A Far Off Place

by Laurens Van Der Post

  With that he turned his back on them and went to sit close by the cross on the wall, arms resting on his knees and head on his arms, his body still, and as if alone in the world. And yet his attitude emanated such an atmosphere of significance that all the others moved around on tip-toe and when one had to speak, did so in whispers.

  Meanwhile François had quickly and deftly checked his gun and in doing so, noticed a look of intense alarm on Nonnie’s face. So he whispered to her, “I’m just going outside to make quite certain the light from the candles isn’t giving us away. I shan’t be long. Could you please start opening the tins and putting the food in those dixies?”

  The announcement brought back all Nonnie’s terror of being left alone and it was all she could do not to cry out, “Please don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” She knew this was impossible, yet she felt she had to say something, so she compromised by converting the “Don’t leave me” into a determined: “Then I am coming with you.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort!” François told her, rather fiercely, because he did not know how he would stop her if she insisted on coming, and also because he was convinced that it was work better and more safely done by one than two, particularly when the second was someone like Nonnie, who did not know the nature of the ground outside as he did. “It would be much more helpful if you did as I ask, and got Nuin-Tara to give you a hand with the food.”

  Pretending he took her consent for granted, he turned sideways to tell Nuin-Tara in turn what he had just said. The look on her face told him that the incredible gift which primitive people of Africa possess for reading European meaning, sometimes even more accurately from manner, tone, expression or behaviour than the Europeans themselves can do from the words they use for the same purpose, had enabled her to know precisely what had just occurred between Nonnie and himself. Not only had she understood but had become acutely critical of Nonnie. She herself would no more have imposed her own opinions or emotions on Xhabbo at a time like that than she would have allowed Xhabbo to interfere in matters such as child-bearing. Life for her was an entity of two equal and complementary halves: one masculine and one feminine. All her instincts prompted her that to confuse one half with the other only made the problems of life more difficult and showed an elementary lack of dignity and respect for the character of the other. She had of course no means of telling that Nonnie had never been confronted as she herself had so often been, with so terrible a situation. Terrible as it all was to Nonnie, for Nuin-Tara, tragedy and disaster were great constantly recurring realities of Bushman life. Man and woman could only help one another by trusting each other to bear their half of the burden with all their mind and soul.

  Luckily, François’s decisive response to Nonnie’s relapse into fear was the best thing he could have done. In despair, almost any decision is better than none, and his authoritative tone brought alive some of the Nuin-Tara in Nonnie. He would have liked to explain and excuse her, because from the way that Nuin-Tara had picked up one of the heavier tins and held it out to Nonnie, shaking it at her as if to say, “Now take this and get on with your business and leave him alone to get on with his,” he knew how disapproving of Nonnie she was just then. But feeling somehow that all that would sort itself out in time and Nuin-Tara would soon know for herself the person of spirit he himself knew Nonnie to be, he merely remarked more gently, “You see, I’m not even taking Hin. Please keep him by you and I promise not to be long.”

  Before Nonnie could even call out, “Oh, please be careful,” he was down on all fours at the exit and crawling forward into the night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Another kind of Music

  THE NIGHT WAS black and brilliant as ever but the sound of the concert of stars now had been suppressed by another kind of music. Standing up slowly, carefully, leaning against the dark rock screened by the black bushes at the entrance, so that his eyes could become accustomed to the night, he heard men singing down at Hunter’s Drift. They were singing as only the men of Africa can sing, from somewhere far down, not just in the physical body of themselves but at the source of the well of what is perhaps the deepest racial memory in existence. Although the song was only another in the series of sloganised music to be heard everywhere in a world dedicated to changing human societies by force and bloodshed, and as such obvious and trivial enough, yet those voices transformed it into a chorale of great portent and beauty.

  In fact it was all so unexpected that François, who had never heard anything like it before, was profoundly shocked and angered, that men who had done what those men had done that day, could be down there in his violated home, feasting at ease by the light of lamps and warmed by fire, uttering such beauty in song as if they had never been party to ugliness or wrong. His anger indeed was so great that it almost went out to that superb spread of stars above. There seemed something grossly unfair about such assertion of beauty and he felt like abusing them for continuing in their normal courses as if nothing black had been done on earth that day. Then he remembered how Xhabbo would have reproved him and reminded him of those shooting stars they had witnessed earlier on, begging him to accept them as evidence that the universe had taken note of the cruelty of the day behind them.

  But the singing was another matter. He just could not make his peace with it. Embittered by that sound, his eyes accustomed to the dark at last, he set out on a wide, meticulous patrol of the area all round the roof of the cave. He was immensely reassured to find that no trace of light or candle smell rose into that gentle, impressionable and innocent air of the early night. He crawled through the bushes to look down into the biggest opening in the roof of the cave itself. The bush hat he always wore at night to hide his tell-tale white face which, tanned as it was, might otherwise have given him away, was nearly knocked from his head by the wings of the great old Nonnietjie owl. It was a tribute to the skill with which he did his work that he nearly walked into it before it flew out of his way with a wild, long, “Sephoo-koo-koo.”

