by Andre Brink
Under the salty crust of the dried-up lake—the precious salt, too, is scooped up and stored to be used for meat—he shows her the dark receding rings left by the shrinking water.
“But there's nothing here,” she protests. “The mud isn’t even moist anymore.”
“Watch.” With a smile he starts digging, using his assegai. Six inches, a foot, two feet and it remains hard and dry as stone, followed by a softer, crumbling layer; and then it starts getting moist. From deep down, after a whole day's painstaking work, he takes out the turtle which has submerged itself waiting for the next rain to fall: a female with strings of eggs in her belly. They are safe for another day; perhaps, with careful rationing, even two.
She watches him kneeling over the shell to scrape out the meat; horizontally ahead the sun is sinking, bleeding like a thing torn apart by vultures. It looks as if he's praying.
We’ll survive, we’ll survive. We shall get through. It is the message on your palm. There is always hope.
In the dark pre-dawn they gradually become aware of something happening. At first it isn’t even a sound, merely a faint tremor as if, dull and deep, the earth is trembling. Adam is the first to sit up; then he lies down again, pressing his ear to the ground. He motions to her and she imitates him. Slowly sound is added to it, a thunder still too low for the ear to catch up, insinuating itself through the skull and the bones of the body.
“What is it?” she asks.
Adam shakes his head. Perhaps he already has a suspicion, but he isn’t sure yet. It is growing lighter round them. The dull rumbling sound remains far away.
By the time the sun rises they can clearly make out a huge, lazy cloud in the distance, spreading almost imperceptibly until it covers the entire horizon from south to north.
“Smoke?” she asks. “But there's nothing to burn on these plains.”
“Dust,” he says.
Once again he presses his head to the ground, lying down for so long that she gets anxious.
“What is it then?” she asks.
“We must hurry,” he says with sudden urgency, getting up. “Help me.” He begins to tie up their bundles, his fingers fumbling with the thongs.
“What's happening, Adam?” she demands.
“Migrating buck.”
“But…”
“We haven’t much time. We must get to that koppie.”
Without waiting for breakfast they set out to the narrow stony ridge half a mile from where they’ve been camping in their karosses.
On the horizon the red cloud is rising steadily: keeping one's eyes fixed on it, it is impossible to discern any movement; yet every time one looks back, there is a change as it spreads out and darkens and grows more dense. By now the rumbling can be heard distinctly, although still low and even, like the sound of some subterranean landslide.
Hurriedly they scramble up the rocky slope to the highest ridge of the koppie where he flings down his bundle and starts stacking stones to build a short, bulky wall—only two or three yards long, waist high, but hard work in the sun which already beats down on them, chasing up heat-waves from the hard earth. The rocks are huge, most of them too heavy to handle, so that they have to move back and forth between the top of the ridge and the bottom to select the more manageable ones.
After a time something else becomes visible under the moving cloud: a low, unbroken brownish mass approaching over the plains like a solid wall of muddy water—but slowly, unhurried, and quite inexorable.
“Surely all of that can’t be buck?” she asks, stunned.
Toiling with the heavy stones, he doesn’t answer, barely stopping to wipe the streaks of perspiration from his face or to spit on the cuts and calluses on his hands.
They are buck. Now she can see it for herself. A low, slow mass of springbuck moving across the plains in an endless brown flood.
Adam is gathering wood, stacking it against the wall he has built, still without explanation: dry branches, brittle twigs, decayed bits of thorn-tree bark.
And then the vast herd is upon them. They move at such an even pace that, from a distance, it appears lethargic: but one moment they are still far away, and the very next they are all around them, swirling and eddying in an endless tide of cinnamon-brown bodies, streaked with chocolate, with white undersides, sweeping steadily onward, submerging everything in their way. Directly beyond the wall the tide parts, streaming past on either side, flowing back into one solid mass as soon as they have left the sheltered spot behind. And everything is shrouded in dust, in fine brown powder pervading the very pores of the body, filling eyes and nose and mouth, clinging to hair and eyebrows and lashes.
