Embrace (4 page)

‘Loeletitsoos gogo aneedid poploelay witith tithe didogogsoos,’ I’d say, and Lena might respond, ‘We firsoostit have tito dido tithe didisooshesoos or weloelloel gogetit a hididineegog.’

Our speaking in Gogga could drive Bokkie and Mumdeman to distraction and eventually the language was more or less banned from our home and our grandparents’ home. ‘You’re Afrikaners now,’ Mumdeman said. ‘You sound like Makoppolanders from the wrong side of Mount Meru when you speak that gibberish. Talk Afrikaans or English and be proud of your heritage.’ Lena and I continued speaking Gogga later in St Lucia and in Toti when we didn’t want anyone to understand what we were saying. In the Berg I began teaching the language to Dominic. Soon he and I could rattle it off faster than English. And so Dom and I had Gogga and English — even when it was an Afrikaans week in the Berg. Though eventually we seldom spoke Gogga, we continued using it to joke, or, when the need arose for secrecy or simply to tease the others by pretending publicly at sharing something exclusive. Dominic and my Gogga had six further altered consonants: c to coc, f to fick, j to jol, v to vis, w to wow and y to yok. The only other place I used Gogga was in my diary. There I put down the stuff I didn’t want in English or Afrikaans. On the off chance of the book being discovered where I hid it in the slit of my mattress, at least my worst thoughts and actions — those I even dared write in Gogga — would be rendered as partly incomprehensible. Once my Latin is good enough, I told myself, I’ll graduate to using that as my secret language, even though Ma’am said Latin was a very difficult — almost impossible — language to use for modern discourse and idiom. Its real use lies in enhancing your understanding of the music you sing, she said, and of the English we write and speak, and, of course, it is essential to understanding Roman Dutch law — which was relevant for those like myself and Radys Dietz who wished to go on to university to become lawyers.

Umfolozi. When Bok was away taking tourists on trails I played outside the yard amongst the marula trees and hook-thorns. The latter, which I read about and memorised from Bok’s Parks Board Manual, were
Acacia caffra,
names that came back to me once we started Latin during that Senior year in the Berg. I lay in bed and imagined — thought I’d ask Ma’am — that
caffra
was the Latin root of the word kaffir.

In Mkuzi there had been no yard and no fence. Barring a disproven sighting on a dose-by sisal farm, there had been no lions in the park. In Umfolozi I was allowed out as long as one of the bull terriers accompanied me. While large game like eland, nyala rams and giraffe came occasionally right up to the house, we knew that in seasons of good rain, with antelope abundant and no migration to escape drought, the likelihood of leopard or lion venturing close to human activity was remote. Moreover, there was no way that either Chaka or Suz would let a predator — or even Jonas — near me.

After we left Mkuzi for Umfolozi, and once I had definitely stopped believing that the horse Ganaganda would show up for me to brush, came the horsy game. Sometimes I was the stallion Vonk — before Bok had to shoot him when he fractured his leg. Sometimes I was the mare Ganaganda. A twig between my teeth, I galloped through the bush with a thin stick as riding-crop in one hand while my other handled the invisible reins. Wood from tambotie trees was never used as a bit. I had witnessed in terror and recalled with horror what happened to Bernice in Mkuzi when we thought she had chewed a tambotie leaf or swallowed a jumping bean. And I heard too many times what it had done to the Umfolozi storekeeper, Mr Watts, when the old man had eaten impala grilled over an open tambotie fire. The elasticity of a thin marula branch made for a splendid riding-crop. For hours I would be gone from the yard, Chaka or Suz by my side, or, when Bok was not in the bush, with both of them as my reliable companions. We walked and stalked the veld, played on the boulders above the donkey compound and secretly explored the overgrowncliffs beneath the trail office. After Lena and I saw a leopard there, I abandoned my idea of walking with the dogs all the way down to the \Vhite Umfolozi to look for the cave where Dr Ian Player said he had found a young boy’s skeleton. Maybe killed in the times of Chaka, when Umfolozi was the hunting ground of the Zulus. From the house you could see the White Umfolozi snaking its dull water and white sand east towards Chaka Zulu’s hunting pits. Hidden by hills, the river there joined the Black Umfolozi to flow its course to the Indian Ocean below the St Lucia Estuary, close to Dad and Mumdeman at Charters. Bok promised to one day take me to Chaka’s hunting pits, but we never got round to it before we too were transferred to Lake St Lucia.

