The Conservationist (30 page)

All along the vlei, broad river of islands of reed and willow, the lands remained underwater. No one could get near; no one went down there. The yellowbill duck with their neat, clear markings, the pin-stripe black and grey on the pinions, the flash of sheen-blue as they opened their wings to air them, the shaded purple over the gorge, sailed themselves; calm barges. The black coots shrieked and quarrelled and skittered behind screens of half-submerged reeds. As the water gradually fell back new sand and mud shoals rose, where the flesh of the earth had been furrowed aside by the strength of water. Obscene whiskered balloons of dead barbel were turned up to iridescent-backed flies in the steamy sun. The crystal neck of a bottle stuck out of the mud; pappy lumps of sodden fur with rats’ tails. A woman’s ring or perhaps only the tin loop that lifts to tear open the top of a can of beer glittered in there among the trident-marks of birds’ feet. Other objects appeared and sometimes disappeared again, flushed, rolled up by the waters for a day, and then slowly sinking down to the mud they had come from, that covered them with a coating of itself so that even while visible they seemed to remain of the mud, the leg and broken back of a chair protruding bones through the thick skin of the mud, the door-panel of a car curved like the chest-wall of a living creature under the same thick black skin. A pair of shoes appeared. They held still the shape of feet, like the ones put out to dry up at the compound. They held more than the shape; they were attached still to a large object, a kind of long bundle of rags and mud and some other tattered substance more fibrous, less formless than mud, something that suggested shreds, despite its sodden state and its near-fusion with mud and rotted cloth - something that differed, even in this advanced state of decay, from any other substance, as a wafer of what was once fine silk retains unmistakably its particular weave and quality, its persistent durability in frailty, even when it is hardly more than an impress of cross-woven strands, a fossil imprint against the earth that has buried it. Bits of actual woollen cloth were bonded with the bundle; if such things could have been read by the eyes of birds, which perhaps do not see colour but only tones of dark and light, despite their remarkable sight, the fragments would have been seen to be recognizable as pin-striped, the pin-stripes of a man’s jacket. Bits of another kind of wool, greyish-black, had floated up with the bundle and caught here and there on the mud-bank. Some were stranded quite far from the head-shaped object at the opposite end to the pair of shoes; but on the top of this object, that resembled a hairy coconut (almost human) washed up on some deserted African beach, were traces of more of this wool, and from the object’s withered greyness shone, gleaming white as the nose-bone of a child pressed against a window out of the rain, a naked nose that had cast its flesh. And a jaw of fine teeth, long, strong and even. Set rather prognathously, in the forward-jutting rounded arc that, in life, would make a wide white-toothed smile. One of them.

Yebo, my baas. -

There’s Thomas, the nightwatchman, at the gate, although he must be off duty by this time in the morning. Perhaps he heard the car from afar (as usual; at last) and has come running with his dog to show he’s been on the job, flood or no flood. He has his balaclava cap and is wearing his single little gilt ear-ring: — Yêbo baas, yêbo baas - An all-hail rather than an ordinary greeting; the ridge along the dog’s skinny spine rises and the beast capers round the old man in response to the ring of his voice. — Yêbo, my baas. —

Jacobus is standing near the house in the pathway of the approaching Mercedes. His hands, at his sides, are palms forward, open. His mouth is open, his face wide, but not with a grin. He will have his tale to tell, all right.

The horn is sounded playfully, the car will pretend to run him down as if to say, yes, it’s true, the road’s restored, here I am ... But Jacobus isn’t going to move; this is no time for levity, apparently: one must respect their sense of ceremony.

He is bringing the car to a stop in the usual place, next to the shed where the farm implements are kept and sees now that Phineas and Solomon and Witbooi — the whole bang shoot, or nearly - are lined up, too. Poor devils, they must have had a scare, quite a tough time; anyway, there are rations in the boot, mealie meal and beans, that’ll be welcome. He is conscious of the movements involved in getting out of the car because all are watching him. Jacobus has his hands suppliant in front of his body now, loosely linked and lifted.

He says — We think something is happen. —

— Well, Jacobus, how is everything! How are you ! -

— Everything it’s all right, yes. Ye-es. Everything coming all right. —

- Everybody safe on the farm? Eh? Phineas - Solomon ? —

There is an outbreak of murmurs of assent, grins, movement - they come alive, bashful and eagerly responsive.

