Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  The library was Louisa’s favourite room. She had her desk there, her papers, her footstool with the seat hand-embroidered by herself. Richard could often be found sprawled on the sofa nearby, although on that day he had been standing behind his mother, reading something that was lying open on the desk in front of her.

  They hadn’t noticed him when he entered the room. Adam did not like the library—in those days, his reading problem had made him feel inadequate in the presence of all those volumes packed with erudition and knowledge. And the opulence of the room was smothering. For his mother and Richard, though, it was the perfect setting. His mother was wearing a low-cut, plum-coloured jacket that was as rich in colour as the velvety petals of the roses drooping from the crystal vase on her writing table. His brother was wearing one of his fancy waistcoats of paisley silk.

  As he stood there watching them, they seemed like characters created by an artist’s brush, characters who had decided to step down briefly from one of the large canvases behind them. Richard’s one hand was gripping the back of the ornately carved eighteenth-century chair; the other hand rested lightly on his mother’s shoulder, his long white fingers barely touching her collarbone. His mother was exclaiming softly, pointing at the book in front of her, and Richard leaned forward and murmured something. She laughed, a low chuckle, turning her head to look up at her son. And then they saw him.

  He would never forget that moment. The two sets of pale blue eyes. His mother’s face limpid and tranquil; Richard’s gaze intent, diamond-hard. And the message in his eyes was clear: you are an outsider here, it said. This is a circle of two. No intruders allowed.

  ‘…an intruder. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘What?’ Adam glanced at his friend, suddenly jerked back to the present and to this small room with its linoleum floor and lime-green walls from which hung a black-framed medical diploma, an off-white eye-examining chart and a faded poster warning against the dangers of unprotected sex.

  Mark Botha was sitting behind a veneer wooden desk. Tall and thin, he had soft, slightly bulging brown eyes and a noticeably protruding Adam’s apple, which he could move up and down like a ping-pong ball. He was able to do so at will and joked that this came in handy when he had to examine his youngest patients. Mesmerised by this unusual sight, they’d forget their tears and their nervousness of the white-coated figure. As an added bonus, he was also able to wiggle his ears.

  He was now looking at Adam expectantly, obviously waiting for a reply to his last question.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Adam shook his head. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘Yuri Grachikov. The man is a menace. An intruder.’

  Adam shrugged. The feud between Mark and Yuri Grachikov had been simmering just below boiling point for months now. Grachikov was Russian, a relative newcomer to Kepler’s Bay. After Namibia became independent in 1990, the South African administrators left the country, and the new Namibian government had imported a large number of Norwegians and Russians to run many of the country’s fishing plants. Grachikov was one of the new immigrants. He had started out as a labourer, but had worked himself up to the position where he had taken over management of one of the canning factories. A big bearlike man, he struck an imposing figure.

  Adam did not like Grachikov—there was a coarseness about him, a savage quality, which inspired caution. As for Mark, he detested Yuri Grachikov. Especially after the Russian decided to build a hotel on Pennington’s Island.

  Pennington’s had once been home to a roving band of guano gatherers but, for the past twenty years or so, no one had lived in the tiny cement houses except for a clan of jackass penguins. But Grachikov had ambitious ideas for the place, envisaging a hotel that would cater to tourists who might find the idea of staying on an island off the main coast rather exotic, and who would regard the short boat trip from the island to the town not as an inconvenience but as a picturesque attraction.

  Personally, Adam thought the hotel was a pipe dream and one that would cost Grachikov dear. Others before him had tried to develop Kepler’s Bay into a more welcoming destination for tourists, but the fact of the matter was that the town was simply too isolated. It was hundreds of miles away from the port of Walvis Bay and the sleepy resort town of Swakopmund. There was only one road leading into town and it was often impassable. The dunes in this part of the Namib were ‘walking dunes’ and every now and then residents would wake up to find the road connecting them to the outside world blocked by a massive mound of sand. The hotel would ultimately be a failure; it was simply a matter of time.

