From this old master we worked our way around the base of the hill for close on a mile, becoming so absorbed in the painting that I forgot we were also to look for Bushmen. A shout from Samutchoso, who had gone on well ahead, brought me back to my immediate task and the reality of the burning noon-day hour. We found him in the midst of what was obviously the site of a recent Bushman encampment. There were the light screens of grass and acacia branches to shelter them against the sun and dew, and all round the sand was thickly strewn with broken and empty nutshells, wilted melon skins, rabbit fur, porcupine quills, tortoise shells, and the hooves of animals. There were several fresh giraffe shinbones cleared of every scrap of meat and sinew and the marrow the Bushman so relishes. Finally, there were the unscattered ashes of their fires, a torn leather satchel sewn with sinew, and decorated with ostrich egg-shell beads which a Bushman hunter carries on his shoulder, as well as a broken four-stringed Bushman lyre.
‘They’ve gone,’ Samutschoso told me, letting some nutshells trickle through his fingers. ‘They’ve gone until next winter. Left about a week ago!’
‘Perhaps they’ve moved round the hill to a new site nearer water?’ I suggested.
‘No, Master,’ Samutchoso answered firmly. ‘The main drinking water is in the rocks over there. It is only the everlasting water that is on the hill above it.’
There and then, hot as it was, we climbed to both waters. The first, almost hidden by the hordes of bees drinking at it, filled the long narrow cleft that contained it, but one could tell from the slow drip through the veins in the rocks which fed it from above that, once emptied, it would not be filled again until the next rains. The ‘everlasting water’, as was expected by those who believed Samutchoso, led us to quite a different world.
We climbed up to it by a clearly defined track, the natural stepping stones worn smooth and shining with centuries of traffic. The moment one began to mount steeply one was aware that it was no ordinary track. It was too direct in its approach to be just another of the game tracks which, like the spokes of a sunwheel from their hub, led from the hills through the plain to the far horizon. This track had been extensively decorated. At several places where the rock presented a smooth enough surface it was highly painted. One would lift oneself up from one shelf to another to find oneself staring into the face of a rhinoceros regarding one without fear or favour; or a tortoise, head out and cocked to one side as if listening to our wilful steps, would suddenly confront one as if to imply a rebuke to the sweating procession climbing so frantically towards the summit. At another place we observed what must have been a crowded scene of the animal world, a farewell celebration, perhaps, to pilgrims on their way to the austere summit above. Finally, just below the last rim of rocks wherein the ‘everlasting’ water lay, there was a group of vigilant painted animals assembled on a ledge rather like passport officers at a frontier. This, of course, was a subjective reaction, but perhaps, to some extent, it was also true objectively and with this last painting an emotional circle was made complete for the painter. From the first clarion utterance of eland and giraffe on the raised rock to this final inspection on a far animal frontier, we seemed to be in the presence of a single system of spirit dedicated to the translation of flesh and blood into a greater idiom of the world beyond, where fruit of true knowledge purported to grow by everlasting water. I even wondered whether, with our profane guns and prying cameras, we were not clambering over the forsaken altars of a great natural temple.
Samutchoso, anyway, had no doubts. The expression on his face was exalted. He was the first to go eagerly over the rim. I followed. Before us was a deep cup in the crown of the central hill. I just had time to see a gleam of water when a heartrending sob broke from Samutchoso. He had stopped to kneel on a rock by the track, and was raising his hands like a Mussulman at his devotions, when he over-balanced backwards so violently that he nearly fell. Both knees were bleeding, but it was not the injury that was troubling him.
‘Did you see, Master?’ he asked, profoundly troubled. ‘I was not even allowed to begin to pray!’
He pointed out two deep holes in the rock in which he had tried to kneel and a third somewhat apart on the left. It was there, he said, that the greatest spirit of all had knelt with his cruse of water to pray the day he created the world. Here also he, Samutchoso himself had knelt to pray when he visited the hills before. Yet now he had not been allowed to do so. He had been pulled backwards. He was visibly anguished and I could say little to comfort him, but his instinctive obedience to the working of his fate still enabled him to lead us, like a man in a trance, to the pool of perennial water.
The grass around the edges of the pool was green and lush and the surface covered with growth and slime for it was long since it had been disturbed. In that high place, and in that arid desert, its mere existence was a miracle. Dragonflies and butterflies gratefully made gay over it, and hip to hip the dark brown bees drank eagerly at its edges. Nearby grew the ‘Tree of True Knowledge’ as Samutschoso called it. From its branches hung large, round fruit like green navel oranges. Samutchoso announced they were still too green for eating and that fact, too, seemed to add to his foreboding. The fruit when ripe, he said, was more delicious than honey. I would have liked to bring some of it back for identification, but Samutchoso begged me not to pick any of it. I felt I had already so hurt his spirit that I desisted and merely tried to film the fruit.
Down the sides of the hill several distinct tracks of animals led to the water. Though there were no spoor in the earth the rocks, as Samutchoso had foretold, were deeply impressed with the hoof-prints of the animals. He took us from one set to the other and though my companions argued their own preferred explanations of the phenomenon far into the days to come, I will attempt none and merely add that I myself identified the spoor of eland, gemsbok, giraffe, and hartebeest embedded deeply in the rock.
