1972 - A Story Like the Wind (3 page)

He was, therefore, uncharacteristically sharp with !#grave;Bamuthi. Indeed, so sharp was he in his reply that if his father had heard, François would most certainly have been severely reprimanded. François’s father always insisted on his household showing the utmost courteousness to people who themselves were naturally courteous, and attached much importance to good manners, as did the Matabele.

‘Those who judge before they know the facts will learn to string the beads.’ He hurled the Sindabele proverb back at !#grave;Bamuthi with the automatic pompousness proverbs tend to bring to the tongue of those who use them, even one so young as François. The reference to ‘stringing the beads’ was a Sindabele image for the tears, bright as beads, that human beings shed in moments of great grief.

Pressed and preoccupied as François was, he had snapped it out unthinkingly. But he did have a sneaking sense of shame realizing that, perhaps for the first time, he had not preceded his sententious remark with the ‘Old Father’ that good manners demanded from a youngster like himself when addressing so old and fine a Matabele gentleman.

He felt it all the more when !#grave;Bamuthi replied lightly, without a trace of resentment: ‘And even the greatest bird, Little Feather, must come down from the sky to find a tree to roost upon.’

This was another proverb implicit with the simple reproof that François could not fail to feel, since it meant that no human being, however old or great, could live high and mighty with his head for ever in the air.

But by this time his little can was full, and snapping the lid firmly into position, he doubled back without another word to his room and Hintza. Hintza was still fast asleep, but François only had to put the bowl of milk, still warm from the cow, near its face to see the shining little nose come alive and the smell of milk make it quiver in scores of the finest magnetic little creases.

A second later the large blue eyes were wide open. Hintza was struggling out of the blanket and on to its feet, so unsteady and trembling that François had to support it under its stomach with his hand, while it fell to lapping up the milk as if it had not fed for days. ‘Gosh,’ he remarked to himself, ‘his stomach is as warm as one of Lammie’s hot-water bottles.’

From that moment on Hintza spent every night of its life in François’s room. This was not an unusual arrangement. One of the facts to be faced in a dog’s life in the wild country where François lived, was that an enormous number of dogs all the year round were killed by leopards. Leopards, who were great gourmets, loved two kinds of food above all others: dogs and baboons. Already in François’s own life, seven of his father’s favourite ridge-backs had been killed by leopards.

The trouble was that no selfcrespecting dog could ever see any reason why it should be afraid of a leopard. A leopard was hardly any bigger than itself and, in any case, was a species of cat which no dog could be expected to respect. When they had found themselves faced with a leopard, the dogs had had no hesitation in rushing to the attack. Unfortunately, leopards not only had teeth that were sharper than dogs’ and jaws that were just as powerful, but they were also armed with four sets of long, sharp claws, as tough and piercing as steel. Dogs could not hope to match such heavy armament. No one in François’s world had ever heard of an encounter between leopard and dog where the dog had won the battle.

So it had become the custom in François’s home to keep their ridge-backs inside at night. The duty of guarding the homestead was left to five large mongrels because, although François now would hardly admit it to himself, the mongrels of Africa were far more intelligent and capable of taking care of themselves than well-bred dogs like Hintza. Hintza and his breed were too proud to put intelligence first. They needed men, as men needed them, to be at their best in the bush. When faced with any challenge from wild animals, even leopards, they felt it a point of honour to take up the issue without hesitation. It had accordingly become a fundamental principle in the training of all pure-breed dogs at Hunter’s Drift, to make them so obedient to their master’s instructions that they would never attack any game, let alone leopard or lion, unless ordered to do so.

Somehow the mongrels were different. Born to make their way in life without any automatic privileges, they developed their sense and intelligence to an extraordinarily high degree. Moreover they were never troubled by any consideration of honour, self-respect or what some call the bourgeois compulsions of ‘keeping up appearances’. They could, when confronted by wild animals, fight as fiercely and perhaps even more intelligently, than any ridge-back. But they fought only as a last resort and, at the first hint of any danger, much preferred to give tongue and bark and, at times, or so it seemed to François, at night even to scream their alarm. So’it was quite natural, and with his parents’ full approval that Hintza, from the start, shared François’s room.

