Mukurob

by André Costa

  Some twenty meters ahead, one of the Toyotas was swerving precariously through the camp as if trying to avoid something. The noise of the screeching tires and revving engine soon drowned out the native banter. Hesitating, David put down his glass and left his tent to go and offer help as the car came to a stop. Positioning himself in front of it, he not only realized that the driver had managed to avoid the set of logs used to fuel the campfire, but also that Marie and the San boy were sitting in the front seats.

  “Going somewhere, doctor? Do you need help?” David asked.

  “Everything’s fine, Father,” Marie said. “I’m just off to solve a very earthly issue.”

  “Are you going to find Benjamin? Then you will need my help.”

  David did not wait for a reply. In one swift move which defied good sense, he found his way into the backseat of the Toyota. There was no arguing with his unexpected, though effective action. Marie put the car into first gear immediately, and sped out of the camp in the direction that !Soh had indicated.

  Chapter XIII

  From his seat, David did not exactly see the starry darkness of the Kalahari as a call to action. The silhouettes of the twisted trees revealed by the full moon were a portal to an uninviting world. Like fire, the environment inspired fear and respect; and just like fire, it emitted an irresistible attraction. He was proud of his spontaneous act of courage but wondered whether the two or three glasses of wine might have actually been the decisive influence.

  Under Marie’s direction, the vehicle frequently veered off the road, and the horizontal swings were constant and menacing. !Soh instructed her with the precision of a GPS, but with a single and definitive difference: the indicated route was made to be crossed almost exclusively by foot, not on four wheels. Soon enough, this difference proved to be non-negotiable. The vehicle climbed half a meter up against the side of a hill only to fall into a ravine four times deeper, turning on its side as it hit the bottom.

  On the inside of the vehicle, the injuries inflicted were not serious, but the Toyota was defeated; its wheels suspended in a seventy-degree angle to the ground. David had felt the impact the most, as he was the only passenger who had not been wearing his seatbelt, a stupid lapse that he blamed his excitement for and the influence of the wine. The result was a visible lesion on his forehead, just above his left eye, and a cut on his upper lip. Marie and !Soh counted only a few scratches.

  They did not attempt to straighten up the car since they knew it was useless. They tried to use their cellphones, but there was no reception, and within a few moments, their good sense kicked in, demanding preparations for a long night in the open air. Fortunately, David thought, they were in the company of an authentic bushman, who, aware of the prominent role he played in the Kalahari fauna, must surely be carrying a few handy survival tools.

  The first of these was a stick a little shorter than fifty centimeters. When rapidly turned between the palms of the hands on a small wooden base—cut to the perfect fit and lying on some straw and twigs—it produces fire without much effort. However, the tool was not necessary, since Marie, a smoker since adolescence, had not neglected her own paraphernalia. They made a small fire, and with it came the courage to face the night regulars.

  The first one echoed a bizarre form of laughter that caused David to doubt the sound’s origin. !Soh identified it as the cry of the hyena, a nocturnal carnivorous animal whose ability to digest bones was enough to frighten away any human in its vicinity. Although they had the shelter of a tent, the San boy thought it better to double the volume of the fire to keep the predators at bay.

  The night was bright but long. The fire served another purpose as old as protection against predators. Many thousands of years ago, around bonfires, humans learned to socialize. Seated shoulder to shoulder, while waiting for the food to cook, they had time to interact on a much more personal level. Without such frequent encounters, it was hard to imagine how long it would have taken humans to create societies and cultural parameters so complex and distinct—Marie reminded the small audience.

  They staved off the intense cold with blankets brought from the inside of the car, along with a bottle of vodka. Dr. Steensen did not allow !Soh to have any but made sure David shared some of the alcohol with her.

  “Fortunately, the car was already packed and ready to leave the camp. We have everything we need,” said Marie.

  “And thanks to the German and Andreas,” David added, holding up a plastic cup.

  Their situation was now less precarious. David recovered from the discomfort of acting impulsively and accepted a drink, even though he suspected he might be crossing a line. “Whatever,” he said to himself while smiling at Marie. None of them, except perhaps Jack, had ever welcomed his qualification as a spiritual advisor anyway.

  “Thank you for your gesture, Father Callaghan,” said Marie “It was very brave!”

  “I didn’t have time to think,” David answered, giving her a long, slow smile. “I just thought a priest could always be useful... at least at delivering souls.”

  The San boy looked at David in surprise, while Marie laughed.

  “Do you think I didn’t have a plan?” Marie asked.

  “I sincerely hope you do.”

  “We will bring some gifts and look forward to their gratitude.”

  “Simple as that?” Embarrassed by his display of disappointment, David promptly added a new question: “Do you think Benjamin is ok?” Likewise, he regretted the second one as soon as he uttered it. Marie looked down and sniveled.

