Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  Nosakhe kept a dog, the best-trained animal in Gwadana. She called the bitch Atamaraka, or Ata. Nosakhe knew that at some point in her life she would meet the Queen of Evil face-to-face. Nosakhe’s grandfather had told her so on his deathbed. To accustom herself to the use of this frightful name, by using it for a lesser being, was an important preparation for this ordeal. Today, as she called for the dog, whom she loved with all her soul, more straightforwardly, if truth be told, than she loved her grandson—because Ata had long ago reached the perfection of her kind that Ntsina was still grasping for—she knew that Atamaraka might hear.

  The waves lashed against her. The dog came to her side and sat, back straight as a leopard’s. Ata had a coat of impossible sleekness and a diet better than all but the wealthiest Gwadanans. Nosakhe made the call again, and the gulls rose from the cliffs and began circling, cawing and cawing where they had been silent before.

  Nosakhe told Ma she was aware of Atamaraka working within her son-in-law. She acknowledged the logical interpretation of Sukude’s deception—that he wished to take Bela to the marriage bed for himself. Nosakhe admitted that Atamaraka had forced her into a delicate choice: to expose her son-in-law, and bring shame and ridicule on the family; or to let him go his way, unpunished. The goddess did not acknowledge Nosakhe beyond the cawing of the gulls, but She reminded Nosakhe that she should trust herself.

  Nosakhe knew, because her grandfather had told her, that if she prepared with rigour she would be equal to Atamaraka when the time to meet her came. She well understood that this might happen after the death of her physical body, and often prayed to be reincarnated as one of the great birds that dive for fishes in the sea. She took from her bag a folded cloth, and opened it, and scattered Ntsina’s hair and toenail clippings on the waves. No other sangoma would dispose of the means to act on a person at this most vital time. Nosakhe did so to invite the Sea’s aid, to show her trust in Ma, to call for the Goddess Amarire to join her in what she, a poor mortal, had failed to do on her own: to bring her grandson back in time to prevent his father from committing a capital crime.

  She walked over the rocks, waiting for a feeling. And when it came, transmitted by the leaping of a wave, the grace of a whirlpool, it was one of resolute calmness. She washed her feet in the sea and climbed the high escarpment. As she reached the top, through the open door to her own kitchen, she saw Ntsina.

  In a voice as loud and clear and beautiful as Marimba’s herself, Nosakhe lost all her dignity and shouted: “I am as happy as a BIIIIIG fish swimming in a DEEEEP pool!”

  —

  SUKUDE WENT TO BED as early as he could. He knew he must keep a constant watch for Lundi. He had never been demonstrative with his son, and told himself that Nosakhe had not seen his disappointment. He had blunted it with drunkenness, but as he walked to his hut it overwhelmed him; became self-pity. And then rage. Ntsina had given him a bottle of the brandy Piet had bought in Idutywa, and it was this brandy that lit the fire of his anger. He raged against Nosakhe, who kept him like a zombie, with no outlet for a man’s natural needs. He raged against his dim-witted wife, who had stepped over a rock and trodden on a puff adder. He might have managed her. Together they could have made a family, and broken from the evil old woman. At least a wife would give him some protection. He knew the value of women.

  He watched and watched for Lundi, until it was dark and the moon had risen over the sea. Lundi was not foolish enough to wander at night through the forest, but he was known as an early riser and Sukude knew he would need to be awake before dawn. One of his little rebellions against Nosakhe was the acquisition of a watch like the ones the poorer sort of Strange Ones wore. He told himself he must wake at the hour of the seabird, and looked at the clock, and tried to sleep. But he opened his eyes every few minutes until, as dawn was breaking and Lundi was just beginning his ascent of the escarpment with a telegram from Ntsina in his hand, he fell into an insuperable sleep.

  5

  Nosakhe sent Piet and Luvo to rest as soon as she decently could. She was agog to know the means Ma had employed to bring Ntsina to Gwadana at this vital hour, and she, like Sukude, was perturbed by the presence of a Strange One. She watched Noni step nimbly down the steep path with her brother, trusting wholly in her senses, and asked Ma not to forget her. And also, if she must be sacrificed, to give her, Nosakhe Zini, the strength to do it quietly and quickly, with dignity. Nosakhe had never before been compelled to throw a child from a cliff. Though she knew it was a sacred duty, just as much as it was her duty to burn with hot stones the thighs of an adulteress before her execution (which she had done before, twice), she prayed to be excused it.

  When the others had gone, she put away the brandy Ntsina had brought with him and got out the special sheep fat he loved, which she had not shared with her guests. Nosakhe had a paraffin stove, as befitted a magician, and it was the work of minutes to melt the sheep fat and fill the hut with a savoury scent so all-compelling in its deliciousness that Ntsina’s mouth ran as much as Ata’s. Ata loved Ntsina, and had been as glad as her mistress to have him home. Ntsina sat on the floor, watching his grandmother, and the sleek dog curled against him. Nosakhe thought, as she had often thought before, that those parts of her own spirit which could not fit into the body of Nosakhe Zini had taken up residence in Ata. For though she was excited, and talking volubly while she cooked, she was also as peaceful as the dog.

