by Andre Brink
“How come you don’t have anywhere to live?” I asked.
“I’m following the Momlambo.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look here.” From under his kaross he took a short stick. I went closer to have a look. It looked like a short walking-stick, no more than a foot in length, finely carved on one end, and, as I bent over to have a better look, an amazing pattern of tiny inlaid shells.
“Where did you get it?”
“From the Momlambo.”
“Who’s the Momlambo?”
“Don’t you know her then?”
“No.”
He grinned. “If you put all the beauty of all women together, it makes the Momlambo.”
“Where did you find her?”
“No one finds the Momlambo. She finds you.” For a long while he sat puffing at his long pipe. When he started speaking again, he was looking right past me: “When you’re young and you’re walking all by yourself in the veld; or you’re sleeping and you dream of woman and you wake up with a horn here” – pointing to his shrivelled genitals – “then you know it’s the Momlambo’s work.”
“And that stick?”
“It’s Momlambo’s stick.”
“But you said —”
“When I was a young man,” he said, interrupting me, “I lived in the Transkei. Other side of Umtata. My father was the headman in our village and I would have become headman after him. But then, one day, I went to Butterworth. On foot. Walking with this ache for a woman inside me. Now when one walks with that sort of ache, your head is like a pot of water on a woman’s skull. Unless you cover it with leaves all the water spills out on the ground. And whatever gets spilled is drunk by the Momlambo. And when I looked up, she was coming towards me.”
“How?” I asked. In spite of myself, spellbound by his tale, I became a child again, sitting among the huts, drinking in every word of the stories told by the old Black women.
“One moment all was quiet,” said the old man. “Then a wind sprang up. A whirlwind, turning round me, round me. And in the wind I heard the laughter of a woman. Like water bubbling. The wind gathered more and more dust and leaves as it went on spinning until, all of a sudden, it died down. And there the Momlambo stood before me.”
“What did she look like?”
“Beads, beads all round her head. And copper rings on her ankles and her wrists. And a small beaded inciyo in front here.” He gestured again. “That was all. The most beautiful woman who had ever lived.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“She just beckoned with her hand like this. But when I ran to her to catch her in my arms, she was gone. It was just the wind again, and the dust and leaves. And the sound of her laughter.” Another long session of eager puffing at the pipe. “And when it was all over and everything was quiet again, I saw this stick lying there. I knew it was the Momlambo’s sign. To say that she had taken a liking in me.”
“Was that all?”
“That was all. And my head was so filled with her magic that I clean forgot what I wanted to go to Butterworth for. I turned back and went home. And my heart was jumping like a small buck inside me. But at the same time it was as heavy as a blanket in which a dead man is wrapped.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew. The stick was her sign, you see. It meant she would come back to me if I wanted her. But she would only come if I did a terrible thing.”
“What terrible thing?”
“If a man desires the Momlambo, if you want to sleep with her under one kaross and untie her inciyo, then you must kill your own father in your heart.”
“Surely you didn’t do that?”
“What else can you do when the Momlambo calls you? She is not a woman one can say no to.”
“So you murdered him?”
“I went to see the witchdoctor, the igqira. And he spoke to the izinyanya, the spirits of the ancestors. And then my father died. It was I who killed him in my heart, because I couldn’t do otherwise.”
“And since that day you’ve been following the Momlambo?”
“All the time, all the way.”
“And does she come when you call her?”
He nodded slowly, grinning.
“Why don’t you call her now?” I asked on an impulse, deliberately taunting him. “Then I can see her too.”
He looked at me in silence for a long time. “Every man has his own Momlambo,” he said at last. “You must wait for your own whirlwind.”
It was my turn not to answer. Screwing up my eyes to see better, I studied him in silence. Small and shrivelled he sat opposite me, huddled in his stinking kaross of musk-cat skins. In spite of myself I remembered how, whenever we’d been naughty as children, we’d been scared by warnings about “the Kaffir”. Eat your food, else the Kaffir will catch you. – If you don’t go to bed now, the Kaffir will come and get you.
Here was the Kaffir, sitting a yard away from me, that hideous old monkey-man with his long-stemmed pipe and his exquisite little stick. And I wasn’t scared. I smiled.
When I looked up again, he was gone. That was the most shocking moment of the whole encounter. There had been no sound to warn me, not a flickering of a movement. When I raised my head, he’d simply disappeared. Without a trace into that wilderness. As if he’d never been sitting there on his rock at all.
Within a single moment the forest had become evil. The delightful luxury of a minute before – ferns and cycads, yellowwood, alder-trees, stinkwood and brushwood – had become a menacing jungle. The dried bed with its string of green pools had become putrid; the tangle of thorns and branches and vines and growths a bewildering gloom. I had to get out. But in my panic I’d lost all sense of direction. Instead of following the stream-bed or looking for a game path, I thrust myself headlong into the densely matted bush. Within a few minutes I was lost. And behind me, somewhere close by but invisible, he was lurking like a shadow, the evil old man. The Kaffir. I knew he was watching me with his monkey eyes, from behind some trunk or thorny shrub; I knew he’d made up the whole fantastic story just to catch me. He wanted to ensnare me here and then kill me off like a trapped buck.
