1972 - A Story Like the Wind (36 page)

Unhappily uLangalibalela quickly drove all the warmth away by declaring sombrely that even so determined a spirit as Lammie would find that Heaven would still have its back turned on them despite the greatest white inyanga. It would remain so since none of them would find a name for the cause of Ouwa’s departure from his body. The reason for this was simple: the cause was in their own hearts and the hearts of their people.

And what was more difficult for a man to perceive than the fault within himself? Was there not an ancient saying that it was easier to put out the fire in the house of neighbours than to deal with the smoke in one’s own? There was no inyanga so dangerous as the inyanga who was part of the cause he was called upon to strike down. The cause, of course, was first in the Government. He, uLangalibalela, the Son of Osebeni and all the other people around the Amanzin-tetse river knew the Government had become the Great White Bird’s enemy. But it was even worse than that. Gravest of all aspects of the cause was ‘the turning of backs’ on the Great White Bird by all his own people. This ‘turning of backs’ of a whole people upon a single man in all uLangalibalela’s experience, was the gravest and the most difficult of the troubles to strike down. And it now, of course, had been made all the more difficult by the Great White Bird going to a place where uLangalibalela’s words could not reach him; a place moreover close by the Great Water where, as everyone knew, medicines tended to lose power.

Hearing the terrible phrase, ‘turning of the backs of a whole people’, François looked to !#grave;Bamuthi for comfort, but found none. It was as if the phrase had gone into him too like the blade of an assegai. The shock and dismay on his face could not have been greater. Young as he was, François was not surprised, because he had heard the dreadful words before. For instance, Ousie-Johanna and !#grave;Bamuthi had given him many examples of how Bantu tribes would punish persons whom they judged to have been guilty of crime. They would summon these persons to some public place, not for execution, but to witness their own people, men, women and children, not excluding chiefs from far away and their
Indunas
, turn their backs as one upon them. The multitude would then sit down on the ground in utter silence, never again turning to look at the condemned man or men. The condemned men would know then that they had been cast out of the tribe forever and, their spirit wrapped in a skin of darkness, they would sadly slink away.

This, !#grave;Bamuthi and Ousie-Johanna had emphasized was far worse than outright execution. It meant that men thus condemned would find that not only the tribe but Heaven too had turned its back on them. From that day on, there was nothing they could do but watch their own shadows fade. They would slowly begin to leave their bodies, until the day came when the last of their shadow vanished and they were outside their bodies, never to return.

Listening to all this and rapidly losing heart, François recalled all the many hurtful encounters he had witnessed between Ouwa and Lammie and their own people. Adding to his recollections all he had been told about his father’s career both in the south and subsequently in the capital of the country in which they now lived, François was bound to admit to himself that he had never heard a more accurate description of his father’s fate than that implied in the single phrase, ‘the turning of backs’.

His dismay accordingly was so great that he became convinced that uLangalibalela would soon announce that Ouwa was beyond his help. Despite a capacity of restraint unusual in one so young, a kind of cry broke from him. He called to uLangalibalela, ‘Oh Father, is there nothing then that we can do?’

The Right Honourable Sun-Is-Hot looked at him, that strange inner light in his eyes perhaps less indirect than before, and he replied in a voice for the first time not without personal emotion, commanding obliquely, ‘Produce the body matter that you have brought.’

This additional proof of the prophet’s powers of vision after so many others, since the question of body matter so far had not been raised, restored some of François’s confidence. He immediately took out from his haversack the little brown parcel with the bright red seal and handed it reverently to uLangalibalela.

From the way he took it and the quickening of light in those dark, inverted eyes, François knew that he not only approved but also that his own imagination had been excited by the sight of the picturesque little parcel. Clearly in all his long experience, no body matter had ever reached him in quite that manner before. Indeed, the experience appeared so novel that he did not know how to get at the contents of the parcel, and François had to offer with great humility, ‘Father, would you allow me please to show you what I have brought you?’

He was allowed to take back the parcel. Some instinct told him not to cut the string but to break the seal first and then carefully to gather the pieces of blood-red wax in the palm of his hand and offered it all to uLangalibalela, who then dropped it, piece by piece, into Ouwa’s declining fire. The pieces landed on the little bed of coals within, and immediately went up with a splutter of flame which made uLangalibalela utter a profound exclamation of approval.

