Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  This glade became their place. It was close to water, and large enough for a fire to be built. They made many happy memories in it. At the conclusion of a particularly blissful afternoon, Bela stopped at the forest edge as he escorted her home. “It is not for me to decide the ways of men and spirits, but in my happiness I must tell you something that is true.”

  “Anything, my love.”

  “Your grandmother will die of grief unless she knows she has set you free from the monster’s clutches. I have been tempted many times to tell her, but in the first place you made me promise to keep this secret, and in the second, I do not think she will believe a young girl like me.” She almost added: “She does not think much of me.”

  The words landed on Ntsina’s chest with the weight of rocks. He said nothing, and Bela kissed him.

  “If you cannot, you cannot. But if you did, you would do her honour.”

  —

  THE AFTERMATH of the casting of the spell of Reincarnation had left Nosakhe Zini deeply bewildered. That she had succeeded, at least in part, was obvious. She had found the Sea Gate to the Underworld, and freed a spirit powerful enough to chase and kill an experienced sangoma. The expression on Fezile’s face at the moment of his death had hardened with rigor mortis into a most disquieting mask. It was clear that he had seen something so terrifying he had lost his wits, but what it was no one knew. Noni’s role in her rescue added further to the puzzle. It seemed, after all, that Nosakhe had been right to spare her.

  Since the death of her grandfather, Nosakhe had not apologised to anybody for anything. The manner in which she sought the forgiveness of the Chief’s family for her harshness towards their daughter went a long way to restoring happy relations at Gwadana.

  For many days the village waited on tenterhooks for Ntsina’s return, but as time passed Nosakhe came to see that in this, the greatest part of the spell, she had failed. And because she knew that it is better for a spell to fail completely than for certain parts to work on their own, she was greatly anxious. A spirit roamed abroad, whom she had released from the places of darkness. When would it reappear? To what purpose?

  To the Chief’s infinite satisfaction, Nosakhe made Noni her pupil. She knew that certain children have strengths that adults lack. She began by showing Noni her magical relics and rare potions, and was reassured by the little girl’s ability to find anything, unseeing though she was, after once being shown its place. The child was extremely respectful, and Ata the dog loved her. Nosakhe took this as proof of her ultimate goodness, and hoped she would be ready to fight at her side when the moment to confront the Dark Goddess came.

  A moon and a half after her rescue from the Sea, Nosakhe began to notice other strange signs. Chief among them was Sukude’s behaviour. He had guarded the family’s cattles and chased mischievous boys when they tried to steal her chickens’ eggs: these were the domestic duties of the Xhosa male, and he had performed them acceptably. He had never lifted a finger in the performance of a woman’s work. Nor had she expected him to.

  The morning she first caught him on his knees with a dusting brush in his hand, Nosakhe felt so light-headed she had to sit down. She feigned obliviousness, but Sukude made no effort to keep his new activities secret. She said nothing as he swept the yard and emptied the mess from the chicken hutches and the pigsty. She watched him heat water from the stream and squat in the washing place, to do justice to a pot in which Bela had burned mealie meal, which stuck like a demon to its bottom. It was only when he approached her, later that evening, and asked if she might be good enough to teach him how to cook that she said: “What on earth has come over you?”

  She said it half jokingly, but the look in his eyes when he raised them to hers sent a chill down her spine.

  Sukude was afraid.

  She led him into the kitchen hut. “What have you seen?”

  “Nothing, mama.” He had not addressed her so respectfully since the morning of Ntsina’s wedding.

  “Since when have you liked to cook or to clean?”

  “I am trying only to be helpful, mama.”