I played with my Dinky cars in the sand-pit Bok had built for me and filled with the White Umfolozi River sand. The dogs would be banished to the enclosed side garden from where they could do no damage to the elaborate infrastructure of roads, camps and valleys I spent weeks constructing. Bok gave us instructions so that Lena and I could, with roads, towns, hills, rest camps and rivers, map the whole of Zululand between Umfolozi, Mkuzi, Hluhluwe and Ndumu down to Charters Creek on the ocean, where Dademan was the Park Warden and Mumdeman the Camp Superintendent. Sometimes Lena and I removed the Dinky cars, the towns and the rest camps. Then we planted hundreds of yellow broken
Themeda triandra
stalks to represent Chaka’s regiments. From up on our hills, smaller impis swarmed down the valleys into the Umfolozi valleys to surround and vanquish the lesser tribes, the evil enemies of the upright and honest Zulu nation.

Sometimes, in our network of roads, a tour bus would get stuck and one of us, happening by on horseback, would be compelled to radio to base-camp for help.

‘Umfolozi HQ, Umfolozi HQ, this is Ranger De Man, do you read me? Over.’

‘Roger, Ranger De Man, this is HQ, go ahead. Over.’

‘HQ, I found a bus stuck in the sand, RF Ndlovu’s Ridge. We need some help pulling her out. The tourists are getting hungry. Over.’ ‘Roger, Ranger De Man, we have your RF. Will send a tow truck. You’re far out, could take us two hours to get to you. Over.’

‘Roger, HQ,’ Lena said one day. ‘Don’t wait too long. There could be terrorists in the bush waiting to kill us.’

‘Tourists won’t kill us, silly, the lions will, and the black rhino,’ I said.

‘Terrorists, imbecile. Not tourists.’

‘Roger, HQ, I’ll get the boys to start digging so long. Over.’ ‘Roger, Ranger De Man. See you in a bit. Over and out.’

And at night after we went to bed Lena and Bernice told me about the terrorists. Had heard them spoken of at school. Kaffirs. Black and swarming everywhere through Mozambique and Rhodesia. It was the terrorists who stole our land in Tanganyika. With guns from Red Russia. Terrified, I listened for anything that sounded like a tread outside the window. Was ready to scream and flee the room if I heard a twig trod on in the night. I waited till my sisters were asleep. Rose and ran down the passage and crawled into bed between Bok and Bokkie.

Days Bok and Suz were due back from the bush, Chaka and I awaited them down the hill at the Parks Board office. I watched Chaka closely. When his ears started to twitch and stand upright, I knew: he could hear or sense their approach. He’d snort and from inside his throat make puppy-dog sounds. He’d look up at me, eyes pleading for permission to run ahead.

‘Behave yourself, Chaka,’ I would say in my gruffest Bok voice. And, if he went on to yelp: ‘You better stop. I’m warning you. Enough is as good as a feast.’

A mile away, so Bok would later say, on some footpath edging along a ravine, he would be pointing out to his trailists the performance being put on by Suz. She ran ahead of the short line of people, then, knowing the length of the imaginary leash, would turn, running back past the group to where the donkeys followed ahead of Jonas andgoy. Down the line again she’d fly, stopping to spin around, then dash back to Bok who strode along with the rifle across his shoulder. Yelps, almost inaudible; small, muted barks; talking to Bok; asking, as she half turned ahead, then flew back again to look up at him. He did no more than shake his head. She fell into step, now silent, beside him. The tourists, smiling, would say:

‘Oh, Ralph!’

‘Oh, come on, let her go.’

‘Poor Suz.’

‘Ralph, you’re being cruel! You brute.’

‘Look, she’s dying to run off?

Then, if he had been satisfied with her over the three-day trail, and if the distance I would have to run alone seemed safe, he’d say, ‘Go, my girl.’ And the bitch, without a sound, darted from the group, tail a streak behind her. When she’d made distance enough to know she would not be called back, she’d break her sprint for a second and bark, three short sounds ricocheting up the Mpila hill. Beside me, without a second’s pause, Chaka would answer and run, sand flying from behind his paws. I’d follow, calling for him to slow down, knowing he couldn’t be stopped by anything. Soon, jumping on each other, playful in their nipping and licking, the dogs would return as a pair to my side. Then I run with them, calling them to heel when they try to dart ahead. Rounding a corner or a clump of trees I see nothing but the figure in the path ahead of me. He lifts an arm and I reach out mine and as I near him he lifts me still running and hugs me to his sweaty chest.

Sitting on his hip, I could then look back at the line of people behind us, totally amused by what they had seen. Self-conscious, I’d look away from the hearty smiles, to the end of the line, and wave at Jonas and Boy. Bok sat me down on the side of the path. ‘Meet my Philistine,’ Bok grinned as the line of people drew together. I nodded modestly as he said:

‘This is Sylvia Porter from Louisville, Kentucky.

