Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  When she had gone, Susan tried the door behind her and then laughed at herself. This sort of fearfulness could be contagious and it was a disease she did not want to catch. There was no reason why anyone should mean her harm. This was a lovely night with the stars bright and clear and she decided not to wander about inside the house in a lonely, tiresome fashion. Instead she would go outside and enjoy the evening.

  She slipped into her coat, tied a scarf about her head, and let herself out the front door. Following a paved walk around to the side of the house beneath the bedroom windows, she found that a street light spread its radiance through the garden. Along one side ran a low stone wall and when she looked over she saw that the hill dropped away beneath, disappearing into the shadowy ravine, where pine trees clustered. Beyond she could see lights burning on the opposite hill, and was able to pick out her father’s house.

  She sat on the wall and watched the panorama of Cape Town lights spreading densely up from the shores of the bay, to thin out and lose themselves on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. Tonight the mountain rose in massive darkness against the star-flecked sky. Her eyes sought the Southern Cross and she was enchanted as a child to find it again. How far away America seemed, and how vast and troubling was this tip of the continent. All up and down Africa freedom was on the move. Yet here beneath this lovely, peaceful sky quiet was held only by force and by those who believed against history that they could turn back the tide that moved, not only in Africa, but across the world.

  She thought of Willimina, remembering very well from her childhood the gentle, friendly, highly intelligent people who were known as the “Cape coloreds.” These people were a greatly mixed race that might include Portuguese, Indian, English, Dutch, Hottentot, Malay, and a good many other strains. They had come to be set apart from the black population and had fared better in the Cape Peninsula than the “blanket native,” so recently from the reservation.

  Somewhere close at hand a voice began to sing plaintively, sadly, of a soldier from the old Transvaal and his longing for “Sari Marais.” She knew the tune for a song of the Boer War that she had heard as a child. The melody deepened the sense of loneliness all about her, and when it ended the silence seemed intense.

  She returned to the house, wanting now to wake it up with sounds of her own making so that she might shut away the haunting loneliness. She was not truly alone. Dirk would soon be home and she must find ways to be busy and happy when he was absent.

  There were so many things she must do, changes she wanted to make. All through the house there were touches of Mara Bellman that she felt impelled to erase and replace with her own. Now this was to be her house.

  When Dirk came home he found her sitting on the floor in the bedroom, surveying her handiwork. The dressing table had been moved to a new place where the light was better, the beds pushed closer together, the throw rugs on the floor set in a new pattern. She sat with her hands clasped about her knees as she contemplated further changes, and he laughed aloud at the sight.

  “I didn’t expect you to be at this sort of thing so soon,” he said. “Though I’ve been told all wives go in for rearranging the furniture periodically.”

  He did not mention his appointment and she was careful to ask no questions. Just having him home was enough.

  Nevertheless, her sleep that night was dream-haunted. Once she wakened cold and trembling, with an impression in her mind so vivid that it stayed with her for a long while before she went to sleep again.

  In the dream a door had opened and she was walking through it with a feeling of hope and confidence. The room she stepped into was alive with a great glitter and dazzle. For an instant the flashing blue light seemed more beautiful than anything she had ever beheld. Then the brilliant fire turned evil and somehow cold. And she knew what it was. A monstrous flashing of diamonds surrounded her. She was lost in a cavern of diamonds from which she could not escape. The door behind her had disappeared and there was no way out. She was enveloped in cold blue fire, drowning in it.

  When she fought her way back to consciousness, the flashing still seemed so intense that she could see it all around her. She sat up in bed, fighting the memory of the dream, lest it return and engulf her in further terror. But the conviction of reality remained. The blue fire had been real—she had seen it with her own eyes.

  “What is it, darling?” Dirk spoke from the next bed.

  She slipped from the warmth of blankets and flung herself across the space and into his bed, to be held close and comforted.

  “I dreamed about diamonds,” she said. “Everything around me was burning in a dreadful blue fire. Just as though I had really seen a fire like that.”

  He held her close, stilling her trembling, his lips against her ear. “Perhaps you have. Isn’t it possible—”

  But she would not accept that. “No, Dirk, no! Hold me—don’t let me think, don’t let me remember!”

  He held her, at first tenderly and then more warmly, but though she went to sleep in his arms she could not free herself entirely of the subtle horror of the dream. Whenever she wakened it was there with only Dirk’s arms between her and the fear that waited to possess her.

  Not until morning did the nightmare begin to fade. Later she tried to explain it to herself. It had been caused by her mother’s letter, of course, and Dirk’s talk about the Kimberley Royal. These things had disturbed her and become a part of her dreaming. It was nothing more than that, she assured herself.

  In the days that followed she was able to busy herself in a number of ways. Dirk took her downtown to visit her father’s Cape Town store, where he had his office in the rear and kept an eye on things when he was not traveling to Johannesburg, or to some distant source of native art work in the far-flung reservations.

  The shop enchanted her. There was no tourist clutter here. All was arranged with taste and an eye to subtly dramatic effect. Pieces of special worth were set apart against suitable backgrounds where they could be admired by the discerning. There was a corner for masks and fine wooden carvings, a current display of copperware from Northern Rhodesia, a glass case of delicate, carved ivory.

