7)
BABOONS :
When morning comes, I suggest: “The other kids have no way to go to
school, Mammie, but maybe we could give them a lift? It’s the baboons, Mammie
Kassie, êna makula stêrek, they’re
really strong! You should see the branches they can tear off.”
Kassie, her arm
gesturing in the direction of the car, begins to speak when Pappie Sarel
interrupts. “Jus` don’t tease them, Boet, and I tell you they won’t tease back.
I’ll send a kaffir with you kids, starting
today. Old M`dhalha will do. He seems to take an interest in you. I’ll give him
the shotgun. That’ll scare the hairy-backed buggers off.”
At 7:00 a.m., this
time with M`dhalha standing to one side, I wait as usual atop the big round
‘sleeping-buffalo-boulder’ beside the dirt road, directly across from the van
Wyk’s dairy.
Two other boys,
kicking stones, saunter up the road toward me, a roly-poly fellow of eight, and
a thin stick-legged taller chap of twelve. “`Lo, Boet,” the chubby one greets
me, nudging at his thick glasses.
“`Lo, Varkie,” I
smile. “`Lo Piet,” I greet, and jump down.
“I see you brought
your old kaffir,” Piet teases, then picks up a stone. “Hey, Oink,” he
challenges at Varkie, “let’s see if you can hit the van Wyk’s signboard from
here!” and he throws so hard that the rock clangs and ricochets.
“Eina! Wat die hel!” a voice hollers from
up the driveway.
“Sorry, Alex!” Piet
shouts back, laughing, as fifteen-year-old good looking Alex, trailed by his reedy
eleven-year-old brother, come into view. Meek little Mark holds his neck.
“You hit Mark!”
Alex blazes. “I’ve told you to look before you throw!”
My head comes up.
“Mark? You all right?”
Mark rubs at his
neck, but turns his eyes away. “Ja man. Jus` nicked.”
Piet, looking straight
at me, teases, “See, if I’m so good with a stone, who needs your bladdy kaffir
along, hey, Boet? I’ll get the baboons!”
But M`dhalha’s
quick glance silences me.
The narrow trail
disappears into the seemingly impenetrable curtain of soft fern and ropy lianas
and towering teak, but comes out on the broader swath of the natives’ footpath.
Even here the treetops inter-link. It’s like walking within a magically paved
tunnel of waving delicacies of lace, the leafy canopy pouring down liquid
patches of gold from giant slivers of sunbeams. In here we usually meet no one
else, since most of the blacks from the Compound leave very early to be at
work, but at times a laden-down woman, some with children in tow, or an older
man, or even a group of young men would be discovered. They’d stand pressed
into the shadows of the leafy undergrowth, saying nothing until spoken to. And
always, no matter how rude we whites might be, the blacks were most polite. But
of such inequalities between white and black little is ever acknowledged. It
comes by way of the birthright of each group, by the way we all are being
raised, as it always was, and for some of us, as it always should be.
But on this day,
all we boys meet up with are the baboons. As usual, I am the one who sees the
slope-faced apes first. Respectfully, I whisper, “Jambo Umfuzi! Hamba!
Hello Grandfather! Time for you to go!”
Umfuzi, seeming to nod, disappears. The
forest goes still. All remains hushed, ominous.
Piet runs up,
demanding, “Where? Where’s the bladdy thing?”
I point away. “Daar! There!”
Alex, his voice an
urgent whisper, calls, “You kids, wait!”
We stop up. All
around us in the path with its paving stones of golden yellow light that spears
down in gothic shafts from the winking canopy of lace, there is a cathedral
hush. But there is something ugly about that quiet. Usually when we come across
the pack there are about twenty or so of the dusky creatures, chattering and
entertaining with their marvelous acrobatics amidst the branches. And then one
of us, usually Piet of course, would begin goading at them with grotesque
facial gestures and weird noises. The apes inevitably respond by barking back
insults and sometimes hurl seedpods and shake the branches with their antics.
Ha!
But now? I feel goosebumps.
M`dhalha calls
softly, “Stay long, like a string. We must be a python, not a puff-adder.”
Piet spits. “Puff-adders
are lethal. Pythons slow. Just shoot the hairy bastards, kaffir!”
But I’ve had
enough. “Piet. His name is ‘M`dhalha’.
M’dhalha. Respected One. Hear?”
Piet advances, hands
balling. “Yeah, Boetie? Does it now? M`dhalha
this and M`dhalha that! You’d swear
that the kaffir was your own fuggen
father, you little Back Seat Brat!”
My eyes firm. He is
taller than me, but I stare, determined to show no fear.
Piet’s eyes glisten
with uncertainty, but he goads, “Come on, Boet. Come on, you fuggen little kaffir-boetie, fight!”
Then the baboons
explode. From the sudden maelstrom of the swirling canopy a furious hail of
broken branches, bouncing fruit kernels, boomerang-hard sausage-tree seedpods
and gobs of smelly yellow raw dung pelts down.
We rush for cover.
M`dhalha snaps the .410 up and an orange belch blasts from it with an echoing Boom! that sends rustling shivers
through the leaves.
A second of
silence.
But the apes,
seeing that none among them are actually harmed, begin quickly reappearing. A
little chastened, a lot more wary, they perch and chatter and argue over the
matter of exactly what next to do.
A young female, her
baby clung tight to her side, descends to within a stone’s throw and commences
a screaming lecture, full of insult.
Spattered in
stench, I begin to laugh, but then Piet angrily flings a stone and hits her so
sharply that she drops her child. The tiny body, almost naked of hair, screams
as it crashes to the forest floor.
“Los! Leave it!” M`dhalha shouts,
reloading, as Piet runs into the ferns, yelling, “Grab it! Grab it!”
Above us the
baboons erupt. They tear off the green and heavy seedpods, break larger and
larger branches, hurl things down.
Varkie, squealing
in fear, waddles further away down the path, and breaks into a run. I shout! But
Umfuzi, the old watchman, springs.
Whump! The sound of it is distinct. The
impact of some ninety pounds of infuriated menace catapulted from a great
height instantly flattens the pudgy youngster. Dust clouds swirl. Even so, on
all fours both boy and baboon almost at once back off, the ape to gain
advantage, the boy in dazed bewilderment as he scrabbles for his glasses. Wet
blood drips from his shredded ear, spouts in raked reds from the gashes to his
shoulder and thigh. Strangely though, he makes no sounds.
M`dhalha tries to
trace the circling baboon in his gun-sight.
I notice the
mother, to one side, go quietly to rescue her baby. Her child clutched precariously
to her chest, she howls defiance as she clambers back up the tree. Her voice
goads the monstrous male into leaping at Varkie’s neck, but just then the boy
stumbles for his yet again dropped glasses, and the baboon rips him from forearm
to wrist. The ape screeches and howls, bares finger-sized fangs, begins
circling again, and looks for the killing leap.
But then, flashing
as it hurtles end over end through the air, M`dhalha’s great knife impales
itself in the ape’s back, thwunk! The
baboon falls face down, spread-eagled, still.
“Sawright, Basie. Sawright,” M`dhalha
clucks at Varkie, gently prying the heavily bleeding kid up from the dirt.
“Bring the knife,” he tells me.
I somewhat
tentatively tug at the heavy steel from the still warm threat of the back of
the huge baboon. It is, I realize, the first time I’ve touched the weapon. And
from that moment, I want a knife just like it.
Varkie begins to
whimper. M`dhalha wordlessly turns with him in his arms and lopes back toward
the van Wyk’s place.
Thank you for sharing, so descriptive, raw... Lord of the Flies comes to mind...
ReplyDeleteWow that was a gripping account. Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDelete