Fever

by Deon Meyer

  Granny Nandi survived to be elected to the Committee. Along with Pa, Ravi, Beryl, Nero and Pastor Nkosi. Because we had no constitution, the community decided to give everyone a chance to be the seventh member of the Committee: every resident of Amanzi over eighteen would get a turn to sit on the Committee for two weeks, with full voting rights.

  The chairman was to be elected by the Committee, and would serve for one year.

  That same evening of 14 July, in the dining room of the Orphanage, they elected my father, Willem Storm, as the first chairman of Amanzi. Pa tried not to, but he shed some tears. He said in his speech that he knew it was a symbolic gesture, there were others who could do it better than him. But it was a great honour, and he pledged his loyalty and his best efforts to everyone in this difficult, difficult time.

  Old Granny Nandi died on 29 July. Her funeral was disrupted when Amanzi’s entire water supply collapsed on the 30th. In the following two weeks the whole community had to pull together to try to get it fixed.

  The expeditions that returned brought only bad news, especially about the desperation and aggression of packs of dogs which were seen ever closer to Amanzi. Pa said it made sense, the big feast for these dogs was over, winter was also taking its toll. Domingo sent teams out to patrol the roads around Amanzi. In the second week of August a large pack of dogs was spotted in the distance a few times. When they went closer the animals melted away into the veld. Everywhere they saw evidence of the dogs’ torn prey – small buck, springhares and an old, dying kudu bull.

  By this time my father was barely sleeping at all. He was as thin as the last of our sheep, he worried about the more than twenty people who were sick from malnutrition and deprivation, and the fact that the end of the rationed food was in sight.

  Chapter 28

  13 August

  Jacob Mahlangu and I set a trap for the rock pigeons up in the reserve, a simple ambush of sticks and chicken wire and a long line. Birdseed as bait. We caught seven while we were guarding the sheep and gutted and cleaned them there. We were skilled at this, we had learned a lot in the past months. We could slaughter sheep and cattle, springbok and chicken and pigeons without mess or waste, without disgust.

  The snowfalls were rare. On most of the winter days on the edge of the Karoo there were blue, open skies, sunny, though delicate, like something that you handled with care.

  Jacob brought the salt, I recall. I remember the gnawing hunger and feeling of impatience while the pigeons were roasting on our spit over the coals. I remember saying, ‘They’re ready,’ and Jacob saying, ‘No, a bit longer, remember last time?’ Last time they had still been raw, because we had been too hungry and greedy. Raw pigeon is not very tasty.

  We sat and ate in the sun, like dassies on a rock. Afterwards we checked each other for any traces of our little feast, to be sure there were no signs to give us away.

  At night it was cold in the Orphanage sitting room, as the fire only burned while the little children were still up, to save wood.

  Domingo came to me, weapons in his hands. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We have to talk to your father.’

  I was startled, he looked angry, and I thought at once, the pigeons, he knew we were eating alone, on the sly.

  I forgot that Domingo always looked angry.

  He sat down beside Pa, and put the two R4s on the coffee table. One was the DM sniper rifle with scope. He said to Pa, ‘That’s for Nico, and Jacob Mahlangu. The bus gate guards said they saw the dogs this morning on the side of the southern mountain, on the traffic circle side. They will find our stock up there, Willem. The night shift on the mountain are all armed and ready. The boys must also be able to shoot. We can’t afford to lose more sheep. I want to request that Nico and Jacob be excused from school for now, until we have dealt with the dogs.’

  Pa’s mind was occupied by all the other troubles. He looked at Domingo. Their relationship was more formal nowadays. Pa looked at me. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Domingo rose, picked up the rifles, walked across the room. He beckoned, inviting me to sit with him. He gave me the DM rifle, and a black canvas bag with eight magazines. ‘You practise with this, you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you,’ I said trying to contain my excitement.

  ‘Start at one hundred metres, and practise up to six hundred. Use all the ammunition, tomorrow I’ll bring you another eight.’

  ‘Okay, Domingo,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. This is business. Those dogs can wipe us out if they reach the flock.’ He passed me a smaller bag with magazines. ‘This is for Jacob. Help him, so he can learn to shoot properly. You need him.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He just got up and walked away.