Furiously I jerked myself loose from the vines and branches clinging to me, feeling the thorns tearing and tugging at my clothes. Threads and small frayed tatters remained behind on the sharp twigs.
Inch by inch I fought my way through. It was dusky in the forest; the sun would probably be down soon. How would I survive the cold and terror of a winter night in these thickets?
Was I making any progress, or just penetrating deeper and deeper into the bush? Helpless, I stopped, wondering whether I should turn back. But in whatever direction I went on, I was bound to reach the edge of the wood sooner or later. The kloof wasn’t all that wide. A matter of a few hundred yards, I tried to convince myself. I just had to keep on. Muddle through.
Slightly calmer than before I resumed my clawing and tearing. My hands scratched and cut, I forced a tunnel through the undergrowth, crawling on all fours on the crackling rotten humus for minutes on end. Whenever the tangle eased up, allowing me to proceed on foot again, my legs would get caught in vines or loose branches, causing me to stumble and fall every few yards. Every now and then I stopped, convinced that I’d seen him, here, there, behind me or to the left or right, bent double in soundless laughter, knowing he was going to get me sooner or later. The Kaffir.
My chest was burning. My breath came jerking through my raw throat. My God, if I were to have a heart attack here, no one would ever find me in time. Weeks or months later they might stumble on my skeleton. No one would know. Except for him. There was no time to rest, night was falling fast now. All I could do was to keep on and on.
The first time I stopped again was when I recognised something familiar on a thorny branch in front of me. A small patch of material. For a moment I refused to believe it: it had to be someone else’s. But the rag belonged unmistakably to my expensive imported jacket. I could match it
with a tear on my shoulder. How on earth had I started crawling in circles? If that was true I was really lost. Night would catch me here, and that would be the end. I wouldn’t even see him coming in for the kill in the dark.
I had to keep cool. Good Heavens, it wasn’t the first time I’d been in the veld on my own. All those hunting expeditions. But it had never been quite as rough as this. One couldn’t even see the sky, there were no landmarks. And the Kaffir knew it, of course.
There was only one way out: I had to climb a tree. For a few minutes I blundered on in search of one tall and strong enough, with accessible branches. I had to take off my shoes first. On tender bare feet I edged up against the rough trunk, cutting my soles on sharp ridges and thorns, until I managed to break through the network of smaller branches and look out across the kloof. Not that it was much use, shortsighted as I was; but at least it was possible to find my bearings again. That way. I had to hurry now. The sun was sinking fast, a mere hand’s breadth above the hills.
Impatient, I put on my shoes again and struggled on. My whole body was aching. The sharp cuts and abrasions of thorns and nettles; the more dull and general pain of fatigue and over-exertion. He followed me all the way. I knew it. I could smell his pipe and his filthy kaross. He must be a witchdoctor himself, communicating with evil spirits, with the izinyanya. But I grimly clenched my teeth. He wouldn’t get me. I was baas on this farm.
Torn, and smeared with dirt, I crawled on, sometimes flat on my stomach where the branches reached down nearly to the ground. More slowly than before, for now I was trying to keep my wits and not to lose my direction again. If only I could make it before dark.
And at last, panting, exhausted, and ashamed, I broke through the last cluster of euphorbias to reach the fringe of the kloof. Peaceful and strange the dry landscape lay before me in the last light. Behind me the bush was dark, a green-black mass huddled over its terrible secrets. But I’d escaped. I was free.
You know, I think it’s the people I’ll remember long after I’ve forgotten all the rest. I still dream of them at night. Not our boys or UNITA or the FNLA or the MPLA or the Cubans. Not the Portuguese on the farms or in the towns and villages. Not even the refugees. But those people belonging to the land itself. The thin Blacks, like sticks planted in their fields, mostly women and children, because the men had gone off to the army. The people with their wooden ploughs and their pounding-blocks and their home-made rakes. I’m sure, if we pass that way again a hundred years from now, we’ll still find them there just like that. Living with the seasons, like plants and stuff. If it rains, they get wet. If the sun shines, it scorches them. It makes no difference. They’re right there, all the time. They didn’t speak to us. They spoke to no one. They were just there. The armies came and went, like bloody swarms of locusts. They were robbed and beaten and plundered and murdered and raped and bombed and fucked around. But they remained. One might just as well try to get rid of stones. And that’s why, every day, I asked all over again: What the bloody hell was I doing there?
Limping, I went home slowly. My chest was aching so badly that only very shallow breathing was possible. I was covered in perspiration. The cold penetrated my clothes, burning my skin. But at least I was on my way home. From time to time I stopped to rest for a moment. Everything around me was vague and misty, as if the whole world had drawn away from me. There was nothing to hold on to; everything remained beyond my grasp.
Reaching the slope below the dairy, just after I’d passed the graveyard, I stepped into a fresh cake of dung. I looked down in helpless rage. My God, the final indignity. Wasn’t I going to be spared anything at all? Scraping my shoe on the rough ground I tried to rid myself of the stinking mess, but a small wedge remained stuck in the corner between heel and sole. I picked up a twig to rake it out, but in my unsteady position, balancing myself on one leg, I smudged my hand. Nearly frantic with frustration I tried to wipe it clean on my trousers. But it wasn’t so easy to get rid of it. It was as if part of the farm itself had rubbed off on me, a dirty smear.
