For some days we talked over all this until we both felt we had nothing more to say. Our agreement was complete. Even questions of money had been clearly and simply decided. I would finance the expedition. If there was a profit we would share it equally. If there was a loss I would bear it alone. More, I hoped to get contracts to write for newspapers all over the world, and I said I would get them to agree to buy his photographs to illustrate my reports. The income from the photographs, I insisted, would be entirely his.
That settled, we went together to the B.B.C. and came to a final agreement. They arranged for Spode to study their own film methods in their studios and consult their most experienced film people. Meanwhile I had to leave for Africa almost at once. I warned him that for three months or more I would be unable to have any but brief, businesslike exchanges with him. Was he able to arrange for the film and the technical requirements? He said he was not only able but moved by ‘the generous opportunity’ put in his way. I arranged for him and his cameras and film material to be flown out to Africa. We confidently fixed a place for our next meeting in a hotel in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia on 21 August. One of the last things I said to him was: ‘Please bring your violin with you. It’s a wonderful thing to have music round the fire in camp, and you’ll help us more than I can say if you’ll play for the lions at night!’
CHAPTER 5
The Shadow in Between
I LEFT for Africa with my wife and my personal Land-Rover in May, which gave me three months to prepare for the expedition. Even that was barely enough. I had a great deal of Bushman research to do in libraries and museums. I had thousands of miles to travel from the Cape to the Zambezi, looking at old Bushman caves, sites, and paintings and refreshing my memory of the heart of the immense country of the vanished little men. Happily unaware of the fate awaiting them I made plans and selected locations to re-enact certain key scenes from the Bushman’s story for background material for the film. I saw scores of officials to get the many permits, introductions, and vouchers necessary if the journey were to succeed. I organized supply and refuelling points in and around the vast Kalahari knowing that in order to get fuel to some of the more remote points in time I would have to see it on its way by sea, rail, truck, at least three months before I needed it. I engaged the rest of our personnel. I ordered all the complicated supplies from mosquito nets, snake-bite serum, dehydrated foods, camp beds, field chairs, and work tables to the latest drugs for malaria and dysentery as well as aureo-mycin and morphia in case of serious accident. I had hoped to see something of my own family but I found the time for such contacts rapidly devoured by increasingly urgent demands. On top of all this, there was always the inevitable intrusion of the ‘unpredictable’ in Africa to take greedy bites out of such time as was left. Then a shipping strike in England delayed the despatch of the Land-Rovers and cut down the leisurely six weeks we had planned for their assembly.
Also I began to be vaguely troubled about Eugene Spode. I met many people who had known him in Africa and though everybody acknowledged his gifts yet there was an odd reservation in their manner, a suggestion that he might not be tough enough for the journey. Also I found myself in dispute with authorities in territories where he had worked because they seemed reluctant, since he was not British, to grant him a working permit on the same terms as the rest of the company. It all ended in making me apprehensive for a time. But more than anything else I worried increasingly over the mechanics of making the film.
I had been aware from the start that in undertaking the making of a film I was stepping outside my own experience. I had learnt by bitter precept how gravely one can expose oneself to accident and disaster in this process, and especially in Africa. The original idea had been that Spode as well as being photographer to the expedition in his minor capacity, would make a separate documentary film of his own. The more I thought of this the madder it seemed to me. We had taken on too much. I wrote to Spode suggesting that we should make only the television film using it as a pilot scheme for a greater documentary in colour later. I added that even so I considered the work would be too much for one person and begged him to engage a first-class technical assistant. I left the choice of individual to him insisting only that the person should be British as I wanted no more trouble with the authorities. If he failed, I offered to engage an assistant for him in South Africa.
