by Lewis Desoto
Märit’s heart breaks with tenderness. The tears fall from her eyes and splash into the dust. “Mother wants you,” she murmurs to the small yellow face that looks out at her. And the mother hen clucks from deep inside her breast.
Suddenly, Märit is jealous. Jealous of the mother hen, jealous of her protective love. She has what Märit does not have. If she only had her own child to love now, her heart would not break so. The tears fall from her cheeks onto the dust as she stretches her hands with longing towards the little yellow chicks.
“Go to Mother,” she murmurs to the chicks as they nibble at her fingers. “Mother wants you.”
Then, from the doorway to the shed, rises the angry crowing of Dik-Dik. He catches sight of Märit and spreads his wings, rushing at her, but Michael is quick to intercept him, scooping the rooster up into his arms.
Märit retreats behind the wire-mesh fence. Even this little bit of tenderness is denied her by the possessive rooster. She hates him. She kicks at the fence, then wipes the tears from her face and walks back to the house.
AT NIGHT, when the chickens have been rounded up and closed into their pen, and when Michael and Dik-Dik have retired to the hut in the kraal, and the chicks are safe with their mother, Märit and Tembi sit together in the living room of the house. The generator chugs with a comforting rhythm, the night air is mild and sweet, the lamplight falls in yellow pools on the heads of the two women. Sometimes, in the evenings, Märit tries the radio, longing for music. But there is never anything but static.
Tembi is reading a book, and Märit has some sewing in her lap, but her hands are still and her attention is elsewhere. She is remembering the feel of the delicate, fuzzy little chick in her hands, and she feels in her heart an obscure sensation of loss.
Tembi sighs and closes her book, stretching out in the chair. “It is so peaceful here. We are like a family now. The three of us. Even Dik-Dik is part of the family. And now we have some babies!”
Märit composes her face and tries to smile. “Yes, they’re so beautiful.”
Tembi studies Märit across the lamplight, her brown eyes inquiring.
“You are sad, Märit?”
Before Märit has a chance to answer, the lamplight flickers, then dies, casting the room into sudden darkness.
Tembi reaches for the switch next to her chair and flicks it back and forth. “What happened?”
“Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“The generator. I don’t hear it.” Märit rises and goes to the window and listens for the chug, chug of the generator motor. “It’s definitely stopped. I’ll have to go and see what’s wrong.”
“But it’s late now. You can do it in the morning.”
“No. There is food in the refrigerator that will spoil by morning.”
Märit finds the flashlight in a drawer and when she turns it on its white beam lights up the room. “Will you come with me?”
Outside, the night is cool. There is no moon, but the stars are a dense weave of sparkling points, flickering in the velvet sky. The white beam of the flashlight cuts a path through the darkness.
When they reach the generator shed and enter it, Märit plays the light over the engine. “I don’t really know how it works. This is the fuel tank, for the diesel”—she taps the container—“but there is also a battery that is charged by the turning of the windmill. Ben always took care of it. I never learned how it works.”
“Maybe there is no fuel. Shine the light here.” Tembi unscrews the lid of the tank and Märit shines the beam down. “No, it’s got fuel. There must be some other problem.”
They spend the next minutes tracing pipes and wires, but to no avail. The workings of the generator remain a mystery.
“We’ll have to leave it for the morning,” Märit concludes.
As they walk back to the house, the chirping of crickets is as dense as the stars overhead. From the direction of the river a chorus of croaks and warbles competes with the crickets. And beyond that is a vast silence.
MÄRIT WAKES to happiness, because she remembers the little yellow chicks, and she wants to see them again, and she wants to hear the small music that Michael makes on his music box, and she wants to hold the sweet, soft life in her hands again.
But she also remembers the generator failing in the night. She doubts that either she or Tembi will be able to fix it, and now, without electricity, without a telephone, without a radio, their lives will be that much more difficult. Will they even be able to remain on the farm?
