I vowed never to leave the house again.
“But,” my father said, “the rifles make us the dominant animal.”
My grandfather Oupa Gideon preached the “dominant animal” theme for many occasions. You stand taller and you assert yourself. You let them know that taking you will come at a dear cost.
Two lions roared, then more as a group, as if challenging one another. Perhaps it was a night of passages for them as well. They continued much of the night. I wiggled closer to Schalk once I knew he was asleep. I gasped when the roars were loudest, but my heart beat so hard it threatened to bruise my ribs when the time between roars lengthened.
I grew light-headed gulping air scented by the old bones in the cold soil. I stared so hard at the fire that I was certain none had ever been brighter. I pulled my wool blanket close: it was abrasive to the point of pain. I strained to hear every sound in the clamoring night. But it was more than just listening; I was so alert it was as if I could feel the sounds. I was intoxicated by it all and was no longer bothered that I could not sleep.
Ah . . . so this is fear.
A RED DAWN PALED to pink when we began stalking. I was exhausted from the sleepless night, but I worked to step in the exact footsteps of Schalk as he inched through the bush. I had never been so concerned with the direction of the wind nor so fretted over the snap of a single branch. With each of my impatient mutters, Vader and Schalk both squinted threats; this was serious. They expected it to be their last chance for game before they would be hunting foreign invaders.
Bored, bloodied by thornbushes, and asleep on my feet, I finally picked a flat spot and sat. I plucked stickers from my legs and watched the hunters’ strategic gestures to each other and the way they disappeared so gradually it was as if the bush had time to grow up around them.
I picked a cochineal beetle off a prickly pear and squeezed the bright red dye out of it as Schalk had shown me; it could stain your fingers for days. I used it to put my initials on a big rock. I watched the sky and imagined animal figures in the clouds. I finally leaned back and slept. The shot woke me and I ran a jagged path through bush, ducking branches as I could. The men stood at the edge of a clearing, looking down at an animal nearly the size of Vader’s horse. Vader and Schalk removed their hats and said a prayer of thanks and then a prayer in praise of the animal.
Stalk it. Kill it. Pray for it.
They both set about the gutting, reaching elbow-deep into its cavity, steam rising from within. From the tangled gore, Schalk carved out a purple organ and held it in my direction.
“Liver . . . take a bite,” he said. Blood traced a thick path down his arm.
“No . . . Schalk . . . please . . . no.”
He savaged a bite with exaggerated enjoyment, blood painting his chin. He handed it to Vader, who also bit and then twisted his head to rip loose a piece of raw meat. He held it toward me, the scallops of their bite marks at the edge.
“No.” I turned away, stomach rising.
The cleaning and quartering took most of the morning. Vader led the loaded pack mule at a slow pace, leaving Schalk and me in a private tandem ahead, riding together as we had on many afternoons. Schalk always filled the outings with his veld lore. He showed me the annoying gray lourie, the goaway bird, which would screech a warning to the prey he might have stalked for an hour. He often fished for barbel, which were giant fish that could, he claimed, wiggle up out of the water and travel on land for miles if they sensed the stream they were in was going dry.
I loved riding together, the way we moved with the horses’ stride and how the tall grasses reached our stirrups and spread like a wake in a golden ocean. The springboks pronked in front of us, giving off a honey-musk scent from the white fin of fur on their backs. We often spent the time sharing and confiding. He surprised me once with the story of his misguided courting of Mijnie de Bruyn.
“I rode Kroon in circles outside their house until her mother finally came out and asked me if I wanted to come in for dessert.”
“Then what?”
“I went in and sat down . . .”
“And . . .”
“We ate.”
“Did they know why you were there?”
“Of course.”
“What did you say?”
“They were clearing the table and I asked if I could sit up with Mijnie. And everybody disappeared. They didn’t even finish with the table. Just vanished.”
“Oh, Schalk.”
“And they lit the candle . . .”
“Oh, Schalk.”
“It was the biggest candle you’ve ever seen. And Mijnie started talking about how her sister Rosina got married after sitting up through only one candle with Fredrick Coetzee, and they had a baby within a year.”
“What did you say?”
“I just kept looking at the candle—it seemed to be burning fast . . . and hot.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“No . . . couldn’t if I wanted. She never stopped talking . . . about her sister . . . how much she wanted to be the next one to get married . . . how much she wanted a family . . . babies. . . . She kept talking about babies. And living with her family.”
“Did you say anything?”
“Finally . . .”
“What?”
“Thanks for dessert.”
“Thanks for the dessert?”
“That’s all I could think of.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. . . . I just remember jumping onto Kroon and kicking him hard for home.”
6
December 1900, Concentration Camp
Warm weather made it easy to escape the crowded tent and walk during the day. Moeder accepted my absences when I told her of having stopped to help someone with the burden of heavy laundry or trouble harnessing a wild child. She warned me against “borrowing sorrow,” but I convinced her that it was God’s work. And truly, I was excited to meet so many new people.
At first I felt the energy created by the nearness of so many. But I was a plague of curiosity, introducing myself to all who passed, asking their names, how they were, and where they lived and then telling them about my family. Everyone backed away with suspicious looks. Several times, women just interrupted with, “What is it that you want?”