Spode wrote back saying he had already come to the same conclusion and was prepared to bring an assistant at his own expense if necessary, only he would prefer to engage one himself in Britain. The practical good sense and generosity of his response was a complete antidote to any misgiving I had picked up on arrival in Africa. I left it all gratefully behind me and hastened on for I had a growing mass of intractable detail to deal with. Fortunately I have many friends in Africa and there is a strong instinct in all pioneering countries to come to the help of a pioneer. I was helped everywhere generously and the idea which ultimately rescued the expedition from near-disaster came not from me, but from friends. The mines in South Africa, in order to get the labour they need, have built up a vast recruiting organization all over the country. It maintains its own roads and refuelling stations deep in the remotest bush and in the most primitive parts of Africa. A friend in the Chamber of Mines said to me one day: ‘You ought to have letters from us to our people in the blue just in case of need. One never knows . . .’ So a letter was written commending me and my needs to the care of their recruiting officers, directors of air services, and pilots. Without it my expedition would almost certainly have failed.
In early August, hard-pressed, but still within our prescribed schedule, my wife and I came to the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi to complete the last link in the chain of ground organization. From there my wife was to return to England because I had no intention of exposing to the hazards of the journey anyone who had not been conditioned to Africa nor born with the immunities of Africa within her. The wisdom of this decision was demonstrated almost as soon as we arrived at the Falls. My wife quickly developed a mysterious and dangerously high fever. The doctor, summoned from fifteen miles away, declared himself unable to diagnose it, so for a fortnight the fever swayed violently up and down. It has sometimes appeared to me that fever is designed, in part, to magnify reality so that the imponderable contribution of the spirit to the malaise which produces it, can become visible. There seems to be deep within it a rounding-up process of time, which brings past, present, and future all lucidly together in the focus of a single symbol. As I sat, frightened, by my wife’s bed day after day listening to her quick breathing, with the shock of the great Zambezi waters abysmally falling a mile away shaking the windows and rattling the doors without cease, I saw how deeply anxious she was, not about herself, but the journey. Her anxiety expressed itself in the single entreaty, constantly reiterated, ‘Buy your own gun, the best there is, and take it on the expedition with you.’
Since the war I had lost all taste for shooting and on previous expeditions had left it to those of my companions who enjoyed it. Vyan and Ben I knew were counting on shooting the game that would be our main diet, and it would deprive them of one of their great joys if someone else took a hand. My wife knew this. But still now she kept on imploring me to buy a gun of my own – ‘the best in the world’. And when she came out of her fever she held me to my promise.
As far as the expedition was concerned, she came out of it just in time. We were already well in the third week of August when I saw my wife into a plane on her journey back to England, and I left the same day by road for Bulawayo. I drove my Land-Rover through the hundreds of miles of shimmering and singing bush as fast as I could and did so because Spode had arrived in Bulawayo earlier than at first planned in order to study and adapt his arrangements.
Too late for effective advice, I had received two letters about his assistant saying that because of the expense he had decided not to engage a professional assistant but to bring out a South African studying at a university in Britain, �
��a friend of his’ with a ‘useful knowledge’ of filming, and prepared to pay his own way. Both my wife and I had been alarmed by this because it was not what we had agreed to do at all. Still, filming was Spode’s department and I could hardly protest, except to write back saying I hoped he had chosen the right man, begging him not to let expense stand in his way, and repeating my offer to find a local professional.
Now, on my way to my first meeting with Spode in Africa, I called in at the garage which was our agent in Bulawayo. I found Spode’s equipment and films neatly stored in the cool of the office. I was somewhat taken aback by the space they occupied because I had no idea of what 80,000 feet of film, night flares, cameras, stands, and screens in bulk would look like. But I was completely staggered by a bill from the Rhodesian customs for close on £1,000 duty! The agent told me he had pleaded in vain that the material was ‘in transit’ but the customs had been unyielding. He said, and I agreed, that the matter could only be settled with the Ministry in Salisbury. I had hoped for at least a day with Spode in Bulawayo before returning to Johannesburg to receive the Land-Rovers still plodding their way out from England. Instead, now, I would have to use that day for a journey to Salisbury. I went straight to book a seat in the morning plane to Salisbury, put my own Land-Rover into the garage for a thorough overhaul, and went to meet Spode.
