354
Mosh took his own good time, ambling back up to Stein. Approaching, he slowed
even more. Neither man was willing to pierce the quiet with words, so the moment
became weird, a silent black-and-white movie of two men, arms harmlessly swinging,
slowly closing the gap between them. Both had the same secret motive. Drag time.
Distract the other from the leopard, keep the other from the other side of the reserve.
They dawdled in the dark, like old friends with nothing left to say.
The old man broke first. He coughed ahem: ‘Right. Let’s do this slowly. Keep it quiet.
No need to wake the guests.’
‘Maybe we should just < wait a bit, sir? When the impala know the danger is gone,
they’ll go by themselves?’
Neither suggested the obvious; phone the police, get the guns and drive out to check
the fence.
‘Agreed.’ Stein conspired. ‘Go up to the main gate. Make sure the damn guard is
awake. I’ll go down to the bridge and keep an eye out.’
So they separated to either sides of the camp, each guarding an exit from the other.
Mosh heard the death-squeal, and so did Ariel. Both smiled in the dark, despite their
shared anxiety, separated by two kilometers of bush. Both wished they could see. They
waited.
No, higher up. Under the chin. Hurry. No time to play.
The dainty hindlegs thrashed, but gently, accepting. The last breath squeaked shut
with the shift of the grip. Sindisi did not puncture the skin, caused no pain to
accompany oblivion, let it die by consent. They listened to the little heart slow and then
stop.
355
Lift it. Come on, not like that! By the shoulder. Good, that’s right, now …. no, your paw to
the other side. The other paw. Good. Let’s go.
A soft plash of struggling breath from somewhere up the hill. A twig snapped. Ariel
craned her head and stood up, her hair haloed by the swathe of light above the
undergrowth. Something shifted across the sky and stopped at the charcoal sketch of a
dead branch. An owl, miniature, a perfect replica the size of her paused hand, barely an
arms-reach away. It glared at her, eyes as round and bright as coins, then dropped and
soared silently away.
A grunt from Sindisi, much closer now. She peered into the dark and caught her
scent, her sweet, sweaty breath. Then the dawn came to her eyes in a rush, and her ears
flooded with the night. She stretched forward to the cat, fingertips on the ground.
356
10
The clear air welling up from the south-west had travelled all the way up from the
deep southern ocean, bearing the first chilling whispers of winter. It lingered over
Mpumalanga then drifted down again, the trailing feathers fraying over the Swazi
highlands and St Lucia’s wide waters before drifting out over the Indian Ocean. Ariel
shivered at the touch, the cold laying temporary claim to the land from the north, a hint
of implacable intent. The real dawn promised daylight. She lowered the impala fawn to
relieve the ache and rubbed tired eyes with the back of her hands.
She couldn’t really understand it, and blinked twice < still the faint threads of
purple, pulsing through and between the plant life, the strange-colored waves within
the shape of Sindisi, the animated jewelry scattering the bush, almost imperceptible
now as the sun encroached. She tried to figure it out, but was tired to the marrow from
the days of housework and lift-club and cooking and homework, and the nights, the
timeless nights prowling the play-ground of the farm. Maybe I’m discovering latent human
powers … no, no, awareness … from the sustained interaction with nature. My eyes adapt.
Perhaps this is within all of us.
Then why … why did it happen when Sindy came back? Why was I blinded when she ran
away?
The question hung in her mind while her breathing slowed. She eased the ache from
her arms.
And a voice answered, from a deep language of senses, of sight and sound and scent,
as complex as the life all around her. It formed hesitantly into words:
I am here. Inside you …
And she knew. Ingwe. The leopard mother, dead beneath her hand. The night
brightening around her body, the fierce hunt to get her kitten back.
357
Of course. Why did you not speak before?
I … learn. As you learn to listen. Come. Day comes. Danger. We must go.
Gathering her energy again, she hoisted the flopping body with four sharp legs that
seemed to snag on every single damn branch and fell into a lope down the hill through
the fever trees. Sindisi tail-twitched ahead, ears flat and eyes creased with anxiety. The
day loomed, so Ariel ran faster, tearing hooves through leaves, her breath a ragged
rhythm to the birdsong.