  “I set you a great test, my grandson. I sent you to the Underworld to see what you would see.”

  “There are many dark spirits there, Grandmother. The Strange Ones are blasting the earth open and setting them free.”

  Ntsina told her everything he had seen, except for the woman with the rash behind her knees. He told her how troubled sleep had kept him awake, and made him early, and how he had been on the first platform, not the second. And therefore how he had lived, rather than died.

  Nosakhe, watching him, was fully replenished by the Great Goddess Ma for all her recent worry. Ntsina’s return was a triumphant benediction; the ways Ma had spurred him homewards were clear to her. She did not tell him that she had cast a spell for his return, for she knew it would deflate his pride in himself. And pride in himself was the one quality Ntsina had lacked before his departure to Johannesburg.

  Having him return with so much of it made Nosakhe think well of the spirits, to whom she had done so much honour during her life. She heard all about Luvo’s delegation to England, and wondered whether she should fly him there on an eagle wing and save them all a lot of trouble. But she had not yet tried this spell, which is notoriously hard, and she did not wish to seem immodest by flexing her powers after such a great victory.

  At length she said: “Can I trust this Strange One?”

  “Yes,” said Ntsina. “There is good at the depths of his heart. But we must use him too, mama. The whites have stolen so much, from all those who burned their cattles and made themselves weaker in the moons before. Our ancestors have sent us a white man to make us rich.”

  “And to help us fight back,” said Nosakhe.

  But Ntsina, whose dreaminess she had never quite squeezed from him, was not listening any longer. He was wholly present in the moment, at some glorious future date, when he would give his grandmother a bed as comfortable as the one he had seen the Strange One sleep in at Cradock. He would give her a radio, and a bed, and, he thought, help make the money for a delegation to England. When he came back to himself, she was speaking about the Princes in derisory terms. “They must take action, these men. They must join forces.”

  “They are too far from one another,” said Ntsina.

  “Then they must be summoned to the feast for your marriage.”

  Before they went to sleep, Nosakhe took Ntsina’s wide face in her calloused hands. The scratch of her skin made him feel safe. She said: “You have the stirrings of wisdom. You have done well to bring this Strange One here. We must make from him a sum of money bigger than the difference between success and failure
for those who seek the protection of the English King. And we must bring our own kings together.”

  As she spoke, she had no great faith in the one they called King George the Fifth of Great Britain and Ireland. No word in isiXhosa required the vulgarities of the G sound in English, and Nosakhe knew that few who have ugly names have strong souls. But she also knew that in a great undertaking one must leave no anthill unopened.

  —

  PIET WOKE the next morning in a bare mud hut that smelled of earth and thatch. There were no windows and it was very dark inside. For a moment he did not know where he was, and felt afraid, as though he had woken in a dream. But the seepage of daylight round the hinges of the door, which did not fit snugly in its frame, caught the elegant structure of beams above him and at length he understood that he had ventured far beyond the paths of the white man.

  He opened his door to find that morning was well advanced. Beneath him, the ground fell away to blue ocean. He was high enough to see two bays, the grasses emerald green against the sea. In the field beyond a neat fence, a calf was scratching its ear with its back hoof—a balletic movement at once comic and graceful. He saw that the hut he had slept in was whitewashed, above a band of green paint. Ducks waddled across the lawn, skirting the geese, while chickens pecked thoughtlessly between them.

  “Ah my brother! You have woken,” called Ntsina. But he had to find Luvo before he could make plain to Piet that a bath awaited him.

  Fresh water had been fetched from the stream by the girls of the village, who left two earthen jars of it outside Nosakhe’s gatepost each morning. Piet was presented with a small basin and a jug of warm water, and found himself at a loss. It was bitterly cold. He undressed in the dimness of the hut and stood in the little basin. He had not grown up with indoor plumbing, but had taken his baths as a child in a warm kitchen by a fire, in a receptacle big enough to sit in and deep enough to cover his knees. He poured some of the water into the basin, but it was so small he could not sit in it. Finally he squatted, and soaped himself, and used the water as sparingly as he could—but much of it still went on the floor, and rose as steam from the cold hard mud. It was an unsatisfactory experience, and he resolved to better it should he be compelled to spend much more time among the Xhosas. However, he finished cleaner than he had been since leaving Cradock, and cleanliness is a great boon to the human spirit. He left his hut, resolved to be friendly and to face his fears—for it was awkward speaking so little of their language. He was relieved to discover that neither Nosakhe, nor Ntsina, nor the heavyset man of the night before, were anywhere to be found. Only Luvo sat in the kitchen, polishing the cauldron, and Piet took the opportunity to eat his fill of mealie meal before turning his attention to a morning of strict grammar. It was time, he felt, to step beyond the rote learning of sounds and see if he could discern the deeper structure of this strange but beautiful tongue.

  —

  NOSAKHE OPENED HER TREASURE CHEST and took from it the wealth of the Zinis. She had not made all of it available to Sukude, but now that Ntsina had come, bearing with him the blessings of the Goddess Ma, she knew that his marriage should be the most splendid feast anyone had given in a generation.

