Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  Piet did not have the heart to tell Luvo that the European situation, in which the King of England needed every South African soldier he could lay his hands on, did not augur well for the success of his mission. But he also knew that when nothing is attempted, nothing is gained. He took his own circumstances as eloquent proof of this fact.

  When he had gazed long enough at the stars, he went back to the clearing. The impalas were ready and the fire sent their shadows huge against the trees. Wisdom was an excellent cook. His mother owned a restaurant at Butterworth, serving the native location, and he had brought some of the flavours of the town to the meats of the forest. Piet was habitualized to the toughness of game. With a little judicious guidance he had brought Wisdom to a stage where he could make a decent meal. Hard work made him hungry and he ate his fill, listening to Blessing tease Happiness about Happiness’ sister, who was something of a flirt.

  In the matter of women, Piet Barol’s conscience was unblemished. He was proud of that fact. He was not used to going so long without sex, having been accustomed to ample opportunities since his earliest manhood. But he had promised Stacey, and watching the white men in Butterworth stumble out of native brothels had robbed an affair of all its glamour. There were, in any case, no attractive white women in Butterworth, and the idea of being with a black one was sufficiently strange to add a further barrier to any action he might repent. He did his best to think of Stacey when he took his pleasures in his own hands, and often did so—though not always, for his past offered a range of beguiling memories. Sometimes he found himself thinking of a woman in Amsterdam, in whose company he had gone from boyhood to manhood. At others, of a music teacher who had initiated him into certain gentle arts. It was pleasant to revisit these adventures, but he was too satisfied by the present to wish a return to the past.

  “When will your carvers arrive?” asked Luvo.

  “Soon.” Piet stretched. “And my wife will come soon after.”

  Ntsina had learned the English word for “wife,” and hearing Piet use it he asked Luvo to translate. When he had done so, Ntsina said: “I thought no women were allowed in this camp.”

  “That’s what the Strange One said, certainly.”

  They did not pursue this line of thought, for it ended in the unshiftable truth that Piet was the boss, and he could do what they could not.

  Ntsina observed the haunch of impala he held in his hand. He put it down without touching it, and stared at the flames.

  —

  IN CAPE TOWN, Stacey Barol made a decision. Having found her husband, she would not invite Fate to separate them by failing to follow him. With some of Percy Shabrill’s advance she re-hired Ierephaan and Mohammed, the two best Indian carvers in the Colony, whose expertise had won Barol & Co. its reputation for quality. She felt safe in the company of these men, who had always been scrupulously polite to her. “Indians understand deference,” she sometimes said to her European friends. “It’s why they make such good waiters.”

  At the Mount Nelson, she made out she was returning to Europe, but she forbade her friends from making a fuss, or seeing her off at the docks. “I can’t bear scenes like that. You’ll make me sob,” she said. And the women looked at her more tenderly than before, and felt less afraid of her and wondered whether, perhaps, she had liked them more than they knew. She dismissed Arthur’s nursemaid with a month’s wages, and had their possessions put into storage. As she selected which of her dresses to part from, she found she could not contemplate separation from many of them. Besides, she had a handsome husband who would be starved of women. She must do her best for him.

  So it was that when they took the train for East London, they had a great deal of luggage. Stacey’s last action was to send a telegram herself. ANTICIPATE BUTTERWORTH THREE DAYS STOP HAVE IEREPHAAN, MOHAMMED AND ALL TOOLS STOP She hesitated over how to end. A telegram could not do justice to her feelings towards the man who had honoured his promise to her. She left it there. She knelt down and looked at Arthur. She had washed his hair the night before. He wore an Eton collar and looked terribly smart. “We are going on a great adventure. To find your papa.”

  The child’s excitement gave her courage, as she handed Ierephaan and Mohammed their third-class tickets. She felt a speech might be in order, but she had never had her husband’s gift for making inferiors love him. “Do buy yourselves lunch,” she said, instead, and gave them a ten-shilling note.