  “It’s a difficult time, my child, but it will pass,” he said. His priestly tone sounded strange to his own ears. Marie was even more surprised and looked away, in the opposite direction. !Soh mimicked the movement of her neck.

  Once again, David registered the hostility towards his cassock, but felt encouraged and lifted his head. The awkward interaction had actually restored his sense of being there, in the middle of the Kalahari, a region of the world that a freckled boy who worshiped rock bands and sticker albums had never dreamed of knowing. His childhood collections had consisted of football celebrities, renewed every four years during the World Cup, and had done nothing to expand his geographical universe; while his friend Karen used the same method to gather knowledge about the fauna and flora of all continents. Deciphering the world, he thought, was perhaps a general obligation for students of humanities, not exactly a priest’s ambition.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Father,” Marie said, noticing David’s detachment. “You wanted an adventure, didn’t you? We all want one…” she paused. “I just don’t understand why we end up accepting the routine if we always want to get away from it.”

  “I think it’s to preserve the escape, instead of turning it into a routine.”

  It was a touché, and Marie knew she had to expose her beautiful smile in surrender. “You and Jack seem to be made for each other. The only difference is that he wouldn’t make a good priest… at least not like you.”

  “So, you think I’m a good one?”

  “I don’t know any priests, but I’m learning to recognize a good one. It’s part of my role as an anthropologist; I have to be good at identifying occupations.”

  “What do you think I’m good at?”

  “I think you have the gift of persuasion, but you’re confused.”

  “Confused?” David laughed. “You know… There was a priest, like me, who set no limits for a debate.”

  “Another priest like you? What’s going on with the Catholic Church in Ireland?”

  “His name was Duane,” he laughed, “and we used to say things that in the Middle Ages would have us both thrown into the bonfire.”

  “Another drink, David? The night here is very long,” Marie said, refilling his plastic cup without waiting for an answer. “You must find me very different from the type of woman you preach to.”
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br />   “I don’t think you care what others, especially a priest, think of you,” he said after taking a sip.

  “Do you think you can read my thoughts?”

  David looked into Marie’s eyes and thought of just smiling but ended up accepting the challenge. “Yes, of course. You want me to admire you. Well, then, you can rest assured. I do admire you. I just didn’t think you needed my validation.”

  “I don’t. I just wanted it, and you’re right!” Marie stood up and crossed to the other side of the fire to sit next to him. When he met her gaze, she kissed his forehead with familial intimacy and hugged him. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s a purely childish need; I always wanted a brother.”

  “And you found Jack.”

  Not long after, the three of them fell asleep inside the tent. The closer the temperature came to freezing, the closer they moved to each other. They twisted and turned many times, always returning to the fetal position.

  The morning came as a relief. In the first hour of sunlight, the cold kept their mouths shut, and they communicated almost exclusively through gestures. The silence brought with it a conviction, but also some doubts. While they were uncertain about the best way to approach the Chinese poachers and the logistics of carrying the gifts to their camp, they knew that they would have to secure the day’s meal.

  The Toyota had been loaded with expensive and rare equipment, but Thomas had left the food for last. Fortunately, there was water and some alcohol, besides a pack of biltong in the glove compartment. The ration of dried meat, almost a staple in the Afrikaner diet, was barely enough to start the day.

  The solution, then, was the same as it had been for hundreds of thousands of years: hunting. David was once again grateful for !Soh’s presence but it did not take long for his heavenly gratitude to dissipate. “We can hunt only at noon,” the San boy said. “It’s when animals rest under the shade of a tree or in a gully.”

  David and Marie had to control their anxiety and wait for the sun to rise to a ninety-degree angle, which to !Soh was just a bureaucratic mark. They had plenty of water, at least for a few days, or even a week, with careful rationing. Following the trail of the Chinese without being able to carry their gifts would be a foolish undertaking, tantamount to suicide. On the other hand, walking back to their own camp, about twenty or thirty kilometers away, would prove futile if Andreas and the others had already left.

  Marie took full responsibility for the misfortune and decided that if they were not found within the next twenty-four hours, they would make their way back to the others under the guidance of the San boy. It was difficult to judge exactly how far they were from the other camp—that of the poachers. !Soh had assured them that they should be in the vicinity, but his sense of distance, as revealed the night before, was challenging to translate into Marie and David’s cultural parameters. The truth was that both now wished that the San boy was wrong, since the possibility of negotiating had vanished with the accident. “Won’t they just loot what they want from the car anyway?” Marie asked, realizing that the situation would not have been so different if the Toyota had arrived in the enemy’s territory with its bodywork intact.

  “Is there really no weapon here?” David asked, completely turning over the chaos inside the vehicle.

  “I didn’t have time to check,” said Marie. “We had to leave before Thomas saw us. But you wouldn’t use it anyway, Father.”

  David did not look back at her. He just sat up and stared at the horizon.

  When the sun finally reached the desired angle, !Soh reanimated them and asked for help. However, the boy warned them that they would need a lot of patience and that the ancient hunting method of the San was a physically exhausting process.

