1972 - A Story Like the Wind (22 page)

Something prompted him immediately to think of the gramophone. He suggested to Ousie-Johanna that as she had been up so early and had had so many anxieties recently she should go and have a rest in her room while he fetched the gramophone and her favourite records, which were all hymns. They were not the happy, rousing, militant, uplifting tunes of the church which François himself liked, but the most solemn, grave, slow, ponderous and lugubrious dirges of which religious composers over the centuries had been capable. They were moreover interpreted by old·fashioned singers at their most fatal, grim best. It is true that Ousie-Johanna had managed to make ‘Abide with Me’ into the liveliest one of the lot. But the rest of her repertoire seemed to specialize in nothing but ultimate gloom. Even ‘Lead kindly light’ seemed to be sung by her not for the sake of the ‘leading light’ but because of her love and enjoyment of the gloom which encircled it.

Ousie-Johanna’s eyes softened at such forethought for her pleasure from François and she consented immediately, with relish. In a few minutes she was in her room where François came to put the gramophone on the table beside her brass bedstead. The brass was always so polished and shining that it gleamed like gold. He placed the records beside it and had not forgotten ‘Work because the night will surely fall’ because it was also a favourite with Ousie-Johanna, who always saw herself as working as if the night were about to fall like a mountain top upon her. Also ‘Rough storms may rage, around me all is night?’, ‘For those in peril on the sea’, ‘Lord how does the light fade towards the sea’, ‘Be thou also a Daniel’, ‘God be with you until we meet again’ and so on and on until the summit of transfiguration for her, ‘Nearer my God to Thee’.

As she stretched herself out on her bed, her face shining with anticipation at this great musical treat ahead of her, François wound up the gramophone and said, ‘Now, Ousie-Johanna, you know what you like best and what to do. Don’t worry about me. I’ll make myself a flask of tea and take Hintza for a run into the bush.’ Knowing himself safe at last he went out.

Gathering up his presents, another flask of coffee, a loaf of bread, a bag of rusks, more biltong, a field flask full of water, more medicines and his own ·22 rifle, as he had made no promises to do any shooting today, he set off in a new, roundabout way for the hill.

In the courtyard he could hear in that still, trembling afternoon air the sound of Dame Clara Butt at the top of her volcanic voice emerging with a realistic crackling from an eroded old record, thundering so that the day all around him, and Hintza, vibrated with ‘Nearer my God to Thee’.

Hintza stopped for a moment, looked up at François and whimpered as if he too wished to join in being nearer to God but François had no such reaction. He gave Hintza a robust order to be his full hunting self, admonishing him smilingly, ‘Nearer to Xhabbo but not to God just yet we hope, touch wood!’

Hintza, knowing the order well, obediently placed a paw on the stock of the rifle François held out in front of him, and then led off into the bush.

Within half an hour François was back in the cave with Xhabbo. He had progressed so much in the twenty-eight hours since François had seen him last that, much as François wished him to be altogether well, he could not help being a little sad that Xhabbo’s recovery had not been somewhat slower. Progress at such a rate meant that the little Bushman’s stay in the cave was going to be even shorter than he had anticipated. The first thing that François noticed, after greeting Xhabbo, was a deep circular track in the yellow sand on the floor of the cave where he obviously had been walking round and round the fringes of his wide shelter in order to prepare’his leg for the journey home. Even more ominous was the trend of their conversation once François had seen to the wounded leg and fed Xhabbo with fresh food.

Glad as Xhabbo was to see him, François noticed that he was restless and uneasy. He had a clouded and troubled look in his slanted, dark eyes.

Asked what the matter was, Xhabbo replied that he had been awake a great deal in the night because of a ‘tapping’ inside himself.

‘A tapping?’ François asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

Xhabbo explained with animation and at great length. He said that all Bushmen from time to time had a kind of tapping thing that suddenly started up inside their chests.

‘You mean,’ François interrupted, ‘that your heart starts beating faster?’

