A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

  Am I the ghost? Märit asks herself.

  “Wait,” she croaks, stumbling after them.

  56

  ON THE FAR VELDT, Tembi is in bondage amongst strangers. In the hottest hour of the day the company of soldiers lies resting in the shade below a ridge.

  A low drone sounds above the trees. All eyes turn to the sky. A long-winged aircraft slowly passes overhead, high up. It turns to make a wide circle above the trees where the soldiers are hidden. The aircraft circles back, lower, its camouflage markings visible above the trees, then it rises and continues south.

  Tembi lies on the hard earth and closes her eyes, glad of this respite, glad to cease the endless walking.

  She wakes with a full bladder. Her back is damp with sweat, the cloth sticking to her skin. She can smell the dust of the journey on her skin, the wood smoke, the cigarettes that the men smoke, that Khoza smokes, and the smell of the horses, their sweat. She rises and pulls the damp dress away from her skin. The soldiers are dozing, the horses cropping at the scrub under the trees. She moves away, past outstretched soldiers, seeking someplace out of sight.

  “Where are you going?” a voice demands as a sentry materializes in front of her.

  “To piss,” she says brutally. “Do I have your permission?”

  “Watch out for snakes,” he calls after her as she moves out of sight. “Don’t let one bite your honey pot.” His laughter is crude.

  She steps carefully, although she has not seen a snake since that long-ago day when she killed the mamba that Märit found in the laundry room.

  Märit! Where is she now? What will become of her? The last image of Märit is fixed in Tembi’s mind, of Joshua riding her down with his horse, and the figure lying on the ground in front of the house. What if she is so badly hurt that she cannot get up? What will become of Märit? What will become of them all?

  When she is out of sight Tembi looks to see that the guard has not followed her before she squats behind some bushes to relieve herself. The reddish soil turns dark under the stream of liquid, dark as blood on the earth. What will become of her garden, thirsty in the dry earth?

  Tembi becomes aware of the silence. There is no sound anywhere. She cannot hear the soldiers, or the chirp of birds, or the buzz of cicadas. There is an interruption in the motion of things, as if all living creatures have paused in their eternal motion, and hold their breath, like that moment before a storm when all the world catches its breath and holds it—in anticipation, in hope, or in fear.

  In the pit of her stomach she has a sensation of foreboding, waiting for the storm to break. Only her own solitary heart beats, as all the rest of nature waits. But for what does it wait? Far off she hears the sound of an engine, and she cannot tell if it is an airplane in the sky or a vehicle on the ground. A faint tremor moves the air, as if some monstrous creature has sighed and lumbered to its feet.

  She knows what the world waits for now, in this strange moment of anxious anticipation. That fluttering in the air is the motion of Death’s cloak, and that distant engine is the announcement of a terrible presence beginning to make itself known.

  Tembi waits.

  A shout. A rapid booming noise shakes the earth. Something unseen rips through the leaves above her head like a scythe, scattering a spray of chopped leaves and twigs through the branches. A burned smell in the air. Then the guns speak—a hail of bullets smashing into the camp from all directions, men’s voices screaming, smoke filling the air. Death announces itself.

  A vehicle of some kind strains its engine on the ridge and whines into gear, then ceases suddenly as the booming of a heavy weapon reverberates through the thick smoke.

  The suddenness of the eruption stuns Tembi. The shooting is coming from every direction, voices screaming around her, figures running, boots thudding on the ground, the air filling with a burning smell of battle.

  She cowers with her hands over her head, trying to make herself small, to block out the banging of the guns and the terrible voices, to hide from the bullets cutting through the branches. The explosions and the shooting seem to go on forever, as if the entire earth is being destroyed.

  A sudden pause, the clamor silenced—only the yellow smoke drifting through the trees. She rises cautiously to her feet. The chatter of a gun makes her flinch, but it is farther off, the shouting is moving away.

  “Khoza!” Tembi calls.

  Distant voices, too far away to make out the words.

