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Chapter 4

 

 

Northern Angola, at the time when Ruben and Isabelle were sixteen.

 

In the early hours of the morning, Thomas Mavyahlane wakes with a start, covered in sweat from the Angolan heat. Whether it was a dream or a hallucination, or just a voice that asks the life-old question, of whose and what purpose man really serves on this earth, he wouldn’t know, but in his soul looms dread. In his imagination he can see a young man, standing in a queue of hundreds, to sign up for compulsory military service, for the South African army.

         He walks out of the tent into the light of the stars. Repeatedly counting on his fingers, he works out that there were two years left before Ruben would be old enough to join the army.

         Not much in this world could scare him, but, as if it was one of the few last things left for him to lose, he was terrified by the thought of unknowingly running into a white-haired boy, now grown into a man, in the chaos of a battle, caught up in a fight until death.

         He decides there and then, that in two years he will do what he came here for in the first place, and then, somehow, he will quit. He sits down on the sandbag wall around a machine gun bunker and stares at the stars.

 

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Ruben was ten years old. It was before the government bought the farms from the white farmers to make it communal land, before the Odendaals moved up to the Northwest of Namibia.

 

The beacon where the four farms met was ironstone, painted white with lime, on the pinnacle of Speckle Mountain. It was when a neighbor rung up for the tenth time in two years to let him know that fifteen of his goats turned up in the evening, that Martiens Odendaal decided to run the boundary fences all the way up the mountain.

         At an outpost at the foot of the mountain, next to the stockyards, on the scattered granite rocks, the four men put down their fencing gear, a charred kettle and some pots, and set up camp. In the evening, when the windmill turns its face into the Western wind and groans the water up from under the barren earth, they filled their bottles under the cool stream from the rusty throat of the pipe, and under the stars at night, they unrolled their bedding on the soft sand of the Namib.

         With his three-quarter-ton Dodge pickup, Martiens Odendaal dropped the fence posts and the rolls of wire off as close as he could get, from where the fencers would carry it up the mountain on their shoulders.

         The team was a mixture of native tribes, the leading hand was an elderly Baster, and there were two Damaras, and an Ovambo by the name of Thomas Mavyahlane.

 

Smiling, Thomas watches the boy clamber onto an empty forty-four-gallon drum next to the concrete reservoir, and peeps over the wall at him.

         ‘Howdy Roepen,’ he says and nods. The boy watches the movement of the massive muscles under the black man’s skin, shining in the African sun. 'My name is Thomas,' he says, when he sees Ruben smiling back at him.

         'Why do they call you Jumbo?' the boy asks and waves a tiny hand to where the others are sitting around an open fire, some of them drinking coffee from chipped enamel cups.

         'They? They can't remember my name,' he says in a whisper, before bursting into laughter. He glances over his shoulder at the other workers. Ruben watches as the black man walks around the reservoir. Half a meter from him, he stops. 'My name with my people, the black people, is Jumbo,' he says, and pauses, as if something in what he just said doesn’t sound right, 'but my name with the white people, the Boers, is Thomas.' He gently puts his hand on the boy's dusty brown boot. 'You can call me Jumbo, Roepen,' he says.

         'I'll be able to remember the "Thomas" name,' the boy replies.

         'No, call me Jumbo,' he says.

 

When his father sits on the trough in the late afternoon, waiting for the herder to bring in the sheep and goats, Ruben spends more and more time with Jumbo. The moment they stop next to the stockyards, Ruben jumps out of the car and runs to the pile of fencing material. Here he waits till Jumbo comes down to fetch yet more stuff to carry up the mountain.

         Jumbo hangs a roll of wire over each shoulder and gives a light steel post to Ruben. 

         ‘Come,’ he says, and takes the footpath towards the mountain. ‘Here,’ he says after ten minutes. It is well short of where the fencing material is needed, but he drops the load and waves a hand at the child to follow him. Today Thomas takes the boy further, to show him what the world looks like from the peak.

