“Whatever you do, don’t mention it out loud.”
They hollow out shallow sleeping places around the fire.
Willem tends to young Abraham.
“Uneasy tonight, Reitz?” Ben asks.
“Ah,” and “Oh Lord,” sighs Reitz, running his hand over his face.
For a long time he stares into the flames, for behind his back and in the shadows there is the intimation of a presence. A nagging something he has left behind, that will in time catch up with him.
*
The sun rises. They left the farm the day before, and it has been two days since they departed from Commandant Senekal’s wagon laager. Senekal’s commando has been based in the Beaufort West district for the past two or three weeks, having tried in vain since last October to join up with General Smuts during one of his incursions into the Cape Colony. In December, having missed him once again in the Vanrhynsdorp district, and soon after the skirmish with the English at Allesverloren, Senekal appeared to lose hope, and abandoned his search for Smuts.
Ben and Reitz could not decide which was worse: the fruitless roaming in search of Smuts, or the ensuing tedium of remaining in one place.
Now the four of them are taking young Abraham to a more beneficial environment – to his mother at Ladybrand – if she is still there.
Commandant Senekal (his eyes narrowed suspiciously, head wreathed in tobacco smoke) gave them leave, provided that on their way they deliver a letter to General Bergh. The general is hiding somewhere in the Cape Colony, near the Orange River, in the area west of the Skeurberg.
Upon leaving, Senekal handed them a sealed letter addressed to the general and a map with directions to his camp.
Willem Boshoff is in his fifties – the oldest of the four. He is tall of stature. Solemn, slow, dignified: a man of few words. His eyes are clear as water. Before the war he was postmaster in his home town. He took Abraham under his wing the day after Abraham’s older brother had fallen by his side during the battle of Droogleegte. Ever since that day young Abraham has been incapable of uttering an intelligible sentence.
Though Abraham Fouché cannot be much older than twenty, his youth is spent. Who knows what his life might have been in more favourable circumstances?
Reitz Steyn is tall, with a certain languor and hesitancy in his movements. His complexion is ruddy and freckled. His eyelids are heavy, his mouth sensual, somewhat petulant, suggestive of someone excessively attuned to the pleasures of the senses. But what then of the underlying nervousness, the reticence in his interaction with others?
Ben Maritz is shorter than Reitz, of medium build, his curly hair dark and thinning. He has a broad, high forehead (remarkably deeply lined for a man his age). His ironic smile belies the expression in his eyes, which is surprisingly mild and sympathetic. His reaction to a situation is sometimes apparent from his unusually expressive nostrils. Not one for drawing attention to himself, but rather someone whose energy flows spontaneously to the world around him.
Ben is about forty-five, Reitz perhaps three years younger.
They share a passion for the natural world. This mutual passion formed the basis for their friendship – when they found themselves in the Lichtenburg commando under Commandant Celliers, each having joined a different commando at the outset of the war.
Both have been occupied since their youth with observing and recording nature. For as long as he can remember, Ben has been engaged in studying and collecting plants and insects, always searching for new species. He studied natural history at the South African College in Cape Town. Reitz studied geology in England and worked in Johannesburg as a mine geologist before settling in Pretoria, where he had been in the process of documenting the geological features of the Middelveld when war broke out.
*
In the early morning they shiver and pull their jackets closer around their shoulders as the chilly air settles on their necks, cheeks and ears. It is the second morning of their journey.
Initially they are talkative. They admire the seemingly endless landscape stretched out before them. The tall, waving grass, the few rocky outcrops ahead and the low mountains rising in the distance like molehills.
Ben points out a shrub here, a bird there.
It is still hot during the day.
At noon they rest in the shade of a tree.
Reitz looks closely at the ground, always on the lookout for a rare stone or fossil.
Ben makes a small sketch of a pod. Inspects another plant. “Carrion flower,” he says.
Young Abraham sits with his back against a tree. He sits woodenly, like a doll. Willem speaks to him in soothing but firm tones, trying to coax him into taking some food and water. The youngster seems to have lost his will to eat.
They consult the map. There are still no recognisable landmarks in the vicinity, though Willem’s compass shows that they are travelling in the right direction. Due northeast.
In the afternoon they are more subdued. Large clouds scud across the land.
In the distance they see a herd of buck. They notice dassies on the scattered boulders, and a few springhare.
At least they are certain of meat when they reach the end of the biltong and flour the farmer packed for them.
At dusk they dismount at the base of a small koppie. Like the night before they seek shelter under an overhanging rock. Again they hollow out sleeping places alongside the fire.
They cook some porridge. Eat in silence.
After supper Willem reads from the Bible. He reads from Proverbs, chapter three, and offers a prayer.
As on every other evening, Reitz makes a few notes in his journal. As opposed to the Cape system that came into being during the vacant, twilit prehistoric world of the Devonian, the Karoo system is younger, with an unimaginable abundance of water during the Permian and Triassic periods that supported a profusion of plants and animals, he writes. It was formed after a time of widespread glaciation, followed by a lengthy period of lakes, deltas and swamps, and ending in desertlike, volcanic conditions during the Triassic. It remains cause for wonderment, he writes, the many relics of our earliest and most primitive mammalian ancestors preserved in the soil beneath our feet – in the rock strata of the Beaufort, Ecca and Stormberg Series. So many secrets the earth has yet to surrender. So much still to learn about her unfathomable mysteries.
Because the overhanging rock and the koppie provide scant shelter, they do not sleep well. Until recently they enjoyed the safety of the numbers provided by the commando. Now they are on their own. By day in this unbroken landscape they are fair game for whoever may lie in wait to launch a stealthy attack on them.
Reitz is still mulling over the farmer’s tale of his deceased wife and his dream of the trickster woman. He does not know why these tales have struck a chord with him. He only knows they have left him unsettled.
*
The morning of the third day breaks gloriously on the horizon, its beauty constricting the throat.
There is a bite in the air. They consult the map. According to their calculations they should have come across at least one of the landmarks by now. There is the possibility that they are lost. Or that Senekal has played a trick on them.
As they travel on, they observe their surroundings even more keenly than the day before.
The landscape is still changing. Thorn trees and shrubs are diminishing; the waving grass making way for low bushes and smaller scrub.
They hear the call of a bird: weeet-weeet-weeet. A black-shouldered kite, Ben observes.
Another bird cries out: gug-gug-gug. Sand grouse, says Ben.
Now and then