Fever

by Deon Meyer

  We bent down again. ‘One, two, three.’ Shifted the engine. It was heavy. Hennie Fly was much stronger than me. ‘One, two, three.’ Dragged the engine a bit. My fingers and hands were cramping. ‘One, two, three.’ Shift.

  Eventually we reached the door. We rested. We dragged it outside, nearer to the plane. Then right up to it. We rested for five minutes.

  Okkie was inside, playing with something he had picked up there.

  We lifted the engine to load it into the Cessna. Hennie’s eyes and neck bulged, his face was red with exertion, he groaned, there was a moment when I felt I couldn’t go on, then it was in and Hennie shoved it a bit deeper, and he said, ‘Bless my soul, high five!’ and he tried to, but his hand missed mine. We both laughed.

  ‘Come, Okkie,’ I said and we walked back to the hangar. We went inside. Okkie was sitting just inside the door, against the wall, playing with a little bottle of shiny bolts and screws.

  Hennie walked into the middle and looked around. ‘What else can we take?’ he wondered.

  I bent to pick up Okkie. I heard footsteps, and straightened up. Someone outside. I reacted too slowly, I was stunned, surprised and scared. I let go of Okkie, spun around to my weapon. A man in the doorway, pistol in his hand, another man behind him. The front one looked at Hennie, looked at me. He raised the pistol, shot at Hennie Fly. I saw the eyes of both men were at once wild yet determined, purposeful and angry. And they were grinning, as if they got pleasure from this moment, from our shock and fear.

  Chapter 40

  Thielert’s gearbox: VII

  We remember the moments of fear, loss and humiliation most vividly. We recall the detail of movement, of expression, of emotion, or smell and sound and colour. The colour of blood, the taste of it, the texture.

  The bullet smacked into the aeroplane behind, he missed Hennie. The man was too rushed, everything Domingo had taught me he did wrong. I saw that and knew, in that instant, with a fleeting sense of relief: we had a chance.

  I reached the R6, and turned my back on them to pick up the short, automatic rifle. I swung round, my hands working the R6, I aimed, I shot.

  Adrenalin hammered through me, I swung too far, hit the one with the pistol, but in the hip; the other two shots were wild, at the ceiling. I saw the man behind look down at Okkie there beside the door, his little face terrified and dumb. He stabbed the child with a long, thin sword or dagger, a home-made weapon, its handle dirty rags, thickly woven.

  Why did he stab the boy? Four years old, why did he stab the child?

  Something broke inside me, something that had still been whole. Rage erupted too, a dark destructive rage.

  The one with the pistol jerked as the bullet struck his hip, he screamed shrilly, swung the pistol round to aim it at me. The fury and the shock of the dagger stabbing Okkie had paralysed me. The pistol man pulled the trigger. The weapon jammed with a metallic noise, a glitch. He realised, reacted, came charging down at me. His eyes were different now, wild, but fear-wild.

  The other guy wants to kill me. If I hesitate, I die.

  I came to my senses, I aimed the R6. He grabbed the end of the rifle, jerked it upwards, my finger pulled the trigger, the shot boomed, it hit his cheekbone, he screamed; he had the rifle in both hands, he was very strong, he had the barrel, and jerked it out of my hands.

  The other guy wants to kill me. If I hesitate, I die.

  I gripped my knife, pulled it smoothly out of its sheath, I pushed hard against him, hard against the man. I didn’t want to give him a chance to turn the rifle around. I stabbed him.

  There’re six angles you can attack with a knife. This one is the forward horizontal strike, coming in parallel to the ground. You attack the soft, vital target areas. Just here . . .

  He fell forward, on to me. I stepped back, grabbed the rifle. He clung to it. I stabbed again, stabbed him in the heart. He collapsed inwards, on top of me. I wriggled out from under him, leapt up, looked.

  Okkie lay beside the door. There was blood on his tiny body.

  The other man, dagger man, was on top of Hennie. Hennie gripped the hand that held the dagger, keeping it from being thrust into his chest. They grunted like animals. I looked down at the man at my feet. He lay across the rifle, still. I dropped my knife, grabbed my rifle, but couldn’t pull it out from under the man. I forgot about Hennie’s pistol on the aeroplane wing, so great was my rage. I picked up the knife, ran towards the dagger man, where he wrestled on top of Hennie.

