needed her help and as she passed Richard and Mia’s tent, she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. A thought suddenly flashed through her mind.

  Richard was a surgeon, and Mia a nurse. What if they had been the ones to murder Rosalee Khumalo in Swakopmund? Both Richard and Mia would be battered and bruised if the girl had put up a fight. Heart pounding, Kate suddenly thought it all made sense. Richard had been preoccupied with muti and witchdoctors from the very beginning. And Kate had seen them scurrying back to the lodge before anyone else was awake, so they had lied about staying there in a private room.

  Convinced she had stumbled on the truth, she wished she could duck into their tent and search their belongings, but she had no way of knowing if Richard would return for more alcohol. She decided to wait until they were drunk and deeply into their dance and then she would sneak into their tent.

  She walked into the kitchen and found Betty mashing potatoes.

  “Burger patties of the meat and vegetarian kind and mashed potato, that is as good as supper is getting tonight, and I don’t want to hear any complaints.” Betty smiled, her traditional blue and white patterned apron fastened tightly around her.

  “And you won’t either,” Kate assured her. “That sounds delicious. Can I help you?”

  “You can put the plates out under the awning. Supper will be ready soon.”

  “I must warn you, Betty,” Kate said, “they might be more than a little drunk when they arrive back from the waterhole.”

  “They’ve started already?” Betty commented.

  “Yes, and they’re intent on it being a big one. They want to try a trance dance.”

  “I might as well have given them day-old bread and cheese,” Betty grumbled. “They won’t even notice my famous mashed potatoes.”

  “Do not worry, Betty,” Jono walked in, “my appreciation will make up for everybody’s.”

  “As will mine,” Kate agreed. “Let me go and set these out. And I must check in on Rydell.”

  “What pills are you feeding him?” Jono leaned an elbow on one of the concrete ledges. “Do not give him too many.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kate said, “it’s his prescribed medicine, I just want him to stay safe and sound, and us too.”

  “What is the name of the tablets?” Jono asked and Kate pulled them out of her camera bag.

  “It’s a standard tranquillizer of some kind,” Jono said, studying the label and handing the bottle back to her. “Be careful.”

  “I promise. But we can’t have any more dead jackals you know.”

  “I do not believe Rydell did that,” Jono put his hands in his pockets and looked calmly at Kate. “You know that piece of rope you pulled out? I recognized it from Jasmine’s sleeping bag. She had it outside at the Gariep River, out on the grass there, under the tree and I thought then that it was a nice rope.”

  “Why would she be so stupid as to use something from her sleeping bag?” Kate asked.

  Jono shrugged. “Maybe she could not find anything else. People do strange things when they panic. I doubt she would have done it alone anyway. But even so, Kate, so what if she killed a jackal? I do not mean ‘so what’ really, but I mean what can we do, what does it prove?”

  Kate spoke in a rush of pent up fury. “It proves, Jono, that she’s a sick and disgusting person who killed and dismembered an innocent animal in order to destroy the healthy functioning of a another person’s mind, when that person had already been subjected to untold trauma and was on the brink of going either way. That’s what it proves. It proves, beyond any doubt, she had something to hide. That Sofie must have seen something. That Stepfan’s death was not an accident. It proves all of that, Jono, can’t you see that?” She glared at him, stiff with anger.

  Betty rolled meat patties and watched them both out of the corner of her eye.

  Jono shrugged again. “Then, tomorrow, when we are in Windhoek, take the rope to the police and tell them your story. I will tell it my way. A dead animal was found, and yes, the rope looked to be the same kind that was on Jasmine’s sleeping bag. And then what? You have allegations about a man dying mysteriously when an entire crowd tells the exact same story with no evidence to prove anything the contrary?”

  “Why are you sticking up for Jasmine?” Kate cried. “Or any of them? They are killers.”

  “You do not know that,” Jono stated. “Even if you think you know it, you do not, because you have no proof. And I am not sticking up for them. That is a childish way to look at it, Kate. They have either been brilliant or lucky or both because there is nothing I can do and it is eating me up inside. There’s nothing I can do, can you not see that?”

