by Lewis Desoto
Her father raised his eyebrows at her, and she said quickly, “After we look at the snakes.” She wanted to please him, to be brave for him.
The Snake Park was more like a zoo, with tortoises, a wire enclosure where bats hung in a tree, a pool where an old crocodile floated in the murky water. There were no snakes. Then Märit’s father said to her, “Come, we can go and see them milking a snake.”
“Milking?” She imagined a snake with teats, like a sow, with a row of nipples along its underside.
“It’s just an expression. They take the venom from the snake and use it to make a serum, so that if you get bitten, they can inject some serum into your blood and you won’t die.”
Her father took her hand and led her to an enclosure, a patch of grass surrounded by a narrow ditch of water, where two men stood on either side of a large wooden box. One of the men had in his hand a long pole with a sort of clamp on the end. His assistant opened the box and the man reached in with the pole. After a moment he withdrew the pole and a long black wriggling snake was held in the clamp.
“That’s a mamba,” her father whispered. “Very poisonous.”
What if it gets loose? she thought. “Snakes can swim, can’t they?” she whispered. What if it got loose and came towards the crowd and swam across the moat?
Now the man holding the pole handed it over to his assistant. He drew a small glass jar from his pocket and moved towards the wriggling snake held in the clamp on the end of the pole.
“He’s going to put the jar by the snake’s mouth and make it bite,” her father said. “The venom will go into the jar.”
The man reached out and grasped the snake behind the head, and the assistant released the clamp. The long writhing black body coiled back and forth. Märit thought she could hear an angry hissing noise, like air escaping from a punctured tire. The fangs were exposed, protruding from the snake’s mouth, and they fastened onto the lip of the glass jar.
But then something went wrong. A sudden coiling, whipping motion from the snake, and the man lost his grasp on the jar, which fell to the grass. Märit saw the fangs sink into the man’s hand, into the fleshy part just behind the thumb.
He screamed in pain and flailed his hand in the air, with the long black snake hanging there, fangs embedded in his flesh.
Märit screamed too, then pulled away from her father and ran. She ran along a graveled path, not wanting to be trapped in this place, with the snake loose, and she imagined the snake loose now, swimming across the ditch, into the crowd, coming for her. There was a small building just ahead, and she dashed for it. She would be safe inside and there would be someone to help her, someone to catch and kill the snake.
She blundered into a room with a dimly lit interior. There was a faint animal smell in the air. A movement flickered ahead and Märit jerked back, turning to flee. Her motion brought her full tilt into a thick sheet of glass. The impact stunned her, exploding her vision in a flash of bursting light. As she put her hand to her forehead, rubbing the bump that was already forming, she saw the snake.
Behind the glass, in the dim room with its murky yellow light, a cobra had reared up, the whole upper body swaying back and forth, the wide hooded head swollen out like a fan. And at the top of the engorged hood the small reptilian face was watching her with black eyes that were almost on a level with hers.
Märit could not move—her body trembled but she could not move. The sinuous body of the snake swayed slowly from side to side, and she followed it with her eyes, and the other black eyes held hers. The swaying stopped abruptly, the hood seemed to enlarge, to become even more engorged; the mouth opened wide, revealing the pink interior and the stretched muscles of the jaws and the yellow fangs. In a motion that was too fast for her to register, the snake struck.
The reptilian head banged against the glass, once, twice, towards her face, and from the pink mouth a whitish liquid spurted out onto the glass window. The swaying head of the snake shuddered, and it reared and spat again, the thick liquid spattering onto the glass.
Märit screamed and screamed. She was screaming when her father found her, and she was still screaming when he lifted her in his arms and hurried out to the car with her.
She remembers the long walk on the beach afterwards, her father carrying her in his arms, and the cool salty wind off the ocean, and an ice-cream cone, and then a bottle of cream soda that she held in both hands so long that the liquid lost its fizz and chill until it had the flavour of warm syrup.
But afterwards, for a long time afterwards, her parents had to check her bedroom before she would enter the room to sleep, and she would make sure her father looked under the bed and beneath the pillow and behind the dresser before she would go to bed.
Even now Märit does not like to go barefoot, even in the house, especially at night, and she is always wary when she walks in the long grass.
7
MÄRIT ARRIVES at a fence, the barbed wire that marks the border of the farm, the limits of what she owns, the territory where she may walk without being a stranger. A fence to keep others out, and to keep her in. A frontier. She paces along the fence, glancing through the strands of wire to the other side. If she crosses and continues walking, how long before she reaches another country, the real frontier, where there are rumors of war? She will not be welcome there. If she crosses that country and goes to the next she will not be welcome there. Or in the country beyond that. In all the miles and acres of the whole continent it is only here, on this side of the fence, behind the wire, that she belongs.
Märit searches on the ground for a sturdy stick, then uses it to separate two strands of wire, the way she has seen Ben do, making a space wide enough for her to step through. Her thick chestnut hair falls across her face and she pauses a moment to gather it back, fastening the tresses into a rough bun with an elastic from her pocket.