  In the neck, get the carotid arteries. Here, and here, both sides of the neck. They are good targets, body armour doesn’t usually cover the carotids.

  My combat knife was razor-sharp. I sliced the dagger man’s neck, deep, first one side, and then the other. Blood sprayed over me, hot, wet and sticky. He fell. Hennie came out from under him, he gasped for breath, staggered to his feet, went to pick up his pistol.

  I ran to Okkie. His eyes were closed. I could hear Domingo’s voice in my head: I’m going to teach you how to apply a few field dressings. I ran out to the Cessna, my rucksack was there.

  Shots inside.

  I grabbed the rucksack, ran back in. Hennie Fly stood with his weapon in both hands, he had shot the pistol man in the head. Hennie was bent over, heaving, he wanted to vomit. I crouched down beside Okkie, pulled open the bag, found the small pack, the first-aid kit; my hands were shaking, slippery with blood, the man’s blood and Okkie’s blood. I found the bandages, wiped the blood away from Okkie’s belly. There was the wound, deep and ugly and bloody. I grabbed the antiseptic powder, tore the packet open with my teeth, and sprinkled it over the wound. I looked up. Hennie was still standing there.

  ‘Come and help me,’ I said.

  He didn’t hear.

  ‘Hennie!’

  He looked at me suddenly. Then he came.

  ‘Press the dressing on the wound,’ I said.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, and did as I asked.

  I pushed my hand into the pack, I was looking for the superglue, found it.

  They invented superglue to dress combat wounds, you press the two sides of the wound together like this.

  Two hours flying back to Amanzi. I sat with Okkie on my lap. His little mouth hung open, I could hear him battle to breathe, sometimes I thought he had stopped. I hugged him tight against me, trying to keep him warm.

  I felt like crying, in those two hours.

  Why stab the child?

  I didn’t cry. I wanted to kill someone, why had they attacked us? What did they want? Why had he stabbed the child?

  I looked once at Hennie. He was very pale. He had dagger man’s blood on his face, shirt and trousers. He saw me looking at him. He said, ‘You know, I’m flying as fast as this thing will go.’ He sounded dog-tired.

  I spotted the dam. Amanzi’s dam.

  Okkie gasped in jerky breaths, shallow.

  He must not die, he could not.

  We started our descent.

  Hennie flew low over the town. I saw people come out and wave. Joy.

  He turned towards Petrusville’s airfield. First he checked the windsock, then circled to come in to land from the south.

  Hennie’s pick-up was parked beside the hangar. He taxied the plane right up to it. ‘Let’s get him to Nero.’

  Halfway to Amanzi, Domingo approached on the motorbike. He saw us, turned around, rode up beside us. He was invisible behind the helmet, but I saw him turn his head to look in. I knew he saw, the dried blood, the child in my arms. He accelerated, raced ahead.

  Domingo stood at the door of the Orphanage. He was calling inside for Nero, Beryl and Melinda Swanevelder. I brought the child in my arms, I ran up the paved pathway. Domingo wanted to take Okkie out of my arms.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I wept. I have no idea why I began to cry at that exact moment. Later Nero, when he gave me trauma counselling at Pa’s request, would explain that I cried because I could finally pass on to Beryl the responsibility of keeping Okkie alive. I could hand over the
responsibility to Domingo of keeping him and Hennie safe.

  Response-ability.

  Nero would say it had been a mistake to send me. Nero would say we should have listened to my father.

  Hennie followed us, he explained to Nero and Beryl that the child had been stabbed in the stomach, he said we had stopped the bleeding.

  I laid Okkie down on the bed in the Orphanage sick bay. I said, ‘Nero, you must not let him die.’

  I remember the expression on Nero Dlamini’s face. The despair.

  Chapter 41

  Okkie Storm

  As recorded by Sofia Bergman. The Amanzi History Project, continued – in memory of Willem Storm.

