The Sands of Kalahari Read online

  “Will they come back?” Grace asked. Smith turned and saw that she had spoken to him. He was surprised. Despite everything they had gone through, the blond girl was still reserved, almost haughty.

  “Come back?” he said. “Who can say? These paintings are probably a hundred years old. But there are still some wild Bushmen around according to what I’ve read.” He turned to the old man for confirmation.

  “Ja,” Grimmelmann said, nodding his head. “A few hundred perhaps if you speak of the pure wild Bushmen. There are others, mixed breeds, half wild and half Western. They are neither one thing nor the other.”

  “There were Bushmen in Rhodesia,” Grace said. “My grandfather used to speak of them.”

  “I have known Bushmen,” Grimmelmann said. “In South-West Africa. Fifty years ago, when it was a German colony. Standlopers. They were the ones who lived along the coastline. Beach runners. Then others inland. Tiny men. Under five feet. Fantastic when you think of it. Stone Age people in a world that is reaching out into space with rockets.”

  “How the hell do they survive?” Bain asked.

  “The same way all people do,” Smith said. “They understand their environment and adjust to it.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Bain protested. He had wrapped himself in a blanket and joined the others at the fire. An hour before he had been violently cold.

  Smith laughed. “Okay, so I sound like a professor now and then, but it really is the answer. Grimmelmann will agree with me.”

  “He’s right,” the German said. “They live in the Kalahari and in South-West Africa now. They are still neolithic. Hunters. Like the Australian blacks and the true Eskimos and the Congo Pygmies. Still hunting after all the ages of agriculture and towns and cities and empires and world wars.”

  “But why here?” Bain said. “Why do it the hard way?”

  “They were chased here,” Smith said. “The books say that they were forced out here by stronger people. It’s the old story. A powerful people invade a place and the original people are either killed, enslaved or driven into the local swamp, mountain, desert or what have you. No choice. The invader takes the good soil and the easy life.”

  Sturdevant tossed a small stick and they watched the fire take it. “Maybe the Bantus killed off most of them,” he said. “They were supposed to have come out of central Africa, maybe Nigeria or thereabouts, and come south. This was about the same time van Riebeeck and the Dutch started coming into the Cape. We killed or made slaves of them too, so they were caught between two fires. The Boers and Bantu. More and more they were forced into the Karoo and the Kalahari and the other bad places. I’m Boer descent and I’m not ashamed of it but we did some terrible things to the Bushmen and Hottentots. Hunting dogs, poison, all of it. They were hunted like vermin. I think the reason for it was that they couldn’t comprehend tame cattle or sheep. They’d kill stock, couldn’t grasp the idea of private property, ownership of dumb animals who wouldn’t run from them.”

  The others looked at the tough redheaded pilot and realized that he was an educated man, a tolerant person. Since they had known him he had been curt, ordered them about, spoken sharply to them. But he was relaxed now and they all felt better, safer.

  “And even in the desert we pursued them,” Grimmelmann said.

  “There’s a parallel, too,” Sturdevant went on. “I mean being caught-between-two-fires. Later on it happened exactly the same way, only this time the Boer was in the middle. The Zulus came down from the north and the British started putting on the pressure. And so the Boers fled to the less desirable country only to make the mistake of finding gold and diamonds on it. Then the English wanted that too.”

  “There might be some Bushmen around here,” Bain suggested. “Maybe we could make contact with them, get them to take us out.”

  “I’ve seen no signs of them,” Grimmelmann said.

  “What signs would they leave?”

  “Bones at least,” the German said, sweeping his hand around to take in the cave. “Signs of fires. Something. Perhaps I am wrong but I have a feeling about this cave. I think the last men were here hundreds of years ago.”

  “They could be watching us now,” O’Brien said staring into the fire. The others turned, not to him, but to the mouth of the cave and saw the total primeval blackness of the night. Grace Monckton shivered.