François also undid the knot of string most carefully, unwrapped the paper, handed both string and paper to the prophet who put them on the fire as well, watching the growth of flame with even greater satisfaction.

Only then did François unwrap the tissue paper and without touching the strand of Ouwa’s hair, for he felt more in awe of it than ever, he handed it over to uLangalibalela.

It was, of course, impossible to say precisely what the prophet had expected. All one can say with certainty is that he regarded the offering of hair as of great value, since he did not throw it to the fire.

Instead he lowered the offering carefully on the ground on his left, before commanding again: ‘And now for the rest?’

!#grave;Bamuthi and François, surprised as well as disturbed, looked questioningly at each other, then asked simultaneously: ‘What then is absent, Father?’

uLangalibalela gave them a pitying look. Did they not know, he demanded, that important as the hair of Ouwa’s body was, it was as important for him to have in his possession something vital belonging to the men who were the cause of Ouwa’s illness? How was he to continue his work as a healer, if having divined the nature of the trouble, he did not have for instance, also a hair of the head of the Government? Was not the Government, after all, one of the main enemies to be struck down? More important still, had they not thought to bring something vital belonging to the person paramount to even so powerful a Government and indeed the only authority who could make the Government first turn round, open its eyes and see Ouwa again as he, uLangalibalela, was seeing him, and seeing him thus compel the peoples they governed also to turn about to see Ouwa as one of his tribe again? Indeed, if they had no more to give him, if they had not even thought of bringing so obvious a thing as a single hair of the head of the Little Lamb so that he could strengthen her, there would be nothing uLangalibalela could do. And that would be the end of the matter.

François’s despair was at its blackest, blacker even than magazines and books, although he wore hardly any clothes or ornaments.

In that position, from what seemed a steep summit of spirit, François heard uLangalibalela command them like a voice issuing from some Sinai of the Matabele past: ‘You, Son of Osebeni, and you, Little Feather, hasten to your kraals by the Amanzim-tetse. It is always later than men think. Now it is even later than I, uLangalibalela, would have thought. We have not a day to lose. Hasten! Hasten! See that you send me these things of which we have spoken as fast as you can. When they arrive and, in arriving, come in time, I, uLangalibalela, will seek through flame and fire to persuade Heaven to turn about so that the Queen beyond the water too can turn about in order to turn about the Government over here, so that the nation and tribe of the Great White Bird shall be seen again and being seen shall be called to return to his body and throw a fine dark shadow once more upon the earth. Water and distance will make the work of uLangalibalela difficult and long, so hasten. Meanwhile I will work with this hair you have brought me to make the sickness of the Great White Bird stand still until the Government is commanded to change. Beyond that all words are naught.’

With that the prophet, taking their reactions for granted, turned his back on them, bent down and vanished through the doorway of his own beehive hut.

That night, !#grave;Bamuthi, François and Hintza, with no heifers to retard them, had hastened with such effect that they camped in the same place where they had slept on their first night out from Hunter’s Drift. They had arrived at the hill in the bottom of the depression just before sunset.

François, exhausted, would have liked to camp on top of the rocky mound in the centre but in view of the fact that the men who had possessed it on their way out could easily be followed by others, !#grave;Bamuthi thought it too dangerous and had insisted on hurrying on through the dark to the site of their old camp.

By the following afternoon some hours before sunset, they were back at Hunter’s Drift. Before the sun had set a Matabele herdsman known as a great runner, was sent back to uLangalibalela’s kraal, fully briefed by !#grave;Bamuthi on the need for speed and the dangers that might await him in the depression. He was carrying a brown cardboard box, securely wrapped in paper, sealed and containing not one but two of Ouwa’s letters with imposing seals of Government. Also there was that vivid coloured portrait of the Queen, together with a crumpled little handkerchief that François had found hidden in a corner of the shallow drawer in the dressing-table of Lammie’s bedroom—an emanation of the subtle scent she used rising like an autumn mist to his senses. It touched him deeply because it seemed such an apt image of what Lammie might be feeling at that moment.