She rises quickly, hurrying to stoke the kitchen stove into life.
Tembi stretches like a cat when Märit brings the breakfast tray to her room. “You bring me breakfast again! You don’t have to.”
“I know. But I like to. Stay in bed a little longer.” Märit takes pleasure in this occasional ritual, when she can sit on the edge of the bed and watch Tembi sip her tea. These moments of intimacy give her comfort and a sense of normalcy.
“I didn’t hear Dik-Dik this morning,” Tembi says. “He usually wakes me up with his crowing.”
“Perhaps Michael has taught him to sleep a bit longer in the mornings.” Märit sits a while longer, then says, “We have to see about the generator. The food is going to spoil in this heat.”
Tembi throws back the sheet. “I’ll get up now.”
“I want to go and look at the chicks first.”
“Yes! I love those little babies.”
Outside, the blades of the windmill turn in the warm breeze as Märit makes her way to the chicken coop. She pauses when she notices Michael, sitting with his back against a tree, in the same place where she first saw him. On the ground at his side is his music box, his old alarm clock, and the pair of boots that he never wears.
“Good morning, Michael. Where is Dik-Dik today? I didn’t hear him when I woke up.”
Michael barely glances up as she approaches, and as she steps closer Märit sees the lines of tears etched on his dusty face.
“Michael! What is it? Is something wrong?”
Märit crouches down next to him. There is mucus gathered in his nostril, and she wants to reach across and wipe his nose, as one would for a child.
“Michael, what’s wrong. Is it Dik-Dik? Has something happened?”
Michael looks up at her and tries to speak, the words not forming on his damaged tongue. A groan escapes from his throat.
Märit stands slowly and stares in the direction of the chicken coop. “You’re frightening me, Michael. What has happened? Is it the chickens? Is it Dik-Dik? The babies?”
Michael tilts his head and wails at her, showing the stump of his tongue in his open mouth.
Märit sets off at a run.
The breeze lifts and blows around her, and she sees the white rose petals blowing in the wind, and her mind refuses to believe what she knows is coming, and she sees white petals in the wind—and the white feathers that rise on the wind are stained with blood. The wire gate to the coop is wide open, and everywhere are white and red feathers and the smell of blood, and she sees the carcasses, entrails spilling onto the dust.
Märit rushes into the shed, and there are bloody feathers everywhere. Frantically she searches through the hay, her only thought for the chicks, her hands touching old droppings, the smooth surface of eggs, but no chicks.
Outside again she searches at the back of the shed, and there she sees the hole at the bottom of the fence, and the dug-up earth where some animal has come in. And here she finds a few puffs of yellow down, and here is the body of Dik-Dik, limp, torn, his head almost severed from his neck.
Märit recoils from the devastation. Every single chicken has been killed. Butchered. The bodies have been scattered everywhere by some ferocious presence that passed amongst the hens, ripping and clawing and slashing at random.
Märit staggers away from the carnage and the guts and the smell of death. And on the breeze a small tuft of yellow down drifts past her and then is gone. She clutches her han
ds over her eyes and wails, and the sound that breaks from her mouth is the same inarticulate cry of grief that came from Michael’s damaged mouth.
When Tembi arrives, still in her nightdress, her brown face goes ash gray at the sight of the destruction. Clutching her arms against her body as if the day has suddenly turned cold, she sinks to her knees.
“I don’t understand this,” Tembi moans. “This wasn’t done out of hunger. It couldn’t have been. What animal could have done this? What evil? I don’t understand why everything has to be killed.” She grabs a handful of soil in her fists and flings it away from her. “I hate this country!”
MÄRIT DIGS the pit in the earth while Tembi shovels together the carcasses and loads them into a wheelbarrow. Both women tie scarves across their lower faces because now, as the sun becomes hotter, the odor of putrefaction is a stench. When the remains of the chickens have been tipped into the pit Märit begins to shovel soil over the carcasses.
