Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (87 page)

Forty minutes later Daniel heard the rumble of the approaching trucks, and saw them coming slowly through the forest. A squad of half-naked axemen ran ahead of the convoy, cutting out the brush and making a rough track for them to follow.

Johnny stood up with obvious relief from where he had been sitting alone at the edge of the trees, and came to take charge of the butchering.

The piles of dead elephant were pulled apart with winches and chains.

Then the wrinkled grey skin was sliced through down the length of the belly and the spine. Again the electric winches were brought into play and the skin was flensed off the carcass with a crackling sound as the subcutaneous tissue released its grip. It came off in long slabs, grey and corrugated on the outside, gleaming white on the inside. The men laid each strip on the dusty earth and heaped coarse salt upon it The naked carcasses looked strangely obscene in the bright sunlight, wet and marbled with white fat and exposed scarlet muscle, the swollen bellies bulging as though to invite the stroke of the flensing knives.

A skinner slipped the curved point of the knife into the belly of one of the old cows at the point where it met the sternum. Carefully controlling the depth of the cut so as not to puncture the entrails, he walked the length of the body drawing the blade like a zipper down the belly pouch so that it gaped open and the stomach sac bulged out, glistening like the silk of a parachute. Then the colossal coils of the intestines slithered after it. These seemed to have a separate life. Like the body of an awakening python, they twisted and unfolded under the impetus of their own slippery weight.

The chainsaw men set to work. The intrusive clatter of the two-stroke engines seemed almost sacrilegious in this place of death, and the exhausts blew snorting blue smoke into the bright air. They lopped the limbs off each carcass, and a fine mush of flesh and bone chips flew in a spray from the teeth of the spinning steel chains.

Then they buzzed through the spine and ribs, and the carcasses fell into separate parts that were winched into the waiting refrigerator trucks.

A special gang went from carcass to carcass with long boat-hooks, poking in the soft wet mounds of spilled entrails to drag out the wombs of the females. Daniel watched as they split open one of the engorged wombs, dark purple with its covering of enlarged blood vessels. From the foetal sac, in a flood of amniotic fluid the foetus, the size of a large dog, slid out and lay in the trampled grass.

It was only a few weeks from term, a perfect little elephant covered with a coat of reddish hair that it would have lost soon after birth.

It was still alive, moving its trunk feebly. “Kill it,” Daniel ordered harshly in Sindebele. It was improbable that it could feel pain, but he turned away in relief as one of the men struck off the tiny head with a single blow of his panga. Daniel felt nauseated, but he knew that nothing from the cull should be wasted. The skin of the unborn elephant would be finegrained and valuable, worth a few hundred dollars for a handbag or a briefcase.

To distract himself he walked away across the killing-ground. All that remained now were the heads of the great animals and the glistening piles of their entrails. From the guts nothing of value could be salvaged and they would be left for the vultures and hyena and jackal.

The ivory tusks, still embedded in their castles of bone, were the most precious part of the cull. The poachers and the ivoryhunters of old would not risk damaging them with a careless axe-stroke, and customarily would leave the ivory in the skull until the cartilaginous sheath that held it secure rotted and softened and released its grip.

Within four or five days the tusks could usually be drawn by hand, perfect and unmarked.

However, there was no time to waste on this procedure. The tusks must be cut out by hand. The skinners who did this were the most experienced men, usually older, with grey woolly heads and bloodstained loincloths. They squatted beside the heads and tapped patiently with their native axes.

While they were engaged in this painstaking work Daniel stood with Johnny Nzou. Jock held the Sony VTR on them as Daniel commented, “Gory work.”

“But necessary,” Johnny agreed shortly. “On an average each adult elephant will yield about three thousand dollars in ivory, skin and meat. To many people that will sound pretty commercial, especially as they have just witnessed the hard reality of the cull.”

Daniel shook his head. “You must know that there is a very strong campaign, led by the animal rights groups, to have the elephant placed on Appendix One of CITES, that is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.”

“Yes, I know.”