  Dirk took her about, pointing out objects of interest—the painstaking beadwork, colorful blankets and woven mats—from the Transkei, Basutoland, Swaziland, Zululand. His knowledge was enormous, yet he displayed it in an offhand manner as if it were something that came naturally and which he did not particularly value.

  “I can see where my father could hardly do without you,” Susan told him proudly.

  But Dirk disclaimed his own importance. “Hardly a day passes that Uncle Niklaas doesn’t come down here,” he assured her. “There’s not much we handle that doesn’t receive his attention before it goes on display. It’s amazing the way he keeps a running plan of the store in his mind and knows just where everything is. Not a thing is changed unless he approves.”

  Susan could not share Dirk’s feeling toward her father. Obviously there was much to admire about him, but remembering why he had brought her here, she had no desire to recapture old affection. She enjoyed the shop, but she did not look upon it as merely an expression of her father.

  At the Aerie she went to work turning the house into a home for Dirk. He was willing to give her a free hand and she enjoyed being able to make her own plans. Her shopping list grew long and she began to learn about the stores of Cape Town.

  Dirk had the rest of his own things brought up to the house and he and Susan had the fun of unpacking them together. One trunk still contained articles that had belonged to his father and mother, and this trunk he would not unpack. Susan had begun to sense that there were matters in his childhood that had left wounds he was reluctant to reopen. That his German father had been interned and that his mother had grieved herself into illness after his death—these things she knew. But he would not elaborate. There was a deep hurt in him that could be easily aroused and she learned not to tread upon quicksand.

  One thing he sought for, how
ever, in this family trunk, after he had it brought up to the bedroom. Though he would not unpack it, he reached along the sides and beneath the layers of clothing until he found what he had looked for. When he drew it out, Susan was startled.

  The thing he held in his hands seemed to be a rounded, flexible black stick. It was over three feet long and perhaps an inch thick at one end, tapering to a point.

  “It’s a sjambok,” he explained. “This one is made of rhino hide, cut wet, and then salted for preservation, rolled, and dried. It’s the sort of whip the Boers used to drive oxen. Or it could be used for flogging, when necessary. In fact, the police still use sjamboks today. This one belonged to my father. See—he cut his initials into the thickened part that makes the handle.”

  He held the whip out to her, but she did not touch it. There was an ugly look about it that repelled her.

  Dirk raised the sjambok and lashed it whistling through the air. Behind her Susan heard a soft sound of dismay. She turned to see Willi, her hands laden with fresh towels, standing in the doorway. Her eyes were upon the whip in something like horror.

  Laughing at her expression, Dirk gave it another whack through the air, while Willi stood frozen, watching him.

  “Don’t do that again,” Susan pleaded. “You’ve frightened Willi and you’ve frightened me. I don’t like whips.”

  Dirk smiled at the colored girl. “This was just a practice session. I haven’t had it in my hands since I was a boy.”

  Willi did not return his smile. Her gaze dropped and she went mutely away with her towels.

  “You really did frighten her,” Susan said. “It’s a brutal-looking thing.”

  “She probably thought I was going to beat you with it,” Dirk smiled.

  “But why do you want it? Why did you get it out?”

  He pulled the tough leather of the whip through his hands as if he enjoyed the feel of it. “Mainly because I thought it would make an interesting wall decoration. The voortrekkers used whips like this. They’re part of our history.”

  She had no wish to oppose him, but she was not particularly happy when he fixed brackets on the living room wall and set the whip upon them. The pattern it made was far from decorative in Susan’s eyes, and it lent a violent and disturbing note to their quiet living room.

  7

  Since Dirk preferred to avoid any social fanfare over their marriage and Niklaas van Pelt shunned publicity, no announcements were given to the papers. The news was allowed to spread gradually among Dirk’s friends.

  Susan was happy enough to postpone the day when she would have to take up the social role that might be expected of her as Dirk’s wife. A life of leisure, of belonging to a club, of going in for tennis and watching cricket matches, was not entirely to her taste. In her own mind she was still a working girl with a desire to earn a reputation by means of her pictures. Toward this attitude Dirk remained tolerant and encouraging, but she knew he did not take it seriously.

  So far she had made no really constructive steps in the direction of furthering her work. Though she had a darkroom set up now, she had done no more than snap odd pictures like any sightseer. She must, she knew, determine upon some plan that would make her pictures marketable. Magazines were more interested in picture stories than in isolated shots. So she must work out such a story to photograph. There should be a good many possibilities in Cape Town.

  One morning, ten days or so after her arrival, she awakened with a strong urge to get away from the house and wander on foot, tracking down a real story. She would set out, she decided, in the direction of the Public Gardens, which she still remembered affectionately from her childhood.

  Learning her way about Cape Town had been an easy matter. The downtown streets crossed one another in the straight lines of a checkerboard, with Adderley Street running down to the bay as the main business thoroughfare, crossed near its foot by the Strand. Susan had already gone downtown on shopping trips and was learning to get about by bus and trolley.