The up-stretched wires were now shockingly visible, an aberration of line. She let the
momentum of her run swing her arms and the buck up over the fence. Sindy was
already jiving under the wire and she followed, over-hasty, thrusting with boot tips.
Loose stone scoured weals on her breasts and tummy and the fence zapped her
wriggling bottom, a kick of voltage, good riddance.
‘ Ssss,’ she called and they ran onto the tar. Halfway across Sindisi turned with a mew
at the abandoned buck, but Ariel gave her a slap and shouted, chasing her over and
under a thick knot of thorny bush. She ran back, knelt before the pole and tugged at the
peg. It was stuck fast, so she worked at it, thumbing from side to side. Then she
stopped, listening; the approaching thrum of an engine from the direction of the lodge.
She worked faster, frantic, then clicked her tongue in annoyance and stood, grasping
the pole carefully with both hands. The fence zapped her again, frying a few arm-hairs,
but she adjusted and pulled, squealing with exertion. It slid an inch higher, staining to
the limit of the wire, but enough to kick the stick loose and away. The pole dropped
down just as a car’s roof mushroomed into view – and she a wandering tourist, a casual
whistling stroll in the fresh country air.
An old man leered for a split-second. She noticed her swinging hair, matted and
tangled and disgraceful. I should cut it. Get rid of it. Show my face. Now that would be brave.
358
The incident last night gave Mosh a reason, nicht wahr? To go talk to her. Break the
ice. Besides, he had to check that Sindy had got home safely. His duty, surely? He was
nervous, strumming the steering wheel, and as he turned from the dirt road onto tar he
stopped on the verge, to give the matter some thought. Careful now. Could cock this all
up. Have to warn her that the leopard is loose at night, discuss the situation, but
without accusing. Or disapproving. Friendly, like. The last few weeks had been hell,
both of them acting chill and loose, sketching hullo waves when they happened to see
each other, desultory words when they met and had to talk. Could go either way.
And truth is, after all the chasing around after stupid impala half the night, old
vulture-head squawking commands, the fiasco of the ornamental cabbages, buck
running this way then that and then the other, he was somewhat peeved. Basically
wanted to go and just fight with her. Shout and grab her and throw her down and <
fuck her, there and then. He sighed.
Some inkling of the future aged him, sitting there, the sun just touching his lap. He
tasted it - one day I’ll own this valley – and his face hardened. Question: do I want her here
with me, my … wife? and the answer: hell, yes. He rolled tension from his shoulders. Then
do the right thing. Always. With this woman, you fail once and you fucked forever. He
indicated, released the brake, looked left and right and drove slowly back onto the road.
It was a guilty pleasure, this early morning read, because nowadays Churchill really
didn’t have the time. But he allowed himself, say twice a week. Okay, sometimes more.
He would accompany young Mlungisi to the pasture and take an hour on an east-facing
rock, the sun slowly warming his bones, a book in his hands. He liked the crisp
morning words, the flexing of his mind, the transition from dreams to hard farm-work.
In his memory a distant herdboy and the wonder of his second-hand copy of Mtshali’s
Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, wrapped in a disintegrating scrap of newspaper. He still had
the skinny volume, battered and stained red, in pride of place on the bookshelf.
359
This morning he had that Da Vinci thing everyone had been making a fuss about a
few years ago, a clean fresh block in his hands, but it couldn’t catch his attention. He
put it aside and watched the cattle awhile. He knew the moment they did of some
disturbance in the bush behind him. He climbed up on the rock and craned as they
calmly gathered into a horned laager, the Afrikaner queen at the front.
He called Mlungisi over. ‘What is it? A man, a dog? What do you think?’
‘The leopard? And the crazy white lady, I’m sure. I saw them the other morning, first
light.’
‘You mean they’re out at night?’
A shrug.
‘The cattle seem okay.’
‘Used to the smell, by now.’
‘I’m going to check. And watch your mouth, boy. She’s not crazy. She’s royalty.’