At first, Adam and Elisabeth remain crouching together against their protecting wall. But after a time, as the flood of brown bodies continues undiminished, they become more confident and stand up. One can touch the passing buck with one's hand, they wouldn’t even notice: the moist black eyes staring fixedly ahead, all caught in an inexplicable trance. Now, so close to them, it is possible to distinguish separate sounds in the general rumble: the clattering of sharp cloven hooves on the hard earth, dislodged stones rolling downhill, the gentle grunts of individual buck, the higher, shrill, whistling sounds of others. And under their feet the earth is trembling, an interminable shudder as if the vast plains are feverish in the sun.
“But where are they going to?” she asks, dumbfounded.
“They just trek like this.” He stares at the flood swirling round them: there is still no end in sight. “Perhaps they smelled rain in the wind.”
After a long time, as she still watches them, hypnotized, he unties his bundle and takes out the pistol. Waiting patiently to select a young male passing a yard from him, he aims, pressing the barrel almost against the head of the buck, and pulls the trigger. The others do not even try to avoid the kicking animal. In fact, Adam has to be quick to rescue the carcass before it is trodden to a pulp.
“Will you cut it up?” he asks after he has skinned the buck.
“What are you going to do?”
He motions to the pistol, loading it again.
“But one is enough!” she protests. “We can’t store so much meat in this weather.”
“Stomach fluid,” he says cryptically.
And with cold-blooded calculation he goes on killing more buck; after a while he doesn’t even bother to use the pistol any more and fells his victims with his assegai. Until there are at least ten carcasses heaped up against their wall. And still there is no sign of abatement in the living flood.
She helps him to make a fire. Even that has no effect on the buck passing their shelter. “If the wall hadn’t stopped them they would have come right through the flames,” he says, talkative at last. “I’ve seen them at rivers. The front ones are simply trampled down; the others keep on coming from behind, until there is a whole bridge of carcasses damming up the water.”
In the heart of the slowly moving earthquake they roast their meat and have a meal. It is unearthly; even while it is happening she finds it difficult to believe in it. He goes on cutting up the other slaughtered buck, collecting the fluid from their stomachs.
She pulls up her nose at the warm, physical stench.
“You’ll be grateful later,” he says, smiling.
“Surely we’ll find ordinary water.”
“Do you think they would have been trekking if there had been water that way?”
“You mean… ?”
He nods, grimly continuing with his work.
“So it really will be worse ahead?” she demands.
“Yes. Not only because of the water. But because they’ve now trodden everything to dust. It will no longer be possible to find hidden kambro or other bulbs. Now it's a desert.”
She gets up and looks towards the south, the sun directly overhead now: towards the range of mountains beyond the moving plains. And he knows what she's thinking: those are the mountains they have crossed.
Throughout the day the slow-sweeping horde
comes moving past. Their shelter is a tiny island on the teeming, living plain, covered by red dust. Adam keeps only the meat of the first carcass which she has cut up, vainly trying to shelter it from the sun under a kaross fastened to the wall. The other slaughtered bodies are hurled back into the moving mass that tramples them into the dust. At last it gets dark. The earth is still shuddering under them. Leaning against the wall, they sit beside their small fire, listening to the night thundering past. The stars are invisible through the dust. It is nearly time for the day to break before the trek is over. As suddenly as the buck appeared, they are gone. The booming sound of their migration begins to ebb away, subsiding to a dull monotonous throb, until only the trembling of the earth remains. Then that, too, disappears.
At sunrise they get up, bleary-eyed and covered with dust, their heads aching. The world is vast and empty, even emptier than before. The cloud of dust hangs motionless over the entire expanse of the veld; not a breath of wind is stirring. On the plains there are no contours left, as if the very hills have been trampled into the earth. There is no sign of low shrubs or piles of dry wood or heaps of stones; just an endless monotony of powdered dust.