  But this morning she wanted to walk. When she set out soon after breakfast there was a brisk wind blowing and she was glad of the loose coat flung about her. Over one shoulder she carried by their straps both her camera and the big leather handbag in which she could put her light meter and extra rolls of film.

  More than once she stopped for shots—of a sidewalk fruit stand, of a two-wheeled pony-drawn vegetable cart heaped high with bright orange carrots and green cabbages, of a house with the beautiful iron lacework that reminded her of New Orleans. She paused to watch boys on the way to school, dressed in the short pants and identical caps of the English schoolboy, and she caught a picture of them indulging in a bit of horseplay. Colored children were on their way to school as well, moving along with an air of independence, as though adult burdens had not yet descended upon them, and they too wore neat uniforms. It was notable, however, that the two groups of children ignored each other as if they did not exist.

  The streets looked tranquil in the morning sunlight and, if this was South Africa, the screaming headlines seemed far away. Yet beneath the surface she knew the cancer of apartheid was at work. All was not as it seemed from this quiet viewpoint. The hint of a picture story began to stir in her mind and she walked on, watching all she saw with a renewed interest.

  She came at length to the upper end of what everyone in Cape Town called “the Avenue.” Government Avenue had its history in Cape Town’s beginnings, when the first vegetable garden had been planted by Jan van Riebeeck on the site of the present gardens.

  The wide path of reddish earth was closed to vehicles and all day long pedestrians used it as a pleasant thoroughfare that led directly into Adderley Street. On either side oak trees had been planted and the day would come when their branches would arch overhead, but now they were still young trees, unable to rival the giants over in the Public Gardens at her left. This morning scores of gentle ring-necked doves were out and their bubbling coo was everywhere. If any sound was truly typical of Cape Town in spring and summer, it was the ubiquitous cu-cu-cooing of the doves as they walked and fluttered about the gardens and avenue.

  When she came abreast of the noisy aviary, Susan left the walk to wander among flower beds aglow with everything from the conventional blossoms of England and America to South Africa’s brilliant and exotic blooms. Paths wound beneath great trees that had been brought here from distant parts of the world. A belombraboom with huge uncovered roots caught her eye, and a clump of papyrus. Everywhere doves and pigeons paraded watchfully, their bright eyes ready for tossed peanuts. Squirrels came tamely down from their trees to feed from the hands of small children, out early with their English nannies. All this Susan had loved as a child and she took pictures purposefully of the quiet, peaceful scene.

  Farther on, past a fountain where a boy clasped a dolphin in his arms, she came upon a statue of John Cecil Rhodes. His upraised arm pointed across the bay and there were words on a plaque in the stone: YOUR HINTERLAND IS THERE.

  This she found puzzling. The bay opened to the ocean and there was no hinterland for South Africa off there to the west. She had walked around the statue twice, considering the matter, when she became aware of a man observing her. She saw him out of the corner of her eye, and when he continued to watch her, she threw him a quick look. It was John Cornish.

  Her first instinct was to walk quickly away. This man had caused her enough trouble and it would be wiser not to speak to him at all. But he came toward her and she was caught.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hohenfield,” he said.

  She answered his greeting and turned to walk on, but he did not appear to see her movement away from him.

  “I hope I didn’t cause you any difficulty the other day,” he went on. “I’m afraid your husband was displeased at finding me there.”

  This was something she had no intention of discussing, yet in spite of the disapproval she knew she might expect from Dirk she was still curious about this man. A few moments of casual talk could do no gr
eat harm. She glanced up at Cecil Rhodes for help.

  “Why is he pointing out to sea?” she asked. “There’s no hinterland out there.”

  Cornish gave her the grave, slow smile that had so little warmth in it. “Like most uitlanders, you’ve turned yourself around. The newcomer forgets that Cape Town, and the mountain too, face north. The Atlantic is really off to your left beyond the Lion’s Head. Across the bay to the north lies Africa.”

  She felt like telling him that she was no uitlander, but remembered in time that he had no knowledge of her identity. Her curiosity about this man’s determined purpose still held her from walking away.

  “Have you managed to see Niklaas van Pelt?” she asked frankly.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ve not given up. The chance will come.”

  Having committed herself thus far, she plunged on. “But why is it so important to you? Why can’t you write about him out of the material that must already be available? And out of your own past knowledge of him?”

  “Perhaps the past is the very thing I want to know more about firsthand,” he said.

  It came to her that here lay an opportunity to find out the things her father had forbidden Dirk to tell her and that she felt an increasing desire to know.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” she asked. “These are things Dirk doesn’t want to discuss. Understandably, since he works for Mr. van Pelt. But I would truly like to know.”

  He studied her from beneath craggy brows as if measuring her in some way. She sensed in him a deep intensity held well in check. He gestured toward a nearby bench where sunlight speckled through leaves overhead.

  “Will you sit down for a moment? I’d like to tell you. Perhaps if you know the story you won’t think me quite such a blackguard as your husband believes.”