The Sunbird Read online

  ‘Good lunch?’ she asked, starting the slow sidling approach across the carpet towards my desk that would put her in position to check what was going on. She can read documents upside-down, as I have proved to my cost.

  ‘Great,’ I answered, deliberately covering the photograph with the envelope. ‘Cold turkey, lobster salad, smoked trout, and a very good duck and truffles in aspic.’

  ‘You bastard,’ she whispered softly. She loves good food, and she had noticed my play with the envelope. I don’t allow her to talk to me like that, but then I can’t stop her either.

  Five feet from me she sniffed, ‘And peppermint-flavoured malt whisky! Yummy!’

  I blushed, I can’t help it. It’s like my stutter - and she burst out laughing and came to perch on the edge of my desk.

  ‘Come on, Ben.’ She eyed the envelope frankly. ‘I’ve been bursting since it arrived. I would have steamed it open - but the electric kettle is broken.’

  Dr Sally Senator has been my assistant for two years, which is coincidently the exact period of time that I have been in love with her.

  I moved aside making room for her behind the desk and uncovered the photograph. ‘All right,’ I agreed, ‘let’s see what you make of it.’

  She squeezed in beside me, her upper arm touching my shoulder - a contact that shivered electrically through my whole body. In two years she had become like the children, she didn’t seem to notice the hump. She was easy and natural, and I had a timetable worked out - in another two years our relationship would have ripened. I had to go slowly, very slowly, so as not to alarm her, but in that time I would have accustomed her to the thought of me as a lover and husband. If the last two years had been long - I hated to think about the next two.

  She leaned over the desk peering into the magnifying lens, and she was still and silent for a long time. Reflected light was thrown up into her face, and when she at last looked up her expression was rapt, the green eyes sparkled.

  ‘Ben,’ she said. ‘Oh Ben - I’m so glad for you!’ Somehow her easy acceptance and presumption annoyed me.

  ‘You are jumping the gun,’ I snapped. ‘There could be a dozen natural explanations.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, smiling still. ‘Don’t try and knock it. It’s true, Ben, at last. You’ve worked so long and believed so long, don’t be afraid now. Accept it.’

  She slipped out from behind the desk and crossed quickly to the shelf of books under the label ‘K’. There are twelve volumes there that bear the author’s name ‘Benjamin Kazin’. She selected one, and opened it at the fly-leaf.

  ‘Ophir,’ she read, ‘by Dr Benjamin Kazin. A personal investigation of the prehistoric gold-working civilization of Central Africa, with special reference to the city of Zimbabwe and to the legend of the ancients and the lost city of the Kalahari.’

  She came to me smiling. ‘Have you read it?’ she asked. ‘It’s quite entertaining.’

  ‘There’s a chance, Sal. I agree. Just a chance, but—’

  ‘Where does it lie?’ she cut in. ‘In the mineralized series, as you predicted?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, it’s in the gold belt. But it could, it just could, produce so much more than Langebeh and Ruwane.’

  She grinned triumphantly, and bent over the lens again. With her finger she touched the indian ink arrow in the corner of the photo that gave the northerly bearing.

  ‘The whole city—’

  ‘If it is a city,’ I cut in.

  ‘The whole city,’ she repeated with emphasis, ‘faces north. Into the sun. With the acropolis behind it - sun and moon, the two gods. The phallic towers - there are four, five - six. Perhaps seven of them.’

  ‘Sal, those aren’t towers, they are just dark patches on a photograph taken from 36,000 feet.’

  ‘Thirty-six thousand!’ Sal’s head jerked up. ‘Then it’s huge! You could fit Zimbabwe into the main enclosure half a dozen times.’

  ‘Easy, girl. For God’s sake.’

  ‘And the lower city outside the walls. It stretches for miles. It’s enormous, Ben - but I wonder why it’s crescent-shaped like that?’ She straightened up, and for the first time - the very first wonderful time - she spontaneously threw her arms around my neck and hugged me. ‘Oh, I’m so excited, I could die. When do we leave?’

