1972 - A Story Like the Wind (30 page)

François then described how Lammie had telephoned to Mopani to say that the doctors in the capital had once more failed them, and that they were, at that very moment, in the train on a journey of four days and four nights to consult more doctors in the far south.

At this last piece of intelligence Ousie-Johanna snorted and exclaimed: ‘A thin lot of good that will do!’ Ousie-Johanna, like !#grave;Bamuthi and all the other Africans regarded fat in any form as a singular blessing, and thinness as a manifestation of misfortune, a belief to which her monumental appearance testified. She then went on immediately to say: ‘We must catch that slim Matabele [her favourite name for !#grave;Bamuthi] this very lunch-time and make a plan.’

Once the midday meal was over, !#grave;Bamuthi was duly summoned to the kitchen and listened to François and the immense elaboration of Ousie-Johanna’s fears and ideas on the situation with his characteristic patience. He agreed that the time for making a plan had come but he had great reservations about doing anything immediately. Ousie-Johanna, inclined to be militant at the slightest hint of what she regarded as the male’s universal compulsion to be obstinate and already driven to remorselessness by anxiety, upbraided !#grave;Bamuthi long and unfairly.

When he did get a chance to get a word in, he was able to explain that his reluctance was due entirely to the fact that after all, he had been left in charge of Hunter’s Drift and felt he would be betraying the trust Ouwa had put in him if he left it, as he would have to do if they were to consult uLangalibalela properly, for was not that what they all had in mind?

Ousie-Johanna’s anger vanished at once and she tried to reassure !#grave;Bamuthi, asking rhetorically what it would matter if some cows were not for once milked as well as normally for a few days or indeed if a week’s supply of vegetables and fruit rotted, if it meant that Ouwa’s life could be saved thereby? Had they not all agreed that those silly white doctors with spectacles on their noses were no good when a man was bewitched? And had !#grave;Bamuthi overlooked the fact that Hunter’s Drift would not be left all that much uncared for in his absence, since he had enough experienced helpers? And did he not know after all these years that there would be old Johanna to keep an eye on them all for him whom no one had yet fooled? Let just one of; them slacken and they would have her to reckon with.

The thought of Ousie-Johanna trying to discipline the male Matabele staff seemed to appal !#grave;Bamuthi even more than his fear of betraying Ouwa’s trust. Taking orders from a woman, no matter how wise and revered, went against all the deepest instincts and traditions of Matabele man. Even François, young as he was, knew this only too well and did his best to erase immediately Ousie-Johanna’s tactlessness by creating a diversion and saying to !#grave;Bamuthi, ‘It is true, is it not old Father, that the farther away Ouwa goes from uLangalibalela, the less powerful the medicine against the spell on him will become?’

!#grave;Bamuthi answered with a sombre ‘Yes’, admitting that the danger to Ouwa had already been gravely increased by this long journey to the south.

Encouraged by the effect of this revelation on !#grave;Bamuthi, François pressed on. ‘And will you please consider, old Father, that should the doctors in this great city by the sea also find that they cannot put a name to Ouwa’s illness and cannot produce the right medicine for him, they might decide to send him even farther away?’

!#grave;Bamuthi and Ousie-Johanna, as mystified as they were alarmed by this thought, exclaimed together, ‘But how can they send him farther away than the great water?’ their name for the sea.

‘They can put him in a ship and send him to Britain where the greatest white doctors of all live in a world which knows even less of magic than the doctors here. What good will uLangalibalela’s medicine be then if they too fail, as we all know they must?’

‘Do you really think they will do this to our Great White Bird, Little Feather?’

!#grave;Bamuthi asked, appalled at the prospect.

‘I do indeed, old Father,’ François answered, sincerely. He too was as afraid of the prospect because he knew there were no lengths to which Lammie would not go to get Ouwa cured except the length of entering into the world of magic in which the three of them there so firmly believed.

‘And then the fat will be in the fire for all of us,’

!#grave;Bamuthi commented in a voice of doom, ‘because it is known, even to children, that the most powerful medicine in the world grows weaker the longer it crosses water.’