  —

  AS HIS WIFE FANNED HERSELF in a threadbare train carriage, for even the first-class compartments on the East London train placed a strain on the cultured soul, Piet reached the top of the scaffolding and hoisted up the double-ended saw he had bought in Butterworth. He had chosen Grace to help him, and they stood at opposite ends of the platform, the blade poised above the bough. This limb of the tree was much less thick than the trunk, for the Ancestor Trees devoted the bulk of their strength to their wide bases, using their branches only for the support of foliage. At first the saw’s teeth made no purchase. But Grace was persistent, and very strong, and after repeated efforts they made an indentation in the bark, which focused attention made a groove. And then they were on their way.

  After an hour, Piet’s hands and back were so sore he decreed a pause. But Grace’s lust for destruction, which lies latent in most human souls, had been brought to the surface by the scale of the challenge. He shrugged when Piet suggested replacing them with Blessing and Brightness, so Piet carried on as best he could, settling into a rhythm, the pain in his body focusing his mind on the grandeur of the undertaking.

  The tree had survived seven hundred and eleven fires, one hundred and eighty-six droughts—the severest of which, in the mid-thirteenth century, had lasted eight years. It had repulsed the assaults of legions of beetles and termites. Eight species of bat fed from its fruits. Every bird in the forest sought refuge from snakes on its boughs, for the trunk was so tall that only the hungriest serpents attempted it, and these were too weak to scale it.

  The tree had not noticed the pinpricks of Piet’s blunt blade. She did notice the attentions of Grace’s saw, and sap rushed to heal the wound. But sap is at a disadvantage against steel. The branch almost took the scaffolding with it when it fell. Creatures many trees distant heard the sound. Baboons screamed in alarm. Birds rose into the heavens. The three thousand six hundred and fifty-eight insects on it clung tight as their world began a terrifying plunge downwards. Piet, watching from below, cheered heartily. Ntsina looked away. He had killed many animals, and chopped many trees. But to kill this tree, the empress of the forest…He had no words for it, and did not forgive himself his part in her assassination.

  They made an incision in the trunk, where the severed bough had exposed tender wood. The artery carrying nutrients from the forest floor to seventy thousand leaves was severed, and the gash attracted swarms of bees and flies. The tree’s siblings, sensing a crisis, diverted stores from their own roots to the aid of their troubled sister.

  Over the next days Happiness and Brightness dug deep around the roots, loosening their ages-old connection to the earth. Piet felt a delirious delight as he examined the wood that was to be his material. The outer layer was hard as iron, but the wood within, though strong enough to endure for centuries, was not too hard to take the detail of the carver’s gouge.

  The tree had never endured such a purposeful assault. She did not know what to make of it. The consciousness of a tree, though profound, is not swift. The price for longevity is paid in speed of movement. Only the insects stayed loyal, able to conceive of no other home. She felt her root connections to other trees begin to sever as the hairless apes dug deeper and deeper. Her roots stretched far, but the apes dug further. And then the training ropes were applied. And thus the mighty tree was felled.

  And there she died.

  —

  THE CRASH of the slaughtered tree was heard throughout the forest, and in the village of Gwadana. Kagiso proposed an expedition to investigate the cause of the mighty
disturbance, but Fezile the witch doctor, seeing no way to evade participation in such a rash venture, sternly forbade it.

  Nosakhe waded into the ocean up to her breasts, imploring the Sea’s aid. She looked askance at Bela, who had turned her attention from the cauldron to the fence around the vegetable patch, which had become the straightest, sturdiest fence in the village.

  Zandi heard it, and thought of the Strange One, who had bravely ventured into the forest, never to be seen again. She had so enjoyed dancing with him. She wondered if he had evaded the creature, but she knew she had no powers of divination and made no attempt to discover the truth.

  Sukude heard it. The sound struck terror into his soul, for Bela’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge him had stirred the anxiety of a man who knows he has done wrong, whatever the Law says. He thought of the cow who had not cried. Perhaps his Ancestors had looked into his heart, and disapproved of what they found there. Fear induced urgency. If some great punishment awaited him, he might as well seize pleasure while he could.