‘No, Foot of the Day!’ Xhabbo answered, shaking his head emphatically. ‘It is not the beating of the heart. It is utterly different. It is like a finger tapping against the skin of the chest, like a finger on a drum, telling the ear to listen and hear talk of things from a far-off place. All we Bushmen are taught from the time we are young that we have to expect this tapping inside ourselves in order to know things that the eyes cannot see, the ears cannot hear and the nose, even the nose of a porcupine woman cannot smell.’ The porcupine, according to the Bushman, had the finest sense of smell of any living thing.

He went on to explain that all Bushmen were taught to go and sit apart when this tapping started in them, and listen carefully until they knew what it was saying. ‘Only fools,’ he said, ‘would not obey the law of the tapping.’

Many evil things had come to Bushmen in the past because they had not listened to what the tapping was trying to tell them. This tapping was always of two kinds. There was tapping which told things of the world without; this would come to the best of hunters and told them in which direction they had to go to find game. But there was another, more important tapping that would tell of things many seasons before they were to come. Many a calamity had come to Bushmen who had not listened to this kind of tapping, as it was the most difficult of all to believe. Perhaps only one in a lifetime among the Bushmen could hear and know what this kind of tapping meant. And he was afraid that he, Xhabbo, felt ‘not a little’ that he was one of those.

‘Afraid?’François asked.

Xhabbo nodded his head vigorously and replied, ‘Yes, Foot of the Day, afraid, because the tapping I hear is not pleasant to me. It tells me that every day as the sun goes up and down, ringing in the sky, the things approaching Xhabbo and his people are not pleasant. Utterly I must tell you that this tapping is not pleasant and makes Xhabbo utterly afraid.’

Xhabbo went on to explain that when he was lying down with sleep like a cloud of thunder in his head, the tapping started against his chest and became so fast and loud that the cloud of sleep left him. He was forced to sit up and let his ears become full of the sound of the tapping. It was, he realized, tapping that came from a great distance, come to summon him back to the desert and warning him that he must not delay because his people had to leave the place where he had left them as soon as possible. When he had tapped with his hands on his chest, to show that he had heard and would obey, the tapping had stopped and he was allowed to sleep.

But in the middle of the night the tapping had come back with the same message, more urgent than ever, and again he had answered. Yet that had not been enough. Just before dawn the tapping started again.

‘Tapping once, Foot of the Day,’ Xhabbo observed, almost fearfully, ‘can be heard and discussed before believing. Tapping twice is grave and must be heeded after talking. But tapping thrice, is from Koeggen-A himself and must be obeyed at once. So I stood up and all day have walked round and round this cave to make certain that I had two legs and not one for the journey. Therefore, I feel utterly that now Xhabbo must turn round on his heels and go to the place of his people.’

François, desperate, immediately pleaded with Xhabbo to wait at least one more day. He told him of all the preparations he had in mind to bring him more food and supplies for the journey. He argued, in a voice shrill with emotion, that he could give him so much more food, that he would have some biltong to spare for his people when he arrived. Besides, another day or two of rest would enable him to go faster than if he left at once.

He put this to Xhabbo all the more persuasively because he really believed in his reasons. But he was only partially successful. In the end Xhabbo agreed with great reluctance to wait only until the evening of the next day. Then as soon as it was properly dark, he said not without sadness, that he would have to set out on his journey.

That done, François produced his gifts. Inadequate as they seemed to him, to Xhabbo they appeared miraculous. Regarding the flint and its fire-flex he was overcome with joy. He tried the flint again and again, with the air of a magician, and in the end François had to ask him to stop, saying the flex was too precious to be used unnecessarily.

All these things, the talk of the future and preparations for the journey, again made the time pass so quickly that when François emerged from the cave, he was amazed to see that the sun was already low. He would have time enough, provided he hurried, to get to the milking sheds before dark and go through another round of deceptive appearances of having come there from the simple desire to help !#grave;Bamuthi and his fellow herdsmen.

So, going back the straightest way at the fastest pace that he and Hintza could manage, he arrived in time to help carry the last pails of sea-foam milk and empty them into the great metal churns in which the milk was to be conveyed to Hunter’s Drift Siding and so by train to the mining city beyond. Even then, he was not soon enough to prevent !#grave;Bamuthi from looking in his direction from time to time, as if he were making a special effort to suppress a strong intention of having to reappraise François’s behaviour. Whenever François caught that look he had to admit to himself, however much it went against his emotional grain, that Xhabbo might be leaving the cave just in time to prevent !#grave;Bamuthi from discovering what the two of them had been doing.

