The Sunbird Read online

  If I had been frightened, it was as nothing to Ral’s reaction to my question. Letting out a howl of terror he leapt about three feet in the air with his arms flapping, rather like a crested crane doing its mating dance. It took him a minute or two to recover himself sufficiently to shamble across to his bed and reply in a shaky voice, ‘I’ve been to the toilet.’ Which was just as well, I thought, otherwise my challenge could have had disastrous consequences. I got up, dressed and went out to check the Land-Rover. I suppose I guessed that Ral had been with Leslie, but I did not realize the implications of this.

  It took Louren and me most of the first day to find a way over the Hills of Blood that the Land-Rover could negotiate. We followed the line of cliffs northward until they dwindled away and broke up into low kopjes and we could climb one of the gullies between them. It was a rugged ascent that taxed even that sturdy vehicle, but once on the top the going was through open savannah and scattered acacia forest and we made good progress, swinging away southward again to pick up the caravan route that Louren had hopefully drawn in on his large scale map.

  That night we camped astride it, or at least where we hoped it might have been. With the amount of gasoline and water aboard, there was scant room for the luxuries of camp life. Besides it was meant to be a rough trip to dispel the smogs and grimes of civilization, a nostalgic return to the expeditions we had made together in our youth.

  We grilled a brace of sand-grouse over the coals, and drank Glen Grant and sun-warmed water from enamel mugs. Then with hollows scraped from the hard earth for hip and shoulder we rolled into our sleeping bags beside the Land-Rover and chatted drowsily and contentedly for an hour before falling asleep.

  In the dawn Louren massaged his back and gingerly worked the stiffness out of his muscles.

  ‘I’ve just remembered I’m not twenty any longer,’ he groaned, but by the third day he was looking it. The sun coloured him again, the bruises under his eyes were gone and he laughed freely.

  Our progress was slow. Often it was necessary to retrace our spoor out of broken ground whose kopjes and ridges denied us passage. Then we would leave the Land-Rover and go in on foot to try and pioneer a way through. There was no hurry, however, so we could fully enjoy each mile as we groped our way north and east through country that changed its character and mood with the bewitching rapidity that is Africa’s alone.

  Each hour of eastward travel rewarded us with more evidence of bird and animal life. The dry-land birds gave way to guinea fowl, francolin, and the gigantic korrie bustard. While amongst the mopani and masasa trees there was the occasional silver-grey flash of a running kudu, with his long corkscrew horns laid flat along his back.

  ‘Water not far away,’ Louren commented as we stopped the Land-Rover at the edge of one of those open glades of yellow grass and watched a herd of stable antelope move away into the trees on the far side. The most stately antelope in Africa, proud heads holding the curved scimitar horns high and the dazzling contrast of snowy breast against black body.

  ‘Another endangered species,’ I remarked sadly. ‘Making way for the greed and excesses of man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Louren agreed. ‘And you know something, there’s not one single specimen of homo sapiens that’s half as beautiful, and that,’ he said, ‘includes Raquel Welch.’

  That night we camped in a grove of masasa trees, clad in their outlandish spring foliage which has the colours of no other tree on earth - pinks, soft shiny beige, and flaming reds. Louren had shot a young impala ram during the day and he wrapped the fillets in bacon and roasted them in a heavy iron pot while I made a sauce of onions and tomato and plenty of garlic. We ate it with thick slices of brown bread and yellow tinned butter and it tasted like no other food I had ever known.

  ‘If you ever need a job, Lo, you can come cook for me,’ I told him around a mouthful. He grinned and went to the Land-Rover to switch on the radio.

  ‘What was the deal?’ I asked.

  ‘Just the news.’ He had the grace to look guilty. ‘Can’t lose touch entirely.’

  We listened to the strivings and strugglings of a world gone mad. Somehow, in this remote and tranquil place the affairs of man seemed unimportant, petty and transient.

  ‘Switch it off, Lo,’ I said. ‘Who needs it?’

  He reached for the control knob of the set, but checked his hand as the voice of the announcer spoke a familiar name.