Long before we reached this stage Duncan had rejoined us, his magazines replenished and his spirit undismayed. But once more, despite his skill and care, the frustration of the morning was repeated. As he was trying to film the ‘Fruit of Knowledge’ the last magazine of six jammed. This renewed and continued set-back to filming, after all we had endured, was profoundly disheartening. Was I never to be allowed to make a film of the journey? Both I and Duncan refused to admit such a possibility. So he, Charles, and I worked until late that night cleaning the magazines and camera parts, oiling, greasing, and polishing them by our great fire, until Duncan in the end said with a defiant grin: ‘Well! I’d like to see anything stop me from filming tomorrow!’
But he was wrong. Again at first light we were invaded by bees and had to endure them until the sun rose when they vanished as before. After that we returned to the hills, climbed up a precipitous cleft to the first painting and began to film it. Hardly had we started when the ominous blur in the precise mechanism of the camera announced another stoppage. So it went on all day. By nightfall everyone, except myself and Duncan, seemed convinced there was a permanent hoodoo on us. Once more Duncan with all the tenacity of his race spent the evening overhauling his camera and spares. Charles and I left him to it and set up our Ferrograph and microphones to record some of the strange night sounds that wailed around the hills. Then we got an additional shock. The machine, which before had worked so well, now went dead on us. We tried every test prescribed in the makers’ manual. We could find no fault in any of the parts. But the machine was dead. By midnight we abandoned the effort without any sound recording. As we crawled into bed a strange wind rose combining, with the carrion of the bush, to sing of annihilation and decay among the rocks now deep in sable against the dark.
The next day, from the invasion of bees at first light to the jamming of the camera before breakfast, the pattern was repeated. To this day the snippets of filming we brought back testify to the struggle that went on all the time, until in the afternoon, the forces working against us decided on the final blow. A steel swivel in the camera itself (a part so sec
ure that no spare for it is ever carried) failed, and brought abruptly to an end our filming with that particular camera. It seemed to me when that happened that the grim faces of the hills came near to laughter. The whole thing had so got on my nerves that I began to fear that our admirable Land-Rovers, which had never failed us, might also get caught up in the sinister cycle of misfortune and refuse to start. For clearly we now had to leave the place as quickly as possible.
My fear was not lessened by Samutchoso who exclaimed in surprise, as he watched Cheruyiot deposit the camera in camp: ‘But surely, Master, you never expected those machines to work?’
‘Of course I did,’ I answered heatedly. ‘Why not?’
‘Would you like me to find out?’ he asked.
‘Please do,’ I answered curtly.
He asked me for a clean thread of white cotton with which he threaded a needle produced from his bundle. He knotted the two ends of the thread together, turned the double thread around his fingers, and placed the needle in the life-line of the palm of his left hand. He then looked deeply into it.
By this time everyone in the camp knew something unusual was happening and all stopped working to crowd round the pair of us. Silently they watched Samutchoso. He stood gazing at his palm for about ten minutes and then in a voice we had not heard before, he began to speak to presences that only he could see, saying: ‘No, not you over there. Don’t push so please. . . . Be so good as to make way for him that is behind you. . . . No not you either, but the next please. . . .’ And so on and on until at last a deep ‘Ah!’ came from him as if he had found in a great multitude the one he sought. Then he fell silent and appeared to be listening intently. Another quarter of an hour passed thus and then, like a man awaking, he rubbed his eyes, shook his head and seeing me again said slowly: ‘Yes! Master, it is as I thought, the spirits of the hills are very angry with you, so angry that if they had not known your intention in coming here was pure they would long since have killed you. They are angry because you have come here with blood on your hands. They are angry because you have not behaved like a leader of your men. You allowed men who are less than you to come into their presence before you did. You allowed them to trample all over the hills and drink of the water they provide for men and beasts without first saying their prayers and asking permission to do so. You should have come first with me and, as the leader, paid your respects to them. We should first have asked their permission and have made a sacrifice of food and said our prayers before taking of their waters. That is why they have broken your machines. And, Master, they have not done with you yet.’
He said all this so quietly without melodrama or any effort at effect that it was deeply impressive. I saw a look of consternation on the listening black faces.
‘What can I do to put it right?’ I asked him.
He shook his grey head sadly saying: ‘I do not know. Truly I do not know. They are angry with me, too. You saw how they threw me out of the place of prayer? They tell me they would have killed me if I had tried again.’
And there for the moment I had to leave it. I got the camp busy preparing to run from the hills first thing in the morning. Our situation, from a practical point of view, was desperate. Our time was running out fast and in spite of Duncan’s promising start at Muhembo I was not much nearer making the film I had contracted to make than when Spode left us. I had managed once, thanks to the steadfast support of Vyan and Ben, to lift the expedition out of one cycle of failure, but could I do it a second time? Again I would have to go a thousand miles and more into the civilized world beyond the desert and try to get Duncan’s camera repaired. It was uncertain that I could get the spares, and Duncan thought even if I did the repair might take weeks. Could I count on everyone standing fast until I returned and once more taking up a task twice blighted by such abject failure? There in the silence of the impervious hills the answer seemed hopelessly problematical. And yet that was not what troubled me most. As the gloomy afternoon wore on I found myself worrying more and more about what Samutchoso had told me of the spirits. I felt I could not leave the situation as it was. That seemed even more important than my own success or failure. Something more was demanded of me, and towards sunset I walked away with a gun once more to the gap in the hills to consider this strange persistent feeling.