  Mark, however, was appalled by the very idea of Grachikov’s hotel. Pennington’s Island was home to a wide variety of marine life which would suffer dreadfully if the place was developed. The penguins were already endangered; of the three thousand original breeding pairs, only a hundred and thirty were left. Mark had even confronted Yuri Grachikov in the street and, if a passer-by hadn’t intervened, the situation would have turned ugly.

  But Mark refused to be intimidated. Never one to do things by halves, he had started a campaign to stop Grachikov, even going so far as to travel to Windhoek, the Namibian capital, to seek support there. His persistence had paid off. A commission of inquiry was to be launched into the matter and until such time as it had completed its inquiries, Grachikov was not allowed to continue building his hotel. The foundations of the hotel were already in place but, for the past month, no further activity had taken place on the island.

  Still, the matter was far from settled. Mark had won the first battle, but there was no guarantee he would win the war. The town needed all the economic help it could get and the commission could very well decide that the loss of biodiversity might be a necessary price to pay for new job opportunities.

  ‘And I would like to know where Grachikov gets the money for his grandiose schemes,’ Mark frowned. ‘You know what they say…’

  Adam nodded. There was a rumour going around that Grachikov was in the diamond-smuggling business. If so, the man was incredibly lucky not to have been caught yet, or extraordinarily cunning. Probably a mixture of both.

  ‘You shouldn’t obsess, Mark. What will be, will be.’

  ‘I don’t understand how you can be so blasé about this.’ Mark frowned again and the corners of his mouth turned down. ‘If we lose those penguins, they are lost forever. Doesn’t it bother you at all what’s about to happen there?’

  Adam smiled slightly. ‘Many things bother me.’

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake. We can’t just sit around. We should organise the people here, show them that the hotel is an experiment bound to fail and that we’ll be robbing our children of something precious. Let’s do something.’

  ‘Certain things are a waste of energy. Do I think Grachikov is a menace? Yes, I do. Do I think that in the long run he’ll be stopped? No, I don’t. And I think you’re playing with fire. He’s dangerous.’

  ‘If your precious strandwolves were at risk, you wouldn’t be so sanguine.’

  ‘You give me too much credit.’

  Mark leaned back in his chair, clearly exasperated. ‘Sometimes you’re pretty hard to take, you know. I wonder why I even try.’

  Adam looked at his friend with affection. Mark Botha was the one man in the world he felt he could trust. The two had met eight years ago, after Adam had returned from a trip to the Etosha in the far north of the country. There, in that silver-white wilderness, he had contracted malaria. Shivering with fever, his veins cold as ice, his brain burning up, he had staggered—barely conscious—into Mark’s consulting room. He had been very ill indeed, delirious and hallucinating. And he must have cut a strange figure: a man with wild eyes, matted hair brushing his shoulders, and a voice hoarse from disuse. A man with no home, no friends, no ties. But Namibia was a country tolerant of drifters and Mark had nursed Adam back to health without asking any questions.

  Mark was the first person with whom Adam had engaged after a year of self-imposed isolation. There was something about
the lanky, white-clad figure with the slightly protruding eyes and gentle voice that inspired trust. For the first time in months, Adam had allowed himself to lower his guard—just slightly. And slowly, very slowly, the relationship had progressed from doctor and patient to a meeting of minds.

  They became friends, close friends. Mark Botha was the only person here who knew what had happened nine years ago at Paradine Park. And it was because of Mark that Adam had managed to start earning a living. As one of only two doctors in Kepler’s Bay, Mark was a person of stature in the small community. Life in this wind-smothered town was hard and the services of a good doctor were recognised as a blessing. Mark’s personal recommendation carried weight and his friendship with Adam opened doors to Adam that might otherwise have remained closed. It also kept at bay intrusive questions.

  A further bond between the two men was their passion for diving. If there was one thing that revealed the strengths and weaknesses of a man to the full, it was his behaviour within the dangerous environment of deep water. In the cold, murky depths, friendship and trust could be destroyed—or taken to a new level.

