The Sunbird Page 6

  We picked our way along the base of the cliff, through the grove of silent trees. Once we startled a small troop of vervet monkeys in the high branches and they fled through the tree-tops in shrieking consternation. Their antics couldn’t raise a smile from either Sally or me. We paused to examine the cliff at intervals, but there was little enthusiasm or hope in our efforts. Three or four miles from camp we stopped to rest, sitting on a block of sandstone that had fallen out from the cliff face.

  ‘I could cry,’ said Sal. ‘I really could.’

  ‘I know. I feel the same way.’

  ‘But the photograph. Damn it, there was definitely something showing. You don’t think it’s his idea of a joke, do you?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Lo wouldn’t do that. He was just as keen as we were.’

  ‘Then what about the photograph?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was clearly some sort of optical illusion. The shadow from the cliff, and cloud perhaps.’

  ‘But those patterns!’ she protested. ‘They are geometrical and symmetrical.’

  ‘Light can play funny tricks, Sal,’ I said. ‘Remember that photograph was taken at six o’clock in the evening - almost sunset. Low sun throwing shadows, you could get almost any effect.’

  ‘I think that this is the most disappointing thing that has ever happened to me.’ She really did look as though she might burst into tears, and I went to her shyly and put one long arm around her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and she pulled a face and offered her lips to be kissed.

  ‘Wow!’ she said at last. ‘Dr Kazin, you do carry on!’

  ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

  ‘I’ve seen too much.’ She broke away gently. ‘Come on, Ben. Let’s circle back to camp, away from the cliff. There may be something out there.’

  We tramped slowly through the heat. The flowers were out here also, and I noticed the bees crawling busily into the blossoms, their back legs thick with yellow pollen. We found where the recent rains had scoured a shallow ravine, although there was no remaining trace of moisture. I climbed down into the ravine and examined the exposed layers of stone and earth. Three feet from the surface the pebbles were rounded and water-worn.

  ‘Good guess. Sal,’ I told her as I picked out a few pebbles and found the shell of a bivalve encrusted in the half-formed sandstone. ‘That proves at least a little of our theory. At one time this was the bed of a lake – look.’

  Eagerly Sal clambered down beside me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A type of unionidae, fresh-water African mussel.’

  ‘I wish,’ said Sally, ‘that it were something a little more exciting.’ She dropped the ancient shell in the sand.

  ‘Yes.’ I agreed, and climbed out of the ravine.

  My only excuse is that my reasoning was clouded by intense disappointment and my recent physical excitement with Sally. 1 do not usually behave in such a cavalier fashion with scientific clues. Nor do I usually miss as many as four hints in the space of an hour. We walked away without a backward glance.

  The camp was fully set up and functioning smoothly when Sal and I trailed in, sweaty and dusty, and sat down to lunch off tinned ham and Windhoek beer.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Louren, and we shook our heads in unison and lifted our beer glasses.

  ‘Warm!’ Sally spoke with disgust at her first taste of the beer.

  ‘Cook has got the refrigerator going. It’ll be cold by tonight.’

  We ate in silence until Louren spoke. ‘I raised Larkin on the radio while you were away. He will send in a helicopter tomorrow. We’ll have a last search from the air. That will settle it once and for all. If there’s nothing doing, I will fly out. Some things are brewing back in Johannesburg, and there is only one passenger seat, I’m afraid. You two will have to bus out the hard way.’

  It was at that moment that a deputation arrived, headed by Joseph, to tell us that some unknown and foolish person had left the taps open on four of the water tanks. We had thirty-five gallons of water between seventeen people to last the rest of the trip.

  ‘Therefore,’ added Joseph, with evident relish, ‘we will have to leave this place tomorrow, and return to the nearest water on the Maun road.’

  There were a few expressions of disgust at this latest, clearly deliberate setback, but none of us could work up any real anger.

  ‘All right, Joseph,’ Louren agreed with resignation. ‘Break camp tomorrow morning. We will leave before lunch.’ There was, an immediate improvement in employer-employee relations. I even noticed a few smiles, and heard a little laughter from the cooking fire.