  Tembi runs back to the camp; the horses have bolted, the soldiers are gone. Some items of clothing lie on the ground—blankets, a single shoe.

  “Khoza?” she calls. Then louder, “Khoza!”

  The battle has moved up the valley—she hears the firing of guns, the cries of men. After only a few yards Tembi stumbles upon a body. A man lying on his back, as if sleeping, except for the way his legs are twisted under him, except for the fact that his uniform is stained below the waist, wet and dark with blood. Tembi looks quickly at his face, slack and dead, then turns away and hurries on.

  The sounds of battle are growing fainter, distant. Tembi follows the tracks of a wheeled vehicle.

  A second body. This man is shirtless—somehow he has lost his shirt—and in his throat is a gaping hole, the size of a fist. Already the flies are there, crawling into the exposed red flesh. Tembi retches violently.

  She follows the tire tracks in the soil. The noise of the battle is gone, leaving an eerie, singed silence, broken only by an occasional distant shot, too far off to guess the direction.

  “Khoza, Khoza,” she calls. “Where are you?”

  Tembi finds Khoza. He is sitting under a tree with his back resting against the trunk, a rifle lying next to his leg. His eyes are upon her.

  “Khoza!”

  They have not hurt him, Tembi tells herself as she rushes towards Khoza. Like me, he was hiding in the trees when Death came. He is resting now, waiting for me. They have not hurt him, they did not see him when the battle started and Death came.

  He sits under the tree like someone waiting. “Khoza, Khoza.” She calls his name, so that he will know her.

  As Tembi sinks to her knees and stretches out a hand to him, his eyes are upon her but they do not see her. “Khoza.” She whispers his name. But what is a name? Once it was the word by which the world knew him, the sound of his presence in life, the sound by which the stars knew him. It was the word by which the world acknowledged his presence.

  His eyes do not know her.

  “Speak to me, Khoza.”

  She wants him to say, “Tembi, Tembi, where have you been?”

  But his name has already become a memory to the world, and the world does not know him, the wind does not know him, the stars do not see him.

  “Oh, Khoza,” she says softly, and looks for the wound on him, for there must be a wound to have caused this stillness in Khoza. Her hands touch his face, tilting his head back slightly, and she sees the dark blood in his nostrils. Her hands pat his chest and unbutton his shirt, revealing the muscles of his chest well-formed and strong with life and youth, with all the strength of life.

  On the right side, just below his breast—the breast of a young man that is flat, with a nipple small as a raisin, so unlike her own breast that he has touched with his strong hands—there just below the nipple, in the place that guards his heart, is a small hole, a small hole the size of a coin, the smallest coin. A coin that will buy nothing ever again, for all payment has been made, and the cost was the life of Khoza.

  She embraces him, and his body slumps forward, revealing the bloodstains on the bark of the tree.

  “Oh, Khoza,” Tembi whispers. She holds him close and kisses his face, his lifeless face. She kisses his lips and his cheeks and his brow. She kisses his eyes, then reaches up and closes his lids with her thumb, for his eyes will no longer know her and there is nothing more in this world for him to see.

  Tembi sits down in front of him and holds his cold hands in hers, rubbing them gently between her pa
lms to warm them. He has ceased his wandering.

  She cannot let him lie here at the mercy of the hyenas and the vultures. “I will bury you,” she tells him, “and let you sleep now in the earth, in the one final place that is yours.”

  Tembi searches amongst the discarded equipment and packs scattered on the ground until she finds a small folding shovel. She digs a resting place in the earth. For a long time she digs the earth with her small shovel, and when there is space enough dug for a man’s body to lie in the earth, she rolls Khoza into his grave, and covers him with the soil that becomes wet with her tears. Then she searches for stones and rocks, to cover the soil, to protect his resting place from the hyenas and the vultures.

  When it is done she slumps down under the tree. She reaches for Khoza’s rifle and cradles it on her lap. What is there in life for me now? she wonders, running her fingers across the metal. Nothing but this gun.