The trees are the same here, the soil, the sky, the air all the same as on the other side of the wire. But she is different. A trespasser. She walks farther in, until the fence is no longer in sight. When she reaches a conical mound of dried mud, a termite mound in the shade, she sits down and removes her cardigan, glad to feel the air on her bare arms. Silence closes in on her. But then she picks out the sounds of birds, the chattering of finches, the soft call of a dove, then the flash of tawny brown and white as a hoopoe sails through the branches of an acacia, a wriggling grub in its long beak.
In this unknown country, this wild place, she is nobody, she is unknown. She is not Märit, not Mevrou Laurens, not the farmer’s wife, not the new bride, not the girl who lost her parents, not the Missus, not the one who walks and is watched. Here there is nobody to see her. She is nobody. Here is a place to forget and be forgotten.
She sees the shrubs and trees and the long grass, but her mind takes no notice of what is there as her consciousness drifts into a state of half awareness, as she forgets herself and her trespasses. Her eyelids droop like those of a cat, the world dissolves in a haze of light. She is free of the burden of her self. She is alone. She is nobody.
Time has no substance when she lapses into these states. Time stops, becomes nonexistent, as if she steps out of the flow. She is aware, but her usual consciousness is suspended. It is not a state that could be characterized as happiness, yet she is happy, after a fashion.
A rustle sounds in the trees nearby, the movement of leaves, the sharp snap of a twig breaking—the motion of another presence on the earth. Märit rises quickly to her feet. She hears the careful tread of footsteps, stealthy, then silence. The birds have ceased their chattering.
All the fear rushes back, all the awareness. She is not alone, she is watched. Her eyes move across the screen of brush, peering into the dappled green and brown. Nothing. Nobody. Her heart flutters rapidly in her chest.
Nobody, yet she is watched. She feels it in the silence and the suspension that fills the air. Her ears strain to catch the slightest sound, the slightest movement. And it comes again, the furtive footst
eps.
“Who is it?” she calls.
The movement stops. She feels herself watched, seen by the unseen.
She decides to run. All her muscles tense for flight.
In that moment as she poises to flee, a face peers at her from among the leaves. Dark eyes meet hers and hold her transfixed.
The footsteps shuffle again and the face pushes forward through the leaves. A long muzzle, a white chevron down the bridge of the nose, large almond-shaped eyes.
The animal steps into the clearing. A kudu, jaws slowly chewing, shell-like ears swiveled in her direction, brown eyes focused upon Märit. A long sigh of relief shudders through her chest as she breathes again.
The fear drains from Märit, flowing away like water, and she is left trembling and grateful. Only a buck, only an animal. Only a kudu, studying her with cow-like eyes. The antelope steps into the clearing delicately, dainty for an animal of that size, for it is almost as big as a horse. Above the mild brown eyes, and the shell-like ears turned in her direction, are corkscrew horns, heraldic, regal, like a royal headdress. On the tan hide, thin white vertical stripes are like further emblems of royalty. A bearded fringe dangles below the animal’s chin, brushing its neck.
Recovering from her fright, Märit is left grateful and trembling, seized for a moment with an almost overwhelming desire to embrace the kudu. Could it be the very same kudu she saw that first day she came to the farm with Ben, when they disturbed one as it was drinking at the river? Kudufontein, the name of this farm, given for the presence of this animal.
Märit remembers a picture she saw as a girl, in a book of paintings, of a walled garden and a lady in white kneeling before a white unicorn that had the same expression on its face as this kudu. The desire to embrace the animal, to touch it, comes upon her again.
Märit feels herself in the presence of some wise and beneficent dignitary, a creature from mythology, something priestly and good. And in this presence she feels herself also to be good and wise and without malice or harm. Slowly she lowers herself to her knees and folds her hands before her chest, in a gesture of prayer, of worship. The kudu dips its head and looks at her, wide black nostrils flaring slightly to take in her scent. She smells the kudu’s breath, a scent of warm grass.
She looks up into the creature’s eyes and sees no guile, no malice, no fear, only the kudu’s knowledge of itself. She sees its soul. And her own soul is tarnished and flawed in comparison, compromised in some manner that she fears will never be purified.
Gently she reaches up to touch the bearded fringe, to stroke the chevron of white across the nose, to be taken up onto that strong back.
She is emptied of doubt, of trespass, of fear.
“I am Märit,” she whispers.
The kudu ceases chewing for a moment, then emits a soft pant, like an answer, and again she smells the warm scent of grass, the very breath of the animal.
She stretches her hand forward, wanting just one touch, and she feels the warm breath on the tips of her extended fingers. Then the kudu steps back, and the regal head reaches up, and the wide shell-like ears swivel away. It turns without looking at her and moves back into the trees, unconcerned.
The soft thud of the footsteps fades and the rustling of the leaves fades, and the silence returns.
The tears that come to her eyes are hot and bitter, and filled with great sadness. Some great opportunity has passed. As if the hope of grace has been offered, then withdrawn from her forever. She remains kneeling on the ground, head bowed, hands clasped.
Eventually, Märit rises to her feet, a supplicant whose prayers have remained unacknowledged, and she is chastened and disappointed. She rises and brushes away the dust from her knees and turns again to the way she has come, to the farm, to the fence, to the house where she must live.