“Shall we go on?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer; she doesn’t even nod.
“I’ve always believed it would get better as we went on,” she says at last. “That was what kept me going. Every day I firmly believed: tomorrow…”
“And now?” he asks, unnecessarily, bluntly.
“We can’t stay here,” she says.
“Shall we try to go back?” He points to the mountains in the south.
“Do you think we’ll be able to cross them again?”
He shrugs.
“We’d better go on,” she says.
“Even if you know it can’t get better any more?”
Clenching her teeth, she nods, and picks up her bundle.
Through the great emptiness they start walking on, stunned into a stupor. There are vultures in the sky.
A few miles on, the sun already burning relentlessly, they come upon a trampled, bloody, dusty bundle covered by vultures. It is barely recognizable: a portion of skull, teeth, tufts of hair.
“It was a lion,” he says, almost reverently. “It came in their way.”
“But…” It's no use saying anything.
This is that history we spoke about before: do you remember? You didn’t want to believe me. You still thought it was something which happened in the Cape and was carried into the land from there. Do you understand a bit more of it now? Of life going its own stubborn way here in the wilderness? Of the suffering of the nameless, the revolt of the humble?
You stand so still beside me. Here are the vultures. Round us there is nothing. You are filthy and covered with dust; sweat has drawn patterns over your burnt face; your hair is caked with dirt; there are lines of suffering round your mouth, and your eyes are bloodshot and scared; your breasts are sagging, your nipples scorched black. Human being reduced to dust. I recognize you. And I have never loved you as I do now.
The ruin is a mere pimple against the bare hill on the scorched and trampled plains, but it lures them like a beacon. It is the first time since the three small ruins on the other side of the mountains that they’ve come across the slightest sign of human life: and it is the vultures that show them the way.
A cottage of mud and stone, the front half caved in, the woodwork of the roof plundered by the wind; a low stone-wall enclosing the yard half ruined but still standing. It must have been this wall which warded off the migrating buck, protecting the yard. Vultures are circling over the house; a couple are already perched on the torn roof and others have descended to the stones of the tumbled wall. But there are no people. The birds have been lured by the half-decayed carcass of a springbuck on the back doorstep, partly inside the house; and by the dog.
At first it seems as if the dog is also dead, but then it lifts its head— much too big for its panting, emaciated body and sticky legs—barking feebly whenever the vultures come too close. Then they flap out of the way, patiently returning to the dark, slowly narrowing half-circle of waiting birds.
Ever since the passing of the buck the dog must have been keeping watch over the rotting carcass, feeding on it, bit by bit, trying to moisten the dried blood with its tongue.
It struggles to its feet as soon as they approach, baring its teeth, its mouth and sunken eyes swarming with flies. It tries to warn them with a pathetic attempt to bark; then, whining softly, it begins to wag its tail. Adam goes up to him, patting the bony head. The dog must have been left behind when the people of the house moved off: but when was that? And why didn’t the dog go with them? Why did they leave their furniture behind, now broken to bits, littering the hard dung floor? It must have happened very long ago. Yet one cannot be too sure: the sun and wind work violently and fast.
First they must get rid of the dead buck. The dog starts growling again and even tries to snap at Adam when he grabs the carcass by the hind legs and begins to drag it away; half a mile from the house he abandons it to the swarming vultures. When he returns, the dog welcomes him with a miserably wagging tail, obviously too exhausted to remain aggressive. Whimpering, it nuzzles Adam's legs, trots off a few yards towards the back of the house, then returns to repeat the process, until, with weary curiosity, Adam follows it. The dog leads him to a few scraggy thorn-trees in a dry ditch running across the backyard; there he discovers a stone well. In rainy years it is probably fed by a fountain. Whimpering steadily, the dog tries to jump on the stones surrounding the well, but its legs are too weak and it falls back.