  ‘I don’t know what you two intend doing this afternoon,’ Louren lit a cigar as he spoke, ‘but I noticed elephant spoor when I did my little recce this morning. I’m taking the Land-Rover and the gunbearers. Don’t worry if I don’t arrive back tonight, we may get hung up on the spoor.’

  Sally looked up quickly; for a moment I thought she was going to start her anti-blood sport campaign again, but instead she merely frowned and went back to her ham. I watched the Land-Rover drive off along the base of the cliff before I suggested to Sally:

  ‘I’m going to try and find a path up to the top - do you want to come along?’

  ‘Deal me out, Ben,’ she answered. ‘I think I’ll do some sketching this afternoon.’

  Hiding my disappointment as best I could, I set off along the base of the cliff, and within half a mile I had found a game trail leading into one of the bush-choked gullies that furrowed the face of red rock.

  It was a steep climb and I toiled up with the sun burning onto my back and bouncing off the rock into my face. From cracks and crannies in the cliff-face an army of furry little rock rabbits watched my endeavours with avid interest. It was forty minutes before I came out on the top, my arms scratched by the thorny undergrowth of the gully and sweat soaking my shirt.

  I found a good vantage point on the front edge of the cliff under the spreading shade of a giant euphorbia, and my first concern was to sweep with binoculars for any trace of ruins. The thorn bush at the base of the cliff below me was fairly open and scantily grassed, and immediately it was obvious that there was no trace of any human habitation or cultivation. I shouldn’t really have hoped for more, but disappointment gave a sickening little lurch in my guts. Then I dismissed it, and turned the glasses towards the camp far below. A Bantu was cutting firewood, and for a while I amused myself by watching the axe-stroke, then listening for the sound of the blow seconds later. I searched farther from the camp and picked up Sally’s rose-coloured blouse at the end of the grove. She had obviously given up all hope of a major discovery and, sensible girl, was deriving what other enjoyment she could from the expedition. I watched her for a long time, trying to decide how exactly to proceed with my campaign to make her my own. I had spent one night with her, but I was not so naive as to believe that this proved a breathless and undying passion on behalf of a sophisticated, highly intelligent and extravagantly educated modern Miss. Angel that she was, yet I was pretty damned certain that my Sally had played the game with other men before Dr Ben stumbled starry-eyed into her bed. The odds were extremely high she had been motivated by respect for my mind rather than my body, pity, and possibly a little perverse curiosity. However, I was almost certain she had not found the experience too repulsive, and I had only to keep working on her to change respect and pity into something a little deeper and more permanent.

  A good quiet sense of peace came over me as I sat there in the high kranz; slowly I realized that this whole journey had been worthwhile and I found myself wishing that I could stay longer at these haunting Hills of Blood, with their mystery and silent beauty. Sally and I together here in the wilderness where I could teach her to love me.

  A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye made me turn my head slowly, and within six feet of where I sat a marico sunbird was sucking the nectar from the blossoms of a wild aloe, its metallic green head shimmering as it dipped the long curved
bill into the fiery red blossoms. I watched it with an intense pleasure, and when it was gone on quick darting wings I felt as though I had missed something. The feeling became stronger, making me restless, there was a message somewhere that was trying to come through to me but it was being blocked. I let my brain relax, and had the feeling that it was just there at the very fringe of my conscious mind. Another second and I would have it.

  Dull on the hot breathless hush of afternoon the double boom-boom of distant heavy gunfire jerked my attention away, I sat up and listened for another thirty seconds - then it came again, boom, and again. Louren had found his elephant.

  I picked Sally up in the field of the binoculars. She had heard it also, and was standing away from her easel staring out into the bush. I stood up also, my sudden restlessness still persisting, and started down the cliff path again. I could not shake off the mood, and it grew stronger. There is something here, I thought, something strange and inexplicable.