  “We came to the cave out of an old instinct,” O’Brien went on. “If Bushmen were chased here, they might not have brought the cave instinct with them. They slept in different spots each night in the open.”

  “They are like that,” Grimmelmann said. “A good point.” He kept nodding to himself as O’Brien went on.

  “They could have passed this cave last week. Drank from the pool. Killed an animal, eaten it and moved on. Why would they set up housekeeping in this godforsaken spot if they can move around the desert without fear of dying of thirst? We are thinking of them in our terms; of how we would act.”

  “Maybe our painter is a contemporary then,” said Smith. They looked at the rock painting and the shadows leaping over it. It was a thing of great beauty.

  “How the hell do they live in the desert?” Bain said. “How do they stay here?”

  “They are the world’s best hunters,” Grimmelmann said. “They are almost animals themselves in their manner of hunting. They have bows and tiny arrows and make great use of their secret poisons. They crawl close to springbok, shoot one, and then track it, for hours, days even; once they are tracking an animal they cannot lose it. The Australian black is like that too. All Stone Age hunters have to be, for life is so hard for them. Their weapons are very rudimentary and slight against any kind of game. A good wound is about all they can inflict; that’s the importance of poison. When there is no game they eat melons such as you and I have just eaten and other things: roots, tubers of various kinds, berries, certain resins and bulbs, lizards and snakes and insects and honey, ant eggs, eggs of all birds, especially the ostrich, yams, seeds, grubs, anything and everything that can be digested… . And do not make faces, my friends. These things may soon be on our diet. I for one hope so. Tomorrow we must see what else the valley holds.”

  “Tomorrow will be our last day here,” Sturdevant said. “I’m going up that peak and look around. We’ll fill the water cans and head for the next likely-looking spot. We can’t sit still.”

  “You might see something and you might not,” Grimmelmann said.

  “We’ve got to look,” O’Brien said.

  “Of course,” the old man said. “But do not build your hopes too high. The Kalahari is a world in itself. The Great Thirst, that’s what they call it.”

  “Why did we have to crash here?” Bain asked. He spoke quietly as if to himself, a childish question from a feverish brain, but its simplicity made them all start. It had been in their minds too but they had not voiced it.

  O’Brien snorted. “The gods are angry, I guess.” He winked at Grace Monckton, startling her. She blushed and turned away.

  “I wonder,” Sturdevant said. “I wonder.”

  The others turned to him. He had been toying with a stick and now he tossed it into the fire. Sparks flew upward, into the blackness.

  “I sometimes get the feeling that I don’t belong here,” he said. “In Africa, I mean. When I’m up there in the plane all alone looking down I feel like a vulture coming in to feed. None of us belong here; we all know it; it’s not our land. It belongs to the black man.”

  “You were born here,” Grace said, defensively. It was true of her also.

  “We don’t have the right,” the pilot said. “It’s wrong. Terribly wrong. If it’s right to enslave men on their own land, then nothing is wrong. And we’ve got to pay for it sometime. Suffer.”

  “I agree,” Grimmelmann said. “We owe a great deal to Africa. The terrible things we have done. If we must suffer let it be here where we have caused so much of it.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” O’Brien said. “We’re here beca
use we’re here. We’re going to beat this place too. We got in a plane and it went the wrong way and that’s why we’re here.”

  “And we’ve suffered enough,” Bain said. “All of us. Just by living. It’s hard to survive outside of here too, remember that. And you suffer enough just doing that.”

  “I am religious,” Grimmelmann said, quietly. “I am old now; I’ve been involved in evil; I’ve done many things I should not have done.”

  “So have I,” Bain told him, “but knowing it is punishment enough. Living with it.”

  Smith pulled himself closer to the fire. “We all feel guilty about something,” he said, staring into the flames. “And I suppose it’s one way to explain the suffering we might have to experience. We rationalize it. Sturdevant feels guilt because he is Boer descent, a South African. Grimmelmann has other reasons, and all the rest of us perhaps. You know something? I feel guilt too here in Africa. A reverse kind. I see the appalling things here, all that my race must endure, the subservience, the humiliation, the peonage. And I am ashamed that I never knew it, that I was born free, not equal, but still free. I didn’t have to suffer . .