  If she were to place this barrel against her temple and pull the trigger then the sadness and the sorrow would end, and she would join Khoza, and be free of sadness. She rests the cold muzzle of the gun against her forehead, pressing it hard against her skull, her other hand reaching for the trigger. All it will take is one small movement.

  A shuffling noise makes her lift her head and look across the clearing. A man is limping towards her. One look at his face and she leaps to her feet. It is Joshua.

  “You can give me that gun,” he says to Tembi.

  She shakes her head. “Go away. Leave us alone.”

  He stops, grimacing as he holds one hand pressed to his side, the sly glint in his eye that she knows from before.

  “Give me that rifle. I will need it. You have no use for it.”

  “No.”

  In his eyes she sees the knowledge come to him that he can take anything he wants from her. If he has done it before then he can take again.

  Joshua’s hand drops to his waist and slides a bayonet loose from its sheath.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Tembi says, raising the rifle. Her heart fills with anger and hate for all that he has taken from her. The gun is heavy in her hands.

  He advances, sure of himself, sure of her weakness. In his eyes she sees the cruel pleasure. Some evil thing in him is enjoying this moment.

  He raises the bayonet, his other hand reaching to grasp the rifle.

  Tembi squeezes the trigger. The rifle jerks in her hand; she doesn’t hear the bang.

  A puff of dust leaps from Joshua’s shirt, just below the collar. Surprise appears in Joshua’s eyes as he jerks back from the impact.

  Tembi thrusts the rifle towards him, almost as if offering it, and pulls the trigger again.

  He looks down at the slow stain spreading across his stomach.

  The surprise leaves his eyes, the life leaves his eyes. He topples over, dead already.

  For a long time Tembi just stands there, shocked into emptiness—her mind empty, her heart empty, her soul empty. She becomes aware of the gun in her hands. All the sadness and the waste that is her country is in this gun, this instrument of hate. With an exclamation of disgust she flings the weapon away from her.

  She turns and crouches down in front of the shallow mound of earth. “I’m sorry, Khoza. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The vultures circle in the sky. Somewhere the hyenas lift their heads at the smell of carrion.

  Along the path that leads through the valley and out of the hills towards the veldt the young woman strides with purposeful steps, making her solitary way. She does not look back. Somewhere ahead of her is a farm, a place with many names but only one meaning—home.

  57

  SOMETIMES MÄRIT LOSES SIGHT of the baboons. Even though their motion is unhurried, apparently aimless, with frequent stops for grooming or to investigate some nest of insects or tasty root that one of them has discovered, still she falls behind.

  Sometimes she finds herself alone, except for pain, her constant companion. Behind her in the white haze stands the empty house, the ruined fields, already receding into memory, into the past.

  Once more she sets off. To keep up with the baboons is her only desire, to not be abandoned by them. She rounds the side of the koppie and catches sight of the animals just disappearing into a narrow cleft that seems to lead into the tall rock.

  Perhaps the baboons live inside the rock, where there is a pool of cool water in the rocks, and a garden with fruit trees. We can live there, hidden from the world, forgotten and ignored by the world. We can live there. Perhaps that is where they live, Märit thinks. Inside that rock that is called the Devil’s Head, inside the shadow of loneliness.

  The last of the baboons disappears into the crevice. Märit pushes on, anxious to catch up. As she enters the shadow that the tall rock throws across the ground she feels a chill in the air, as if the sun has never reached this place. The path is steeper and she must stop often. Once, she knocks her wounded leg against a stone and the terrible agony makes her cry out loud. Her voice is swallowed up into the rock.

  She drags herself up the path, almost bent double, using her free hand to lever herself forward. The crevice narrows as the path flattens out. Märit leans against the sheer rock and breathes deeply, gathering her fading strength before struggling on once more.

  As she rounds the edge of an outcrop she comes face-to-face with the baboon, the big silvery one. He is planted squarely in her path, standing on all fours, his head lowered. But his yellow eyes under his furrowed brow are upon her. The warning grunt that rolls from deep in his chest makes Märit halt.