  ‘You and I are lucky, my friend,’ Timothy Mageba had told me once. ‘We are marked by the spirits and we have the eye within that can see beyond, and the ear that can catch the sounds of silence.’

  It was cool now in the heavily shaded gully and my shirt was still damp with sweat. I felt the goose pimples rising on my skin but not entirely from the chill. I began to hurry, I wanted to get back to the camp and Sally.

  For dinner that night we ate grilled elephant heart sliced thin and covered with a biting pepper sauce, served with potatoes roasted in their jackets. The beer was icy cold as Louren had promised, and he was in an expansive mood. It had been a good day’s hunt, fully compensating him for the other disappointments. Lying in the lantern light beyond the fire were four long, curved yellow tusks of ivory.

  When Louren sets out to be charming, he is irresistible. Although Sally tried to maintain a disapproving attitude at first, she soon succumbed to his charisma and she laughed with us, when Louren gave us the toast, ‘To the city that never was, and the treasure we didn’t find.’

  I went to bed a little drunk, and I dreamed strange dreams - but I woke in the morning clear-headed and with an unformed sense of excitement buoying me, as though today something good was going to happen.

  The helicopter came out of the south an hour before noon, drawn to us by the smudge fires of oil-soaked rag; it sank noisily down towards the camp on its glistening silver rotor, and raised a whirlwind of dust and debris.

  There was a brief conference with the dark-haired young pilot, then Louren climbed into the seat beside him and the ungainly craft lifted into the air once more and began a series of sweeps along the cliffs, rising higher with each pass until it was a dark distant speck in the aching blue of that hot high sky. Its manoeuvres were so clearly indicative of failure, that Sally and I soon lost interest and went to sit in the shade of the dining tent.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that is that, I guess.’

  I didn’t answer her, but went to the refrigerator and brought us each a can of Windhoek. For the first time in days the fabled Kazin brain began running on all cylinders. Thirty gallons of water shared between two persons meant a gallon a day for two weeks. Water? There was something else about water in the back of my mind. Sally and water.

  The helicopter landed once more on the outskirts of the camp, and Louren and the pilot came to the tent. Louren shook his head.

  ‘No go. Nothing. We’ll have a bite of lunch and be on our way. Leave you to make the best of it home.’

  I nodded agreement, not telling him my plans to forestall any argument.

  ‘Well, Ben, I’m sorry about this. I just can’t understand it.’ Louren began building himself a sandwich of bread and cold slices of roast gemsbok fillet, smearing it with mustard. ‘Anyway, it won’t be the last disappointment we will ever have in our lives.’

  Twenty minutes later Louren’s essential luggage was packed in the helicopter and while the pilot started the motor we said our farewells.

  ‘See you back in jolly Jo’burg. Look after those tusks for me.’

  ‘Good trip, Lo.’

  ‘All the way, partner?’

  ‘All the way, Lo.’

  Then he was ducking under the spinning rotor and climbing into the passenger’s seat of the helicopter. It rose in the air like a fat bumblebee and clattered away over the tree-tops Bumblebee? Bee? Bee! My God, that was what had been niggling me.

  Bees, birds and monkeys!

  I grabbed Sally’s arm, my excitement startling her.

  ‘Sally, we’re staying.’

  ‘What?’ she gaped at me.

  ‘There are things here we’ve overlooked.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The birds and the bees,’ I told her.

  ‘Why. you randy old thing,’ she said.

  We split the water fifteen to twenty gallons. That would give the servants a little over half a gallon a day each for two days, sufficient to get them out safely. Sally and I would have a full gallon a day for ten days. I kept the Land-Rover, making sure the petrol tanks were full, and there were twenty-five gallons in the emergency cans. I also kept the radio, one tent, bedding; a selection of tools including spade, axe and pick, rope, gas lanterns and spare cylinders, torches and spare batteries, tinned food, Louren’s shotgun and half a dozen packets of shells, together with all of Sally’s and my personal gear. All the rest of the equipment was loaded onto the two trucks and when the servants were all on board I took the old Matabele gunbearer aside.