         They go at a hard pace, because there are not many daylight hours left, and he doesn’t want the child to get in trouble for being late. Fifteen minutes later, next to an Emboia tree, Thomas stops and unhooks a canvas water bag from a dry branch. He hands it to Ruben. He watches how the child drinks, with his head tilted back; a thin stream running down his chin to disappear into the front of his khaki shirt. It is only when the boy hands the water bag back to him that he drinks too.

         Ruben wipes the sweat from his face with his sleeve and combs his soaked hair back with his fingers. He tries to forget about the burn in his legs and lungs, just looking in front of him at the ground, and keeps up. When the big black hand takes his wrist and pulls him up a long incline of solid rock, he loses his breath for a moment.

         ‘Why is the mountain flat on top Jumbo?’ Ruben calls and looks around him. ‘Why couldn’t I see it from the bottom? Are all mountains flat on top?’

         ‘Those that I’ve seen are,’ the black man answers. ‘The old people say the mountain is flat because that is where the mutiman sits and watches over the world.’

         ‘What is a mutiman?’ the boy asks.

         ‘White folks call it a witchdoctor. It is a man who can hear the rocks and the trees and the wind and the wild animals talking. He can hear the voices in your head, and sometimes he will come to help you, or he will not help you, both by making noises in your head,’ Thomas says and watches the boy frown.

         ‘Pastor Frits said that when he came to our house the other day to collect money for the church. Mum baked cookies and a tart too,’ the boy says.

         'What did he say?’ the black man asks.

         ‘He said God knows everything we do.’ 

         After a moment of silence, Ruben looks up at the vastness where the Namib disappears in a sapphire on the horizon, and grabs the black man’s leg with both his hands. When his heartbeat settles, he walks next to Thomas through the knee high grass of the plateau.

       A grey and white bird with a yellow beak slides overhead and lands on the fork in a camel thorn trunk, seven feet off the ground. Thomas goes down on one knee and pulls the boy down to a squat next to him. 'Let's see what he's doing,' he whispers and subtly points at the hornbill. 'Look,' Thomas says, 'he's feeding his female.'

         'Where is the female?' Ruben asks.

         'Locked away in a hollow inside the trunk, sitting on the eggs.' The boy stares at him wide-eyed. 'There's just a small opening so he can feed her,' Thomas says and points at the nail of his thumb. After a few minutes, they see the bird clambers to the top branches. 'Come, I'll show you.'

         Thomas lifts the boy and puts him down to sit on a branch, a foot away from the nest. 'She's in there,' he says, and points at an inch long slit in what seems to be a rock-hard clay wall. 'Nothing can get in to harm her,' he adds.

         'What if something happens to him and he can't bring her food, how does she get out?' Ruben asks with urgency in his childish voice.

         'Nowhere does a female put more trust in her male partner to always come back, than hornbills do,' Thomas says. 'Maybe it is the same with humans,' he adds softly, looking at the hazy heavens.

         'That doesn't seem right,' Ruben says.

         'She can break out, and when the time comes, she will free herself and the chicks. But only if he's there till the end,' Thomas says. 'If he doesn't come back and she keeps waiting and waiting till she's too weak to break out, then she'll die inside. If he keeps coming back, she'll be strong enough to break out on her own.'

         'Let's leave them alone now,' he says after a minute and heaves the boy down.

         'I see the hornbills around the old stockyards every day,' Ruben says after a few steps. 'They are always hopping, sometimes forward, sometimes sideways.'

         'If you watch closely Roepen, you'll see they are dancing,' Thomas replies, and watches the boy smiles.

         'Will you please come and check on the hornbill's nest every day?' Ruben asks.

         'No, we can't change what's meant to be,' Thomas replies. ‘We have to go Roepen, it’s getting late.’

         ‘Which way is your home?’ Ruben asks. ‘How come the Erongo mountains look so small?’