  —

  DEPOSITED AT the sleepy provincial station of East London, within sight of a slumbersome sea, Stacey Barol gathered herself and asked in her smartest voice how she might reach Butterworth. She was an instant grandee. Every Bantu who passed averted his gaze, in case this magisterial white woman took offence. Every white man who saw her doffed his hat, and not a few were stirred to chivalry.

  There was a public bus that ran along the narrow gorge to Butterworth, but the gentlemen who clustered around Stacey and her cartload of luggage would not hear of her taking such a thing. The whites of East London, conscious of being on the edge of their world, were scrupulous in enforcing the dignity of their race. They would not countenance a white lady taking a native conveyance.

  Stacey spent the night at a hotel, while her carvers went to find their own lodgings. By the next day, word of her arrival had reached the mayor himself, who attended her at her hotel and suggested she take a private car and a driver—his car, if she so wished. He had meant, he said, to visit Butterworth for some time. He would gladly take her, and her servants could come on with the trunks—if she trusted them, of course.

  “They are devoted to me,” said Stacey.

  She had had a fretful night’s sleep in an uncomfortable bed, kept awake by her ignorance of her husband’s address. She had sent her telegram to the post office, hoping he would find it; but she could not know if he had. The mayor was a terrible bore, and his conversation offered no distraction from her worry. Only Arthur did. Sitting beside her in the seat, he was so clearly his father’s child that she felt Piet’s presence in his profile, his blue eyes so full of life and optimism.

  She put a brave face on things at the Butterworth post office, while the mayor hovered at her side. Having been brought thus far, she wished to be rid of him. “I am looking for my husband,” she said. “The Vicomte de Barol.”

  The clerk looked at her blankly.

  Stacey described Piet as best she could, though modesty prevented her from saying how handsome he was. Absent this telling detail, the clerk could not help her. He had seen many dark-haired European men in their thirties, for many came to this out-of-the-way town to evade their responsibilities elsewhere. None of his customers was sufficiently well dressed to be imagined as a consort of this extraordinarily fine lady, and he said as much. It was the worst compliment Stacey had ever been paid.

  She stumbled out of the post office and got rid of the mayor. He was most unwilling to leave her alone, and she was compelled to be quite harsh with him. There was a single hotel at Butterworth, the Travellers’ Rest, and she permitted him to escort her there. She tried to take a suite, but they had no such thing as suites at the Travellers’ Rest. She settled for their best room, and was very haughty with the proprietress. As she reached the turn in the stairs, she caught the mayor looking up at her and nodded in farewell. The worry on his pink face pushed her own nerves to the brink of collapse. They collapsed entirely when the clerk opened the door to room 312, which was plunged in darkness, and lit a gas lamp. It had clearly been unoccupied for a long time. The cockroaches, used to untrammelled freedom, dashed for cover as the light exposed them—but not fast enough to escape detection. The clerk affected not to notice them. Stacey dismissed him, sat on the bed and drew Arthur to her so that he would not see she was in tears.

  “Don’t worry, Mama.” The little boy squeezed her tightly. “I will take care of you.”

  His courage destroyed the last of Stacey’s equilibrium. She had a good relieving cry, at the end of which, doing her best to smile, she said: “We have come on an adventure. Daddy will join us soon.”

  She lay awake that night. She had left the lights on, to deter the cockroaches. She was in the grip of a wild fear. The lies she had told in Cape Town made it impossible for her to return there. Confident of her good fortune, she had lived well in the city and now the edge of her finances was uncomfortably in view again, as she had promised herself it would never be. With her dwindling capital she must house and feed herself, her son, her Indian servants. What if it ran out before Piet…? But she could not pursue that thought.

  A voice in her head reminded her that Piet had not summoned her. Perhaps he was still making preparations for her reception. It seemed foolish to have crossed the country on a whim, and she saw that fear had been her motivation. Fear that if she did not find him he would disappear. Stacey knew that fear is seldom a wise spur to action, and this knowledge heightened the unpleasantness of the room with its velveteen drapes and plush cushions. A room that belonged in a bordello, not a hotel. Finally she exercised the emotional self-control she had developed over twenty years of wandering, and locked her feelings securely within her. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. When she opened them again, cockroaches and ants had reclaimed their former haunts, and several enormous spiders were hunting them. She got up, and got dressed, and stormed downstairs, demanding to see the owner.