  I didn’t answer, I hardly heard the question, I just stood there and revelled in the feel of her big warm breasts pressing against me.

  ‘When?’ she asked again, pulling back to look into my face.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What did you say?’ I was both blushing and stuttering - and she laughed.

  ‘When do we leave, Ben? When are we going to find your lost city?’

  ‘Well,’ I considered how to phrase it delicately, ‘Louren Sturvesant and I will go in first. We leave on Tuesday. Louren didn’t mention an assistant - so I don’t think you will be coming along on the recce.’

  Sally stepped back and placed her clenched fists on her hips, she looked at me unkindly and asked with deceptive gentleness: ‘Do you want to bet on that?’

  I like reasonable odds when I do bet, so I told Sally to pack. A week was too long for the job, for she is a professional and travels light. Her personal effects filled a single small valise and a shoulder-strapped carry-all. Her sketchbooks, and paints, were more bulky, but we pooled our books to avoid duplication. My photographic equipment was another big item, and then the sample bags and boxes together with my one canvas case made a formidable pile in the corner of my office. We were ready in twenty-four hours, and for the next six days we killed time by arguing, agonizing, squabbling and poring over the photograph which was starting to lose a little of its gloss. When our tensions built up to explosion point, then Sally would lock herself in her own office and try to work on the translation of the rock-engraving from Drie Koppen or the painted symbols from the Witte Berg. Rock-paintings, engravings and the translation of the ancient writings are her speciality.

  I would wander fretfully around the public rooms, trying to find dust on the exhibits, dreaming up some novel way of displaying the treasures that filled our warehouse and upstairs storerooms, counting the names in the visitors’ book, playing guide to parties of schoolchildren - doing anything but work. Finally I would go upstairs to tap on Sally’s door. Sometimes it was, ‘Come in, Ben.’ And then again it might be, ‘I’m busy. What do you want?’ Then I would drift through to spend an hour in the African languages section with my dour giant, Timothy Mageba.

  Timothy started at the Institute as a sweeper and cleaner, that was twelve years ago. It took me six months to discover that apart from his own southern Sotho he spoke sixteen other dialects. I taught him to speak English fluently in eighteen months, to write it in two years. He matriculated two years later, graduated Bachelor of Arts in another three, Master’s degree in the required further two years - and he is working on his doctorate in African languages.

  He now speaks nineteen languages including English, which is one more than I do, and he is the only man I know, apart from myself - spent nine months in the desert, living with the little yellow men - who speaks the dialects of both the northern and Kalahari bushmen.

  For a linguist, he is a peculiarly silent man. When he does speak it is in basso profundo which matches well his enormous frame. He stands six foot five inches tall and he is muscled like a professional wrestler and yet he moves with the grace of a dancer.

  He fascinates me, and frightens me a little. His head is completely hairless, the rounded pate shaven and oiled to gleam like a midnight-black cannon ball. The nose broad and flat with flaring nostrils, the lips a thick purple black and behind them gleam big strong white teeth. From behind this impassive mask a chained animal ferocity glowers through the eye slits, and once in a while flashes like distant summer lightning. There is a satanical presence about him, despite the white shirt and dark business suit he wears, and though for twelve years I have spent much of my time in his presence I have never fathomed the dark depths ben
eath those dark eyes and darker skin.

  Under my loose surveillance he runs the African languages department of the Institute. Five younger Africans, four men and a girl, work under him and, so far, they have published authoritative dictionaries of the seven main African languages spoken in southern Africa. They have also accumulated, written, and taped material to keep them busy for the next seven years.

