An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘And one of the men in the front line of rhino conservation,’ the announcer broke in, ‘leading a team of local people backed by international NGOs in this fight to save a piece of prehistory, is Stirling Smith.’

  Sonja nearly spilled her drink as she clumsily set it down on the bedside table. She scrabbled for the remote and turned up the volume.

  ‘Stirling?’ she said. Her Stirling. It was him, framed close-up on the screen now, and that was his voice speaking. He was heading up the rhino research and conservation project in the Palmwag Conservancy in Damaraland.

  Sonja slid herself along the bed until she was sitting at the foot. She reached out and touched the screen as he talked about rhinos. Sam had been the true love of her life, but once upon a time she’d thought that the only man for her was Stirling Smith.

  Chapter 7

  At the dig site they had a couple of free-standing camping gazebos that could be shared among the students to keep the worst of the sun’s fury off a couple of diggers at a time, but one of them was now covering the remains of Harry Brand.

  They had dubbed him ‘Harry’ by consensus. Emma took off her hat and wiped her brow and looked across to where Dorset Sutton knelt, meticulously brushing away the sand and grit from Harry’s boots.

  That morning, just after dawn, he’d asked them to assemble around the body, before Natangwe left to do the shopping for the next few days’ provisions.

  ‘We must not forget,’ he had said, standing at the body’s head, ‘that here lie the remains of a human being, just like us. Whatever his nationality, whatever his race, whatever his religion and whatever his politics, he was flesh and blood, with a beating heart, a soul, and a life. You may call him “Harry” if you wish, at least until we know his correct name, but we must not make light of him or treat him as an object of fun or ridicule, any more than we would if one of our own family members was lying here.’

  Emma had noticed Natangwe fidgeting and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘But Prof,’ he’d chimed in, ‘this man was probably part of the security forces, the men who brutalised my people. He might have dropped bombs on women and children.’

  ‘Natangwe,’ Emma had hissed.

  ‘No, no, Emma, don’t be so quick to criticise,’ Dorset said, not unkindly. ‘Natangwe, I know your father was a member of the liberation army, your family’s role in the struggle is well documented. Inevitably, the work we do, uncovering the past, scratches at the scabs of barely healed wounds. We must – you and I both must – try to view the events of the past as historians, as archaeologists, as investigators, not as participants, or the family of participants. We must confront the sins of the past, and try to understand them through our work, just as we must celebrate bravery and heroism and other noble deeds. If you don’t think you can treat this body with respect because he may have fought against your father, then I think you must either resign from this program or ask for me to be dismissed from the university.’

  ‘You, Prof?’ Natangwe asked. ‘I didn’t mean any offence to you; I just don’t know if I can salute the remains of a man who may have killed innocents.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to salute Harry here any more than I’m asking you to forgive me. It may be, though, that you can’t see past your family’s own history.’

  ‘I still don’t understand what this has to do with you, though, Prof,’ Natangwe said.

  ‘I served here as well, Natangwe. Before studying history and archaeology at Wits I, like every other able-bodied white man living in the old South Africa, had to undertake national service. I served as a gunner in an Eland armoured car, with the Umvoti Mounted Rifles. I did two tours in the old South West Africa, today’s Namibia. I didn’t kill anyone, civilian or soldier, but I was trained and ready to. If you can’t abide respecting Harry’s dignity as a human being then perhaps you can no longer respect me.’

  Natangwe said nothing for a couple of minutes, and Emma’s heart had pounded. Their exchange was simply bringing into the open the sorts of questions that she had been grappling with. She was worried Natangwe wouldn’t like her if he knew more about her family’s history in the war, but now Professor Sutton had brought the simmering tension to a head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor Sutton. I do respect you and I do want to be here.’

  Dorset walked around Harry to Natangwe and taken his hand in his. He looked into Natangwe’s eyes. ‘You don’t need to be sorry, Natangwe. When I was your age, serving here in the heat and the dust, thousands of kilometres from home and worrying that some other poor bugger might kill me with an AK-47 or an RPG round, I hope I would have been as respectful of a dead enemy as you have been. I learned through the course of the war that we were all victims in some way or another and, in the end, the ideologies we were fighting for all counted for nothing. Namibia has emerged as a beautiful, peaceful country and I’m proud to be here and proud to play a small part in unearthing its history.’

  ‘I understand, Prof,’ Natangwe said.

  ‘Thank you. Then let us continue,’ the professor said to them.

  *

  Natangwe Heita thought about Emma Kurtz as he waited for the Chinese man in the general trader’s store to fill the requirements on the shopping list.

  She was of German Namibian descent and her family had left the country at the end of the war. Emma hadn’t said why, exactly, but Natangwe assumed that her white supremacist parents couldn’t have countenanced the idea of living in an independent country, ruled by the majority, or that her father had done such shameful things during the war that he was too scared to face his victims.

  In fact, Namibians had proved extremely tolerant of their former oppressors. Sure, the issue of the genocide came up often for discussion, as did the question of land ownership – much of the country’s most productive land was still in the hands of a white minority, many of them living abroad – but all in all he felt he lived in a progressive, peaceful society. Still, if he ever brought home a German girl he knew his father, who had served as a freedom fighter in SWAPO’s military arm, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, would hit the roof.