  14 August

  I helped Jacob first. He had very good eyesight, the ability to spot a springbok or even a little steenbuck in the grey winter grass from a long way off. But he was only a reasonable shot. I think he wasn’t really interested in it.

  After that I shot out all eight magazines.

  That night Domingo brought another eight magazines to the Orphanage. ‘How did you do?’

  I told him, from four hundred metres I was having trouble. He asked where the bullets were going. I said a bit varied, but generally too far left and too short. He checked that my scope was correctly mounted. He said he would come and make a tour through the mountain tomorrow. The dogs had been spotted again.

  15 August

  He came at eleven in the morning and looked through binoculars where my shots landed. He said, ‘You’re just inconsistent. First thing to remember is if you shoot a lot of times close together, you are going to generate too much barrel heat, and you are going to get inconsistencies. Second thing is inconsistent trigger pull. Each one must be the same. Third thing is inconsistent shoulder pressure. Try to squeeze it a little bit tighter, and try to do it exactly the same way every time.’

  I fired again.

  ‘Much better,’ said Domingo. ‘One more thing. Your shot isn’t over when you pull the trigger. It’s like a golf swing. You must follow through. You must stay part of that rifle, you must visualise how the bullet strikes the target. And you look through the scope until it hits. Then the shot is complete.’

  I shot again, a whole magazine.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Domingo.

  I glowed with pride.

  ‘Now both of you, remember, if those dogs come up here, you aim for the leaders first, the ones in front of the pack. You get them, the others will get confused. Keep shooting, we need to get them all. You hear me?’

  We nodded, Jacob and me, and our hearts beat faster.

  ‘Where did you learn all that?’ I asked him.

  His eyes were dark behind his sunglasses, as they always were in daytime. His face twitched a fraction into what might possibly be called a smile. ‘You’re talking to Davy, who’s still in the navy.’

  ‘You were in the navy?’

  ‘No,’ said Domingo. ‘Billy Joel.’

  ‘Who?’

  He didn’t say.

  I didn’t understand him at all. ‘Were you with Billy Joel in the navy?’

  But he was on his way already, and I was none the wiser.

  16 August

  Some time after nine in the morning, Jacob Mahlangu and I were high in the mountain, near the sheep. It was his eagle eyes that spotted the dogs. ‘Nico,’ he whispered, and pointed. They came over the ridge, from the side, slyly, sniffing the breeze. I’d never seen dogs hunt in such broad daylight before, they must be starving in this dreadful winter.

  I pointed the scope at them, Jacob looked through binoculars. ‘You can see,’ he said. ‘They’re killers.’ There were nearly thirty of them, loping effortlessly, the pack close together, a small, highly efficient procession.

  ‘You shoot,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll pass you the magazines.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Two hundred metres from us the dogs picked up speed because the she
ep were in sight. The flock saw and smelled the dogs, they jostled about in fear. Then I began to shoot.

  The first shots weren’t very accurate. I was too keen, too rushed, I didn’t allow enough room for their movement.

  The shots first brought the pack to a halt. Ears pricked, eyes searching for us where we lay downwind, while I kept shooting, and improved. I focused on the leaders. Domingo was right, it confused the pack more, so that they ran back and forth and eventually chose a direction away from the noise of the rifle.

  I got the last one just before he was five hundred metres away. I was very proud of that shot, it was a moving target, very far. Jacob leapt up, yelling, punching the sky, then he slapped me on the back, shouting, ‘Incredible shot, we got the bastards, Nico, we got the bastards, every one of them.’

  We raced back with the quadbike to tell Pa and Domingo, to bring the first good news in a very long time. We found everyone in a crowd in front of the Midas filling station. There was rejoicing in the air, and most people were helping to unload bags from one of our returned trucks.

  ‘Our hunger is over, it’s maize meal,’ someone said. ‘Two thousand bags. They found it on a goods train other side of Warrenton.’

  ‘We shot nearly thirty dogs dead,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Two thousand bags. And there might be more. They didn’t break open all the train trucks. Isn’t it fantastic?’