“If that happens it would prohibit the trade in any elephant products, skin, ivory or meat. What do you think of that, Warden?”

“It makes me very angry.” Johnny dropped his cigarette and ground it under his heel. His expression was savage.

“It would prevent any further culling operations, wouldn’t it?” Daniel persisted.

“Not at all,” Johnny contradicted him. “We would still be forced to control the size of the herds. We would still be forced to cull. The only difference would be that we could not sell the elephant products. They would be wasted, a tragic criminal waste. We would lose millions of dollars of revenue which at present is being used to protect and enlarge and service the wildlife sanctuaries…” Johnny broke off and watched as a tusk was lifted out of the channel in the spongy bone of the skull by two of the skinners and laid carefully on the dry brown grass. Skilfully one of them drew the nerve, a soft grey gelatinous core, from the hollow end of the tusk.

Then Johnny went on, “That tusk makes it easier for us to justify the continued existence of the Parks and the animals they contain to the local tribes-people living in close contact with wild animals on and near the boundaries of the national wilderness areas.”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel encouraged him. “Do you mean the local tribes resent the Parks and the animal population?”

“Not if they can derive some personal benefit from them. If we can prove to them that a cow elephant is worth three thousand dollars and that a foreign safari hunter will spend fifty or even a hundred thousand dollars to hunt a trophy bull, if we can show them that a single elephant is worth a hundred, even a thousand of their goats or scrawny cattle and that they will see some of that money coming to them and their tribe, then they will see the point of conserving the herds.”

“You mean the local peasants do not place a value on wildlife simply for its own sake?”

Johnny laughed bitterly. “That’s a First World luxury and affectation. The tribes here live very close to subsistence level. We are talking about an average family income of a hundred and twenty dollars a year, ten dollars a month. They cannot afford to set aside land and grazing for a beautiful but useless animal to live on. If the wild game is to survive in Africa it has to pay for its supper. There are no free rides in this harsh land.”

“One would think that living so close to nature they would have an instinctive feeling for it,” Daniel persisted.

“Yes, of course, but it is totally pragmatic. For millennia primitive man, living with nature, has treated it as a renewable resource. As the Eskimo lived on the caribou and seal and whale, or the American Indian on buffalo herds, they understood instinctively the type of management that we have never achieved. They were in balance with nature, until the white man came with explosive harpoon and Sharpe’s rifle, or, here in Africa, came with his elite game department and game laws that made it a crime for the black tribesman to hunt on his own land, that reserved the wildlife of Africa for a select few to stare at and exclaim over.”

“You are being a racist,” Daniel chided him gently. “The old colonial system preserved the wild game.”

“So how did it survive for a million years before the white man arrived in Africa? No, the colonial system of game management was protectionist, not conservationist.”

“Aren’t they the same thing, protection and conservation?”

“They are diametrically opposed. The protectionist denies man’s right to exploit and harvest nature’s bounty. He would deny that man has a right to kill a living animal, even if that threatens the survival of the species as a whole. If he were here today, the protectionist would prohibit us from this cull, and he would not want to look to the final consequence of that prohibition which, as we have seen, would be the eventual extinction of the entire elephant population and the destruction of this forest. However, the most damaging mistake that the old colonial protectionists made was to alienate the black tribesman from the benefits of controlled conservation. They denied him his share of the spoils, and built up in him a resentment towards the wild game. They broke down his natural instinct for management of his resources. They took away his control of nature and placed him in competition with the animals. The end result is that the average black peasant is hostile towards the game.

“The elephants raid his gardens and destroy the trees he uses for firewood. The buffalo and antelope eat the grass on which he feeds his cattle. The crocodile ate his grandmother, and the lion killed his father… Of course, he has come to resent the game herds.”

“The solution, Warden? Is there one?”