When I came opposite the crimson cleft in the rocks a movement in the bush brought my eyes out of their inner focus. Fifty yards away stood the kudu with the Viking horn and the long face that I had seen the first day. I stood still at once, and for some moments it remained immovable staring intently at me. I almost held my breath so close did the animal feel to me. Finally it just changed direction by calmly turning round and climbing back into the bush from whence it had come. It reminded me vividly of the eland in the raised painting; and that gave me an idea which sent me hurrying back to the camp to find Samuchoso.
‘Suppose’, I asked him, ‘I wote a letter to the spirits to beg forgiveness and put it in a bottle and we buried it at the foot of the painting of the eland for the spirits to read, would that help, d’you think?’
He did not think long. With a light I had not seen in his eyes since the day after our meeting with the buffalo, he exclaimed: ‘Master, it’s a very good plan’!
While he stood beside me I sat down at once to write the letter. I wrote quickly, for in some odd way it seemed already written inside myself. At the same time I felt it important to make it as formal and correct as possible. This is how I remember it:
In camp,
Sunset,
To the Spirits, Thursday, October —
The Tsodilo Hills
We beg most humbly the pardon of the great spirits of these Slippery Hills for any disrespect we may have shown them unintentionally and for any disturbance we may have caused in their ancient resting place. At the foot of this great painting, which is such clear evidence of their presence and of their power to make flesh and blood create beyond its immediate self, we bury this letter as an act of profound contrition, hoping they will read it and forgive us. We beg that anyone coming after us, finding this letter and reading it too, will be moved by it to show them greater respect than we have done.
When it was written I read it out aloud to my companions some of whom thought it was going a bit too far. None the less I made them all sign it. That done we sealed it in an envelope which I addressed to ‘The Spirits, Tsodilo Hills’. We placed it in a lime juice bottle and at first light the next day Samutchoso and I climbed up for the last time to the painting that had first caught our eyes. The eland and giraffe over the signature of those gay young hands glowed with a clear warm ruby light in the shadows, and almost at the place where the forgotten artist must have stood to paint them we found a crack in the ledge with sand enough to bury the letter.
‘Do you think that all will be well now?’ I asked Samutchoso when we stood up.
‘Would you like me to find out?’ he asked.
‘Please,’ I requested.
Thereupon he took out his needle and thread again and stood there once more, with bowed head, looking deep into the life-line in his hand. For some time I watched that grey head in the oldest attitude of communion with a spirit beyond his and my own tight round of knowing, moved as I had seldom been before. Below us the dawn came up fast, its light breaking over the vast plains like wave upon wave of some multitudinous sea incarnadined.
Then Samutchoso looked up quickly to say in a voice trembling with emotion: ‘All is well, Master. The spirits ask me to say that henceforth all will be well with you. Only they warn me that when you get to the next place to which you are going you will find one more unhappiness waiting for you. They ask you not to be discouraged by it because it will be an unhappiness that belongs not to the future but the past.’
We returned in silence to camp. For the first time no bees came to attack us. Our Land-Rovers started up and took us promptly from the presence of the hills without hitch. We took Samutchoso to his home and when I left him I
was sad to see that, although I might be free of the experience, he had not yet done with it. I knew he felt as near to me as was possible to someone not of his race. He had treated me as a friend and I am certain wished me well. Yet there was a strange compelling note of regret in his voice when, on saying farewell, he remarked: ‘The spirits of the hills are not what they were, Master. They are losing their power. Ten years ago they would have killed you all for coming to them in that manner.’
It was a cry straight from his heart and the final utterance of an experience which seemed to be to be an example of the injury the coming of the European had done to the being and spirit of Africa. Samutchoso’s gods were dying from a contagion brought by us and against which he and his kind had not our inborn immunities. Now to whom and to what could he turn? For even he, illiterate and unimpressive in the rags and tatters of our civilization, knew that without his gods life would lose its meaning and inevitably lead towards disaster. His face and his cry rode with me all the hundreds of miles on the hard journey to Maun.
We arrived at Maun on another wide, white, glittering Sunday afternoon. I had decided at the last moment to go to Maun instead of Muhembo because I thought it would give my party more comfort and company while I was away trying again to get my film venture going, and so help them over what was going to be another tedious test of their goodwill. On arrival Charles volunteered to seek out the D.C. and ask for mail. On his return I knew by his expression that he brought bad news. One of his letters was an urgent appeal from his mother begging him to come home because his father had died some days before. When he told me, the face of ‘He who was left after reaping’ with his prophecy of ‘one more misfortune’ was as clear as if it had been staring at me over Charles’s shoulder.
The Lost World of the Kalahari Page 21