  ‘Lusaka Radio reports that the leader of the terrorist gang which yesterday ambushed a detachment of police in the Wankie district of Rhodesia, killing four and wounding two others, is the self-styled “Colonel” Timothy Mageba who two months ago made world headlines in his dramatic hijacking bid. A spokesman for the Rhodesian police said that Mageba is probably one of the most dangerous terrorists in Africa. A reward of 10,000 Rhodesian dollars has been offered for information leading to his death or capture.’

  With a savage gesture Louren switched off the set and came back to the fire. He sipped his whisky before speaking.

  ‘He’s operating only 100 miles or so north of here, I’d give anything to get a chance at that one.’

  News of Timothy disturbed me deeply, and that night I lay long awake with my hands behind my head staring up at the starry splendour of the night sky. Venus had dropped below the horizon before I fell into a sleep troubled with ugly dreams.

  The morning sun lit the crests of the kopjes a fresh gold and inflamed the sky with virulent reds and purples, driving away dark thoughts and we talked and laughed together as we picked our way slowly towards the east.

  In the middle of the morning we saw the vultures circling off towards the north, a vast wheel of specks turning slowly beneath the hard blue sky. Following the flight of these grotesque scavengers is one of the most intriguing invitations that Africa has to offer. For every time they will lead you to the scene of some desperate incident in the never-ending drama of the wilderness.

  ‘A couple of miles off,’ Louren commented, peering eagerly ahead through the windscreen. I shared his curiosity. The hell with ruined cities and lost civilizations, this was the stark, raw rule of tooth and claw we were going to witness.

  A quarter of a mile ahead of us we saw the hunch-backed bird shapes squatting obscenely in the tree-tops, thick as some devil’s fruit in the orchards of hell.

  ‘They are off the kill.’ Louren was jubilant ‘Something’s keeping them up in the trees and sky.’

  He stopped the Land-Rover, and switched off the ignition. We climbed out, and Louren checked the load of his big .375 magnum, changing the solid bullets for soft-nosed ones that would deliver a heavier knock-down blow.

  ‘We’ll walk up,’ he said. ‘I’d love a chance at a big black-maned lion.’ He snapped the bolt of the rifle closed, ‘Take the shotgun, Ben, load with buckshot.’

  This is my sort of thinking. If a lion is far enough away to warrant the use of a rifle then he and I have got no quarrel; closer than that I like a weapon that I can’t miss with.

  Louren set off through the waist-high grass, I followed him, keeping out on his flank to open my line of fire, the shotgun loaded for lion and my pockets bulging with spare shells. We moved in slowly, trying to find the focal point of this gathering of vultures for they were scattered in the trees over an area of half a square mile.

  Every step heightened our tension with the expectation of walking on top of a pride of lions lying in the grass. Louren signalled each change of direction to me, as we quartered carefully back and forth over the ground. From the trees around us the birds launched into flight, changing miraculously from ungainly repose into something graceful and beautiful as they entered their true element.

  My throat was dry with excitement, and a pleasurable fear. I could see Louren was sweating through the back of his shirt, not entirely from the heat. His every movement was charged with restrained energy, ready to explode at the first sign of the quarry. I loved this part of the hunt, for there is the atavistic urge of hunter still hidden in most of
us, it was only the killing that repulsed me.

  Louren froze, rifle at high port. He was staring ahead, and I braced myself for the heavy detonation of the shot that I knew must follow; but the seconds passed slowly as dripping oil and still Louren stood with only the slightest movement of his head as he searched.

  Quietly I moved up beside him. Ahead of us was an area of flattened and trampled grass. In the centre of it lay the body of a dead buffalo, his belly bloated with gas, and big shiny green flies swarming over his dead eyes and into his open mouth. I could see no marks of claws in the thick hide, with its coarse black hair blotched with patches of shiny baldness and rough scab.

  I looked down at the ground, not wishing to tread on a twig as I moved again, and I saw the small childlike human footprint in a patch of ant-turned earth.

  I felt the hair at the back of my neck prickle, we had walked into something a damned sight more dangerous than a pride of lions. Quickly I looked back to the dead buffalo, and for the first time noticed two inches of a frail reed stalk protruding from the folded skin of the neck. The flesh around it was swollen tight and hard.