         As quick and as honest as he can, Thomas answers the child’s questions, but he always seems to be ready with yet another question. ‘Are the ones with their females locked away dancing too?’ the boy asks and points a finger in the distance. ‘How come I don't hear God or the mutiman in my head, do they only talk to grownups? Why does the sand look like the sea out yonder? Which voice in your head are you listening to?' For a moment Thomas looks at the boy with wild eyes and a deep frown, but doesn't answer.

         After a last stare from Ruben at the hornbills' tree, they finally got on their way, but Thomas knew they wouldn’t make it back in time. They are halfway down when the boy falls behind.

         ‘Wait for me Jumbo!’ he calls. The black man stops and waits. When Ruben reaches him, Thomas hoists him up and sits him on his shoulders. By the time his father counts the last sheep into the yards, he and Jumbo are washing their faces at the tap next to the reservoir.

 

On a Sunday, the fencers do not work. It is not an issue of religion for any of them, but on this day they wash their clothes and their bedding and hang it over the stockyard fence to dry. Ruben pushes his father to leave earlier for the outpost, so he can spend more time with Thomas. In time, they stray ever further away from the others, and deeper into the desert.

         One Sunday a circular stroll takes them to the coarse gravel of a dry creek bed. As they walk, Thomas teaches the boy about the berries of the wild apricot, and the raisin bush. With his dagger, he cuts a twig from a young tree, as long as half a pencil, and peels the bark off.

         ‘If you chew this every day, it will keep your teeth white and strong.’

He shows Ruben how to distinguish the leaf of the kambro, and how to rub the skin off.

         ‘It is for when you are thirsty Roepen,’ he says, and laughs when a first bite of the strange plant brings an odd expression to the child’s face.

         ‘This is the best for arrows,’ Jumbo explains, and caresses the bright green leaf of a raisin bush. ‘Sickle bush works best for a bow, but she tends to crack,’ he adds.

         ‘Will you show me one day how to make a bow and arrows?’ Ruben asks, but Thomas doesn’t answer.

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That evening after Ruben left, Thomas walks back to the place. With his machete, he cuts a dozen of the straightest stems from the raisin bushes on the banks. As the weeks go by, he sits by the fireside till late at night, cutting, scraping, and grinding.

One Friday afternoon Thomas calls the boy to a lone camel thorn tree fifty yards away. 

         ‘Come, I have something for you,’ he says and reaches up to a lower branch. He watches how the boy’s hands follow his gaze, over the dove feathers on the ends of the lean yellow arrows, tied down with a strip of bark, and the razor sharp heads, forged in the fire, and honed to perfection on a flat rock.

         ‘What should I pay you for this?’ Ruben asks, and Thomas sees a rare anxiousness in his eyes.

         ‘You don’t have to pay anything Roepen, it is a present for you,’ he says, and points an open hand at the bow and arrows.

         ‘I don’t have a present for you,’ the boy says, holding the older man’s gaze.

         ‘It doesn’t matter Roepen,’ Thomas says. It was all he could say in words. The language of his heart, the love and the hope and the touch of his soul by the white child, showed only in his eyes. The young Ruben Odendaal sensed it and remembered it.

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After nine weeks the fence was finished, shiny as an alien footpath in the morning sun, past the cave, and up to the beacon on top of Speckle Mountain. The following afternoon, Ruben watches his father counting the notes into the hands of the workers. He waves to the Baster and the two Damaras, before he and his father drive to the railway station to drop Thomas off. He was taking the train up North to do a job for a man who went by the name of Roelf Kramer.

         Staring at the black man next to him on the back of the pickup truck, Ruben feels lost in a world that he couldn’t describe nor understand. At the train station, Thomas picks him up and holds him against his chest.

         ‘Goodbye Roepen. Remember me when you see the hornbills dancing,’ he says. He feels the boy grasp him with both arms around his neck, like someone who wants to hold up a falling tree. The afternoon breeze is cool, but moisture shows in the wrinkles around his clenched eyes, as he listens to the boy’s last words.

         ‘Goodbye Jumbo,’ Ruben says, but he doesn’t let go.

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