  This did not mean that the two men did not at times argue quite fiercely. Underneath a meek exterior, the soft-spoken doctor hid a fiery temper. And if he felt passionately about something—as he most certainly did about his quest to save the island—he would embrace it with the fervour of an Old Testament zealot. Obviously, he now found Adam’s indifference irritating beyond measure.

  Adam looked at the cross expression on Mark’s face and smiled again. ‘I’m a hopeless case, my friend. Why not accept that?’

  ‘You can’t live your life always keeping a distance. You know what it says in the Bible. Those who are neither hot nor cold will be spewed from the mouth of God.’

  ‘God is a pretty intolerant fellow all round.’

  ‘Watch what you’re saying.’ Mark was frowning quite dangerously now. He was a devout Christian. Adam often thought their friendship was based in part on the fact that Mark considered him merely another challenging cause, someone whose soul must be retrieved before his number came up and he was plucked screaming into a fiery hereafter.

  ‘You know I’m right. This is the guy who made Abraham think he’d have to set his son on fire. Who sent his chosen people on a hellish forty-year merry-go-round in the desert. Not to mention the fact that the blueprint for creation seems to be based on the premise that the death of one must provide bread for the other.’

  ‘They’re tests, Adam. God sends us tests every day.’

  ‘You don’t say. Well, excuse me if I don’t see these tests in quite the benign light you do. I’ve always considered the morality of God rather suspect.’

  ‘How can you not believe?’

  ‘I never said I didn’t believe in God. I just don’t find him very inspiring.’

  There was a terrible silence. Mark compressed his lips, his nostrils quivering. ‘You make me think of that tribe in central Africa who shoot arrows at rainbows. Apparently, it is their way of communicating with their maker.’

  ‘A rather hostile way of communicating.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s my point.’

  Adam smiled. ‘Mark, give it up.’

  ‘Is there anything in this world that makes sense to you? Anything you truly believe in, that you can talk about without being flippant?’

  Adam didn’t answer. Turning his head sideways, he looked out the window. A rusted bedpost, several split tyres and a petrol drum with the bung turned outward leaned against a fence made of open diamond-shaped wire netting. On the other side, the desert. The idea of wire netting keeping an ocean of sand at bay seemed utterly bizarre.

  ‘Adam?’

  He brought his eyes back to the room. For a moment, with his eyes still adjusted to the outside glare, Mark was reduced to a dark outline behind his desk.

  ‘Oh.’ Mark’s voice had changed. He sounded faintly mocking now. ‘How could I forget? Your mystery woman. The one whose ultimate destiny is intertwined with yours. Now, do tell me again, how do you know she even exists?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘You just do. And you’re saying the two of you have pursued each other—oh, for centuries now. But somehow you’ve never managed to meet. You’re still searching.’

  ‘We’re all searching.’

  ‘You’re saying everyone has a soul mate?’ Mark’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying, yes.’

  ‘And if people get tired of searching? If they stop looking?’

  ‘They don’t. The yearning is too strong. The longing too powerful.’

  ‘So you think we’re all destined to meet up with the one who is meant for us.’

  ‘Only when the time is right.’

  ‘Oh, Adam. You can’t truly believe any of this romantic nonsense.’

  He sat quietly, not responding to Mark’s tone of voice. And he thought to himself that, yes, it must sound insane. The idea of separated lovers travelling through the ages hoping that their time has come; that this will be the life in which they will finally meet up with one another. Ridiculous, really.

  Except he knew he was right. Somewhere out there was a woman who was prey to the same hunger he was; to the same tremendous longing. When and where they were ever going to meet up with one another, however, was the question.

  He sighed. ‘How about we talk about something else? I’m going diving tomorrow. Care to come along?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘Tomorrow I’m off on a two-day trip into the interior. Vaccinations. Where were you planning to go?’

  ‘I want to continue exploring the caves at Giant’s Castle.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous dive to do by yourself. You know what I always say: if you dive alone, you die alone.’