  ‘Lo!’ I croaked huskily. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here - this is a bushman kill.’

  Louren’s head jerked around and he stared at me. I saw the rim of his nostrils fade to china white.

  ‘How do you know?’ he demanded hoarsely

  ‘Footprints at your feet.’ He glanced down, ‘Arrow in the buffalo’s neck.’

  He was convinced. ‘This is your shauri, Sen. What do we do?’ Now he was sweating as heavily as I was.

  I said ‘Slowly, slowly! Don’t turn your back and don’t move suddenly. They are watching us, Lo, Probably right here.’

  We began backing off, clutching our weapons with sweat-greasy hands, eyes darting restlessly from side to side.

  ‘Talk to them, for God’s sake, Ben!’ Louren whispered. I found time to examine the discovery that the threat of poison could turn even a man like Louren into a coward.

  ‘Can’t take the chance. Anything could trigger them.’

  ‘They may be behind us.’ His voice shook, and I felt my skin between the shoulder blades cringe as I listened for the flute of the arrow. With each pace backwards I felt my fear shrinking, and fifty yards from the kill I risked hailing them.

  ‘Peace,’ I called. ‘We mean you no harm.’

  The reply came immediately, birdlike and disembodied, seeming to emanate from the heated air itself.

  ‘Tell the big white-head to lay down his weapon, for we do not know him.’

  ‘Xhai.’ I cried out my relief and delight. ‘My brother!’

  ‘His eye was bright as the yellow moon,

  His hoof struck fire from the iron hills.‘

  We sang the buffalo song together, the men squatting around the leaping fire, clapping out the complicated rhythm with our hands. The women danced in an outer circle around us, swaying and shuffling, miming the buffalo and his gallant hunter. The firelight shone on their golden-yellow skins, their tiny childlike bodies with the startling bulge of buttocks and the fat little yellow breasts joggling to the dance rhythm.

  ‘The arrow-bird flew from my hand

  Swift as a bee, or a stooping hawk.‘

  The branches of the trees around us were heavy with festoons of raw meat, hung out to dry, and beyond the firelight the jackal and hyena howled their frustrations to the star-bright heavens, as they snuffed the tantalizing odours.

  The blood when it flowed was bright as a flower

  And sweet as wild honey was the flesh of his body,‘

  The dance ended at last, and the women giggled and trilled as they flocked to the fire to cram more meat into their little round bellies. Bushmen and women are awed by physical size, and to them Louren was a huge golden giant. They discussed him in a frank and intimate manner, starting at his golden head and working downwards until I laughed out aloud.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Louren demanded, and I told him.

  ‘My God, they didn’t say that!’ Louren was shocked, staring at the women in horror, and they covered their mouths with their hands as they giggled.

  I sat between Xhai and Louren, one of them smoking and the other eating a Romeo and Juliette cigar, and I translated for them. They spoke of the animals and the birds for they had a common love of the chase.

  ‘My grandfather told me that when he was a young man the buffalo in this land below the great river were as locusts, black upon the earth - but then the red sickness came.’

  ‘Rinderpest,’ I explained to Louren.

  ‘And they died so that they fell one upon the other, so thick that the vultures could not fly with the load of their bellies, and their bones lay in the sun like the fields of white Namaqua daisies in the spring time’

  They talked on after the women and children had curled up and fallen asleep like little yellow puppies in the dust. They spoke of noble animals and great hunts, and they became friends beside the fire so that at last Xhai told me shyly, ‘I should like to share the hunt with such a one. I could show him an elephant, like those that my grandfather knew, with teeth as thick as my waist and as long as the shaft of a throwing spear.’

  And there goes any further pretence of looking for ruins and caravan routes, I thought, as I watched Louren’s face light up at the suggestion.

  ‘But,’ I added, ‘he says you must leave the Land-Rover here. They heard us coming for half an hour before we arrived today and he says this elephant is old and cunning. Which means we will have to get some sleep now. We’ve got a hell of a day ahead of us tomorrow.’