  On his own initiative, with just a little of my help and encouragement, he has published two volumes of African history which have raised a storm of hysterical abuse from white historians, archaeologists and reviewers. As a child Timothy was apprenticed to his grandfather, the witchdoctor and historical custodian of the tribe. As part of his initiation into the mysteries his grandfather placed Timothy under hypnosis and taped the entire tribal history on his brain. Even now, thirty years later, Timothy is able to throw himself into a trance and establish total recall of this mass of legend, folklore, unwritten history and magical doctrine. Timothy’s grandfather was tried by an unsympathetic white judge and hanged for his part in a series of ritual murders the year before Timothy had completed his training and been entered into the priesthood. However, his legacy to Timothy is a formidable mountain of material - much of it palpably spurious, a great deal of it unpublishable as being either too obscene or top explosive, and the remainder fascinating, puzzling or downright scary.

  I have drawn on much of Timothy’s unpublished material for my own book Ophir - particularly those unscientific and ‘popular’ sections which deal with the legend of the ancients, a race of fair-skinned golden-haired warriors from across the sea, who mined the gold, enslaved the indigenous tribes, built walled cities and flourished for hundreds of years before vanishing almost without trace.

  I am aware that Timothy edits the information he passes on to me - some of it is too secret, the taboos which surround it too powerful to disclose to other than an initiate of the mysteries. I am sure that much of this withheld information relates to the legend of the ancients. I, however, never abandon my attempts to milk him.

  On the Monday morning of Louren’s return from Switzerland, Sally was so overwrought by the possibility that Louren would veto her inclusion in the preliminary expedition that her company was unbearable. To escape her and to kill the last long waiting hours, I went down to Timothy.

  He works in a tiny room - we are a little pressed for space at the Institute - which is congested with neatly stacked pamphlets, books, folders, and piles of loose paper that reach almost to the ceiling, and yet there is room for my chair. This is a long-legged affair like a bar-room stool. For although my legs and arms are regulation size, or better, my trunk is squashed and humped so that from the seat of an ordinary chair I have trouble seeing over the top of a desk.

  ‘Machane! Blessed one!’ Timothy rose with his usual greeting as I entered. According to Bantu lore those of us with club feet, albino pigmentation, squint eyes, and humped backs are blessed by the spirits and endowed with physic powers. I derive a sneaky sort of pleasure from this belief, and Timothy’s greeting always gives me a lift.

  I hopped up on my chair, and began a desultory conversation which flicked from subject to subject and changed from language to language. Timothy and I are proud of our talents - and I suppose we do show off a little. There is no other man living, of this I am convinced, who could follow one of our conversations from beginning to end.

  ‘It will be strange,’ I said at last in I forget what language, ‘not to have you along on a journey. It will be the first time in ten years, Timothy.’

  He was immediately silent and wary. He knew I was going to start again on the lost city. I had shown him the photograph five days before, and had been pumping him steadily ever since for some significant comment. I changed into English.

  ‘Anyway, you are probably not missing anything. Another groping for shadows. God knows there have been many of those. If only I knew what to look for.’

  I broke off and froze with expectancy. Timothy’s eyes had glazed. It is a physical thing, an opaque blueish film seems to cover the eyeballs. His head sinks down on the thick corded column of the neck, his lips twitch - and the goose flesh runs up my arms and the hair on the back of my neck fans erect.

  I waited. As often as I had seen it I could never shake off the supernatural thrill of watching Timothy going into trance. Sometimes it is involuntary - a word, a thought will trigger it, and the reflex is almost instantaneous. Then again it can be a deliberate act of auto-hypnosis, but this involves preparation and ritual.

  This time it was spontaneous, and I waited eagerly knowing that if the material was taboo it would be but a few seconds only before Timothy broke the spell with a deliberate effort of will.

  ‘Evil—’ he spoke in the quavering, high-pitched voice of an old man. The voice of his grandfather. A little spittle wet the thick purple lips,‘—an evil to be cleaned from the earth and from the minds of men, for ever.’

  His head jerked, the conscious mind intervening, his lips worked loosely. The brief internal struggle - and suddenly bis eyes cleared. He looked at me and saw me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured in English, turning his eyes away now. Embarrassed by the involuntary display, and the need to exclude me. ‘Would you like some coffee, Doctor? They have repaired the kettle at last.’

