1972 - A Story Like the Wind (16 page)

Yet a man-child also had to learn to fight against the hearts and minds of others who would deceive and try to destroy him and his people through treacherous words. For this reason a man-child must learn that he had to be well-spoken so that others could feel the truth as he felt it. Above all, he must defend the truth against the strangers who would come as they had always come, like locusts out of the north, to weaken first with their destructive tongues, before they moved in to wash their spears. He must be well-spoken also so that he could pass on the thoughts, names and deeds of his ancestors to his children from the days of Umkulunkulu onwards.

Being well-spoken, a man-child then would have to learn not to like his own words too much; nor to use them for his own ends. He must learn always to be truthful to the people of his own kraal and tribe. It might happen that there would have to be times when he would be forced to use his well-spokenness to deceive an enemy. But on no account was he ever to do so to his own people. Between him and his own kind, there could never be any secrets. That was the meaning of the saying that had come down from the ancestors, ‘He who has killed in secret will hear it announced to all the world by the grass of the veld.’ Secrecy was something that came out of fear. Until a man had learned to abolish habits of secrecy he did not have a heart free from fear.

Then a man-child also had to learn how to sing, and above all to dance; for dancing and singing were the best ways he had of showing gratitude for the good things of life. Song and, above all, dancing were the surest ways of helping a man to endure the great trials of his existence; they were needed at birth, marriage and before war to strengthen his heart. Also, after war, they were needed to exorcise the spirit of death in him, and at the moment when the final loss of his shadow was upon him and those he loved, to drive away the power of death and revive the desire to live. François, !#grave;Bamuthi added, must have seen for himself how by dancing the magic circle with the sick, not in body but in heart, they danced back health into one another and made the divided person one with the tribe again.

Finally, the man-child had to become a man who, though he should never weep for himself, could weep easily for others. In order to do this he would have at times to go alone and sit apart at sunset by the Amanzim-tetse. He would have to go out into the kraal among the cattle and watch the stars for signs in the dark, and listen to the voices of the ancestors speaking through the sounds of the dreaming, contented cattle around him. In this way he would learn to ask in his heart for the things for which there were no words. Unless a person could ask in this way, he could not get the answers to protect him and his tribe from loss of spirit. This would mean, in the end, not only that the old praise names of Umkulunkulu would be forgotten: it would mean that the new praise names needed to promote the increase of spirit could not come. Thus the heart to endure, both in him and the tribe, would decline and die.

Here then is the final example of the great non-European influence that went into the shaping of François’s imagination and contributed as much as the books in his father’s study and his schooling to his education. When one considers his profound allegiance to the vanished world of the Bushman which had been implanted in him by old Koba, and one added to that the impact of the living example of the Matabele world provided by Bamuthi and the other kraals beyond the great hedge of fig trees at the end of the garden, it is difficult for one to think of him from now on just as a European child. Whatever the European influences were and however much they encouraged the sense of his European origin, the world of Koba and !#grave;Bamuthi drew him deeper into a pattern that was the antithesis of Europe? and to a significant extent made him uniquely of the earth and spirit of Africa.

There came a day, some years later, when a visitor, bolder than most, took it upon himself to upbraid François’s father and remark: ‘God man! How can you stand by and see your only son carrying on just like a white kaffir?’ Unjustified as such an observation by a visitor to his host undoubtedly was, it must be said in fairness that François had played a certain role in provoking the outburst.

He had learned from his black companions by then also to play at clay soldiers and when his clay battalions, awkwardly made in comparison with those fashioned by his friends, were drawn up in the classical crescent formation prescribed by the highest Matabele military authorities, he would dance in front of them as a Matabele king was supposed to dance before leading his soldiers into battle.