By this time it was evening and dark. I found Spode waiting for me in the hotel. My friend, who had first introduced us, was with him, having decided with characteristic generosity to launch him safely on his way. I was delighted to see them, they both appeared glad to see me, and we talked well into the night. I told Spode frankly about my misgivings regarding his choice of an assistant, who, incidentally, had not yet left England.
He used, in French, an opening phrase with which I was soon to become familiar: ‘You don’t understand, Laurens. I don’t want another cameraman. I need only someone who knows me and understands me, an intelligent friend who will do as I say, lift and carry for me and help me with all the complicated adjustments of focus, angles, and screens. Don’t worry! He is just right for me.’
I protested no more. It was not what I had wished but there was no other reason to conclude that he could not do the job.
Spode then told me of his ideas for the film and the background filming he wanted to do around Bulawayo. I told him I had to go to Salisbury the following day and begged him not to begin work until I joined him, saying it was important that I, who was responsible for the story, and he for translating it into film, should work closely together from the start. I assured him that the moment I rejoined him I could give him whatever time he needed. We parted affably and I had no inkling whatsoever that in what I had said I had committed an offence for which I was never to be forgiven.
I left for Salisbury at dawn the next day, saw the head of the customs who, with the capacity of quick informal decision that is so refreshing in his country, picked up his telephone and instantly ordered his subordinates in Bulawayo to cancel the monstrous duty of £1,000. At noon the next day I was in Johannesburg. The Land-Rovers were still aboard a ship in Algoa Bay harbour, but Land-Rover agents and all my friends joined forces to speed their arrival. I do not think a goods-truck has ever travelled faster from the coast to the interior than the one containing my remaining three Land-Rovers. Four days later they were in Johannesburg and were at once unloaded and assembled. The two short-wheel-based Land-Rovers already had their extra fuel tanks and water containers built in, the third, a long-wheel-based vehicle like my own, still needed its extra tanks to be fitted locally because it had been ordered later. The Land-Rover mechanics turned to the task with such a will that two days later it was complete with four additional tanks, and emerged like its smaller companions with the Union Jack and South African flags and a neat label ‘Kalahari Expedition’ painted, unbidden but bright, for luck on its flanks.
We loaded our supplies and spares that afternoon. All radio equipment I had had finally to reject in view of what I had seen of the bulk of the film equipment in Bulawayo. As always in Africa when there is the rumour of a journey a crowd of people quickly gathered, silent with inarticulate longing, to watch us tightly tying down the heavy loads, and tucking in the canvas covers round them. At last the Land-Rovers stood there ready, in the clear light of a late August afternoon on the high veld like three little ships battened down before a storm on a remote ocean. Now I had only to complete my promise to my wife and to collect a case for ‘the best gun in the world’ which I had already bought in Rhodesia, my favourite all-round weapon for Africa, a .375 Magnum express. That done I went tired but content early to bed.
We left Johannesburg at sunrise with the smoke tumbling down purple among the tops of the giant skyscrapers, and the light of morning pink and gold on the battleship-grey dumps of the mines. At the head of the small convoy travelled Charles, our expert Land-Rover mechanic. He was tall, slender, dark with wide hurt brown eyes, sensitive, soft-spoken, and rather highly-strung. With his long hands he had gone at the task of assembling the Land-Rovers like a swimmer in a race diving into water. He had worked fast and accurately, with a mind for nothing else. I had, I must admit, hesitated for a moment before engaging him because I thought he might be too complex and sensitive a character for the occasion. But I have always had a predisposition for people of quickened spirit and this young man had plenty of it. Though too young he had volunteered for service in the war and disguised his age so effectively that he became the youngest soldier on active service with the South African Forces. He had fought in the Western Desert and Italy, and the moment he heard of my expedition implored his employers for leave of absence to accompany us. In neat, well-pressed khaki clothes, shining boots, and wearing his wartime South African desert bowler, he climbed into the first Land-Rover and deftly led the way out of the awakening city. I came last because I have learnt from experience that convoys are best led from behind where trouble, like the dust, invariably collects. We could not travel as fast as I would have liked for our Land-Rovers were new, so at the prescribed maximum of twenty-five miles an hour we drove the 300 miles west to Lobatsi where Ben Hatherall was already awaiting us.
