White Dog Fell from the Sky

25



When they reached Nata late that morning, Alice told her boss that she’d like a week’s leave. She reminded him that she had two weeks’ vacation coming to her, none of which she’d taken. “I’m sorry for the short notice,” she told him. “It’s just that I’m already up here, and Ian has offered to take me to the Tsodilo Hills.” She told him she’d write a summary of the trip they’d just taken and have it for him the day she returned.

C.T. looked at her. “There’s something you may not know about him,” he said.

Something cold went through her. She’d worked with C.T. for two years, and she’d never heard him say anything remotely like this. “I don’t mean you’re in physical danger. I mean … well, it’s none of my business really. But hadn’t you better come back with us?”

“I’d like to stay.”

“How will you get back?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Righto. What about the position paper?”

“It’s three quarters done. I’ll finish it without fail by the end of the month.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

“I can try to call you midweek if I’m anywhere near a phone.”

“No bother.”

“C.T.? Thank you. And thank you for the privilege of this trip.”

He told her to take care of herself and moved toward the vehicles. She found Will, explained that she was going to the Tsodilo Hills with Ian, and asked if he’d mind stopping by her place to check on things and let Isaac know she’d be another week.

His eyebrows went up. “You know what you’re about, lass?”

“Will, please.”

He smiled. “But you’ve not asked my opinion, have you?” He scuffed one foot across the dirt as though rubbing something out. “He’s fifteen years your senior.”

“Maybe not that many.”

“Close to, anyway.”

“I’ll call my neighbor if you’d rather not go by my place.”

“That’s not what I’m fussing about.”

“I know, Will.”

“Of course I can check your place.”

“Thanks so much.” She gave him a hug.

“And if you’re not back in a fortnight, I’ll send out a search party.”

“Say hi to Greta and the kids for me?”

She didn’t want to be seen as she removed her things from the back of the Land Rover. Something about it felt ungainly, vaguely humiliating, as though she’d agreed to go off with the first man who’d ever asked her anywhere. Tears weren’t far beneath the surface, and just under them lurked a faint nausea. If she hadn’t already told C.T. and Will, she’d be tempted to change her mind. She found Sam, Motsumi, Shakespeare, and Ole Olsen, and said good-bye. To Arthur Haddock, she waved as he was getting back into the Land Rover. He looked puzzled, then she saw C.T. say something to him. Arthur didn’t look at her after that, as though she’d fallen from the face of the Earth, where the bad women go.

As she stood beside the road, raising one arm, she felt an impulse to run after them. Old Faithful, the truck, drove in front, with the Land Rover behind, carrying Sam, Arthur, C.T., and Will. She’d become fond of them all, even poor old Arthur Haddock with his little fusses and fears and ridiculous shoes. She watched until they took the turn in the road, and then saw their dust rising into the air, and then there was nothing.

Standing in the street alone, the sun felt too bright, the sky too large. She felt that old deep pull toward dark and safety. C.T. and Will seemed to have been saying similar things: you don’t know what you’re doing, or what men are capable of. It was insulting, but she recognized some possible truth there.

She saw Ian at a distance, recognized his easy gait, half bear, half antelope. “You stayed!” he cried.

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

“I wanted to give you space to change your mind.”

“I’m here,” she said.

“I found you a room. Normally I sleep in a friend’s storeroom when I come this way, but I didn’t think you’d want to sleep amid the rubble.” He pushed a bit of hair out of her face and held her by the shoulders. The light was in her eyes, and he turned so she’d not have to squint. “You look uncertain.”

“I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“You’ve done nothing except not go back today. Nothing’s irrevocable. You can still take the evening train if you want.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten lunch.”

He took her to the old hotel, and they climbed up the creaky wooden steps into the dining room. A few regulars were there, tables already littered with beer bottles. The place felt slovenly, enervated. The waitress, an older white woman with about five watts of energy, hobbled here and there on bad legs, clattering cutlery, swearing under her breath.

Ian introduced Alice when she straggled over. “Bet, Alice. Alice, Bet.”

“Charmed,” said Bet, whipping out a greasy pad of paper and the stub of a pencil from her apron pocket. “We’re out of the hunter’s stew, and there’s one more bowl of the soup.”