Half-dazed and eager, Adam peers into the well, but it is too dark to see anything. He throws in a pebble and with a jerky intake of breath he hears the small wet sound of water as it hits the bottom. Tying all their bits and pieces of thong together, he lowers their leaky cooking pot into the well and manages, with patient manipulation, to pull up a small quantity of dirty, foul-smelling water. There is obviously no more than a few inches left at the bottom of the well, but the unexpected discovery sends a choking sob to his throat.
In a surge of joy he pours some of the water into the hollow of a stone for the dog, before he fills an ostrich eggshell for Elisabeth.
She has fallen asleep where she sat just inside the kitchen door. It is the first time since they came across the trekking buck that they’ve found shelter from the sun. During the week or more that has passed since then, they have had to carry their bundles on their heads for shade; they’ve even been forced to wear the unbearably hot karosses in the worst hours of the day to shield their bodies from the terrible sun. The supply of fetid stomach-water has kept them going, hers filtered through the hem of the Cape dress to somewhat purify it, otherwise it would have made her vomit. Now, so unexpectedly, there is this precious supply of water from the well.
Burning with impatience, he allows the eggshell to stand untouched for a time so that the worst filth can settle on the bottom before he gently, coaxingly, raises it to her cracked and scalded lips. He sees her move her mouth in her sleep, swallowing; then she suddenly sits up, looking at him in fear and suspicion, unable to believe what is happening.
Without eating anything, replete with water, they lie down to sleep— throughout the afternoon and night, and halfway through the next day, before they are finally awakened by the dog whimpering and tugging at their karosses.
They feel even more exhausted now they’ve slept, as if the rest has stirred up the silted dregs of fatigue deep inside them, causing it to drift dirtily on the surface of their existence.
Sitting on the doorstep staring out vacantly at the empty world, they strenuously chew the shriveled remains of the veld food they have saved, sweetened with a mere touch of honey. Elisabeth gives the dog some of the hard, rancid biltong that remains of the slaughtered buck.
For the first time, still in something of a stupor and his head throbbing numbly, Adam begins to explore the house and its surroundings. Co
ming upon some bones protruding from the caved-in wall in front, he starts digging in the rubble. A human skull. More bones. There may be several skeletons under the mound of dirt and stones. But why bother to dig them all out?
She finds him there and stops, touching the skull with her foot.
“Perhaps the wind blew down the wall on them,” she says, unasked. “Or do you think it was Bushmen who killed them?”
“If it was an accident there may still be some food around.”
With more interest they begin to search the rubble, but anything edible has been plundered or destroyed. The only recognizable objects they discover are the small skeletons of two children. Unexpectedly, the backyard yields something where the ruined wall has sheltered the little garden: three or four pumpkins which must have been lying there for months, the hard thick skins protecting the fleshy insides; a handful of shriveled sweet-potatoes; peas in dried-up pods scorched white by the sun—but still edible if soaked in water. It's food. And there is enough of it even to share with the dog.
For days on end they do not move from the house, sleeping or lying listlessly in the shade—but slowly feeling a semblance of energy return, although it hardly stirs up much new hope in them, just dull resignation. There is an eternity behind them, and an eternity ahead. They are weary. But sooner or later they will have to move on.
Under a tattered piece of remaining roof jutting out over a side-wall swallows have made their nest and day after day they watch the birds flitting in and out, returning with worms or beetles; passively they listen to the squeaking of the baby birds inside. All the time Adam has been waiting, restraining the urge to rob the nest, knowing that that must wait for last: a decisive act, signaling the resumption of their journey. From day to day he puts it off, hankering after the tastiness of the dish, but dreading the decision involved. Until, at last, it cannot be postponed any longer. And one evening, after both the parent birds have returned to the nest, he piles up stones and wood against the wall and climbs up, removing the birds one by one. Holding the small necks between thumb and forefinger he flicks his wrist in a brief circular jerk; that is enough.