“This won’t work,” Tembi tells her. “Animals will come and dig it up. Hyenas, jackals. We must burn it.”
“There is gasoline in the tractor shed. I’ll fetch it.”
She walks past Michael on her way to the shed, and he does not even look up, but sits slumped against the tree with his head hanging.
“Michael?” she says gently.
He raises his head and looks at her with dull eyes that show no glimpse of recognition.
She fetches the can of gasoline and brings it back to the pit. Tembi douses the chicken carcasses, then sets the can back at a safe distance. “Do you have matches?”
Tembi coils together some strands of dry grass, then lights it and tosses the burning coil into the pit.
The gasoline ignites with a bright orange whoosh, and the women shield their faces from the sudden heat. A pall of smoke rises quickly into the air, carrying with it the singed smell of burning feathers. The smoke is white, and then it is black, and the smell now is of burning flesh. Märit presses her scarf tighter against her face, suppressing the urge to gag.
When the flames die and the smoke dissipates, the women spread soil over the charred embers, and then they carry soil in the wheelbarrow back to the coop and sprinkle it over the dark bloodstains that are everywhere on the ground.
“We should burn this too,” Tembi says, her voice grim. “The whole shed and everything. I don’t want to see it here every day and think about the evil.”
Märit pours what remains of the gasoline onto the wooden boards of the shed and trickles a trail out to the gate of the coop. Then she fashions a coil of grass as Tembi had done and sets it alight before tossing it onto the ground.
A tongue of fire darts up and races towards the shed, then licks up the side of the dry boards, and the flame consumes them. A dull thump blows out from the interior of the shed as one wall collapses inwards and the hay inside sparks alight. Tembi and Märit stand some distance away, in silence, until the shed has collapsed, and the smoke drifts away, and only charred timber is left.
All day Michael does not stir from his place under the tree. Not even the fire seems to have grasped his attention. When the women have been to the house, and washed and changed their clothes, and Tembi brings Michael a mug of tea and a bowl of porridge, he does not acknowledge her.
“Michael, you must eat something.” Tembi touches him gently on the shoulder, raises his chin with her fingers, but she sees in his eyes that he is distant from her. “We will get some more chickens. And a rooster. A beautiful rooster, just like Dik-Dik.”
But the distance in his eyes does not lessen. Tembi sits down next to him. She wants to see his smile, and hear the small melody from his music box again. And even though her heart is heavy she tries to find words to comfort the stricken man.
“Sometimes things like this happen, Michael. Sometimes wild animals will come after the stock on a farm. The wild animals get hungry too.”
Michael shakes his head adamantly. Tembi wonders what evil he has witnessed before, and she wonders if here on the farm Michael had believed that he had found a haven from evil. She too wants to believe the farm is a haven, and she knows that Märit does also. But there is so much death on this soil.
She puts her hand on Michael’s shoulder again. “We will buy some more chickens, and a fine rooster. I promise you that we will do that, Michael. And then we can build a new chicken coop, with a strong fence.” But the distance is in his eyes and she has the feeling that he is not listening to her.
Michael does not stir from his place under the tree. Not when porridge and tea are brought for him, nor when Märit goes to sit with him.
Tembi watches from the window. “I’m worried about Michael. He won’t eat, he won’t move. And when he looks at me his eyes are in some other place. Those chickens were his family, Dik-Dik was his brother, and now he has lost them. His loss is greater than ours.”
Märit slumps back into her chair. “Oh, Tembi, sometimes it all seems so hopeless. We’re not strong enough for this place. I don’t know how to help Michael. I don’t even know how to help myself. We are running short of food—without the chickens it’s going to be worse—we have no electricity now.”
“We have the garden, we have maize that is almost ripe, there is fruit in the trees, we have water to drink. Even if it seems hopeless, this is our place.”