  Looking down the hole as if into a deep well, he could just see like a faint flake of amber water, a suggestion of reflected candle-glow. It convinced him that even if they lit a dozen more candles, their light would not be strong enough to penetrate the dark where he crouched, and even should any soldiers come prowling near the cave they would have to find the hole first and look down into it before they would detect any light. He was certain that no strangers, like those men singing down there so ardently, were going to stumble around among the rocks and bushes of the steep cliff in which the cave was concealed, on so dark a night.

  He turned back to the entrance of the cave but once there, found himself strangely reluctant to go inside. There was some unknown thought trying the door of his imagination as Nonnie had once tried the door of his room in the homestead below. He could not return to the others until he let it in and knew what it was. He suspected that it was his version of what Xhabbo would have called “tapping”, and at that the answer came. Mtunywa (Messenger) had told him that everyone at Hunter’s Drift had been killed, but François now knew that he would never forgive himself unless he went down there to make absolutely certain that none of the many people who had been so good to him and whom he had loved so dearly were not still alive.

  It was extraordinary how well-armed this realisation sprung to his head for it brought also the exact knowledge of how he would have to set about it. He would have to wait until those singing men were asleep. Somehow he assumed that with all the good food and wine they would have found they would sleep early and sleep well after their own long day. Of course, he was aware that such well-trained men in uniform would post sentries for the night as a matter of routine. But he did not imagine that the sentries would be over-watchful, for knowing themselves to be in one of the remotest parts of the bush, the danger of intrusion by night was negligible.

  If he waited another three or four hours, he was certain he would have a chance of getting close to the homestead or even within it undete
cted. If there were any of his own left alive, although he had to admit to himself it was unlikely, he would have to consult with Xhabbo how best to rescue them. Their only hope then perhaps might be for one of them to make for Mopani’s main camp. It was unlikely that if anybody were still alive with the men down below they would be killed suddenly, but even should there be no one, François realised with a start, there still would be the problem of Mopani.

  Mopani had been due back a week before from an international convention abroad. One of his first plans would be to visit Hunter’s Drift; indeed he could even be on his way, totally unaware of the peril awaiting him. Somehow Mopani had to be warned. And those poor coloured people of Silverton Hill, what of them?

  He was overwhelmed by the impossible amount of things that needed doing, the odds against doing them and the lack of time. He was certain of only one dominant priority. He had to find out what had happened and what was happening below. It was something he knew would have to be done alone. Not even Xhabbo could help, for all his supreme hunter’s eye and skill so infinitely greater than François’s own, because his Bushman friend did not know the land below as it would have to be known. Only François, who knew it out of love and experience as the one and only patch of earth in his life, could have any chance of success. And that was doubtful.

  Even Hintza would have to be left behind. For once there was only danger and no safety left in numbers. And here he realised that Nonnie would be an added problem for him, not because she would not accept his decision to go when he explained it all to her, but because he feared that another anxiety, added to all she had already suffered, would be unfair, if not too much for her. He would have to go without her knowing.

  In all this he was sure somehow that Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara would understand. They would help, and from there he came to the answer. He had already concluded that Nonnie could not be expected to sleep as she should sleep that night unless he gave her some of those old tranquillisers and sleeping draughts of Ouwa’s which he had left in the cave and which he had once used on Xhabbo. He would make her eat as good a meal as possible, make her drink a couple of mugs of the best of his hot chocolate and sweet condensed milk which he thought he made as well, if not better, than dear old Ousie Johanna herself (the thought of her nearly sent him on a course of tears of his own), followed by the kind of sedatives Ouwa took in an extremity. He knew the appropriate measure and felt that drugs which had worked so well on persons so much bigger as Ouwa and Xhabbo, would be doubly effective on someone so slight and young as Nonnie. Only when these preliminaries were determined, did he turn his back on the night and that insufferable beauty of the singing below, and crawl back into the cave.

  Nonnie, warned of his return by Hintza who had left her and was standing with his tail wagging enthusiastically at the entrance when François crawled through it, neither looked nor spoke to him. She could not trust herself to do so in case the relief at his reappearance showed through the tears which it had brought to her eyes. She felt she had had enough of crying that day and was angry and humiliated within herself for having done it so often and long. She thought it high time that the practice should cease. If it couldn’t cease, then at best it must be continued as discreetly as possible.

  Xhabbo was still visible like a shape in one of those fantasies that Goya painted by candle-light, sitting bowed over his knees, his head now slightly turned on one side as if listening to some far-off sound from the frontiers of the night. Nuin-Tara, however, was a totally different person. She was obviously excited and full of a lively interest in the things Nonnie had extracted from the tins, watching her opening the biggest of them with its tiny metal key, like someone in a play in a theatre. These commonplaces of existence to Nonnie were acts of the greatest magic for Nuin-Tara which united to restore Nonnie fully to her grace.

  François warmed to the sight of the two of them there, heads close together, engaged in that antique ritual of women preparing food for their men at the end of the day. He only wished that Nonnie could understand the words of wonder pouring out of Nuin-Tara, although he felt Nonnie must have had some idea from the manner and tone in which they were uttered.