He trailed along the fence and picked up the snap of a twig some way beyond, then a
softly spoken word. He listened to that word, let it hang, the pretty incongruity of it,
like an unexpected flower from these dry old trees. It was a moist, round word, with
crisp edges, a sound of real, live Europe < le Carre’s smoky cobblestones, Conrad’s
dark ships. He licked his lips in the bright sunshine and strode to catch up.
‘ Heita, Ariel?’
Silence from behind the screen.
‘It’s me, Churchill. Over here.’ He rattled the mesh.
‘Morning, Church. How are you?’
‘Fine. Fine. And you?’
‘I’m < tired. Church? I have something to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t.’
360
‘No. Now you will. Actually, let me guess. You went out with the leopard last night,
and you killed something.’
‘How–’
‘Was it one of mine?’
‘No, no.’
‘Good. Well done. Relax, girl. Tell me what happened.’
And so they spoke of the night, the fence between them. He hooked his fingers in the
mesh, grinning and nodding. She lightened up, standing taller, chattering a bit too fast.
He held up a palm and she repeated, slower, touching her hair.
‘You say < you can see at night?’
‘Yes, I know it sounds, oh dear <’
Crazy Ari. ‘Yes, well, um < where’s the impala?’
She stared at him for a clear second then skipped back into the bush. He bit back on
his laugh of pleasure, lest she hear and misinterpret.
361
11
‘Can we talk later? Please, Mosh.’ She dropped the fawn. ‘I have to drive Sav to
school, and we’re already late.’ She straightened, stretching her back, staring anxiously
up at the closed kitchen door.
‘You’re way late. I saw them drive past.’
‘Oh. Oh dear.’
‘I’m not angry, Ariel. I’m worried. If we had gone out with the rifles < hell, you
could’ve been shot, never mind Sindy.’
‘But I have to teach her to hunt.’
‘Teach her to stay away. Teach her to be scared.’
‘Maybe we should go the other way?’ She pointed east.
‘That’s worse. Guys with guns, and lion, hyena, buffalo–’
‘So what do you suggest? That we carry on fooling around on the farm? Playing with
bunny rabbits in the garden? We intend to release her out there, so she has to gain some
experience. Look. Look how big she is already. Time is running out.’
The cat prowled a hungry curve around them. Ariel blinked, then dipped a finger
behind her belt buckle, slipping out the little knife. Mosh cringed and took an uneasy
step away. She dropped to her knees and grasped the hock, sliding the knife under the
loose, matt skin between belly and thigh.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Meat. I’m going to cook it for myself.’
‘What? Yuck, man.’
‘Mosh.’ She sliced through. ‘Let me be. Please. Leave me alone.’ She began working
the knife through shin and tendon below the white rump-fluff.
362
He slowly lifted his gaze from her hands to her face, and saw the deep shadows
under her eyes, the stubborn, exhausted devotion to the task at hand, impassive against
the facile judgment of the childless. The knife was sharp and her stroke deft. She stood
wearily, the leg dangling.
‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘I asked you to go.’
‘I just want to help. That’s all. I just want to be part of, of whatever it is you’re going
through. I want to talk. Help. I knew this was gonna happen, that you’d take everything
I say the wrong way. I tried to protect you last night. And look!’ He threw an open hand
at the three-legged buck. ‘If y’wanna go hunt there then do it. Do it! Just lemme know
when, so I can stop a hundred bloody impala from eating all the flowers!’
He saw the amusement touch her eyes and grasped at it with an awkward guffaw.
‘I’m on your side. I love you!’
Click. She blinked and declined her face away from him, mouth firm. He wavered
between cold bitch and I love you you don’t have to love me back.
‘I love you too, Mosh.’
‘< what?’
‘I do. I think about you often. I know that you’re < I, this is timing. Disjointed, it’s
slipping. You scare me, sometimes. I don’t know what you want.’
‘Nothing, whatever. But you, you cut me off.’
‘No, you did.’
‘C’mon. Ever since < it’s like, you think I only want one thing.’