  I went to look for Pa, to tell him about the dogs. I found him inside the OK Value supermarket. ‘Pa!’ I said, excited.

  Pa held up his hand, the radio against his ear. Domingo’s voice crackled over the ether: ‘If you could come down to the bus gate, we have fresh arrivals.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ said Pa. He always tried to get to the gate when new people arrived. He rode the Cannondale Scalpel Black Inc. Nero Dlamini had donated the expensive bicycle as Amanzi’s ‘official vehicle’, for the exclusive use of the chairman – to save fuel and be visible everywhere. Pa liked the idea very much: he believed as leader he must remain humble, just one of the people.

  Jacob and I followed on the quadbike.

  It was Birdy who arrived at the gate then. Birdy and Lizette Schoeman.

  Chapter 29

  Cairistine Canary

  As recorded by Willem Storm. The Amanzi History Project.

  It was that bloody Domingo who went and called me Birdy, I was christened Cairistine, and that’s what people called me, in the old days. I don’t know why everyone here is so taken with ‘Canary’, there were lots of Canarys before the Fever. I won’t talk much about the Fever myself, I hope that’s okay. It hurts too much even if it is a few years ago. My mother . . . I just don’t want to go there.

  I come from Newtown, in Calvinia. I was doing my masters in high-energy physics at UCT when the Fever came. Early on, I already could see it was an ugly thing. I left the Cape before the big mess happened, I went home because I was very worried about my mother. At Clanwilliam, they opened that dam’s sluices, seems they were afraid there would be nobody to do it; that was a sight to behold.

  I saw everything happening from Calvinia. I lost all my family and friends. In the whole town there were only two survivors, myself and an obese white man by the name of Nelus Claassen who had Claassens Trading, a supermarket there in town; he was so fat from just sitting behind the till eating marshmallows. Now you must understand, his shop was the last one out on the R27, beside the Total garage, so it’s the last place I’m going to look for food, because there are quite a few other supermarkets in Calvinia, and only two survivors, those first weeks, before the travelling scavengers turned up.

  I got myself a scooter, a MotorMia that was parked at one of the garages, and rode around on it. I made myself a little hand pump that fitted in a backpack, for the petrol, very basic physics. I wanted to see how easy the petrol was at the Total, when that fat Nelus Claassen came out of his shop, and I nearly died of fright.

  We were both so starved for conversation, for another living soul, and he said come, there’s lots of food here inside. I said thanks very much, and got myself a few tins of curried fish, and he said, that will be seventy-five rand. I kid thee not. So I said to him you really are silly, and he said, but it’s my shop’s stuff. And I said, do I have to go to the Total and take cash out of the till to pay you? You know, to point out how ludicrous he was. He says to me, no, he’s already emptied the Total till, I will have to fetch other money. I just laughed and put the curried fish down. And when I wanted to leave he actually made a pass. He said, here we are Adam and Eve, we have no choice but to procreate, but a little more crudely than I said it. I was on the point of losing my temper, when I realised how hilarious it was. I laughed all the way back to Newtown.

  It was the last time I saw him. I still wonder if he survived the scavengers.

  Cairistine ‘Birdy’ Canary and Lizette Schoeman arrived in a little silver Hyundai.

  Birdy, the delicate, fine-boned, bespectacled Birdy with the braces on her teeth. I don’t remember much of Birdy those first meeting moments, because I was transfixed by Lizette. It was what I later learned is called ‘puppy love’. She was standing next to Birdy, looking tall and graceful; she was nineteen years old. She wore blue jeans that stretched tightly over her beautiful behind, and a thick cream-coloured wool jersey. Her hair hung very long down her back, the colour of walnuts, straight and shining in the sun. Her skin was smooth and flawless and her mouth wide, eyes big and beautiful, and I just stood staring at her, speechless, I could hear nothing, see nothing else.

  She looked back at me, seeing the intensity of my attention and surely my admiration as well. She smiled, it was like the sun rising, her teeth were perfection. She said to me, in a voice filled with joy and music, ‘Oh hi, sweetie pie.’

  I blushed, and looked away, but for weeks afterwards I wondered whether this rhyming greeting, the first poetic words from Lizette to me, were an insult, or had a deeper meaning. Until I heard that she greeted other people she liked in that way. Then I felt a little bit better.