8
IN THE LAST dark-red dusk the woman arrived on the farm. Ma was feeding the chickens, and I had just come round the corner of the house in my torn and messy clothes, when she approached on the dust road down the slope, swinging her legs in long even strides. Seeing her, the dogs stormed towards her, barking madly. Unlike other Blacks, who invariably lost their heads immediately they saw those brutes, the woman stopped and waited, calm and dignified, until Ma had chased them off.
It was Thokozile’s mother. I heard later that she’d walked more than thirty miles that day. A statuesque woman, more than six feet tall, brown as a rock, straight as an aloe, with the sort of aristocratic dignity one finds only among the poorest of peasants.
She addressed Ma in Xhosa. I stood on one side, listening to her, intrigued in spite of myself.
“My child is dead.”
“Yes,” Ma admitted. “Your child is dead.”
“My daughter Thokozile.”
“Your daughter.”
“The lobola hasn’t even been paid in full yet.”
“We’ll pay you from Mandisi’s cattle.”
She silently shook her head with the high black turban, as if it wasn’t really important.
After a while she continued: “All her children are dead too.”
“No,” said Ma. “It’s only Thokozile. The children were unharmed.”
“But the children she hasn’t had yet: they are all dead.”
“Yes, they died with her.”
“What about the other four?”
“They’re up there. I’ve arranged for someone to look after them. I kept the baby with me last night.”
“I must go to them.”
Without waiting, she turned away from us to go up the hill behind the house, to the huts. She was just as straight as before, her strides just as long and steady. But now she was crying. More than crying: howling as I’d never heard man or beast howl before. Striding slowly and purposefully into the dusk, she raised her head to the sky and howled. The sound struck against the distant hills, and came back; and went on. It was no human voice. It was as if the dark-red earth had itself become a voice, thrusting up through her feet and body, through bursting entrails and tearing lungs and breaking heart, howling against the bleeding night sky.
9
MA WENT TO bed early. We’d spent a few minutes talking in the kitchen while we waited for boiling water to fill her bottle. In spite of having rested in the afternoon, she looked haggard and her square shoulders were drooping. I sat on a corner of the table while she went on poking the fire aimlessly, unnecessarily.
“And what happened to you this afternoon?” she asked after some time. “Did the jackals get hold of you?”
“I went down to the kloof, to the wood. Coming back I lost my way.”
She gave a dry chuckle. “One can’t get lost in that little strip of wood.”
“I did.”
She spent some time pushing about the pots on the stove.
“I found an odd creature there,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “Old as the mountains, all shrivelled up. Wears a kaross.”
“Must be old Hlatikhulu. He sometimes comes here.”
“Who’s he?”
“I’ve heard he usually circumcises the boys when they’re initiated. For the rest he just comes and goes. Now you see him, now you don’t.”
“He said he’d come to see the sick child.”
“It’s possible.”
“But he also knew about Thokozile’s death.”
She shrugged. “They have a way of knowing such things.”
“How?”
“It just happens. How must I know? I’ve seen strange things among them, I can tell you.”
The water was boiling. She filled the bottle and held it sideways to turn in the screw-top.
“What have you decided about the farm, Ma?” I prodded her gently.
“Tomorrow is another day.”<
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“But we’re going home tomorrow!”
“Time enough.” She pushed the bottle under her arm. “Well, good night then, sonny. Don’t stay up too late, there’s a long day ahead of you. And it hasn’t really been a holiday to you, this weekend.”
After a while I went through to the lounge and sat down before the fire. Louis was lying on the mat, his back propped up against a chair. The newspapers lay in an untidy heap on one side. He was staring into the flames, not even looking up when I came in. I hoped his anger had settled by now: he’d had enough time to get it out of his system and calm down. I was tired and in no mood for further arguments.
“Where did you go this afternoon?” he asked, without looking up from the fire.
“Went for a walk.”
“Why didn’t you wake me to go with you?”
“I wanted to be alone.” Just as well he hadn’t been there to watch my ignominious flight. But then, if he’d been with me I would probably not have acted like a lunatic anyway. More indulgent, almost apologetic, I said: “I didn’t think you’d want to go with me. You’ve been avoiding us so pointedly these last months.”
“I can’t help it.” For a long time he stared silently into the grate. Small blue flames were flickering in the coals. Then he looked up: “It’s just something – I don’t know how to put it, Dad – something that’s gone limp or lame inside me. Because of everything that’s happening.”
“What is happening?”
“Nothing in particular.” He shifted impatiently. “All the ordinary stupidity, the inhumanity fossilised in a system, all the ritual cruelty, the bloody vulgarity and callousness. What can one do about it, Dad?”
“One’s got to learn to live with it. What else?”
“Jesus!”
“We’ve already spoken about it today, haven’t we?” I said quietly.
“But we didn’t get anywhere. And then you just went off on your own. As always.”