‘Well, don’t you? Didn’t get your bit of bumsen with the white chick, so now it’s hey,
look at me, Mister Cool. I even saw you with another girl. Why waste time?’
‘Huh? When?’
‘I dunno. Three weeks? Who cares? In your stupid bakkie, going out.’
‘No. No wait, that was Blessing, maybe. She’s my cousin or something, forget about
it. I took her to the shops. I haven’t touched no-one.’
363
‘Why not? Do it.’
‘Now wait a minute, this is bullshit. Why you so angry? I’ve given you space, huh?
And I know you’re saving yourself. I’m not expecting sex, Ariel. I’m not.’
‘Oh.’
‘This is < what’s the word? Courtship. I love you.’
‘Oh dear,’ she swung her head as if avoiding a blow, blanketing her face. ‘I want you,
Mosh. I don’t know why <’
And he allowed no thought to hesitate him, stretching long fingers to her neck and
down her spine, his stubbled cheek against her matted hair, her breasts beneath his
chest, thigh to thigh. She melted to him, raising a soft mouth to kiss and their taste was
sweet and salty with the night’s hard work, a tang of fresh air, long awaited. They lost
their balance, stumbling over the fawn. Sindy growled.
‘Okay, okay.’ He broke away first.
‘No, come,’ she whispered, fingertips around his thumb, and led him to her room.
There’s a place where she can forget about the whole damn world for one long,
glorious moment, and Mosh took her there, quickly. They lost their clothes and climbed
under the threadbare blanket, rank with sweat and dust. The touch of skin on skin was
unbearable, shivering breath fusing in warmth, soft and hard, rushing into penetration,
conspiring, thoughtless. They fucked, deep and long, and he came inside her.
‘Wo.’
‘We shouldn’t have done that.’ Impish little fingers peeked from the blanket under
her chin. He chuckled. ‘No, I mean it. I must be out of my mind. You may have Aids.’
‘Or you.’
‘No, I had a test. Two. And I haven’t done it since. A long, long time ago.’
‘I’ll, um go for a test tomorrow.’
364
‘Oh, well that’s nice. I feel comforted. When was your last time?’
‘Six months? I used a condom. Always do. I’m clean.’
‘Am I supposed to believe you?’ She trailed a fingertip through the ridged furrow of
his chest, traced his six-pack, down. He mouthed, ‘uhuh,’ smiling as they kissed. They
got busy for a while.
But this time the A-word hung between them and they were careful, stroking moist
tendrils from their fingertips, a little shove on the hip and he subsided. They mumbled
and sighed and spiraled down into deep dreamless sleep, the slow rhythm of their
breathing in perfect synch, in and out, two wings.
Outside a beat in time, chew chew chew.
At midday he left and she slept on. At two Churchill dropped Sav off, and then sped
off to catch up with the day. She wandered down to the outside room and peered
through the clean window. Ariel’s slumbering shape. She tiptoed back and let herself
in. At four Kay came home and found Sav lying on her bed, watching the afternoon
make shapes on the plaster-board ceiling, Shoulder Thomas in her arms. By six Kay had
made a stir-fry and rooibos tea. Time balanced as the seasons tilted. They did the
homework, watched the Simpsons, talked while they brushed their hair. Below, Sindisi
started on the chest and neck.
And still Ariel slept on.
By dawn the cat had given up pacing the fence, listening for her absent mother, and
settled to sleep the meat away on her mattress. Mosh came, knocked softly, and left.
Kay and Sav banged around the kitchen and bathroom and out the front door, standing
by Ariel’s new car – a battered, bi-coloured twenty year-old Corolla – and shrugging,
before turning to Kay’s car with a glance at her watch. The morning air was still,
windless, warming as the sun rose overhead, and it seemed even the birds stayed away
from the cottage that day. At two Savannah asked Church if she could stay with him
365
until her mom came – ‘Learn about the farm, c’mon, c’mon c’mon’ – and her mom came
late, to a house deepening into darkness. This time she was worried, and knocked hard,
not stopping until she heard mumbling signs of life on the other side of the door. Half-
an-hour later Ariel dragged herself inside.