Both François and Ousie-Johanna seized on this admission with such effect that the last of !#grave;Bamuthi’s hesitations were overcome. Characteristically he showed this by rising quickly from his place at the table to announce that the sooner they started on their way to uLangalibalela, the better. He himself would go immediately to the kraals, to give the proper orders to his people and prepare for their going. They had better leave early the following morning, he said, as it would take them at least two days and a night on the journey there and a day and a night back. So would Ousie-Johanna please see to it that they had food enough for at least a week, for so busy and important a seer as uLangalibalela might well not see them at once.

François wanted to know why the journey back would take a day less than the journey out.

‘Because, Little Feather,’

!#grave;Bamuthi replied, ‘one cannot go to uLangalibalela without gifts, and in so important a matter they will have to be animals that we will have to lead along slowly so as not to make them lose weight. And they will have to be animals you value yourself because it is a law of the greatest doctors that in matters as urgent as these, they cannot help unless the persons to be helped are prepared to give up, for their cause, something of the greatest value to themselves.’

‘And what do you suggest, Old Father, is the thing I value that I should take along as a gift?’ François answered, suddenly sick at heart because just for a second it flashed through his mind that !#grave;Bamuthi could be thinking of Hintza, since there was obviously nothing in the animal world that he valued as much as Hintza.

Whether !#grave;Bamuthi knew what had passed through François’s mind or not it was significant that he answered François obliquely by saying: ‘Before we go into the matter of gifts, Little Feather, I must tell you that if you value the life of Hintza we had better leave him at home. The track to uLangibalela’s kraal is narrow and crooked and leads through the wildest parts of a bush full of great leopards that will like nothing more than to kill Hintza for food.’

François’s relief was greater than his fear for the life of Hintza. He had never been separated from Hintza for a moment and was not prepared to contemplate leaving him at home now. He said immediately: ‘I shall do nothing of the sort. Where I go, Hintza goes.’

He looked so outraged and determined that !#grave;Bamuthi, far from being aggrieved, was touched. He merely shrugged his broad shoulders as if in uttering the warning he had done all that could be expected of him. Then he went on to say, ‘As for the gift, I must ask you, Little Feather, to search your own heart for what thing of greatest value to you will help uLangalibalela’s medicine most.’

Both François and !#grave;Bamuthi would have liked to leave the matter at that but not Ousie-Johanna. She seized on the opportunity to go on talking to them, advising them in all sorts of ways and bombarding them with a bewildering series of suggestions. Although they both recognized that the outpouring was the result of long, pent-up anxieties and proceeded from her desire to help, it became frustrating and wearying, considering that they still had much to do before starting on their journey. It was not surprising, therefore, that afterwards !#grave;Bamuthi made the only criticism of Ousie-Johanna François had ever heard. Even then he did it not in anger so much as with a certain resigned compassion. Shaking his head before looking around to make certain he was out of hearing of the kitchen, he remarked to François in a deep whisper, ‘
Auck!
The princess of the pots, Little Feather, reminds me that water is never tired of running.’

François could not help smiling at this because he recognized the observation as a cry straight from !#grave;Bamuthi’s heart, who as head of his clan almost daily had to face numbers of Matabele ladies who brought their troubles to him.

François’s amusement, however, was brief for he had left the kitchen with his imagination uneasy about what to give to uLangalibalela. When !#grave;Bamuthi had stressed how the gift had to be something of great value to him and, once reassured that the something was not Hintza, it was as if a suggestion of what the gift had to be was already darkening his mind. Now back in his room with Hintza to sort out the few things he needed for the journey, and in the midst of deciding that he would have to take with him both his ·22 rifle and his octagonal muzzle-loader, he was aware of an increasing undercurrent of unease in his mind. He tried his hardest to bring it to the surface but the more he tried, the more intangible this sense of foreboding appeared. In the end he completely renounced the idea of arriving at a solution by himself and resolved to go out and consult !#grave;Bamuthi once again.

Oddly however, the moment he renounced the idea, the knowledge of what the gift had to be came to the surface of his mind like a cork released from the bottom of an ocean. Dear Heaven, how could he have been so dense? There was only one thing it could be. The realization saddened him extremely. Of all the many animals he loved at Hunter’s Drift there was no animal after Hintza so dear to him as Night and Day. He knew now that !#grave;Bamuthi himself must have had Night and Day in mind although his natural delicacy of manners had prevented him from telling François so outright. Night and Day was a year-old heifer. She was called Night and Day because she was a black and white roan; a combination of colour to which all the Matabele attached an almost mystical importance. François could still remember the great cry of happiness and wonder that had gone up in the cattle kraal at the end of the garden when it was announced that a calf of this miraculous combination of black and white had just been born in the shape of Night and Day.