  ‘My old and respected father,’ I spoke in Smdebele, ‘I have heard you speak of a great mystery that lives in this place. I ask you now as a son, and a friend, to speak to me of these things.’

  It took him a few seconds to get over his astonishment. Then I went on to speak a sentence that Timothy Mageba had given me. It is a secret code, a recognition signal used at a high level among the initiates to the mysteries. The old man gasped. He could not question me now, nor ignore my appeal.

  ‘My son,’ he spoke softly. ‘If you know those words then you should know of the legend. At a time when the rocks were soft and the air was misty,’ an expression of the uttermost antiquity, ‘there was an abomination and an evil in this place which was put down by our ancestors. They placed a death curse upon these hills and commanded that this evil be cleaned from the earth and from the minds of men, for ever.’

  Again those fateful words, repeated exactly.

  ‘That is the whole legend?’ I asked. ‘There is nothing else?’

  ‘There is nothing else,’ the old man told me, and I knew it was the truth. We went back to the waiting lorries and I spoke to Joseph first in Shangaan.

  ‘Go in peace, my friend. Drive carefully and care well for those who ride with you - for they are precious to me.’ Joseph gaped at me, his wits scattered. I turned to the camp boys and changed to Sechuana.

  ‘The Spider gives you greetings and wishes you peace.’ There was consternation amongst them as I used my nickname, but when they drove away they had recovered from the shock and were laughing delightedly at the joke. The trucks disappeared amongst the thorn trees, and the sound of their motors dwindled into the eternal silence of the deep bush.

  ‘You know,’ Sally murmured reflectively, ‘I think I’ve been took! Here I am stranded 200 miles from anywhere with a man whose morals are definitely suspect.’ Then she giggled. ‘And isn’t it lovely?’ she asked.

  I had found the spot on the top of the cliff where I could lean out over the drop, supported by a hefty young baboon apple tree, and obtain a good view of the rock screen on either side, as well as over the open plain below. Sally was down beyond the silent grove, and I could see her clearly.

  The sun seemed at the right angle for her, although it was shining directly into my eyes. It was only ten or fifteen degrees above the horizon now and the golden rays brought out new soft colours from rock and foliage.

  ‘Yoo hoo!’ Sally’s shout carried faintly up to me, and she held both hands straight up towards the sky. It
was the signal we had evolved to mean, ‘Come back towards me.’

  ‘Good,’ I grunted. She must have picked them up. I had explained to her carefully how to shade her eyes against the slant of the sun’s rays and to watch for the arrow-straight flight of the tiny golden motes of light. It was an old trick used by bee hunters to find the hive, a bushman had taught it to me.

  I pulled back from the cliff, and began working my way through the thorns and thick bush that clogged the crest. I had guessed where to begin the search, for the chances were enormously in favour of the hive being located in this tall wall of red rock with its many gullies and crevices, and now with Sally calling the range for me from below, it was only a matter of fifteen minutes before she windmilled her arms, and I heard her call.

  ‘That’s it! Right under you.’ Again I leaned out over the edge, and now I picked up the swift sunlight flight of the returning bees as they homed in on the cliff below me.

  Leaning far out I could make out the entrance to the hive; a long diagonal crack the edges of which were discoloured by old wax. It must have been an enormous hive, judging by the number of workers coming in, and by the extent of the waxing around the entrance. In such an inaccessible position it had probably remained undisturbed by man or beast for hundreds of years. A rarity in this land where honey is so highly prized.

  I tied my white handkerchief to an overhanging branch to mark the spot and in the swiftly falling dark I went down to Sally on the plain. She was very excited by our small success, and we discussed the implications of it over our dinner.

  ‘You are really quite clever, Doc Ben.’

  ‘On the contrary, I was as slow as doomsday. I had to beat my head against all the signs for two whole days before I rumbled to it,’ I told her smugly. ‘The place is thick with birds, animals and bees, all of which must have a good permanent supply of surface water. There is supposed to be no permanent water for two hundred miles - well, that’s wrong for sure.’