  On this same day, she caught Bela sitting on the edge of the sea, chewing a stalk of sweet grass and gazing dreamily out over the ocean. The child looked happy. It was most bizarre. That night, over mealies Sukude had boiled, drinking homemade beer from tin cups he had washed, she looked closely at Bela and saw that, though she was as silent as ever, something had returned to her face that had not been there for too long. So long she had almost forgotten it. At first she was furious. It seemed that Sukude had finally seduced her—perhaps all this cleaning was his way of making nice to her. The idea was disgusting, and filled Nosakhe with impotent rage. She could do nothing to stop it. Sukude was perfectly within his rights to take his daughter-in-law for himself, now that her husband had gone forever.

  But Nosakhe, though it was many, many moons since any man had taken her to the love mat, remembered what intimacy was, and saw that there was none of it between Bela and Sukude; much less any fear on her side. The fear seemed to be wholly on his.

  She could not address these questions to Noni, for little girls should not be brought to knowledge of the love mat before their menses have started. Deprived of Fezile’s counsel, she was obliged to ponder this strange evidence herself, and her brain could neither find a solution to the puzzle nor let it alone. The repetitive weighing of what she had seen, the endless searching for an elusive key that would decode the pattern behind her observations, carved deep neural pathways in Nosakhe—so deep that she lost the capacity to direct her thoughts in other directions. Her sleep grew troubled. Her dreams were vague and alarming. She read the entrails of two seabirds, and butchered the Zinis’ best pig—but the gore that resulted was shapeless and held no meaning.

  One night, waking from troubled slumber, she felt so thirsty she decided to brave the inconvenience of a trip to the water bucket. She put on a blanket, muttering to herself, and went out into the yard. The night was black as pitch. But beneath the kitchen door a low light burned. She was instantly awake. She clicked her fingers and her dog trotted to her side. Ata was a dependable guard dog. She could be relied on to leap for the throat of a malevolent intruder. But tonight she was not snarling. She was whimpering, and her tail wagged uncontrollably.

  Nosakhe had learned her lesson. Before advancing she went back to her hut and put on her headdress. She took the most potent of her magic sticks, the one that had led the Great Founder across the forest, in the days before humans knew any such paths. As she crossed the yard, her heart began to beat irregularly. She was not a coward, but she felt weakened by the uncertainty and exertions of the last moons.

  She stopped outside the door to her kitchen, and said a wordless prayer to her ancestors. A sensation of calm settled on her shoulders, like a soft blanket on a cold night. She opened the door.

  On the floor, by the best cooking pot, was a large wooden box with several dials on it.

  Beside it stood the reincarnated form of her grandson, Ntsina.

  —

  IN THE FOREST that same night, Luvo lay awake. Ntsina’s question about the Strange One’s reliability in the matter of honouring their bargain had begun to gnaw at him. He had reassured Ntsina as best he could, but deep within he knew that Stacey would never countenance the payment of large sums to Piet’s Bantu partners. Across the country, Bantu fortunate enough to have employment were earning twenty-four pounds a year if they were lucky. She would say that the fifteen pounds they had already been given was more than enough for a few months’ labour in a forest.

  He tried to reassure himself, and failed. There was no contract, no document that could be presented to a court of law—even had there been a court in the country that would find in a Bantu’s favour against a white man. He and Ntsina had already provided the services without which none of Piet’s furniture would be possible. He himself had even taught the Strange One enough isiXhosa to replace them both. Piet could continue with new men unhampered by th
e barrier of language. Against these fears, he tried to place his knowledge of Piet’s goodness, his kindness. But he had also seen his weakness, and suspected he might not stand up to his wife if a choice were offered between her and their black workers.

  He got up. He could not sleep. He went to the door of the hide and looked into the clearing. One Ancestor Tree had not satisfied Piet Barol. He had killed three more, without apology, and created ugly gashes in the canopy. The scaffolding had been used effectively, and the clearing was scarred with the holes that had been dug for it as it moved from tree to tree. Wide trenches gaped where roots had been ripped from the ground. There was a light coming from the workshop, and he went towards it, in need of company. To his surprise, he found the object of his thoughts sitting on a long bench, an expression of blissful concentration on his face.