  As he joined them Nonnie, without looking up, whispered in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage, “I expect we’d better eat this stuff cold, as your friend there just now seemed to be against us lighting fires.”

  “Not at all,” François hastened to reply, happy because for once he had something positive to announce. “I’ve been all over the roof outside and we’re quite safe in here as long as we use only candles. Now I’ll show you exactly how we are going to set about preparing a three course dinner for you.”

  He went to his store and brought back six long candles. He took out his knife, cut the candles in half and tapered each of the six bottom halves until the wicks were exposed. He arranged the halves in two separate groups of six, each set in the sand in two rows of three close together. That done, he went back to the far end of the cave to collect some stones, banked the stones on either side of the candles, to make two rudimentary fire-places. He then lit the candles, told Nonnie to pour the cans of soup into both halves of each dixie and arranged them in pairs over each fire-place.

  Nuin-Tara watched the congealed soup melt, uttering sounds of astonishment as it became liquid and gradually filled the air above the candle fires with a new smell of food strange to her. Indeed, judging by their expressions, she and Hintza were running a kind of race to see whose appetite for food could grow fastest as the smell of cooking increased. Hintza was lying as close to the candles as possible, flat on his tummy in the way which only he could lie, his legs stretched out straight behind him and his paws in front, with his head and chin out resting on the sand between them, as if he himself were listening in to some kind of dog’s equivalent of tapping. But any impression that his concentration was the result of an exercise in profound inner contemplation was belied by the fact that he was unashamedly dribbling at the corners of his long mouth and that his silk black nose was constantly wrinkling and unwrinkling with each new onslaught of smell.

  Consoling Hintza with the remark that he would not have long to wait, François realised, somewhat stricken with conscience, that there was something more he could do to help. Accustomed as he was to going without anything to drink between sunrise and sunset, he was suddenly amazed at how thirsty he was and realised how the others, particularly Nonnie, must be suffering. So he immediately went to his store and brought a bottle of Ousie Johanna’s famous concentrate of lemons. He had two mugs in the cave which he filled with cool water, added some of the concentrate to each. He gave one to Nuin-Tara and the other to Nonnie, saying; “I’m sorry, you must be dying of thirst, but could you wait for a second because there’s something I want you to take with it.”

  He quickly fetched his little Red Cross store, took out a yellow tranquilliser and held it out to Nonnie, saying, “Please swallow this with your lemonade.”

  “What is it?” she asked, suspicious of the tablet.

  Before he could explain, Xhabbo, who, unnoticed to them all, had apparently at last done with his tapping, came to squat beside them and instantly recognised the tablet. A wide smile broke over his emaciated features and immediately he began to tell Nuin-Tara that it was the very thing about which he had so often spoken. Small as it was, it killed the greatest of pains. He personified the little tablet and the pain as if they were some Bushman David and Goliath, challenged to battle before them.

  Obviously every detail of what had happened between him and François had been told over and over again by many Bushman fires in the remote desert. Nuin-Tara became almost excited as Xhabbo was. She herself had just swallowed the last of her drink and could not yet believe that any liquid could be as sweet as what she had just tasted. Xhabbo recognised the bottle too. It was another great figure in the epic of his first encounter with François eighteen months ago, and its magical properties had to be recanted at great dramatic length.

>   In all this excitement and chatter, Nonnie’s question was almost forgotten, even by herself, so curious had she become. He had to explain to her how these tablets had come to help Xhabbo and added that Nonnie could do now with a tablet herself.

  For a moment it looked as if she were going to refuse. She had in any case a powerful instinct against anything which might isolate her from reality, even so painful and dangerous a reality as the present. But one look at the pleading expression on François’s face as well as the realisation that if she refused she might not only cause him to lose face with his friends but re-antagonise Nuin-Tara herself, made her change her mind. She took the tablet with her first sip of lemonade. The sharp, sweet taste of the lemon woke the giant thirst which the anguish of the day had repressed. She found herself emptying the mug in a way she had not done since she had left her nursery.

  “Merveilloso, que merveilloso!” she exclaimed instinctively drawing on the schoolgirl Portuguese she had always used on Amelia and added, “That was super.”

  She handed the mug back to François, begging, “It was so good, I’d love some more, if you don’t mind.”

  “I know,” François observed, nearly adding that it was one of Ousie-Johanna’s own inventions and to him by far her best, but his wounded self cancelled it and he merely added, “I think it would be wise to wait for a bit before I give you any more. I’d love to but I know from experience that it’s stupid to drink too much when you’ve gone so long without water.”

  “I expect you’re right, but I can hardly bear to wait,” Nonnie answered, resigned, and with no inkling of how encouraged François was by this first indication of a re-awakening of some awareness of her natural needs.

  Meanwhile, he had Xhabbo and Hintza and Nuin-Tara to think of as well. He filled Nuin-Tara’s empty mug for Xhabbo. Then he filled his bush hat to the brim with water and put it in front of Hintza. Fondly he watched him lapping it up as if it were a dog’s dream champagne.