  I can’t remember anything from before Amanzi. Zero. Nothing. I can’t remember anything about my granny and Hoedspruit and Klerksdorp and the aeroplane and the man who stabbed me. Look . . . Here’s the scar. I don’t know what my real name is. Ockert, maybe? I only know what my big brother told me. My big brother Nico. He isn’t really my big brother, I know ‘Storm’ isn’t my real surname, but it . . . I don’t think it really matters. What matters is that Nico and Hennie saved my life twice. Once at Hoedspruit, when they took me along, and again at Klerksdorp, when Nico closed the wound with superglue. Nero said that’s what saved me, because when I arrived, he just put me on a drip for hydration, and gave me antibiotics, there was nothing else he could do.

  Ever since I was little Nico said he was my blood brother. That is what he is to me. My blood-brother big brother.

  Okkie lived.

  My head told me I should be happy. Nero said it was normal to feel so distant from everything. He said it was part of the condition, to feel afraid and sad, and anxious. And sometimes to feel nothing. But also angry, that was the biggest thing for me, the anger, at everyone.

  Nero was a good man. He spoke to me with such kindness, reassuring me again and again that none of this was my fault.

  Pa, my beloved father, came and sat beside me on the bed that first night. He held me and wept. He said, ‘Tonight I’m the one wishing your mother was here.’

  And later, when he had stopped crying, he said, ‘Thank you, Nico, for living up to your responsibility.’

  Pa was gentle with me. And patient, for weeks and months. He and Nero thought it was only the therapy that was healing me. It wasn’t. It was Domingo as well. Domingo and his philosophy.

  The crows lay dead beside the road. Several expeditions that came back out of the west reported the same thing.

  Birdy said it had nothing to do with the road as such, it would be a scientific error to draw that conclusion, because the people drove only on the road, so that’s the only place they saw the crows. She delivered a little lecture on scientific observation. She said the dead crows were an example of ecological correction.

  My father agreed. He said they had been increasing for decades because they adapted so well to people, cities, towns and all the carrion from roadkill.

  Yes, Birdy said, during and after the Fever there was even more carrion for them. And now it was all gone. People, cities, towns, carrion.

  It was just an ecological correction.

  A work week, close to the end of March. Jacob and I were up early and on the quadbike, lunch and rifles packed, ready to drive to the reserve. The child turned up too. ‘Okkie wants to go too, Okkie wants to go.’

  I picked him up. He hugged me tight. I said, ‘Another day, Okkie. I’ll be back tonight.’ He squeezed me even tighter.

  Domingo came strolling up. He said, ‘Jacob, you’re off today, I’ll go with Nico.’

  ‘Yay,’ said Jacob, who was becoming more and more of a bookworm. Now he could spend the whole day reading.

  We had talked once after Okkie came, Domingo and I. He wanted a detailed report on exactly what had happened. He listened, nodding his head a couple of times. When I had finished, he just stared into the distance, and then he got up and left.

  The adults had come to me at the Orphanage in the evenings, a touch on my arm here, a pat on my shoulder there, Pa ruffling my hair, all to ‘connect’ with me, that was the phrase Nero used. Not Domingo. He just went his way as always.

  So now Jacob took Okkie, and Domingo and I drove up the mountain. We drove along the boundaries to see whether all the fences were in order. He took me to a lookout point over a valley that lay due south of our town, at the back of the mountain. It was one of my favourite places, Jacob and I often went there.

  We stood on the edge of the cliff. Domingo pointed, he said, ‘That little Jeep track, that’s the soft underbelly. That’s the weak spot in our defences. That is the only other place you can reach us with a motorbike or a four-by-four. Not easy, but possible, if you put your mind to it. If they come, they’ll come in there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The KTM.’

  ‘Do you think they will come?’

  ‘Yes, they will come.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  A long silence before he said, ‘Sit down, Nico.’

  We sat side by side. We gazed out over the valley. It was late summer, the veld was green, lush and beautiful. We saw the valley stretching out below us, carved out by a stream that only ran when it rained, tumbling downward all the way to the dam three kilometres away.

  ‘They will come, for the same reason that man stabbed Okkie. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

  I stared at the dam far below, the water the drab green-brown of army camo today.