  —

  WHILE STACEY WAS SHOUTING at the fat Afrikaner lady who owned the Travellers’ Rest, Sukude left his hut and made his way to the edge of the cliff. The sunrise was spectacular, but he had not come to look at it. He knew that Bela waited to clean his hut until she could be sure he was not in it. He stepped further away, his back to the homestead, every nerve on full alert. He heard the creak of a hinge as she left the kitchen hut. With studious unconcern he picked up a stick and pretended to look at it closely. This allowed him a glimpse of her form as she hurried past the vegetable patch. She opened his door gently. She had greased its hinges with sheep fat, not wishing to alert him to her presence in a room with a lock. Once she was inside, he hurried back. Outside the door, he collected himself. He wished for tenderness, and had washed attentively that morning.

  He opened the door and went in.

  Bela was sweeping. She did not look up as he entered, but the animal in him sensed her sudden tensing. She swept meticulously, and gathered the ashes from the fire in a fold of her cleaning blanket. The Zinis’ three buckets had disappeared during the wedding feast, purloined by guests unable to resist their temptation.

  Sukude had not courted a woman for many years. He felt clumsy and uncertain. “You are a very good cleaner,” he said.

  He had spoken to her three times before. She had not once replied. Nor did she now. She worked more quickly, sitting on her haunches as she used a small brush to get into the cracks in the mud floor.

  “A very good cleaner,” he repeated.

  He went to her. Her neck was so soft, so graceful in its curve. He stroked it and felt her stiffen. He had been so dazzled by her physical presence he had forgotten to take the precaution of locking the door. He remedied this now, and when the lock clicked Bela worked faster still.

  “Sit down.” And then, when she made no answer: “Rest, sister. Take a moment from your labours.” He reached for the brandy bottle and poured for them both. “Drink this. It is good for you.”

  Bela swept on.

>   “Drink it,” he said again, more firmly. And then, crouching to his knees so his face was level with hers: “It is time you were with child. The future of our house depends on it.”

  With the speed of a striking cobra, Bela ricocheted up from the floor. The force of her movement knocked him over and the dust in her apron filled his nostrils, making him sneeze. He grabbed her ankle. With the power of a thoroughbred horse, she kicked his hand away. Her foot connected with his skull and his head hit the hard floor.

  “She has the power of a demon,” thought Sukude. He looked at her closely. There was a violence in her eyes that shook him. He knew he was stronger than any woman, but demonic strength is another matter entirely. A seagull had landed on the roof of the hut. It sensed a standoff between two hairless apes and flew away, cawing.

  “It can be easy,” he said, assuming a softer tone. “I am not your enemy.” But as he got to his feet and approached her, he saw that every muscle in her was ready for violence. He might have her, but he would not escape without his own injuries. He looked into her eyes, and his nerve failed him.

  “Get out of my hut, you unnatural bitch,” he said.

  —

  THEY HAD TAKEN CARE that the great tree should fall away from the centre of the grove, and it broke the canopy for two hundred feet. Piet walked its length, unable to contain his joy. Every spore and seed in the vicinity was woken from its long slumber in darkness. There were nutrients aplenty on the forest floor, sent down from the canopy by the trees themselves, for it was they who breathed out the water that fell as rain. What had been missing for uncounted years was light. At its magic touch tendrils sprouted, nosing their way through the leaf litter. Some seeds had lain waiting since Piet Barol’s grandmother was a girl. Now they sprang to action, germinating with all their might. No human saw this race, for few hairless apes have the gift of subtle sight, but the insects knew. They came in their swarms to feed on hopeful new shoots, to lay their eggs beside plants that would nourish their offspring. The race towards the light was vicious and fraught with danger. Only the hardiest, and the luckiest, would survive it.