  She looks past him, trying to see where the path leads, to see where the female is, the one who spoke to her, who said, “Follow us.”

  The baboon raises his head and barks at her. Märit understands his words: You can go no farther.

  His eyes fix on hers and she understands. Then he turns and lopes off without looking back. But when he is out of sight around the curve, Märit starts forward again. He is waiting for her, as if he knew she would disregard his warning.

  Without a sound he charges.

  Märit falls back against the rocks as he leaps towards her, the long canine teeth bared. She shuts her eyes. Something swats her face, knocking her down. Then she is alone.

  Märit opens her eyes. She is alone. Raising a hand she touches her cheek in the place where the baboon’s hand has slapped her. The sensation of that leathery palm is vivid upon her skin. She sits on the path, holding her cheek, feeling the welt where the baboon’s fingers have scraped across her skin. For the first time in her life a creature from the other side of life has touched her. And he has slapped her.

  The disappointment wells up in Märit; her heart swells with humiliation, choking her breath. She begins to sob. High above her where the rock face rises is a small patch of sky.

  Märit lies in her prison, the absence of hope as heavy as the rock that rises above her to the ragged patch of sky. Her soul is empty. Even the humiliation is gone. She watches the sky pale, then darken to violet, then turn black. Stars appear, but they are distant points of light, and their cold light cannot reach her in this crevice of rock, in this prison.

  Daylight comes, as it must, as it always will. Märit does not know if she has slept or not. One day will be like another. Empty. Sunlight eventually reaches between the walls of rock and falls on the narrow track where she lies. Märit rouses herself. She looks down at her leg, touches it once, then averts her eyes from the swollen pustulant ankle. A faint smell of rot reaches her nostrils. I am decaying, she thinks. I will lie here forever, I will rot and decompose. But it doesn’t matter.

  She rouses herself, because she remembers the house, the river, because she still lives, because she thirsts, because the life still in her drives her to rise and find her crutch and hobble slowly back down the path. Somewhere across the immeasurable distance that is the day lies the river, and the life in her thirsts for the water, and drives her on.

  As Märit skirts the edge of the koppie, hea
d bent, picking her slow and painful way amongst the rocks, a small quick flash of green darts in front of her eyes.

  She sees it again, noticing now a small green lizard, no longer than her index finger, perched on the edge of a rock in a patch of sunlight. A rapid pulse of life beats in the lizard’s throat, the tiny heart beating. The lizard darts over the edge of the rock and out of sight. Märit shuffles forward a few steps, wanting to see that quick throb of life again, wanting some small image of hope to sustain her in the long, long journey to the river.

  Her eyes fall upon a patch of green, speckled with some bright spots of yellow. She stumbles forward and uses her crutch to push away the brush that has been gathered around the plants. Here amongst the dry hard rock someone has built a little garden. A memory pushes at the edge of her mind; she remembers this place from a long time ago. When there was a farm lush with maize and cattle and fruit, someone had cultivated this little garden, hidden in the rocks, hidden in the midst of plenty. A child’s garden.

  Märit lowers herself onto a rock and reaches down for one of the round yellow fruits. As she breaks it loose from the stem a melon-like aroma is released, and immediately her stomach rumbles. She bites down into the fruit, through the soft rind to the sweet yellow flesh. A groan of pleasure escapes from her throat as she stuffs the sweet fruit into her mouth. Then she reaches for another one, pulling it loose from its vine, and gulps at it voraciously. She falls to her hands and knees amongst the plants, grabbing at the yellow fruits, stuffing them into her mouth.

  And then there is only one fruit left, one of five, and she tries to eat it more slowly, to savor the texture and the sweetness and the nectar, but her need is too great, her hunger and her thirst are overwhelming. In a few bites and swallows the fruit is gone. Märit spits out a mouthful of seeds and runs her hand across her mouth, then licks her fingers, sucking up every last droplet of the juice.