“Since independence from the colonial system we have been trying to change the attitude of our people,” Johnny told him. “At first they demanded that they be allowed to enter the National Parks that the white man had proclaimed. They wanted to be allowed to go in and cut the trees and feed their cattle and build their villages. However, we have had a great deal of success in educating them to the value of tourism, safari-hunting and controlled culling. For the first time they they are allowed to participate in the profits, and there is a new understanding of conservation and sensible exploitation, especially amongst the younger generation.

“However, if the protectionist do-gooders of Europe and America were to force a ban on safari-hunting or the sale of ivory, it would set back all our efforts. It would probably be the death knell of the African elephant and eventually the end of all the game.”

“So in the end it is all a matter of economics?” Daniel asked.

“Like everything else in this world, it is a matter of money,” Johnny agreed. “If you give us enough money we will stop the poachers. If you make it worth their while, we will keep the peasants and their goats out of the Parks. However, the money must come from somewhere. The newly independent states of Africa with their exploding human populations cannot afford the First World luxury of locking away their natural assets. They must exploit them and conserve them. If you prevent us doing that, then you will be guilty of contributing to the extinction of African wildlife.” Johnny nodded grimly. “Yes, it’s a matter of economics. If the game can pay, then the game can stay.”

It was perfect, Daniel signalled Jock to stop filming and clasped Johnny’s shoulder. “I could make a star out of you. You’re a natural.” He was only half joking. “How about it, Johnny? You could do a hell of a lot more for Africa on the screen than you can here.”

“You want me to live in hotels and jet aircraft instead of sleeping under the stars?” Johnny feigned indignation. “You want me to build up a nice little roll around my belly.” He prodded Daniel’s midriff. “And puff and pant when I run a hundred yards? No thank you, Danny. I’ll stay here where I can drink Zambezi water, not Coca-Cola, and eat buffalo steaks, not Big Macs.”

They loaded the last rolls of salted elephant-hide and immature calf tusks by the glare of truck headlights, and climbed back up the rough winding road to the rim of the escarpment and the headquarters of the Park at Chiwewe in the dark.

Johnny drove the green Landrover at the head of the slow convoy of refrigerator trucks and Daniel sat beside him on the front seat. They talked in the soft desultory manner of old friends in perfect accord.

“Suicide weather,” Daniel wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his bush shirt. Even though it was almost midnight, the heat and the humidity were enervating.

“Rains will break soon. Good thing you’re getting out of the valley,” Johnny grunted. “That road turns into a swamp in the rain and most of the rivers are impassable.”

The tourist camp at Chiwewe had been closed a week previously in anticipation of the onslaught of the rainy season.

“I don’t look forward to leaving,” Daniel admitted. “It’s been like old times again.”

“Old times,” Johnny nodded. “We had some fun. When are you coming back to Chiwewe?”

“I don’t know, Johnny, but my offer is genuine. Come with me. We made a good team once; we would be good again. I know it.”

“Thanks, Danny.” Johnny shook his head. “But I’ve got work to do here.”

“I won’t give up,” Daniel warned him, and Johnny grinned.

“I know. You never do.”

Chapter 3

In the morning, when Daniel climbed the small kopje behind the headquarters camp to watch the sunrise, the sky was filled with dark and mountainous cloud and the heat was still oppressive.

Daniel’s mood matched that sombre dawn, for although he had captured some wonderful material during his stay, he had also rediscovered his friendship and affection for Johnny Nzou. The knowledge that it might be many years before they met again saddened him.

Johnny had invited him to breakfast on this, his last day. He was waiting for Daniel on the wide mosquito-screened verandah of the thatched bungalow that had once been Daniel’s own home.

Daniel paused below the verandah and glanced around the garden. It was still the way that Vicky had planned it and originally laid it out.

Vicky had been the twenty-year-old bride that Daniel had brought to Chiwewe all those years ago a slim cheerful lass with long blonde hair and smiling green eyes, only a few years younger than Daniel at the time. She had died in the front bedroom overlooking the garden that she had cherished. An ordinary bout of malaria had turned without warning to the pernicious cerebral strain. It had been all over very swiftly, even before the flying doctor could reach the Park.