  ‘We all die alone, anyway.’ Adam smiled but he could understand Mark’s caution. Although Mark was becoming experienced at cave diving, he came from a tradition of scuba diving where divers paired up for a dive for their own safety. Paradoxically, because of the extreme danger of cave diving, cave divers often preferred to dive solo, because it freed them from having to take responsibility for another diver’s safety.

  He glanced at his watch. ‘I should go. By the way, I hooked the sidecar up to my motorcycle today. Ben told me the books have arrived?’

  ‘Yes. They’re in that box over there.’ Mark pointed to the cardboard box, which sat on the second chair. Every now and then Adam would use Mark’s computer to order books and specialty magazines. As his house was not exactly a stop on the postman’s rounds, the books would be delivered to Mark’s house.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Four ninety.’

  Adam opened his wallet and peeled off the notes. He hefted the box into his arms. ‘Thanks. So long then. I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘Yes. Thursday.’

  Adam sketched a brief salute and turned to leave. As he got to the door, Mark’s voice stopped him.

  ‘Adam…’

  He turned around.

  ‘You really do believe she’s out there, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And somehow she’ll be struck by a blinding insight and come searching for you.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Adam’s lips twitched into a crooked smile. ‘We’ll search for each other.’

  • • •

  THROUGH HIS WINDOW Mark Botha watched the tall, heavy-shouldered figure of Adam Buchanan—or, rather, Adam Williams, as he was now known—walk to his Norton and place the books inside the sidecar. Despite their argument, he was pleased that Adam had stopped by. He hadn’t had more than a few glimpses of him during the winter months and he had missed his company.

  Mark was fascinated by Adam. Even after all these years of friendship, Adam was still an enigma to Mark and in many respects as much a stranger as when he had entered the hospital all those years ago.

  Mark had been startled by the filthy, unkempt figure with the burning eyes who had walked
in out of the desert like a mad prophet. The man was hallucinating with fever, and from his lips—cracked by the sun—tumbled wild, incoherent descriptions: images of moss-draped forests dripping with rain, glittering frost-rimmed windows, orchards filled with red-cheeked apples and circling bees drunk with pollen. Images that sounded unbearably exotic and completely alien to the wasteland of shifting sands and endless sun that lay outside the hospital’s dusty windows.

  Their friendship was still a surprise to Mark, as was his decision to protect this man; a killer, a man who had taken his brother’s life. If Adam had expressed remorse for what had happened, Mark would have better understood his own resolve to keep Adam’s secret. But he had never once heard Adam voice a plea for forgiveness at what had transpired nine years ago. It troubled Mark.

  But that this was a man plagued by demons was certain. A few, a very few, times, Adam had let his guard down and Mark had caught a glimpse of a despair so profound it had left him feeling shaken. And he also realised that Adam was subjecting himself to a kind of self-imposed purgatory. From what Mark could gather, Adam had lived a normal existence in England and had certainly not shown any hermit-like inclinations. He had been a talented athlete and a man who had liked the company of women. But here in the desert, Adam chose to live in that wreck of a house even though he earned good money as a part-time diamond diver and could certainly afford something more comfortable in town. And then there were those few months in the year when Adam virtually disappeared from sight and did not allow himself to speak to anyone. In this country of endless horizons, that could be a very dangerous thing to do. Mark knew, as did anyone who had spent time alone in the desert, that this kind of loneliness can burn holes in your soul. The never-ending wind. A sky too vast to comprehend. And the crushing silence of infinite spaces.

  All those years ago, when Adam had turned up at the hospital, Mark had noticed for the first time the tattoo marks on the inside of Adam’s wrist. A black-and-white snake swallowing its own tail and the stylised head of a wolf. But it would be years later before Adam would explain to him the significance of these images. They were marks of destiny, Adam had told him. A destiny that was to be shared ultimately by another person: a woman. They had never met, but they had been searching for each other through many lives.