This is Professor Jans Groningen from Bloemfontein.

‘This is Mike and Rhoda Jones from London.

‘This is Senator and Mrs Pat O’Hare from Washington.

‘This is Leanne and Joan Hepburn from Cape Town.’

I waited in the grass as Bok and the group moved off and the donkeys and the boys approached.

‘Sawubona, Jonas. Sawubona, Boy.’

‘Yabona, Umfaan.’

Jonas would lift me and deposit me somewhere amongst the leftover victuals, water bottles and folded tents, astride the front donkey. At the office the tourists were packed off in the VW Combies that had come to transport them first to the camp for ablutions and packing, then on to the airport in Empangeni. Before they departed, and after the final group photo in which I was invariably included, I heard them tell Bok that their lives had been changed for ever; that they would never forget him or the wilderness; that they would write; that Bok must come and visit in
The States
; that they’d be back. Sometimes the women would cry.

Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatus, amant. First Latin word and conjugations we were taught.

By Ma’am. Learnt. From Ma’am.

The batteries had begun to dim as I finished
The Day of The Jackal
Book and torch back in my locker, I lay listening to the breathing and the light snores around me. And the frogs, their croaking bobbing from the orchard into the dorm.
Dormire,
to sleep. Still unable, despite my Mkuzi dream. I wondered if Dominic was. Should have organised to go theretonight instead of lying here wasting my time with insomnia — nice word — waiting for Saturday. I still prefer him coming here, I thought. Somehow feels less dangerous. And once a week wasn’t enough. Somnia, somniae, f. Sleep. No, that was dead wrong.
Somnus,
is sleep. Do verbs have a gender? Only nouns. Is sleep female? Insomnia. Must be where the word is derived. Insomnia. Somnambulate if you combine
somnus
and
ambulare.
To sleepwalk. That’s what we had decided we’d say happened if were caught. No one would believe us, I knew already then. Jesus, sweet merciful Father, please don’t let us ever be caught. Three faces over a desk. Bok. Bok’s Chevrolet parked in the street beneath the Natal Mahogany at the gate. Our new car that couldn’t go into the garage as that had become Bok’s office. He and Uncle Michael fixed six rows of metre-wide pine shelves to the walls. Easter I’d return. Would Bok see through me? Guess about Dom and the thoughts of Mr Cilliers? Forget it. On the shelves and on the floor, the stock was stored. Almost every inch of wall — other than a section beneath the square of burglar-barred window — covered in neatly ordered rows of curios. From the moment the roll-up garage door opened I would be overwhelmed by the scent of grass, wood and wood polish, and, I thought, the smoke of fires, which was distinct from the smoke of Bok’s Paul Reveres. Dusk smells, shadow smells. Curios. Turn on the double-tubed fluorescent ceiling light and the mood was radically altered, changed into that of a rude store room and office: on the shelves and stacked on the concrete floor the entire trade of Bok’s Sub-Saharan Curios.

On the broad surfaces to right, human figurines from all over Zululand: men in dugouts, women stooped with children fastened to their backs, warriors carrying spears, women grinding corn in bowls, figures cross-legged on a wooden slab in front of beehive Zulu huts, small black boys extending hands in supplication, begging, women praying on slates of wood inscribed with Biblical scriptures and popular slogans:
The meek shall inherit the kingdom of heaven;
or
Zululand — Wilderness Kingdom;
and, commissioned from the Zulus through a contact who traded with curio stores north of the Limpopo:
Rhodesia is Super!
Sometimes two or three exclamation marks.

Beside the human figures, the animals. Amongst those, also stock from before the fall of Lourenco Marques: wooden crocodiles, rhinoceros, hippo, elephant, marabou storks on one spindly leg — yes, they did look exactly like Holloway. Warthogs, giraffe, buffalo, lion and cheetah. Some the whole animal, some only the head.

Next, the masks from all over the country. The most profitable Bok bought from the girls in the Eastern Transvaal: masks made us our biggest money. Cheap and easy. Bok, buying directly from the girls, tripled the price when he sold to the curio shops, who in turn doubled or quadrupled theirs. Every tourist seemed to want a mask to take back home: Aberdeen, Bonn, Copenhagen, Dijon, Edinburgh, Florence, Geneva, Hamilton, Ipswich, Jerusalem, Kristiansund, London, Munich, New York, Ottowa, Paris, Queenstown, Rome, Stockholm, Tokyo, Utrecht, Vienna, Washington DC, X, x, x — must be some place in China with an X but Chinese don’t come here — Yazoo City, Zurich.