‘ Eishh! You look a wreck!’ Savannah grinned.
‘Are you sick?’ Kay peeled mielies, dropping them into boiling water.
‘Does anyone here know how to cut hair?’ Ariel scratched at the owl’s nest, puffy
eyes squinting against the light.
‘Yes!’
‘I’ll get the garden shears.’
‘Oh funny.’ Ariel slumped into a chair. ‘What < what time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty on Wednesday.’
‘Tuesday.’
‘No, Wednesday. I told you, Sav. She missed a day.’
‘Bizarre.’
‘Can I have a bath?’ Ariel peeked out. ‘I need to wash this.’
‘Of course. Please. Then come and eat with us. Come and talk.’
The bath was one minute of bliss and twenty of pain, picking and tearing at the
matted clumps, tugging with the brush through plastered conditioner. Fit for shearing
or dreads, and the nascent dreads she destroyed. She emerged in Kay’s bathrobe with a
rosy, contented little face.
‘Have a mielie.’ Kay lathered butter with a knife.
‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to cook some of our meat.’
‘Yuck,’ said Sav. ‘Not again. You eat way too much meat.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Come on, have a mielie.’ So they sat, crunching kernels and juicy talk about nothing
much at all.
366
367
12
They got onto the subject of the perfect commune somehow – oh ja, Ariel, these
farms in Germany where they grow vegetables, which they feed to pigs, who bestow in
turn to the bacteria pits which make methane to drive turbines to make electricity, and
fertilizer to feed the vegetables. At every turn of the cycle profit: meat, vegetables,
power. Sav imagined out loud. Nothing comes in but sun and rain and clean fresh air,
nothing out but songs and laughter and food. How many people would be just right,
how would it work? The technology was disarmingly at hand in their cozy little
kitchen: channel rainwater, lay solar panels on every roof, recycle all organic waste
including our own, compost, grow, waste nothing. Just like nature.
But tonight the talk was mostly about people, about the spark of imagination in Sav’s
eyes, her kneading fingers as she shaped the future, the grown-ups playing along.
‘Five couples. Five men and women. Each with two kids.’
‘So only twenty people?’ asked Ariel. ‘Why not a hundred?’
‘No, must be small. Like a gorilla family. Must be natural.’
‘But what about singles? Old people? The odd and the ugly and the orphans? Me?
Gays and infertile and disabled? Is this like a fascist state, like rural suburbia?’
‘You? You’d be out in the wild.’
‘The centre must be female,’ said Kay, picking her teeth, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘I
mean, it must be run by a group of women. With the power to hire and fire.’
‘Why? Why not have mommies and daddies, and everyone equal?’
‘I think,’ said Ariel, ‘that it doesn’t matter who the person is, as long as they
understand the work they have to do. The role-’
‘Yeah sure, well obviously. Everyone has to have a job. But it’s all about happiness,
isn’t it? Harmony. Everyone must get along, with no fighting.’
368
‘Of course.’ Ariel caught Kay’s sad, cynical glance with a rueful smile.
This kind of talk was quite routine in the Quail household, leading Savannah down a
familiar path towards sleep, nodding and yawning and happy. Her thoughts gradually
fell into whimsy, fairy-tales for realists. The young woman beside her took the elder’s
lead, guiding the child, murmuring. A kiss for Mom, and she traipsed off and closed her
door. The two adults allowed themselves a moment’s quiet together, thinking similar
thoughts, the perfect commune. Ariel had a beer to Kay’s second. Late evening rain
drum-rolled the roof and then thickened into white noise, masking their voices from the
sleeping child.
They talked of everyday things, the farm and the lives in its care, Bob and the police,
how Stein must know who the American is. They talked of communism and rampant
capitalism, seeking a path between the two. They shrugged and grew quiet. Then Ariel
sat up, her back sapling-straight, turning her head. Listening.
‘What is it?’ asked Kay
Ariel waved a writing gesture. Kay rummaged in her canvas bag and pulled out