  By the time the sun came up we had been on the march for three hours, dew had soaked our trousers to the knees but we had walked the night’s chill out of our joints and were extending ourselves, stepping out with full stride to keep the two tiny brown figures in view. Xhai and Ghal were into that loose-limbed trot that would eat away the miles all day without flagging, their little brown forms danced ahead of us through the thickening thorns and Jessie bush.

  ‘How you doing, Ben?’

  I grunted and changed the shotgun to my other shoulder.

  ‘The little bastards can certainly foot it.’

  ‘Brother, you have only just started,’ I warned him. They led us into bad, broken country where harsh black ridges of ironstone thrust from the earth and the thorn was grey and spiny and matted, where deep ravines rent the walls of steep tableland outcrops and the heat was a fierce dazzling thing that sucked the moisture from our bodies and dried it in rings of white salt on our shirts. It was the type of country that a canny old elephant bull, pursued by men all his life, might choose as a retreat.

  We rested for half an hour at noon, seeking shade in the lee of a boulder whose black surface was scalding to the touch and drinking a few mouthfuls of lukewarm water, then we went on and almost immediately cut the spoor.

  ‘There and there.’ With the point of a poison arrow, Xhai traced the outline of a padmark on the iron-hard earth. ‘Do you not see it?’ he asked with exasperation, and though we circled the area, tilting our heads learnedly, neither of us could make it out.

  ‘If that’s an elephant spoor,’ muttered Louren, ‘I’m a Chinese tinker.’ But Xhai set off confidently on a new bearing through the thorns, and we climbed one of the rocky tablelands, following a trail that Louren and I could not even see. Near the crest of the hill, lay a pile of elephant dung, still moist despite the furnace-dry heat, and a cloud of yellow and orange butterflies hovered over it attracted by the wetness. The dung looked like the contents of a coir mattress.

  ‘Velly solly,’ I whispered to Louren, ‘please fixee pottee -chop chop.’

  ‘The man’s a bloody magician.’ Louren shook his head in amazement, as he unslung the heavy rifle from his shoulder and tucked it under his arm.

  We went on again, but slowly now, pausing frequently while Xhai and Ghal searched the impenetrable thickets of thorn ahead of us. It was a gut-aching business in this close bush, eac
h step planned and made only at a signal from Xhai’s dainty pink-palmed hand, moving forward when the hand beckoned and freezing when it froze.

  ‘Come,’ said the hand and we went on again, then abruptly—

  ‘Stop!’ A quick cut-out sign, with the hand like a blade, then balling into a fist and pointing ahead, bad luck to point with a finger at the quarry.

  We stood still as death, sweat-shiny faces staring ahead into the wall of thorn - and then suddenly the elephant loomed ghostly grey amongst the grey thorn, moving from us in a leisurely sway-backed shamble, grey skin wrinkled and old, hanging in bags and pouches at the belly and in the crotch of his back legs, the tail bare of tuft hair, the knuckles of the spine showing clearly through the ridged skin on his back. Old elephant. Big elephant.

  ‘Stay here!’ Xhai’s hand pointed at Ghal and me, and I nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Come with me!’ Xhai’s forefinger crooked at Louren, and they went on together, circling out on the elephant’s flank through the thorn. The bushman doll-like beside Louren’s bulk, leading him around for a clean shot at the head or shoulder.

  The elephant paused, and began feeding from one of the thickets, delicately plucking the pale green shoots with the tip of his trunk, stuffing them into his mouth, completely unaware of danger - while out on his flank Louren reached a firing stance and braced himself, legs spread, leaning forward to meet the recoil of the heavy rifle.

  The shot was stunningly loud, shocking in the heat-drugged silence. I heard the bullet slap into flesh, and the elephant spun away from the impact, turning to face Louren, with its long yellow ivories lifted high, the huge grey ears cocked back, and it squealed as it saw the man. It squealed in anger, and a long smouldering hatred now burst into flame.

  It crabbed sideways as it began the charge, blanketing Louren’s line of fire with a thicket of thorns. I saw Louren turn and run out to the side, trying to open his front for a clear shot. His foot hit an ant-bear hole and he fell in full run, going down heavily, the rifle flying from his hand, lying stunned full in the path of the charge.