For some eighteen months Hintza was trained to be a hunter’s dog with all the dedication and natural patience born of affection that François, single-minded as only a lonely boy can be, could bring to the task. In these crucial matters he also had his father’s great experience, willingly shared. But perhaps most important of all, twice a year in the spring and early autumn, François was allowed to go on holiday to Mopani Theron’s camp. On these occasions Hintza, of course, went with him. There they were constantly taken out on routine patrols in the bush by Mopani, so that both François and the rapidly developing Hintza had the finest teacher in these matters that Africa could produce. Also, Hintza had the constant example of his own parents, Nandi and !#grave;Swayo.

Unexpected as it was to Franpois, it was not really surprising, therefore, that at the end of his third holiday in the bush with Mopani Theron, sitting by their last camp fire the night before he had to go back to Hunter’s Drift, that the old hunter admitted to François with a certain whimsical reluctance: ‘Little cousin’ (that is how he invariably addressed François in the intimate manner that people of his generation reserved for the young) ‘Little cousin, it was a bad day for me and a good day for you, when I allowed that ‘slim’ [clever] father of yours to talk me into giving Hintza to him. I am afraid he is going to be even better than his parents. It just shows you how much breeding counts in life.’

Pleased as François was with Mopani’s verdict, and much as he admired Nandi and !#grave;Swayo, François secretly felt that there was more to it than mere breeding. A great deal, he believed, was due to the fact that Hintza had been trained largely by a young person. He was convinced that no grown-up could have done the job half as well. He had only to think how incomprehensible grown-up people could be and how often they failed him in matters that seemed of the utmost importance, to be sure that the same gulf would exist between people like his father and Mopani, however well-meaning, and the little puppy.

He remembered, as an example, that first morning when he had taken it, after its long night’s sleep, into the breakfast room to show it to his parents. Ever since it had woken up the puppy had been just one long intensive wriggle of playful energy. But at the first glimpse of François’s parents it had gone instantly still and rigid, staring at them in sheer unbelief. Then it had suddenly given a sharp, apprehensive yelp, whirled about, and made straight for reassurance to François, who was kneeling on the rug near the wide open fireplace. The moment its eyes found François the bewilderment vanished.

Although he had only known Hintza for one night, François felt sure that Hintza’s behaviour was due to the fact that his parents somehow were just too big for him to take into his understanding; their eyes too big and bright with predetermined grown-up judgement. The puppy, indeed, was having the same sort of difficulties he himself had experienced when first confronted with the concept of giants and colossi in fairy-tales and legends. Only he, François , was of a size that Hintza’s young senses could grasp.

The parallel made him realize that he must act as a bridge between Hintza’s uninitiated capacity for understanding and this world of tall, confident grown-ups, with loud voices and heavy footsteps, that made the floors vibrate and the ground shake under the purple pads of Hintza’s sensitive paws. For months François was to notice how Hintza, when faced with adults, would inevitably turn to look to him first, before venturing another glance at the outsize shapes that bestrode the world of Hunter’s Drift.

But there was one other reason for François’s success with Hintza. It was, he was convinced, because he hardly ever spoke to Hintza in Afrikaans, Sindabele or English, the three languages most commonly used in his world. He always spoke to him in Bushman. He had learned Bushman from Koba who had, from as early as he could remember, always talked to him in her own language, when they were alone together. Indeed, his first clear memory was not even of old Koba’s wrinkled magnolia skin and somewhat Mongolian face, but rather of the peacock light of brilliant Hunter’s Drift sunsets playing on a necklace of heavy dark blue and red glass beads that she always wore, and the sound of her voice singing a Bushman lullaby to coax him, against his will, to sleep.