He would think up his own words for the song which accompanied his dance, although there was ready to hand a traditional song thought to be very effective on these occasions. This song had been danced first long ago by a famous Matabele hero called u-Ndaba and it became famous not only because it meant that his enemies were invariably scattered but also at one time it had unfailingly brought on rain. The first time François had ever danced it by some curious coincidence it had brought down upon Hunter’s Drift, when badly needed, an abrupt and violent thunderstorm, followed by a heavy downpour of rain. This coincidence immediately raised a superstitious suspicion in Matabele kraals that there might have been some connection between François’s dancing and the fall of rain. Coincidences to them were never idle, and the consequence of this particular one was revolutionary, since they themselves had long since given up using this song and dance for the purpose of making rain fall, because for generations it had failed them and they believed their powers to have perished with the great u-Ndaba himself. Their original belief, however, was reconfirmed when some two years later, in another period of drought, !#grave;Bamuthi provoked François into performing the same dance again. And again it rained the following night. !#grave;Bamuthi’s explanation to his tribe for François’s success was simple. Since power clearly had passed from the black to the white man it was not surprising that the son of a Great White Chief should have the gift of making ‘the long serpent of water’ and other spirits concerned hear him, as they could no longer hear the weakened Matabele.

François himself had no idea why he was, from time to time, exhorted to give an exhibition of this dance. !#grave;Bamuthi took great care that he should not know, not because he wished to deceive him but because he believed, as he told his kraal, ‘It is better in these matters not to know how a person is being called, for often to know is to drive out the power to answer the call.’

The morning after the discourse then, François was subtly provoked into doing his dance. It was a particularly arid day and he started to dance close by the Matabele kraals just when the Matabele herdsmen and their male children had brought in the cattle in readiness for the evening’s milking. All, however, broke off work to watch François’s performance. They kept one eye on the young boy as he leapt up and about and brought his bare feet heavily down on the earth to make it vibrate like a drum, at the same time emitting the dread sound that would put fear into the heart of the enemies of the Matabele. The other eye, of course, the herdsmen kept on a great formation of thunderclouds that were massing in the north-west as might a fleet of sail for battle.

His hair was burnt almost a platinum white by the sun, because François only wore a khaki bush hat when hunting, in order to provide shade and camouflage for his head and face which Mopani had taught him were features most likely to betray a stalker to his quarry. And also because Ouwa thought it unhealthy for boys to wear hats even under so hot an African sun. François, with his blue eyes and fair young skin, tanned and fresh as a peach, could not have been more obviously European. But the sounds that came out of his throat and the movements that shook his long legs and arms and a body, rather tall and broad-shouldered for its age, came from far back out of the savage and heroic Matabele past, with the sole exception that, instead of calling on u-Ndaba as tradition demanded, François had substituted his own name.

As his legs rose and stamped down on the earth faster and harder and he leapt higher and whirled about before his feet crashed down once more, he sang and shouted the refrain again and again with increasing force and volume, trying in vain to make his shrill young voice deep and strong:

u-Françoisu-Inkosi!
(François is King)

Oho! O!

Ha! Oyeeh!

Jijidgi! Jijidgi!

The
Oho!, O!, Ha!
, and
Oyeeh!
were utterances of scorn, sheer and unmitigated; the
Jijidgi!
an imperative to warriors to go in and kill.

This, of course, was a picture of gross over-simplification if considered out of context, as the visitor might have observed had he stayed on to see François instructing his companions at other times how to play Greeks and Trojans, or equipping them with glittering shields battered out of empty four-gallon paraffin tins, and long lances made out of the straightest mopani wood. In their game of make-believe he made them into Knights of the Round Table in search of an appropriate quest in the bush, which was the nearest African equivalent to the dark medieval wood of the Malory he had discovered in his father’s study. No passing observer could possibly have known therefore of this great heraldic influence in François’s life, nor how Mopani Theron had captured as great a segment of his imagination as either !#grave;Bamuthi or Koba had done, but more of that later. This must be enough to give a valid hint of the kind of ‘other person’ François had in essence become that day he and Hintza rescued Xhabbo from a lion-trap and he found himself late for the midday meal facing his ill and exhausted father at table.