The rest of the evening, and the night, followed the same pattern as those of the day before, except that now it was François’s turn not to sleep well. He got up early, sad and worried. He never knew how he got through the dutiful pattern of the day because the prospect of losing his new friend made him more and more reckless even as the sun rose higher in the sky. In the end he did not care whether he made Ousie-Johanna and the others suspicious or not. He just went into the kitchen and wheedled and implored her until she agreed to give him an early lunch. That done he purloined a pair of leggings made of webbing, the largest haversack in their store, stuffed it full of more biltong and dried fruit without any attempt at explanation and walked out of the door at the far end of the homestead while Ousie-Johanna was still washing up the dishes. He started off into the bush in a completely new direction and as a result was in the cave two hours earlier than the day before.

As he and Hintza crawled through the narrow entrance they saw Xhabbo quite near, standing facing them and indicating with his finger to his lips that he did not want François to speak. Then he beckoned François to come closer and whispered in his ear to be as quiet as possible. On the tips of their toes they went slowly to the farthest recess of the cave. There Xhabbo stopped to point with his finger folded back in reverertce, at a trembling circle of sunlight aglow on the fine yellow sand.

For a moment François, whose eyes were not yet accustomed to the light of the cave, saw nothing. Then, suddenly, the whole meaning of Xhabbo’s attitude became clear to him for there, almost as transparent as amber in the sun, was a large praying mantis.

François, of course, had often seen praying mantises around Hunter’s Drift. But never before had he seen one in the awesome surroundings of what Xhabbo had taught him to regard as the natural temple of his god. Moreover the timing of it all seemed deliberate as if meaning to crown the climax of all that had happened between him and Xhabbo. Again, he had that odd, prickling sensation in the hair at the back of his head.

Xhabbo, who apparently already had come to terms with this visitation of the living image of his god, whispered to François in a tone full of hope that at last François would be able to understand all. ‘You see, Foot of the Day, Mantis himself has come to call me. When Xhabbo woke this morning, and the sun came through this hole in the cave, Mantis himself was sitting there, looking with eyes of fire at Xhabbo. Ask Mantis yourself, please, whyhashecome?’

François was afraid that at the sound of his voice the praying mantis would fly away instantly. Also, he was convinced that he would not know how to do it properly. Ridiculous as it may seem to sophisticated persons, he was suddenly terrified of giving offence to what most people in the world regarded as a common insect. Xhabbo assured him in vain that if he went down on his knees and spoke politely with the proper voice of reverence, Mantis would most certainly not fly away, but answer him.

‘But what shall I ask him Xhabbo?’ François implored him, certain he would make a mess of it. ‘No, Xhabbo, no. Forgive me but I fear not a little that I will utterly fail. Could you please ask him for me?’

Accordingly, Xhabbo knelt down and as he did so François was amazed to see Hintza going down on his stomach too, and even wriggle into a position where he was close to the little insect and began regarding it in the most extraordinary way, as if he were seeing a dog’s idea of a ghost. Ashamed that he had not thought of it sooner, François sank on his knees beside Hintza.

As he did so he heard Xhabbo in a voice as soft and tender as a Bushman mother chanting a lullaby, addressing the mantis. ‘O Snatcher of Fire, Dweller in the Rainbow, Giver of names to the flowers and animals and all things of the earth, Fixer of colour not a little pleasant to all animals with honey; Person of the early race who hears sounds that come from far away places and whose ears listen to the wind from the other side of the desert and the tapping of stars talking of the hunt in the desert of the night, please, oh please tell me, are you come to call Xhabbo to the place of his people?’

At the first whisper from Xhabbo that strange head of the mantis, so oddly Mongolian, if not Bushman, in its shape, was turned slowly about. Its large brilliant eyes looked sideways at Xhabbo. The eyes seemed to flash like jewels in the shaft of sun and to François’s amazement, the mantis’s front legs were raised slowly up into the air and then slowly brought down again.