As she walks slowly back to the house Märit recalls a story she once was told of a traveler who lived amongst the Bushmen of the desert, those nomadic wanderers who slept under the stars and carried nothing and left nothing behind, moving with the winds of the seasons. The traveler asked them one day, How is it that you never become lost? They had no maps and there were no roads, no signposts, yet the Bushmen moved unerringly to where there was water, and food, moving like the breezes of the desert.
They laughed at the question, for it was strange to them. How can we become lost, they said. The birds know us, the animals know us, the wind knows us. At night the stars see us and they know where we are. So then, how can we become lost?
But nobody knows me, Märit thinks. And I am lost.
8
THE DAY is dark. The hour is early, too early to even be called morning. The sun has not risen, the world is still immersed in the silence of night. Only a single bird in the darkness, calling with a cry like water falling on stone, announces that daylight will come, that this darkness too shall pass.
Grace stands with Tembi next to the gate, where the driveway to the house meets the dust road that winds through the veldt and past the other farms until it eventually meets the paved road to Klipspring. From here Grace will walk to Klipspring, and there she will take a bus to Postberg, and there she will take another bus to Rooifontein, and from there she will walk to visit her sick cousin Sofia in the hospital.
Because it is a long distance to walk to Klipspring, and because the bus to Postberg leaves early in the day from outside the station, she must leave here while the darkness of night still lingers, before the morning light touches the sky.
Grace carries her handbag, the good black one, and a small overnight case. She wears her Sunday coat and hat, her going-to-church clothes. But her feet are bare, her shoes placed neatly in the top of her suitcase. She walks barefoot because it is easier to walk these dusty roads unencumbered by shoes, because she wants her shoes to remain free of dust until she reaches the town limits of Klipspring, where she will put them on, and straighten her hat and brush down her coat and present to the world the image of the respectable, employed woman that she is, not some wanderer come in from the countryside.
Tembi shivers slightly in the predawn chill, standing close to Grace. “Mother, I want to visit Sofia in Rooifontein and see her baby.” There is a pleading in her voice, a child’s tone that she has not used in many years, the yearning of a child to be taken along on a trip, to participate in the adventure of leaving home.
Grace shakes her head sharply. “You must stay here and work in the farmhouse. I told Missus Märit that you will help her with the cooking and cleaning.”
“Why can’t Missus Märit clean her own house and cook her own food?”
“Don’t talk this way, my daughter. My work is in that house, and now I must go away and you must do that work for me. You must keep my position there for me. If you don’t, they will find someone else.”
Grace has worries other than what Tembi desires at this moment. She worries about her cousin Sofia, about the small child, about there being no husband, about what happens if Sofia has to stay in the hospital. She worries about the long walk in the darkness, and whether she will miss the bus. She worries about the money she will spend on bus fares and medicines. She wants to hurry now, to be on her way, to allay her anxiety.
But she is also glad to linger here a moment, glad that Tembi has risen with her and walked down to the gate with her, and carried her bag this short distance.
The sand underfoot smells damp from the dew that falls in the night and there is a faint aroma of wood smoke in the air even though it is too early for any cooking fires to have started.
Tembi shivers, shifts Grace’s suitcase to her other hand and hunches her shoulders, for she has only pulled on her thin cotton dress before coming out.
Grace looks at her kindly, with the affection of a mother for her daughter. “You should have stayed in bed longer, my piccanin. Or at least have put on a pullover.” She rubs her hand briskly across her daughter’s shoulders. “And why are you so thin? All that porridge I feed you, you should be as plump as a heifer,
but you are like a gazelle instead.”
“I am strong now, Mother.” Tembi says this as a statement of fact, as if there is no question of her being otherwise.
Grace smiles in the darkness. “Yes, you are. You are strong. I know this.”
“When will I see my father?” Tembi suddenly says.
“Father visits later in the year. When the mines give him his holidays. You know that, Tembi.”
“Why must my father always stay in the mines?” There is still something childish in her tone, the belligerent insistence of a child demanding answers.
“Why? My daughter, you ask me that?” Grace shakes her head. “So that you can have food for your breakfast. So that you have a warm pullover on cold mornings. So that we can pay the schoolteacher for your lessons. So that you can have sandals to wear instead of going with bare feet. That is why.”
“But why do we need extra money? Doesn’t the Missus pay you enough? You should ask her for more. And my father should work here on the farm. Ask Baas Ben. He has money.” All her impatience with her mother’s stolid, accepting ways comes out in her complaint.
“Do you blame me, Tembi? Do you blame me for this life?”
The girl scuffs her foot in the sand and shakes her head.
“Come then, daughter, give me my bag. I must go.”
She takes the bag and leans forward to place a kiss on Tembi’s cool forehead. “Things might be different one day, God willing.”
“How will they be different? Is God going to change things for us? Is that what you expect?”
“Hush, child. I won’t hear such words from you,” Grace answers, stepping across the cattle grate that lies between the road and the driveway. “You must look after everything while I am gone. All right?”
Tembi pouts.
“All right, Tembi?”