  His attention was distracted, at least temporarily, by the girl who strode into the store.

  ‘Give me a Coke,’ she said to the shopkeeper.

  Despite the girl’s curvaceous beauty, she needed to be taught a lesson in manners. ‘I was here first, sister,’ Natangwe said.

  ‘I’m not your sister, and I’m in a hurry. I have a deadline.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a bunch of starving archaeologists waiting back at camp. A deadline? Are you a journalist?’

  She tossed her head, flicking an errant dark curl from her face. ‘Yes, I’m a journalist, for New Era. You might have heard of it.’

  Straight out of university, Natangwe guessed, which would account for her age and the fact she was here, in the middle of nowhere. ‘Of course I know it. The government-owned newspaper; which minister is telling you what to write today?’

  She frowned. He had clearly scored a point. ‘It’s not like that. We are encouraged to be independent, and to voice the people’s problems. We don’t just toe the party line, you know. Anyway, why am I bothering to justify myself to you? What did you say about archaeology?’

  He decided not to goad her any further. ‘I’m studying archaeology. A few of us are on a dig not far from here. We’re looking for a mass grave from the Herero War.’

  Her plucked eyebrows formed double arches. ‘The genocide? Serious?’

  ‘Very serious,’ he said, savouring the reaction his revelation had provoked. ‘How much is that?’ he asked the shopkeeper.

  The man evidently couldn’t speak English as he simply pointed to the figures on an old-fashioned desk-top calculator he’d been entering the prices into. Natangwe knew only too well from his history studies the dangers of racial stereotyping, just as he knew the debt his coun
try owed to the People’s Republic of China for its support during the liberation war, however the presence of so many Chinese trading stores throughout Namibia concerned him. This was, he thought, a type of neo-colonialism where traders had been dispatched to the remotest corners of Africa to peddle Chinese-made goods. As well as limited range and stock of basic food supplies – bags of maize meal, cooking oils, canned goods and long-life milk – this little shop was overflowing with mass-produced, cheap consumer goods. There were radios and clocks, blankets and clothing, rubber sandals, lanterns, children’s toys, a couple of bicycles and just about everything else in between.

  ‘Tell me more,’ said the woman. ‘I’m Aggie, by the way.’

  He felt like he was getting somewhere. ‘Natangwe. Nice to meet you, Aggie.’

  ‘Have you found any heroes from the war against the Germans?’

  Natangwe hesitated. She was back to business and he didn’t know how much he should tell her. The find was interesting, though not in the way they had all been expecting. It was a mystery, and he wondered what ramifications the finding of a dead white man in the desert might have. At the very least the man’s family would want to know his fate. It might make an interesting story, he thought. He corrected himself; it would make a good story for a young journalist consigned to a beat far from Windhoek.

  She changed tack. ‘OK, if you’re not going to tell me anything I can’t waste my time talking to you here in the middle of nowhere. Coca-Cola Light,’ Aggie said slowly and loudly for the benefit of the shopkeeper. She tossed some coins on the glass-topped counter, above a selection of flashlights and pocket knives. ‘Goodbye, Natangwe,’ she said, and turned on her heel.

  ‘We found a body,’ he said, the words tumbling out.

  Aggie stopped and looked back over her shoulder. ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man.’ He felt safe giving away that small amount of information, and she wasn’t leaving.

  ‘Executed? Killed in battle?’ she pressed.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he said, rationalising it was best to stick to the truth.

  ‘Hmmm.’ She frowned. ‘That’s not very interesting. And I do have a deadline.’ She reached into her purse. ‘Here’s my card. You can call me on the cell number if you have something really interesting to tell me. Maybe I’ll come out and do a story on your dig?’

  He liked her. She was confident and beautiful. ‘I could show you around, give you a briefing on the battle that took place in the area.’

  Aggie faked a yawn. Natangwe felt a little hurt and annoyed, but she laughed. ‘I was just kidding. It could be interesting, but I can’t just go wandering off into the wilderness without a story to follow. My editor puts enough pressure on me to come up with news every day, so I can’t waste hours listening to a history lesson, no matter how important you and your fellow archaeologists think it is. Tell me more about this body, something I can use. Where’s your dig?’

  Dammit, she was sucking him into revealing more information than he’d intended to give her.

  ‘Go on, tell me where you’re scratching around. I’ll be able to find out from the local authorities in any case.’

  ‘On the site of the new mine, about forty kilometres east of here.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I know it. There’s some local opposition to the mine. If your find is controversial it might stop the project from going ahead. This could be big.’

  Natangwe groaned inwardly. He really hadn’t thought through the potential consequences of what he was doing. The reporter, Agnes Aikanga, her card informed him, was right, though. The point of the dig, from the mining company’s view, was to find nothing of interest. The government outwardly supported the dig, which the mining company was paying for, but Dorset Sutton had hinted that there would be people high up in the administration who wanted the mine to go ahead as badly as the company did. It would bring employment to impoverished local communities, resources income for the country through taxes and who knew, perhaps even some cash to some politician or bureaucrat’s back pocket. Dorset, however, said that they needed to stay true to their calling, to seek out the truth through their digging. They were there to reveal history, he had said, not provide the answers other people wanted.