  “Until now,” O’Brien said.

  “I guess I’ve still got a lot of old-time religion in me,” Sturdevant said. “An eye-for-an-eye.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Grace said. “We all feel the same way, I think. We are wrong. But what can we do?”

  Grimmelmann nodded. Grace sat watching Mike Bain who hunched forward, eyes closed, wrapped in his blanket. He looked very sick but there was not much they could do for him. It was quiet now except for the wind outside in the black night. O’Brien got up and began to make a bed for himself inside the circle of warmth created by the fire. One by one the others followed. Smith helped Mike Bain, brought water to him, made him comfortable for the night.

  The fire died down. The cave grew colder. They slept.

  Finally the sun rose and brought warmth. They waited for it in the darkness, watched it rise, saw its redness tint the gray-blue horizon. They understood now a little of the sun rites of prehistory, the sun gods, the sacrifices. Without the sun the world would be a sterile frozen ember aimless in black space.

  The sun rose and brought light and heat; the night creatures shunned it and found deep crannies in the rock. The sound of the insects came; birds stirred; the baboons came from their den on all fours, lazy and sullen, half-awake. The east wind came: night air seeking the warm sea.

  Then the long day with the sun supreme, merciless in triumph, beating down upon the sand and rock, on the withered trees, the desert plants. Rock sometimes crumbled and stones split when one side became hotter than the other or when there was a sudden change in temperature. The sun ruled. All life adjusted to it or perished.

  Over the eons, the sun and the wind and occasional rain. The soft rock became pitted from the wind-borne sand; it crumbled, fell, turned into sand and helped batter the chalk cliffs, carve gorges, scour the tougher crystalline rock that stood defiant and alone in growing sand belts. Through long geologic periods the land rose, formed high plateaus, sharp mountain chains. Long rains came, and the cascading water wore knifelike ravines in the earth and stone as it raced to the sea. One element fought the other and in the end it made a land that was hard and pitiless and unrelenting.

  When light came they found it difficult to leave the cave. It was still cold and they were exhausted. The excitement of the first day had worn off; the terrible fatigue had caught up with them. They knew they would have to climb the peak before they could move on but for another day they would rest and drink water and eat the wonderful melons.

  O’Brien and Sturdevant got up and walked off across the canyon. They came to a place where many of the thorn trees had died and the pilot crouched down and started a fire with a few handfuls of dried grass and bark.

  They built up the fire, adding to it everything and anything that would burn or smolder or make smoke. The roots of many of the dead trees were weak and rotten and the two men pushed them over, dragged them into the fire.

  A great pillar of smoke rose from the canyon reaching for the clouds; the air was almost still; the smoke column grew thicker, mushroom-shaped. The two men continued to carry broken limbs and decayed tree trunks. They were black with soot and filth, their clothes torn, their eyes watery from the intense heat. In time they became too exhausted to work and they found tree shade and rested, watched the smoke, speculated on how far it could be seen.

  They rested for an hour and walked back to the cool cave.

  There were lizards in the canyon. Later in the day Grimmelmann killed one with his walking stick, cut off the head, tail and feet, cleaned it, roasted it and ate it. The others watched him, scowling, disgusted. They could not bring themselves to eat a lizard for breakfast or for dinner; yet each of them knew that it was inevitable. They would do it if they had to close their eyes and stuff it down their unwilling throats. The tsamma melons were tasty and filling but six people could not live for long on the available supply. Unless they moved on or found other food they too would eat lizard.

  “It is not the first time,” Grimmelmann said, looking up at them. “With me it is not difficult. The first time, yes. But you get used to the taste. This one is like chicken.” He licked his fingers and rubbed them in the sand.

  “Let’s climb the peak,” O’Brien said.