Foot of the Day

‘O
h Coiske,’ Lammie gently reproached François as he spread out his napkin on his knees, ‘why do you choose today of all days to be late?’

Already made uncomfortable by being late, as well as by possession for the first time in his life of a secret that he could not share, François would have been unable to find an appropriate word of excuse. Luckily he was saved from having to do so by his father. For once Ouwa did not seem to find it necessary to support Lammie as he always did, even in the smallest things. It was as if his mind, through pain and sickness, was working in a dimension where things like ‘being late’ or ‘in time’ were no longer important. He merely looked up from his own cover and tried hard to adopt a certain ironic insouciance which was his favourite pose for containing his affection for François. He then started teasing him in that slightly pedagogic way that involuntarily came to him when confronted with anybody young, even someone so familiar as Franjois.

‘What of the bush, oh hunter?’ he asked in a voice taut with effort and pain. ‘Is it true, this enormous lie that has preceded your coming? Have you really succeeded in killing an outsize leopard?’

Grateful as François was for the question he was, as always, somewhat put out by his father’s teasing. It made him feel small and rather self-conscious. None the less he was glad of it as a diversion and began his story of the day from the moment Hintza had woken him just before dawn. As he talked his confidence returned, particularly when he started describing Hintza’s almost extra-sensory perceptive role. Encouraged further by the obvious look of interest that came to both Ouwa and Lammie, in the end he told his story rather well.

He was helped, too, by the fact that Ousie-Johanna seemed to have cooked one of his favourite dishes as a first course to the meal. It was a Hunter’s Drift speciality, a kind of milk soup made out of fresh milk and home-made noodles with black Natal sugar and sticks of fragrant cinnamon. The moment Lammie lifted the cover of the dish to serve them, there was a magical scent of milk and cinnamon in the cool air of the great dining-room, a spice with which François associated all the wonder and mystery of the far Far East.

It smelt particularly good to him on this day because he was exceptionally hungry. For a moment he had even the temerity to assume that Ousie-Johanna might have cooked it specially for him, because in shooting the leopard he had killed one of the worst enemies of civilized life at Hunter’s Drift. But soon, in the midst of talking and eating, he was disillusioned.

From where he sat he had a view of the open door that gave on the passage leading to the pantry. When his own eyes were accustomed to the shaded noon-day light he saw within the frame the dark glowing eyes, the plump, creased, benign features of Ousie-Johanna. What on earth could she be doing there?

The answer came when he noticed that the eyes were not on him but fixed on Ouwa. She was obviously watching, in a state of great anxiety, to see whether this fragrant dish was to his liking. Unfortunately he only took a spoonful or two of the delicious soup before laying down his heavy silver soup-spoon as if he could not bear the effort any more. Leaning back in his chair, he half closed his eyes and just urged François not to leave out a single detail of his story, as if it seemed to relieve his mind from the oppression of the pain.

When that happened, François, out of the corner of his eye, noticed Ousie-Johanna quickly putting a plump hand to her eye and heard a faint: ‘Oh no! Dear little Lord in Heaven, oh no!’ break from her before she vanished into the shadows of the passage beyond.

He knew then that the dish had been cooked specially for Ouwa because it was the most powerful medicine in her long repertoire of dishes for making those who were not well better. In his own convalescence from afflictions like measles, scarlet fever, malaria and mumps, Ousie-Johanna, to his great delight, had never failed to see that not a day passed without liberal helpings of this rich milk food. But such occasions shrank to insignificance compared with that of the present with its scale heightened as it were by the acute sense of crisis for his father. As a result of this poignant gesture of solicitude and despair from Ousie-Johanna, he had from then on only to get a faint whiff of cinnamon and no matter how unlikely the circumstances or urgent the preoccupations of his own mind, he would be instantly transported back to the dining-room at Hunter’s Drift and re-experience all as it unfolded about him now.