  Natangwe realised Aggie’s newspaper could actually help ensure that what they had found was never covered up. The discovery of the body – whoever he was – warranted a full investigation. For all they knew he could have been the victim of a murder rather than a casualty of war.

  ‘We found the body of a white man, from the liberation war, we think. He seems to be wearing the uniform of a pilot, so we think maybe his plane crashed or was shot down somewhere. His surname is Brand, first name begins with an “H”. That’s all we know. Maybe your newspaper could even help us identify him.’

  ‘Wow,’ Aggie said. ‘I’ve got to call my editor.’

  *

  Emma noticed that Professor Sutton had been quiet since the exchange with Natangwe that morning. She welcomed the absence of his brusque instructions and frequent criticisms, but as she watched him Emma also wondered if his revelation about his war service had brought back some painful memories. She set down her trowel, stood, straightened her aching back and took her water bottle over to where Sutton was working. He didn’t bother looking up as she stood next to him, casting her shadow over him.

  Emma cleared her throat. ‘I’m just on my break, but thought I’d see how you were doing.’

  He brushed away some more dirt from Harry’s boot. Emma looked into the dead man’s empty eye sockets. At first she had been so excited to discover him she hadn’t been concerned by the physical sight of a dead person, but since this morning she’d been feeling mildly freaked out about being around Harry. It was, she realised, Sutton’s simple but poignant reminder to them all about what, or rather who, they were dealing with that had brought about the change in her attitude. Seeing the skull, with its layer of stretched, mummified skin drawn across the cheeks, made her feel incredibly sad all of a sudden. Harry must have had a family, perhaps a wife or a girlfriend, maybe children, and they would have had no idea what had happened to him, only knowing that he’d never come home.

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t kill anyone during the war, but I did lose a couple of friends. You never really get used to it, you know,’ Sutton said, without looking up. ‘And the memories, they stay with you.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He looked up at her, pausing in his work. ‘Do you, Emma?’

  ‘My mother gets nightmares.’

  ‘You couldn’t get through to her, when you and Alex went to Namutoni?’

  ‘No, there was no phone signal,’ she said. He had changed the subject, just like her mother did when she tried to ask her about her sleepless nights, or about the places she had served and worked.

  ‘Do you think Natangwe was all right, when he left to do the shopping?’ Dorset asked her.

  Emma was surprised. She didn’t think the professor would care what one of his students thought of him, but Natangwe’s comments had obviously unsettled the old man more than she had guessed. ‘He seemed fine. Before he left he told me he was sorry he’d interrupted your speech. He’s a hothead, that’s all. He’s in the SWAPO Party Youth League and you know what student politics is like.’

  Dorset nodded and went back to brushing away the dirt. ‘There has been so much blood spilled on this continent,’ he said without looking up, ‘that I wonder if we’ll ever be able to dig anywhere and not unearth more sorrow.’

  ‘But you were right,’ she said, ‘this is our job, to bring history to light and not shy away from it. It’s good to remember the past, and to understand and learn from it, so that the terrible things that happened won’t ever occur again.’

  Sutton sighed. ‘Yes. The only problem is that mankind’s been saying that since the dawn of time, and we never learn.’

  *

>   Sonja cleaned up the mess in her room as best she could, filling the tiny waste paper bin with broken glass from the mirror. She left an extra five hundred rand on the writing bureau and a note that said, ‘Sorry’.

  She made herself a cup of coffee in the room, but skipped breakfast. It was good to be moving again and she wound down the window of the X-Trail rather than using the air conditioning and let the hot wind blast away some of her hangover as she drove out of Kuruman.

  The road soon turned to gravel and she had some fun driving too fast and deliberately drifting through some of the bends. At tiny Van Zylsrus she filled up the car’s tank and then went to the hotel across the road, where she had a cold Windhoek Lager and a cheeseburger at the bar to take care of the remnants of her post-binge illness. Sonja knew she couldn’t go on like this. She needed to get her mind back into shape. She’d worked out and stayed away from liquor for a month prior to the Vietnam mission and had felt the better for it. She needed to keep up that regime, but it was hard.

  As she hit the road again she thought about Stirling. It had been a surprise seeing him on the television last night and, in her drunken stupor, she had googled the lodge where he was based, Desert Rhino Camp, and found a phone number. She had almost called, but by morning had thought better of it.

  Things had not ended well for them the last time she’d seen Stirling, in Botswana. She’d been on another mission then, to blow up a dam that the Namibian and Angolan governments were building on the Okavango River, where it passed through the narrow corridor of Namibian land known as the Caprivi Strip. The dam was a threat to the wildlife-rich wetlands of the Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve; downstream in neighbouring Botswana a group of lodge owners had banded together to oppose the dam. When their lobbying efforts failed they employed Corporate Solutions, the mercenary outfit Sonja had worked for back then, to destroy the dam.