  David grabbed a backpack he found inside the Toyota and filled it with bottles of water and some possible useful objects—knives, ropes and some cloth. With !Soh in the lead, the trio walked in complete silence for about half an hour until the boy gestured with his left hand something unintelligible to the others, indicating that he had found the tracks of a kudu herd. By analyzing their footmarks, !Soh could determine the animals’ pace and estimate how far away they were. The unlikely hunting trio kept walking and not long after—precisely according to !Soh’s calculations—spotted the herd. At their approach, the animals rushed away.

  The boy, with a serenity that only someone at the top of the food chain could exude, chose the victim, the oldest male, which carried massive horns and would thus tire more quickly than the other animals.

  And so the toughest part of the hunt began. The chosen animal had already separated from the rest of the herd, and they had to chase it to exhaustion. However, Kudus can run up to seventy kilometers per hour—a far superior speed to that of humans—and, as a result, !Soh lost the way from time to time. It was then that he would try to put himself in the animal’s mind and get back to the trail.

  Marie and David, far behind, were only concerned with keeping the boy in their field of vision. The hunt turned into a test of endurance, which Marie felt unable to master. She stopped. David, however, was determined to keep following the trail left by !Soh.

  “This is ridiculous. How are we ever going to catch this animal?” David exclaimed, as he said goodbye to Marie, who had decided to walk back to the car.

  The San boy certainly knew the script and the kudu, which had a strong intuitive reason to fear humans. He was sure of the efficacy of his method, since this was how primitive societies overpowered their prey long before the invention of weapons. Hunters would chase an animal to its final collapse, to complete physical exhaustion. In this regard, humans possessed a unique advantage—their bodies are able to produce much more sweat and thus cool down more efficiently. Besides, they carried water, indispensable for long distances.

  About three hours passed under the merciless sun until the animal, unable to drink or rest in the shade, collapsed in surrender. The San boy approached it carefully, and swiftly struck the one decisive blow with his spear. The animal did not resist death. When David finally caught up with !Soh, he was in a state almost as deplorable as the kudu. Worried, !Soh made David sit down and poured water over his head and back in an effort to cool his flushed skin.

  When David’s vital signs had normalized, !Soh began the third and last phase of his hunt: honoring his prey. As he spread a handful of sand on the animal’s body, he started the religious ritual that made it possible for the kudu’s spirit to return to the desert soil, from where it came. It was an honor for !Soh to share the animal’s pain in its final moments.

  “When you were alive,” the San boy said, stroking the animal’s head, “you lived a full life and enjoyed this land and its food, and you have seen this whole landscape that surrounds you. Now, I want to thank you for your life that was taken, so that my friends and I can eat.”

  David watched the ceremony with the attention of a novice, feeling so moved that he fell to his knees and began to cry. The San boy didn’t understand the priest’s reaction. He walked over to David, put his hand under the man’s chin to gently raise his head and looked into his tearful eyes. In a matter of seconds, the boy began to cry compulsively. They embraced each other for a moment, tears leaving tracks on their dirty faces. David’s soul felt purified as he wiped the tears from the boy’s face and got up.

  Standing before the large body of the adult kudu, the San boy said: “I know why you cried. We shouldn’t have killed this animal. It offers far more food than we need. Now we must leave behind so much of its body because we cannot even carry it. In my tribe, the animal would have satisfied everyone’s hunger for almost an entire month. This is a shame we have to live with.”

  David said nothing about !Soh’s conclusion, merely nodding in reaction. After carving as much of the softest flesh from the animal as they could carry, they began their long walk back to the place where they had left the car.

  Chapter XIV
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  The way back was even more painful for David, and the entire hunt took about five exhausting hours. Much of his fatigue upon arriving at the improvised camp, however, was immediately dissipated when he saw Marie sitting beside the tent with a book on her lap.

  “My God, what happened to you? You’re redder than the Chinese flag.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” David replied.

  It was already getting dark when they lit the bonfire to prepare the first and only meal of the day. While the meat was cooking, each of them got lost in thought, their eyes mesmerized by the dancing flames. Marie thought about having to repeat everything the next day, since they had no means of refrigerating the meat. David thought about the dead animal’s spirit, about the possibilities of Christian animism, and about the comments Jack would have made about the day they had had. The San boy was at peace with the moment since he thought of nothing.

  When the meat was finally cooked, they devoured it, ravenous from a day without food.

  “Now I remember that gluttony is a sin,” Marie smiled. “We’re lucky to have a priest to whom we can confess.”

  Maybe it was the slight melancholy that comes with the profound filling of the stomach, or perhaps the contemplative mood after the open-air banquet, but David did not show the least bit provoked by Marie’s joke. He was not hostile towards her usual sarcasm, of which he had often been a victim—after all, it was typical of Irish humor—but simply indifferent to her comment, and that bothered Marie way more.