  “Not today,” Sturdevant told him. “I’m still groggy. And so are you. We need the rest. Eat the melons and drink plenty of water and sleep. Maybe tomorrow …”

  “I did not eat the lizard to disgust you,” the old German said. “You will have to adjust to this place. To survive is to adjust.”

  “We’ll get out of here,” Sturdevant said. “From the top of the peak we’ll be able to see a hundred miles.”

  “But we can’t walk a hundred miles,” Grace said. “I don’t think I could reach the plane again.”

  “But I could,” Sturdevant said. “Walking at night with water I could make a hundred miles. More.”

  “But it might not be enough,” Grimmelmann said.

  Another night. They gathered around the fire.

  “When will it rain?” Smith asked Sturdevant.

  The pilot thought for a while. “Six weeks, five weeks. A long time for us. It rains in February and March and then the rest of the year is dry as hell. Two months maybe of greenness and that’s in the good parts of the country, not here. When the rain stops, everything starts drying out again and it’s the best part of a year before any more rain falls. The sheep and cattle get along on the dry stuff or they starve to death.”

  “Sometimes there are great grass fires,” Grimmelmann said.

  “And when the grass is gone nothing comes back to replace it until the rains come again. It’s terrible for the animals.”

  “I can’t get used to the cold nights,” Smith said suddenly. “I keep forgetting we’re three thousand feet or so above sea level.”

  “I wish now we hadn’t burned up all that wood,” O’Brien said. “We should have had sense enough to go farther away from the cave.”

  Sturdevant nodded. The American was right.

  “Are we going to stay here?” Grace asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sturdevant said. “We’ll have to see how far this mountain runs. I’ve got to get up that peak and have a look and see what I can see. We were lucky to find this place, the water. It was one chance in a million …”

  They knew this. They had survived the crash and by some miracle had stumbled upon a fountain in the desert.

  But it was not enough. They had to move, go on. The cave was but a temporary refuge. When Sturdevant found out which way to go they would fill the water cans and leave.

  It grew colder. They wrapped themselves in their blankets and clothes and fell asleep.

  In the morning, the sound of birds.

  They brought the dead coals to life and heaped wood on the fire, shivered over it for half an hour eating tsamma melons and drinking
water warmed over the fire.

  “Let’s climb the peak,” O’Brien said.

  Sturdevant spat a melon rind into his cupped hand.

  “I was thinking the same thing. We’ll take turns carrying one of the water tins. It’ll be hot up there. I can tell you that.”

  “With the binoculars we should be able to see right into Windhoek,” O’Brien said.

  “Don’t say funny things,” Sturdevant said. “I have a feeling we flew to the moon.”

  They moved out of the cave into the weak sunshine.

  They looked at the far peak. Sturdevant stretched, yawned.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start getting ready.”

  The others were relieved; they had been thinking about it for two days now, wondering what they would see from the top of the jagged peak.

  Mike Bain sat in the warm sunlight and silently pleaded to go with them. He had never wanted anything so much in his life and he wondered if he was losing his mind. But he wouldn’t go. He was too weak, too sick. In a few minutes he would get up and go back to the cave and rest. Somebody would bring him water; then he would drift off to sleep and dream terrible dreams. He was dying; his whole body was a glowing pain, his throat, his mouth, his stomach. He needed cigarettes, cigarettes and some real food. Bread. Meat that was not from disgusting creatures that crawled in the sand. If the pain did not go away he would take one of the rifles and kill himself.

  He got up and went inside to his bed. As he did so the blond girl came to him, knelt down beside him.

  “Are you better now?” she asked.

  “No, it’s the shock of going off liquor and cigarettes, that and the hunger, the exertion, the cut thumb and the sun. That’s a hell of a lot for a guy like me. I’ve been out of shape since the war.”

  “You were a soldier?”

  “I was in the American navy. But not on ships. An outfit called Seabees. We built airfields, camps, harbors.”