  He looked at her, his arms folded, his face impassive. “For you — a rich white girl — there is always a solution; do this, do that. We blacks, we know how to keep quiet and suffer the weight of the burdens we have to carry. You whites, you stand around, asking who can take this load from me? It cuts into my back, it hurts my shoulders, I do not like it, you say, it is not comfortable you complain, so we step in and carry it, not a word said.”

  “It comes down to black and white, does it, Jono?” Kate was hurt and angry. “I don’t want to solve this because it’s an uncomfortable load on my white back. I want to solve this because its murder and it’s wrong.”

  “All murder is wrong,” Jono said, softly, “and most of it goes unchallenged. Truly, only you privileged whites think everything must be solved, that the ‘bad’ man will be brought to justice. Justice, what is justice? Here is a Xhosa proverb for you, Kate, on how we think your famous justice works:

  The ox is skinned on one side only.

  Ponder well this saw, and do not go to the law,

  For, like an ox with half a hide, justice has oft one side.”

  They stared at each other, an impasse.

  “Let me help you with the plates,” Jono said, ending the discussion.

  Kate picked up the sauces and walked out.

  Betty looked at Jono, and said nothing.

  He shrugged, and loaded up a tray.

  “At least,” he said to Betty, “I have your mashed potatoes to look forward to, tonight. That is the only reason I will even go near these people this evening.”

  “Oh, Jono,” she turned to scold him but he had already left.

  The Eleventh Night

  WITH CRIES OF DRUNKEN HILARITY, the others made their way back to camp. “I’m so hungry.” Ellie cried.

  “Starving.” Mia agreed.

  “I could eat a horse,” Richard said. “One can’t help wondering why it’s a horse they always suggest you eat? I mean who would eat horse really? Not me or anyone I know, that’s for sure.”

  “The saying,” Jasmine was already slurring, “has two possible origins of meaning. The one is that you are so hungry you could eat all of a horse, which is a huge amount of food. The other is that you are so hungry that you are willing to eat a horse, which is considered to be the most disgusting of meals, the last resort.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Richard considered. “Surely gnawing one’s arm off would be the real last resort? As opposed to horse I mean?”

  “It would be the only resort if you were chained up and you were hungry?” offered Ellie.

  “Why not get on the horse and go and find more food?” Lena asked, “that would be the most sensible thing to d
o, as far as I can see. After all, don’t eat your transport, use it to find more food, simple.”

  “But,” argued Jasmine, “even if you were on your horse, there might be no food to be found. That’s the whole point, you could ride for days and find nothing and you’d be so hungry, you’d consider eating your horse, your last resort.”

  “The poor horse would be so hungry,” Ellie said sadly.

  “If the horse ’ad any brains, he’d eat you,” Mia kicked at a pebble.

  “He can’t,” Ellie told her earnestly, her long skinny legs sticking out of her short, bright red sundress, “he’s a hervibore.”

  “You mean herbivore, old Ellie, and we’ve just about flogged this horse to death.” Richard aimed an empty beer bottle at nearby trashcan and missed.

  “He’d be easier to eat if he were dead,” Gisela stopped to light a cigarette. “I mean then you wouldn’t be responsible for actually killing him, and you could light a fire, roast some horse meat and thank him for dying and therefore saving your life.”

  “How did he die?” Ellie asked, upset.

  “He starved,” Jasmine told her. “No wait, he was flogged.”

  “Ladies. Please, leave the road kill alone, can we please move on from the horse?” Richard begged.

  They walked on in silence.

  “Gisi, luv, can I bum a fag off you?” Mia asked, and Gisela handed over her pack of cigarettes. Richard looked questioningly at Mia who shrugged. “Just for tonight luv.” She inhaled deeply. “Fuck a duck, talk about a head rush.”

  “Was it a grey horse or a bay?” Ellie asked.

  “Ellie! Stop with the horse!” the others yelled.

  “I’m trying to imagine what I’m leaving behind,” she said sulkily.

  They reached the camp and lined up under the awning to get their food.

  “Mashed potatoes, burgers, meat and vegetarian, enjoy.” Betty pointed.

  “Kate,” she said aside, “would you mind clearing it away and doing the dishes? I’m so tired, I am going to sleep now.”