It happened significantly on the morning of François’s eleventh birthday. Ouwa had made it a custom to present François on his birthday with a heifer calf. He did this so that in time François would have a herd of cattle of his own and in fact François now was the proud owner of a little herd of his own cattle. But for him, too, Night and Day was special. It had come to know him and his voice too, and from early on would even go for walks around the farm with him and Hintza. It sparred and played with Hintza and answered to its own name, coming when called. Indeed on one occasion it had annoyed Ousie-Johanna considerably by calmly walking into her kitchen to find out why François who, for once in his life had overslept, had not yet appeared outside to say good morning.

The more he thought about it the sadder François became, for it seemed that in giving Night and Day to uLangalibalela, he would be betraying a friend. Then the thought of how !#grave;Bamuthi had been forced to overcome his own feeling of betraying his trust as guard of Hunter’s Drift in Ouwa’s absence, came to his rescue. He realized, as !#grave;Bamuthi had done, that of course there was nothing they could possibly value more than Ouwa’s
Me
.

So, quickly, before any more thought could weaken his resolution, he went straight to !#grave;Bamuthi’s kraal. He found !#grave;Bamuthi busy with a couple of cow-hands separating his own calves from the part of the herd he was allowed to keep at Hunter’s Drift. He was in the process of putting a leather band round the neck of a beautiful shining black heifer, also about a year old, and one which François knew was a special favourite of his. She was called Little Finger, the first calf of a noble heifer and great new bull of whom !#grave;Bamuthi and all his clan were certain a new chosen race of cattle would spring, and from it more children would be born than could be counted on the fingers of two whole hands. Therefore, !#grave;Bamuthi had asked one and all when they watched the small black calf which had just been dropped, a silk-like sheen upon its skin, as it struggled on trembling legs to its feet, what name could be better than one beginning the great count to follow, with the little finger of the hand? However, the significance of this did not strike François at once. He was too absorbed in his own agonized feelings and, rushing up to !#grave;Bamuthi, he announced at once, almost with tears in his eyes, ‘It has to be Night and Day, has it not, Old Father?’

!#grave;Bamuthi put his hand affectionately on François’s shoulder and said in a voice as if he were born to be the father to all living things in that world of the bush, ‘No
Induna
, Little Feather, could have chosen half so well.’

Then, in order to comfort François, he drew his attention to Little Finger, which he now had firmly roped in hand. ‘Look, Little Feather, look. Night and Day will have the company of a friend in her new home, because this child of a bull of the night is my gift of value to uLangalibalela.’

There and then all self-pity left François. He grabbed !#grave;Bamuthi’s hand in both his own, pressed it as hard as he could, incapable of words. Young as he was he knew how much cattle meant to people like !#grave;Bamuthi, carrying as they did within them the spirit of the ancestors and how great a proof it was of !#grave;Bamuthi’s love for Ouwa, Lammie and himself that he was joining, perhaps even unnecessarily, in making this sacrifice for them, for surely an animal as fine as Night and Day might well have been incentive enough even for so illustrious a doctor as The Right Honourable Sun-Is-Hot.

Comforted, François was about to go back home when !#grave;Bamuthi took him by the arm and whispered in his ear, ‘You have not forgotten that we have to take with us something of your Ouwa’s person.’

François happily could reassure him. Ever since the possibility of going to uLangalibalela had first been raised, he had made a habit of slipping into his parents’ room every day and gathering some hair from Ouwa’s brush. He had by now a small strand of hair wrapped in tissue paper and hidden underneath his clothes at the bottom of a drawer in his room. He had in fact become extraordinarily aware of some magnetic quality about this secret possession. Lammie and Ouwa, of course, would have dismissed it as sheer superstition but for François it was an acute reality. It had reached the point where he did not even like touching the paper in which the hair was wrapped because he felt it an intrusion into a forbidden zone of Ouwa’s personality.