The sun was beginning to decline when we crossed the Transvaal Border into Bechuanaland. I noticed that since last I had crossed the frontier the fences had been repaired, gates mended and painted, the stones at the side whitewashed, and a new flag hoisted, bright in the blue, to the head of a shining pole. The post, too, was manned again and a policeman in smart uniform and polished boots raised his hand in a precise salute as we went by. Then in the distance a cloud of red dust rose like an explosion over the pass and a roar of urgent traffic rolled towards us. Charles drew on one side, wisely stopped the engine, and we all parked behind him.
Charles got out and came back to me saying: ‘Looks as if we are being met! A reception committee?’
I shook my head. ‘No! I suspect an old Lobatsi custom: a wedding with an escort of every car in the village to speed the bridal couple safely over the frontier for a honeymoon in Johannesburg!’
I had hardly finished speaking when the dust and a long line of cars swept past us. The first had a score or more of old boots and shoes tied to the boot. In the last car, despite the red stinging sand, a pair of broad shoulders and a fine massive head with iron-grey hair, a deeply tanned and lined face, and shrewd grey eyes glowing with recognition, suddenly were pushed far out of the window and a surprisingly young voice called: ‘Colonel! Colonel! I’ll be with you in a second.’ Still shouting, man and car vanished in a dark stain of dust.
‘Who on earth is that?’ Charles asked.
‘Ben Hatherall,’ I answered laughing. ‘You’ll be seeing a lot of him from now on. I’m glad to see he’s lost none of his zest for life! Like him not to miss a wedding!’
Lobatsi, little more than an administrative and shopping hamlet among the last of the Waterberg foothills on the brink of the desert, was almost empty as a result of the wedding. I went first to the
Government Offices to call on a friend and was talking to another old friend, the head of the police, when a distressing little incident occurred. As it reveals the exposed state of mind I was in at the time, and something of the oppressive and electric atmosphere everywhere in Africa, I tell it briefly here.
I was laughing with the police lieutenant over some reminiscence when suddenly for no obvious reason at all desire to laugh went from me. More, I felt all confidence and zest drain swiftly out of me. I had no idea what caused it. Alarmed I turned round. Immediately behind me shackled between two policemen on his way to judgement went a young man of Bushman blood. Our eyes met briefly and I knew then that the black invasion of my being came from him. I looked in those eyes filled with neither hope nor despair, and recognized the black hand that puts out that candle in the heart when it knows its gods have failed it.
‘What’s happened to him! What’s he done?’ I asked the lieutenant in distress.
‘Ritual murder,’ he answered grimly. ‘Murdered his own little sister to make medicine for the clan. His people, too, were suspected of the murder of some airmen who crashed in the bush up north some years ago.’
The coincidence was almost too much for me. I remembered that, some years before, I had spent a night at the scene of that murder. I had met his people and used a kinsman of this very man as a tracker.
‘Poor devil!’ I said. And immediately felt sad that here, at the physical beginning of the journey, I was confronted with the overwhelming question that assails one at every step of the way these days in Africa. ‘What am I to him, and he to me? And what am I to do about it?’ For this question has haunted me ever since I was a child in Africa.
I have never seen justice in treating ‘ritual murder’ as murder. We have a share in it too, for the increasing revival of ritual murder is an expression, in part, of the sense of insecurity that we have inflicted on the indigenous spirit of my native land and a desperate attempt, by natural children, to appease an insupportable fear. It is also a product of our denial of what is naturally creative in Africa, and we too who arrest and judge the murderer are accessories before and after the fact. After the trial the law-officers, judges and accusers, and I talked the matter over. I thought I had rarely seen nicer faces or met fairer minds. I think they would have liked to agree that life and the situation in Africa needs more than justice to carry it out of certain disaster. But law and order came first and had to be maintained with mercy if possible, without it if not.
The Lost World of the Kalahari Page 9