The only real consolation that François could draw from the situation was that the man carrying the vital parcel to uLangalibalela was called Mtunywa, Sindabele for Messenger. From what he knew of Messenger’s reputation as a runner he fully believed !#grave;Bamuthi was right in saying that Mtunywa would be at the prophet’s kraal before another sun had set.

All this done, he and !#grave;Bamuthi joined Ousie-Johanna for supper in her kitchen to give her with lighter hearts a full account of their visit to uLangalibalela. Afterwards François and Hintza slept a deep, exhausted sleep in their own room. Indeed they only woke when the sun was already up. Ousie-Johanna, for once, had not had the heart to call them.

As a result François arrived in the kitchen just as the men who had taken the daily load of vegetables and fresh meat to Hunter’s Drift Siding late the night before, arrived with some mail. He thought it a good omen then that it brought him a letter from Lammie. The letter gave him a full account of what had happened since she and Ouwa had left Hunter’s Drift, and set out at length Lammie’s clear and undiminished hope that, despite the fact that Ouwa had been tired by the journey more than even she had expected, she was convinced they would find the right answer in the great city by the sea.

It was not surprising in the circumstances that the letter was dominated by Lammie’s concern for Ouwa and that she manifested concern for François’s well-being in a slightly perfunctory way. All that was only to be expected and highly understandable. Also it was flattering to François’s claim to greater maturity than commonly acknowledged, that his well-being should be taken affectionately for granted. And yet one wonders again whether somewhere, quite selfishly as he would have been the first to admit, deep down, something in François would not perhaps have liked her to display not just deliberate concern but also a trace, however small, of simple, straightforward and involuntary anxiety on his own account. Even more characteristic than Lammie’s lively and highly articulate letter was a postscript in Ouwa’s writing, a hand so clear and unambiguous that it always seemed to one to presuppose a schoolmaster’s blackboard in a classroom full of beings uninitiated in schooling.

Ouwa wrote in that clear, larger than life script of his, ‘What is this that we hear from Mopani? Have you really gone on from being the terror of leopards to terrorizing the elephants of our bush? Will you and that hound of yours please condescend to see to it that there are a few of the greater fauna, not to mention imperilled lesser, left alive for us to enjoy when we return from this tiresome and futile excursion to the sea? And, as far as possible for a person of your energies, zeal and ambitions, and a hound of Hintza’s indefatigable capacities, may you stay in peace as much as possible in this unpacified world.’

That ‘stay in peace’ of the Matabele farewell, the inevitable piece of teasing with its faint trace of sarcasm in the postscript, and which moved François almost to tears, was Ouwa’s gallant way of sending his love.

The time between the coming of the letter and Messenger’s return, two and a half days later (because Messenger, after his extraordinary exertions in reaching uLangalibalela’s kraal in twenty-four hours not unnaturally returned in a more leisurely fashion), seemed very long to François. When he did come at last he brought word that the prophet wanted !#grave;Bamuthi and Little Feather to know that he would send them news within a few days of how he had not only been able to make Ouwa’s sickness stand but to strike down its cause at the base.

Hopefully, François, !#grave;Bamuthi and Ousie-Johanna waited for such a sign from uLangalibalela. If there was anything in life, apart from real tragedy more likely to slow down time than hope against fear, Franjois would have been most interested to learn of its existence. He realized that uLangalibalela could not feel it necessary to send messages by as fast a person as Mtunywa and that everyone said ‘no news is good news’. He accepted that it would be at least four days before they would hear from the prophet. Yet he hoped to the contrary and hope made the suspense almost unbearable.

But when they had no sign by the fourth day, not only he but both !#grave;Bamuthi and Ousie-Johanna became profoundly worried. The fifth day, as the three of them confessed to each other, was one of the longest they had ever known. It was only at sunset of that day that a great noise of clapping and cries of ‘We see you, yes, we see you!’ coming from the direction of the kraals beyond the milking sheds where François and Hintza were with !#grave;Bamuthi and the herdsmen for the evening’s milking, intimated that uLangalibalela’s message might have arrived.