Bushman was a most difficult language to speak because almost every other consonant in it was a click of some kind. François’s mother, who knew only a few words which she liked to use from time to time as a token of respect when speaking to Koba, would flush with the effort of pronouncing them. François therefore could easily have been discouraged from going on with it, if it had not been for four things. First of all, he possessed a child’s supple tongue. Then there was his great love for Koba. Also there was the attraction, that appeals to all young people who are compelled, out of the need of protecting values which the grown-up world have forgotten, to lead in a sense a disguised life, of having his own secret language. It was almost as if an important part of himself felt it were on enemy territory, where it was safer to use a code for communicating with those who shared its secrets. Bushman seemed the perfect answer to this need. Finally, there was the overwhelming fact that Koba had assured him that all the animals, birds, reptiles and insects of Africa, and also the plants, understood the onomatopoeic Bushman tongue.

She told him many stories of how in the beginning the people of the early race, as she called the first Bushman, lived in complete harmony with all living things and plants on earth. She explained that it was only when the people of the early race snatched the first fire from underneath the wing of the great ostrich ancestor of all ostriches and started using it for their own selfish ends, that the animals took fright and ran away from human beings. But even though they fled, they never forgot the meaning of the sound in which they had first conversed in harmony with men.

François thought that from his own short experience of life he had already some intimation that old Koba was right. Even from the start Hintza had seemed to bring evidence to support her. One day François was playing with his puppy in the sun on the stoep of Hunter’s Drift and the puppy wandered off on his own near the edge of the high stoep.

François, afraid that it might fall over, called out loudly to him in Bushman, ‘Here, Hintza! Here!’

In his shout he had put the emphasis on the
tza
and to his amazement his puppy, instead of turning around and coming back to him, had leapt forward and vanished over the brink of the stoep. Alarmed, François dashed after the puppy and saw that it had picked itself up out of the dust, fortunately unhurt, but weak at the knees with shock and a strange, inner excitement, while it stared about wildly, the hair of its coat bristling and its mouth open, growling at the vacant day which was trembling with light and heat, as if expecting to see some kind of enemy ahead.

At once revelation came to François. Koba had long ago explained to him why the two most important words of command for hunting dogs were
tisisk
and
tza
—used by everyone from the Cape of Storms to Broken Hill.
Tssisk
was used when one wanted a hunting dog to go into the bush and flush out whatever one’s quarry happened to be;
tza
when one wanted a hunting dog to go as fast as possible after the quarry, once it was flushed. His father, Mopani Theron and even the Matabele unfailingly used no other words for these precise purposes.

Accordingly François realized instantly how the ‘tza’ in Hintza had been taken instinctively for a word of command by the puppy. He knew that, henceforth, he would have to be most careful to use Hintza’s name differently, or serious and even dangerous confusion might arise between them. So from then onwards Hintza became ‘Hin’ not only to Franjois but, at his request, to everybody else at Hunter’s Drift. The Bushman ‘Tza’ was added only when one really wanted the dog to go after live game.

These two words were so effective, old Koba had told him, because the hunters of the people of the early race got them straight from the stars. The stars, Koba said, were the greatest hunters of all and if François would come with her one night and walk out away from the sounds of the house into the darkness, she would give him an example of what she meant.

So he had gone with her on a very cold, clear and still winter’s night and waited until there was not even the sound of a lion, jackal, hyena, bush-buck, owl or night plover to be heard. Then, as they stood beside the thick hedge of massive fig-trees which lined the orchard and looked up deep into a sky bursting at its black seams with the weight of the stars, François had become aware of a far sound rather like that in the great mother-of-pearl shell in his father’s library when held to the ear.

‘Now listen, Little Feather,’ Koba had said, ‘listen and hear the sounds they make hunting up there in the bush of the night.’

Obediently he had turned his right ear, already alerted, to the stars. At once quite clearly he had heard the stars, faintly yet distinctly, crying out: ‘
Tssisk!
’ and a host of others crying out: ‘
Tza!
’