  Luvo did not find white men desirable, as a rule. He could appreciate the fineness of a Strange One face, having been taught to look for it in the masterpieces of Western art, but the sharpness of the Strange Ones’ noses was off-putting. Tonight, watching Piet, whose face was lit by the warm glow of paraffin, whose lashes were long, whose concentration was so childlike in its purity, he had a flash of what it would be like to be loved by such a man. If he were his wife, he would not nag him as Stacey did.

  Piet was working on a garland of flowers and fruits he intended to attach to the northeastern post of the bed. The garland was made of eight different woods. The flowers were of lime, but other woods, whose names he had invented for himself, made the twisting vines, the face of a squirrel that peeked between the leaves. Piet was carving from the back of the objects, a long line of tools glinting at his side. When Luvo tapped the wall to announce his presence, Piet jumped as violently as if he had been stabbed. He had been in a realm beyond consciousness. Luvo’s tap wrenched him back to this world. He looked at the plant in his hand. He had done no damage. Relief made him laugh.

  “You fright give me, my friend.”

  “You gave me a fright.” Luvo could not help correcting him.

  “You gave me a fright, my friend. What are you doing awake?”

  Luvo went to him. He felt he could not last another day without reassurance. “I was thinking about you,” he said, in English.

  “Really?”

  “And about your promise to pay me and Ntsina three hundred pounds each, as soon as Mr. Shabrill has received his furniture. I know it is now two hundred eighty-five pounds, after the advance you gave us.”

  A quick, downward deflection of Piet’s glance was like a cold hand clutching his heart.

  “Oh, that.” Piet imagined what Stacey would say when he told her he had promised to share half Shabrill’s money with two Bantu.

  “Your wife will return from Johannesburg with the money, will she not?”

  “She very well may.”

  “I should like to make my arrangements. You will soon have no need of a translator. If you do need one, I can hire one for you. My mission to King George the Fifth cannot be much longer delayed. It will soon be two years since the Natives Land Act was passed, and still the Commission appointed to look into it has not reported. Once it does, it will be very hard to undo the legislation.”

  Piet hesitated. It seemed that this was an opportunity for honesty. “It will be very hard to undo in any case. You must know that.”

  The timbers creaked. The trees of the forest rose up in unison, stirred by the wind. The dream of championing his people had become a talisman for Luvo, an assurance that his sacrifices in the forest, moral and physical, were worthy of the high principles on which he had been raised.

  He said nothing.

  “The world is caught up in a hideous war,” Piet went on, gently. “The statesmen of Europe have far-graver things on their minds than injustice done to the natives of South Africa.”

  “There is nothing graver than injustice.”

  “Well, there are injustices closer to home for your king George the Fifth. The British need the soldiers of South Africa, and above all the gold. The Afrikaners control both. They are not likely to offend them.”

  When Luvo was seven, Frau Ranke had taken it upon herself to disabuse him of the existence of Father Christmas. Up to this point, he had believed in the existence of a man who flew in a sleigh, delivering presents to deserving children, as ardently as he believed that a carpenter in Nazareth had been conceived by a virgin. On that occasion he had cried in front of her. He felt a similar desire to cry now, at the destruction of his hopes.

  Piet saw that he had wounded him and touched his arm. “I do not say you should not try. And I will ensure you have the money for a third-class ticket to Europe, and some more to spend in London, which is an expensive city. I just want you to be realistic, my dear fellow, so that disappointment when it comes is not too painful to bear.”

  “You promised me three hundred pounds. Not a third-class ticket. I have many uses for it.”

  “Very good.” Piet looked down at his work and picked up a chisel, as though their conversation had reached a natural end.

  This enigmatic response brought a note of panic into Luvo’s voice. “You would not cheat us.”

  “Of course not. I will do the best I can.”

  But doing the best he could was not the promise Piet had made, and they both knew it.