Märit tries a wan smile. “You always have hope, Tembi. You know more about suffering than I do, yet you always have hope. Without you here I would die. I feel that I will never leave this farm. I will die instead.”
“Don’t speak such nonsense. You think too much. Go and see to Michael. Maybe he will listen to you. Try to make him eat something.”
Michael still sits slumped against the tree, his hands lying limp on either side of his body. A trail of ants has found the bowl of porridge, and Märit tries to brush them away but then gives up. What can she say to him that will ease his loss? She cannot find the words to convince even herself to hope.
She reaches for his music box and plucks out a few notes, then places the instrument on Michael’s lap. “Will you make some music for me, Michael?” But his hands remain limp in the dust.
He remains sitting in place all through the day and into the evening. The women bring food and tea periodically, and talk to him, but the food remains untouched except by the ants. When darkness approaches they both urge him to come into the house. But he seems unaware of them now.
“Michael, you cannot sleep out here. You will be cold. It’s not safe.” Tembi tugs at his arm. “Please, come to the house.”
“He doesn’t know us any longer,” Märit says. She returns to the house and fetches blankets to drape over his shoulders. When darkness falls the women stand on the veranda of the house, looking out to the shadows that gradually obscure the sick and grieving man.
Märit brings a paraffin lamp and places it on the veranda. “I’ll leave it here in the night. That way he will see it and know we are here.”
IN THE MORNING when Tembi wakes she is immediately struck by the quality of the silence. No crowing from Dik-Dik, no clucking of chickens, no chug from the generator, no twanging music from Michael’s music box. Michael is gone. The silence tells her.
On the veranda the paraffin lamp has long since burned out. She walks down to the place where Michael sat all the previous day and night. She sees only the pair of old boots under the tree. And a single palm print outlined in the dust, as if he had placed his hand there when he rose at last. Tembi does not go to the kraal to look for him, or to any other place on the farm. The silence tells her that he is gone. Only the boots remain. He came with nothing and he has left with nothing.
Part Three
The River
39
SOMETIMES MÄRIT WALKS in the cool air of the morning, with the breeze moving the blades of the windmill and the doves cooing in the eucalyptus trees and the rows of maize plants green in the sunlight and the distant mountains violet against the blue sky, and for a moment she forgets.
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She stands at the bottom of the veranda steps and takes in the view. The landscape, so pure, the whisper of the breeze, the echo of birdsong.
She forgets the deaths that have marked this place called Kudufontein, or Lebone, or Duiwelskop, or nothing at all. She forgets the death of Grace, the death of Ben, the death of the stranger who was shot from the air, the death of the chickens. She forgets that Michael wanders out there in the wilderness.
But then she remembers, and the veil of sorrow descends. Then Märit is convinced that this farm is the last place on earth, that the rest of the world has been destroyed, and that destruction is lurking just beyond the horizon, in the brooding silence, knocking at the doors of Kudufontein. And then there will be no place left on earth.
If not for Tembi, Märit thinks, she would fade into the void that lies beyond the farm and give herself up to the silence. It would be so easy to give up, to cease the struggle, to let the veil descend. Only Tembi anchors Märit now. Tembi with her bright and optimistic smile, her courage to face obstacles, her brown skin that is a mixture of the veldt grasses and the dark soil so that she sometimes seems created from the veldt. I could fade into the pale light, Märit thinks, and I could disappear, because I am made from something insubstantial. But Tembi is made from the soil, she is this land.
When Tembi joins Märit on the veranda, and looks to see what Märit gazes upon so far away, and sees the distance in her eyes, she asks, “What are you looking at? What do you see?”
“Nothing. I’m looking at nothing.”
“We must harvest the mealies. They are ready. And we must pick the fruit. Otherwise, the birds will eat it all.”
“Won’t it go rotten anyway?”
“Not if we dry it. You can do that with fruit. But first you have to take out the pits, and slice the flesh, and set it out in the sun. A lot of work.”
“And what will we do with all the maize cobs?”