  But in those moments of falling in love other things happened of which I remember nothing. I heard them later, and they became part of the legend.

  Domingo, the deadly Domingo, the emotional Domingo, had his own knee-buckling romantic epiphany. It wasn’t the beautiful Lizette who stole his ice-cold heart, but the vulnerable Birdy.

  The only words that Domingo could utter when he saw her – desperate to say something, make a connection – were: ‘A Hyundai i10?’ It sounded much more scornful than he’d intended.

  ‘Yes,’ said Birdy Canary. ‘It’s very energy-efficient.’ Her voice was so completely unique, one contradiction piled on the other: half an octave too high, even for her plucky little body, but so full of self-confidence and wisdom. An accent that Pa said was ‘pure Namaqualand’, but she sometimes used long, learned academic words, and frowned irritably when you couldn’t keep up or understand. And nearly every sentence ended on a higher note, as if it were a question.

  Her answer had Domingo stumped for a reply and he could only respond with an ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘The brochure mentioned electricity,’ said Birdy. ‘Hydro, I assume?’

  Domingo said, ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘It’s more of a pamphlet,’ said Pa. ‘We hope to get the hydro-electricity working,’ he added.

  ‘Hope? You mean it’s not working yet? That’s false advertising.’

  Domingo said, ‘Uh . . .’

  Pa said, ‘No, the pamphlet speaks about “soon” . . .’

  ‘Which is something of a relative term, apparently,’ said Birdy.

  Pa was also embarrassed now. ‘We don’t yet have the expertise to make the connections.’

  ‘Well, I’m here now,’ said Birdy.

  ‘You know how to work with electricity?’ asked Pa.

  ‘Basic physics. I’ll figure it out,’ she said.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Pa.

  ‘Uh,’ said Domingo.

  ‘Shame, is he a bit s
oft in the head?’ Birdy asked Pa, and pointed at Domingo.

  The bus guards laughed. Pa laughed, some of the onlookers laughed. Birdy laughed and the braces on her teeth sparkled. And everyone looked at Domingo, who had never once laughed out loud since he’d arrived.

  And then he laughed too.

  Chapter 30

  Birdy Day

  On 24 September in the Year of the Dog there were four hundred and one residents of Amanzi. Nero Dlamini orchestrated it so that they were all there that day – no one was out on expedition or patrol. He made sure everyone knew that they must be on the edge of the dam at 18.15, down by the boat slipway that looked out over the huge concrete wall.

  He told Domingo the bus gate guards had to be there too, ‘Because, really, Domingo, we’re not going to be invaded on this day, and at this hour. And even if they do, so be it.’

  Domingo growled and conceded, because, like everyone in the community, he too had an inkling of what Nero planned.

  They began arriving before six in the late afternoon. All they could see was a big canvas tarpaulin draped over some objects – chunky shapes lined up in a tidy row a few metres from the water’s edge. Beryl Fortuin and Dlamini directed people to sit down in a semicircle around the mysterious tarpaulin.

  By ten to six they were all seated. There was a festive atmosphere, people laughed and chatted as they watched the sun dip lower towards the dam wall, until at twenty past six the rays just began to touch.

  I sat as near to Lizette Schoeman as I could, and hoped and prayed that she would glance in my direction just once. Because I was big, I was fourteen; since 22 August I had been fourteen years old. To my mortification I saw Pa arrive, and he searched me out among all the people, and sat down beside me. What would Lizette think?

  Nero walked to the centre, in front of the tarpaulin, and raised both hands in the air. Beryl walked to the back, out of our sight. More than three hundred and ninety people fell absolutely silent. Some of the little ones’ voices could still be heard. Nero spoke: ‘Today was Heritage Day, in the time before the Fever. And Braai Day, when we celebrated with family and friends; it was a day of togetherness, not a day that honoured politicians or historical figures or events, it was a day that honoured ordinary people. And tonight we’re going to do it again. Honour ordinary people. In a special way. Tonight sunset is at exactly twenty-eight minutes past six. Remember that, remember that you were here at that moment.’