“I’ll have the tripe and trotters,” said Ian.

“I’d like the stewed chicken.”

Bet paused. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Alice laughed.

“It’s been around the barn and back again.”

“A cheese omelet then.”

“To drink?”

“Whatever you’ve got for beer.”

“The same,” Alice said.

Bet stumped off.

“Nice of her to warn me.”

“She’s a trouper.” He picked up her hand and held it. “What made you stay?”

She thought a moment, then smiled. “When you said you were a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave. If I were a dog, I’d have me put down. And my own tent … You know, I never wanted to see you again.”

“That was clear enough.”

“I’ll probably live to regret it.”

“Do you mean that?”

“No.” She looked at him hard. “No, I won’t regret it.”

They ate lunch, and the place emptied out. They paid, and Bet clattered dishes and set tables around them. “You mind if we stay?” Ian asked.

“Be my guest,” said Bet. “Just as long as you don’t ask for anything.” She got out the broom, gave the floor an indifferent swipe, and left.

“I want you to see something before we go,” he said. He opened his pack. There were a half dozen notebooks there, all the same size, thin, square, bound with thick unlined pages, battered around the edges and numbered in consecutive order. He passed her number one, written in his neat hand, and she read, The place is called The Rock That Whispers. People have lived in these hills for over one hundred thousand years. There are over four thousand rock paintings here, some of them twenty thousand years old. The San people say this is where the world began. Near the top of the male hill, the spirit who created the world knelt to pray when the rocks were molten. The imprint of his knees is still there. What they call the female hill is nearby, and the child hill not far from that. The fourth hill is unnamed but said to be the male hill’s first wife.

She looked up to find him watching her. Many of the pages in the notebook contained likenesses of rock paintings, neatly copied with a fine black pen. Most were of animals. Some were stylized human figures, and the rest geometric shapes, either rectangles with appendages that seemed to represent arms, legs and penises, or circles which enclosed grids.

“Every one of these paintings has a place in the cosmology of the San. It’s likely that the majority represent visions of shamans in trance states.”

“Like what you experienced.”

“No. I experienced pain and visual distortions, but nothing like … It’s entirely different. When !kia—that’s their word for an altered state—is very deep, healers cross what they believe is the threshold between the living and the dead. They travel to the dwelling place of the gods to plead for the health of a member of the community, or the community as a whole. The danger is great. Their souls may be taken away by the spirits forever. They wail, they howl, they pull that terrifying sickness into their hands and throw it into the darkness, back to the spirits.”

“When you enter !kia, your body becomes light, the base of your spine tingles, you feel as though your belly is on fire, as though you have no bones, you tremble all over and lose control of your legs. You can walk on coals without being burned.”

She pointed to the geometric designs. “So what’s the connection with these?”

“They probably represent trance-induced entopic phenomenon. Images that come from oddities within the fluid of the eye itself—you know, like when you look up at the sky and see floaters.

“At the first stages of trance people see zigzags, grids, wandering lines, dots. Then they hallucinate animals. Deeper still, they become animals. On rock paintings, you often see animals fused with human beings.

“Until recently, people thought the art was a literal representation of everyday life. For instance, there’s an eastern Cape rock painting of a dying eland with blood falling from its mouth. You could see this just as a dying animal, but in its larger context, eland are animals of the gods, and when they die, they release their supernatural potency to shamans.

“What makes you care the way you do?”

He looked pensive for a moment. “I suppose it’s because these paintings go right down to the nub of what we are: powerful testaments to the way humans connect to a larger universe. Whether you believe in God or not, the artists understood that they weren’t at the center of the universe, that humans are a small part, surrounded by the power and beauty of the whole. And the fact that the rain each year is rubbing these paintings out, in the same way that the forces of civilization are rubbing out the culture itself, it makes me half crazy.”

He stopped suddenly and looked at her as though he’d forgotten her in his torrent of words. “I’m glad you stayed. It was brave of you.” He took her hand. “I had a strong impulse to save you from me, to get away from Maun, not even to say good-bye, but I couldn’t do it.”

“It turned out I didn’t want to be saved.”