  ‘I see you’re suffering since you came back. And it’s good and right that you’re in therapy with Nero, ’cause there’s a lot that’s true in that therapy. Nothing that happened was your fault. That’s part of my philosophy, and I’m going to give you that philosophy. You’ll see, it’s not your father’s philosophy, it’s not the pastor’s philosophy. Nor Birdy or Nero’s. It’s just mine. You won’t find many people in your life who share this philosophy, ’cause it’s harsh, and it’s trouble. I’m not trying to convert you; I’m just putting it on the table. Use it, don’t use it. Maybe it can help with all that you feel.’

  ‘Can I say “okay” now?’

  He smiled behind his sunglasses. ‘This isn’t combat training, you can say whatever you want.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We are like the dogs.’

  ‘The dogs?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s the essence of my philosophy.’

  ‘Oh. No. It’s not true.’

  ‘I know it’s harsh. But it’s true.’

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  He paused. I think he was searching for words and ideas. He said, ‘Back in the day, before the Fever, every month or so you would read about a dog attacking a child or somebody. Major outrage, lawsuits, always aimed at the owner of the dog. But what the people conveniently forget, dogs were once wolves. Before we tamed them. Wild wolves, predators, killers, hunting in packs. Which makes them social animals. And then we domesticated them, and gave them a veneer, a thin layer of civilisation. One degree away from wild. And what happened, when the Fever made that civilisation disappear? They went back to the wild. They killed each other, they killed everything they came across, they attacked their former masters, they became wolves again. Talk to the people here . . .’ He pointed in the direction of Amanzi. ‘Listen to the outrage, how could the dogs do that? How could the dogs just want to kill people and cattle and sheep, we were good to them, we domesticated and civilised them. Same outrage as back in the day. And nobody understands. Because they don’t want to, they can’t afford to understand. Just like no one can afford to understand when men do evil deeds. ’Cause we all believe man is the crown of creation, we’re the animals who think and cry and laugh, noble creatures, how is it that we can murder? The one who murders, there’s something wrong with his head. Screw loose, lights off, fuse blown, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure. Here is my philosophy: we are animals, Nico. Social animals. Domesticated, social animals, thin ve
neer of civilisation. Gentle creatures if the world is fine, if the social conditions are undisturbed and normal. But if you disturb the conditions, then that veneer wears off. Then we go feral, we turn into predators, killers, we hunt in packs. Then we become just like the dogs. That is why my mantra is: the other guy wants to kill me. If I hesitate, I die. That’s the law of the jungle, that’s how it works with animals. That guy who stabbed Okkie, those guys who kept Melinda Swanevelder tied up in the house, the KTM who robbed us, they are animals, just like you and me. There’s nothing wrong with their heads, it’s just the veneer that’s worn off.’

  I pictured the two men in the aeroplane hangar in Klerksdorp, their eyes, the look on their faces. And then I thought of good people.

  ‘But why? Not everyone is bad? My pa—’

  ‘That’s a classic mistake. Very human reasoning. If we’re good, we can’t be bad, the one has to exclude the other. Just like with the dogs. That time before the Fever, if you told anyone their dog was bad news, they would look at you as if you were a serial killer type. How can you not love dogs? Then they would tell you dogs are noble. Dogs are loyal and loving and cute. They would ask: what about the brave police dogs, and man’s best friend, all the feel-good things that dogs have done? I’m not saying dogs and people can’t do good things. Remember we’re social animals. That means we must be sociable from time to time, do nice things. But that also means that from time to time we must be animals.’

  I sat there, processing it all.

  ‘I don’t need you to buy into my philosophy, I don’t want you to,’ Domingo said. ‘I may be totally wrong. Go and find other views. The pastor, let the pastor tell you about God. Or your father and his thing for that Spinoza dude. Go and talk to him, talk to Nero. One of them may be right. Maybe none of us are right, then you just take the philosophy that works best for you. A lot of people do that. But do yourself one simple favour, just ask yourself one question: which philosophy explains everything about the human condition? No loose ends. No awkward, unanswered questions. Which one makes complete sense?’