  Between the descendants of the followers of the Great Founder, who continued to enjoy the fruits of ancestral wealth, and those of the Xhosas who had obeyed the sangomas’ instruction and burned their livestock, existed a feud of intense hostility. Nosakhe did not believe in self-indulgence. The prospect of spending her capital only made her happy because she understood its part in the great order. As she held her shell necklace to her throat, she resolved to invite the leaders of the Xhosas beyond the forest’s edge, to find out what ailed them, and to assist in their hour of need.

  The day of reconciliation was at hand.

  She took herself down the hill to the village proper. The Chief’s household were well apprised of the Strange One’s arrival, and the Chief listened gravely as Nosakhe told him what must be done. He had risen intending to inform her of the way Noni had foreseen that a Strange One was in the forest, with Ntsina, but he could tell from Nosakhe’s manner that she was thinking of other things today, and that this information would be better used when she was calmer.

  He acquiesced to her request that the Princes be invited, and the date for the wedding was set for two weeks hence.

  It was Nosakhe herself who had bade Lundi keep in his pocket his fraudulent telegram. She had not decided what attitude to adopt to Sukude, and did not wish to be placed in open knowledge of his guilt. The proper punishment for a man caught stealing another’s love mate is a slow death, its manner chosen by the injured party. She did not wish Ntsina to have to make such a choice for his own father.

  So Sukude burned the telegram, and watched his mother-in-law’s face closely, and as the days passed he became more convinced that he had gotten away with it.

  —

  PIET DID NOT DELAY in making his preparations for his meeting with the Chief. He spent his first day assiduously, and when he found he could make no sense of Xhosa grammar he set himself the easier task of learning the longest speech he had so far attempted. He wrote the words on a page in his notebook, and above them Luvo wrote the Xhosa translation, and Piet busied himself in fathoming which sound meant what. It took all day, and much of the night; but by the morning of the second day, Piet was ready.

  It was Nosakhe who led him, as was proper, down the escarpment to the King’s Place. They had waited a day so that the village council might digest the news of a Strange One in their midst and make arrangements to be present. A messenger had asked for the Strange One to be brought at the hour of the eagle, and it was a tribute to the intensity of local curiosity that in a place where time had an imprecise meaning, and was rarely strictly stuck to, all were present.

  Piet, Luvo, Sukude and Ntsina followed Nosakhe down the hill, and from a distance many pairs of eyes watched them. Most of the men in the village, and not a few of the adult women, had seen Strange Ones in the flesh. Hardly any of the children had, and it was they who lost control of their curiosity first and pressed towards Piet as he made his way across the beach. Noni led them, but she did not join them in stroking the hair on Piet’s arms with wonder. The adults nerved themselves, for it is one thing to see a dangerous creature from afar; quite another to have one in one’s hut.

  As Piet crossed the beach, he lost all shyness. He was used to the notoriety of celebrity. Kagiso greeted him beyond the fence of his father’s homestead and brought him into the yard. Piet had not been presented to the Chief’s ancestors, and so could not be present in their kraal. The meeting had, accordingly, been moved outside, since the day was fine, and the people were waiting under the Tree of Justice. Piet had taken care to learn from Ntsina the correct mode of address, and had practiced the subtle hand movements that indicate polite greeting in this part of the world. To the watching eyes, many of them skeptical, he performed these movements gracelessly; and yet the fact that he made the effort to perform them at all was a point in his favour.

  It was on days like these, when life threw unexpected happenings in his way, that the Chief of Gwadana felt least equal to his duties. He had questioned his son closely about this Strange One and knew that he had come in search of fine wood, and the labour of strong men to carry it as far as a useable road. He had no idea what to charge him for such services and knew that many of his kind had sold their labour and their goods too cheap to those of Piet’s kind who were polite enough to ask before taking.

  Piet did not wither under the attention. He made the ritual greeting, then said, in tones at once fearfully odd and comprehensible to his audience: “Good day, mighty Chief. I have come from Cape Town to do you service.”

  It was not the opening anyone expected, and many pairs of eyes met other pairs across the green space.

  “You are welcome, Strange One,” said the Chief, in his gravest manner. At a prod from Ntsina, Luvo said: “Welcome, sir.”

  Piet was shown t
o a cowhide stool and waited while the Chief’s Council rather self-consciously went about their daily business, making, truth to tell, rather more of the back and forth of village affairs than was usual. They did not wish the Strange One to feel too special. Piet waited with an expression of polite attention on his face. Luvo, bending low to his ear, whispered an approximate translation of the proceedings. As he listened, Piet thought how enviable were the lives of these natives, despite their inadequate bathing facilities. He stared out across the pretty bay. Far away on the horizon, visible only because the day was bright and clear, was a battle cruiser in full camouflage. He wondered what these primitive people would make of such a sight, and gave thanks for his preservation from this senseless European War.

  When his name was called he stood and smiled his warmest smile. “I have come to bring you good things,” he said. “I have need of strong men, and good wood. I know I can find both here. Those who assist me will be well rewarded.”