  I sighed. Timothy had switched off, there would be no more communication that day. He was closed up and defensive. To use his own expression, he had ‘turned nigger’ on me.

  ‘No thanks, Timothy.’ I looked at my watch and slipped off the stool. ‘Still some last-minute things to do.’

  ‘Go in peace, Machane, and the spirits guide your feet.’ We shook hands.

  ‘Stay in peace, Timothy, and if the spirits are kind I will send for you.’

  Standing on the rail of the coffee bar in the main hall of Jan Smuts Airport I had a good view of the entrance to the international terminal.

  ‘Damn it,’ I swore.

  ‘What is it?’ Sal asked anxiously.

  ‘BYM - a whole platoon of them.’

  ‘What are BYM?’

  ‘Bright young men. Sturvesant executives. There, you see the four of them beside the bank counter.’

  ‘How do you know they are Sturvesant men?’ she asked.

  ‘Haircuts, short back and sides. Uniforms, dark cashmere suits and plain ties. Expressions, tense and ulcer-ridden but poised to blossom as the big man appears.’ And then I added in an unaccustomed fit of honesty, ‘Besides, I recognize two of them. Accountants. Friends of mine - have to prise money out of them every time I want a roll of toilet paper for the Institute.’

  ‘Is that him?’ asked Sally, and pointed.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s him.’

  Louren Sturvesant came out of the doors of the international terminal, the first of the Zürich flight through customs and immigration, the airport public relations officer trotting to keep pace with him. Two other BYM a pace behind him on either side. Probably a third taking care of his luggage. The four waiting men broke into smiles that seemed to light the hall and hurried forward in order of seniority for a brief handclasp and then fell into formation around Louren. Two of them running interference ahead of him, the others closing in at either hand. The public relations officer fell back bewildered to the tail of the field, and Anglo-Sturvesant drove across the crowded floor like an advancing Panzer division.

  In their midst Louren stood out by a golden curly head, his sun-bronzed features grim in contrast to the artificial smiles around him.

  ‘Come on!’ I caught Sally’s hand and dived into the crowd. I am good at this. I go in at the level of their legs - and the pressure from this unexpected level cleaves them open like the waters of the Red Sea. Sally ran through behind me like the Israelites.

  We intercepted Anglo-Sturvesant at the glass exit doors, and I dropped Sally’s hand to crack the inner circle. I broke through at the first attempt and Louren nearly tripped over me.

  ‘Ben.’ I s
aw immediately how tired he was. Pale beneath the gold skin, purply smudges under the eyes - but a warm smile cleared the fatigue for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. I should have warned you not to come. Something has come up. I am on my way to a meeting now.’

  He saw the expression on my face, and clasped my shoulder quickly.

  ‘No. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s still on. Be at the airfield at five o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll meet you there. I must go now. I’m sorry.’

  We shook hands quickly.

  ‘All the way, partner?’ he asked.

  ‘All the way,’ I agreed, grinning at the schoolboy inanity and then they swept on by and disappeared through the glass doors.

  We were halfway back to Johannesburg before Sally spoke.

  ‘Did you ask him about me? Is it fixed?’

  ‘There wasn’t time, Sal. You saw that. He was so rushed.’

  Neither of us spoke again until I turned into the grounds of the Institute and parked the Mercedes beside her little red Alfa in the empty car park.

  ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘It isn’t. You won’t sleep anyway - not tonight. We could have a game of chess.’

  ‘All right.’

  I let us in at the front door and we went through the public rooms, crowded with glass cases and wax figures, to the private staircase that led to my office and flat.

  Sal lit the fire and set out the chessmen while I made coffee. When I came back from the kitchen she was sitting cross-legged on a tooled leather pouffe, brooding over the ivory and ebony chessboard. I caught my breath at the fresh dimension of her loveliness that the light and setting presented to me, She wore a patchwork poncho, as brilliantly coloured as the Oriental carpets strewn on the floor about her - and the gentle sidelighting glowed on the soft sun-touched olive of her skin. Watching her, I thought my heart might burst.