  —

  NOSAKHE ZINI COULD NOT SPEAK. She stopped breathing. Everything in the Universe ceased to exist but Ntsina’s face, the cleft in his chin, his sizeable nose—undiminished by his sojourn in the Underworld. Her grandfather had told her many times that she would rise one day to accomplish great things—greater than anyone else in the village. She had never doubted these assurances, but neither had they ever assumed such a concrete shape. Confronted by the evidence of her gifts, her faculties deserted her. In her youth she would have sizzled with self-satisfaction. Even a few months before, such a triumph would have doused her, almost drowned her, in pride. But she was old enough to know that she had accomplished nothing on her own. Without the Sea’s aid, without the bravery of Fezile, without Noni, without the billy goat Ntsina had loved, she could never have brought her grandson back from the dead.

  There was an animal-hide stool by the washing pot and she tottered towards it. She was conscious of a strong desire to sit down. Ntsina watched her, eyes wide. It was the expression he had worn as a child, when he had done something naughty and knew that punishment awaited him. She supposed it must be awkward to encounter a living person when one has spent many moons a spirit. She opened her mouth several times. No words would come. Her voice seemed to have died. She wondered whether she would ever speak again. Perhaps her gift of language was one of the prices she had yet to pay for the miracle she had wrought. But this was not so. At length, she said: “I see you, my grandson.”

  The sound of her voice dissolved all Ntsina’s nerves. He flung himself at her feet, squeezing her knees as tightly as he had as a child. He lost consciousness of the many things he had done that she might disown him for. All he knew was Love. It made him sob and as the tears flowed he choked, gulping his breaths. “I see you, my grandmother.” He got it out at last, his voice as high and true as a little boy’s.

  “What is this?” Nosakhe regarded the wooden chest with shrewd interest.

  “It is a present I have brought. To thank you for your courage.” He stood up and wound it, then switched it on, hoping for a jolly song. But all he heard was the chatter of the airwaves. He fiddled with every dial. Nothing but brutal whisperings. Ntsina did not know how music found its way to a radio, and so could not understand why this one did not play. They were far too far from the radio masts at King William’s Town to catch any of the patriotic programs beamed into the heavens. He began to feel foolish, and angry with the man who had sold it to him. The anti-climax was devastating.

  But Nosakhe approached the dial reverently, and twisted it. She felt only wonder. There are unseen spirits all around us, and they speak in their own tongues. She had never
heard their tongues so clearly before.

  “Have you returned for good?”

  “No, mama. I must go back tonight.”

  “To the creature?”

  “To the forest. I have escaped the creature. It was you who rescued me. But I have an undertaking to accomplish that cannot be spoken of. No one must enter the forest until I have completed it. When I am finished, I will come again.”

  She nodded. Then she touched him. She had expected, perhaps, the cold solidity of wood—but he felt warm and strong. Stronger and healthier than he had been on his wedding day. He was fuller in the chest, more of a man. “Was it dreadful?”

  “Yes, mama.”

  “Will you tell me of it?”

  “No. There are some things mortals can never know.”

  She accepted this answer without question, and he saw that he would not be interrogated. Relief made him euphoric. “Let me taste your sheep fat, before I go.”

  She made it for him. She felt joyful but uncertain. The dog went immediately to Ntsina and nuzzled him as Nosakhe would have done had she not…She knew one must be reverent with a spirit, and did not wish to take liberties. Ntsina ate a whole loaf of bread and all the sheep fat she had left. She had not been a diligent cook in the moons since his departure.

  When he was finished, he said: “Do you know what my father did to my wife?”

  “I know,” said Nosakhe.

  “Then you know what must happen.”

  “A man cannot kill his own father, no matter what he has done.”

  “Then I shall not kill him.” He embraced her. Her smell was unchanging. For a moment he wished to be a little boy again. Then he came to his senses. A boy cannot have a wife, and he would not exchange his woman for anything in the world. “But die he must.”