— We wait every day — Jacobus is saying - Every day. We think perhaps something is happen. I’m trying phone-

— It still doesn’t work, mmh? I tried to get you this morning. And then I thought no, the road
must
be open by now —

— Try, try phone. No one is come, nothing. Some days I’m say to Phineas, it’s better you try go to Baas De Beer-

— I know, I phoned him. But that was dangerous, he shouldn’t have gone, you know that a woman was drowned, over there ? —

— The water! - Phineas says. — That water was too much. I’m swimming, and it take me. I go in there by our trees, but I’m come out other side right down there, far far from De Beer —

Everyone is animated, now. Jacobus is suddenly gasping, laughing, as if he has just come through some such experience successfully. -We was worry too much. That woman was gone - gone. Nothing. Can’t find nothing. And only one cow, that small one, the calf from Sheba-

- What happened to it? Dead ? —

Solomon is talking : — When I’m see she not there, we looking there there, not find. —

Jacobus gives his head a quick, vigorous scratch that expresses overburdened confusion. - And the rain is coming too much. Ye-es. All the time, all the time. We looking everywhere but tomorrow we see she’s get in mud, the feet is stick, and then lie down in that furrow there just behind the pump-house —

- Never mind. Only one. Not too bad Jacobus, in that flood. —

All give their crooning, groaning note of sympathy and agreement.

— And was nice, fat, that one. —

— Can’t be helped, Jacobus. —

They sound regret and accord, deep from the chest again.

— You should see what the water did to the road. I tried already a week ago to get through. Impossible. Half the road fell in. Some people were drowned. The car was washed away, they were inside. Nobody could find it; the police were looking, everyone was... —

- We think perhaps something is happen - Jacobus says. He has punctuated the account he has listened to by nods that show he knows all about it. - We don’t know who is car that is going. We don’t hear nothing. No one is come to us. —

—
Couldn’t
come, you understand that? Even the other road, from Katbosrand, you couldn’t get through on it. I couldn’t come. -

— No phone, nothing. We think perhaps... —

There will have to be some kind of bonus for them. All of them. They really seem to have coped rather well. There’s a cow making a good recovery from what old Jacobus had the sense to recognize as mastitis, and, what’s more, to treat with the right injection. — How did you know how to put it in, Jacobus, eh? You’re a clever doctor now, eh ? —

He doesn’t need much encouragement to mime, step by step, exactly how he filled the syringe, etc. — Always I’m look nicely when the doctor he’s here for the cows. —

— I’ll save plenty money, now, eh, Jacobus, we won’t need the doctor any more. —

He’s grinning almost shyly with pleasure, very bucked with himself.

There’ll have to be some bonus, yes; in the meantime — a full pack of cigarettes is a nice gesture. Even though he cups his hands to receive, as is customary, it passes almost from man-to-man in the atmosphere of a crisis successfully overcome.

— How long since I was here, Jacobus? Must be nearly two weeks. —

— Is more two weeks we are alone here. — He’s determined to make a drama out of it. He drops his head on his breast and moves it mournfully from side to side.

- Well, you looked after everything
very nice
. I’m very pleased with you. All the boys. D’you hear? —

Jacobus and he have moved on together past the farm buildings — the others have drifted off out of a kind of delicacy they have, primitive as they are. Jacobus represents them: — Thank you master, ye-es, thanks very much, master. —

Of course some measures sensibly taken in the emergency will be allowed to remain for ever, now that it’s over, unless it’s made clear that things can’t just be left like that, normal procedure must be returned to. The bales of feed on the verandah of the house: they ought to have been back in the barn by now. Unless it’s seen to, the stuff’ll never be put back and indeed when there’s another load of teff it’ll be dumped there, too. That’s how they are, the best of them. The house will simply be taken over as another outhouse. There’s nobody living there to complain. Next thing, there’ll be parts for the tractor nicely stored in the kitchen: all the veterinary medicines he must have taken out of the cupboard when he was rummaging for penicillin for that cow are still laid out on the dining table. He’s cleared some of the irrigation furrows, though; they’re hardly that - all little overflowing rivers, now. One of the women is doing her washing conveniently in one of them, a heap of bedraggled grey blankets. Everything probably got quite a soaking, up at the compound; but the rooms are cement blocks, they should have been fairly weatherproof. The picannins are enjoying themselves. The game is to float plastic beer containers — some sort of race.

— They know they mustn’t leave those things lying about when they’ve finished playing, eh, Jacobus. —

He’s shown the place where the calf got stuck in the mud and died. The more it pulled, the faster it was held. He makes a note to bring new bearings for the pump; a good time to repair it, while it’s not in use. Jacobus has said that all the pasture on the vlei side of the farm is useless at present, the cattle will get foot-rot if they are allowed to graze down there — but probably that’s all nonsense. what’s needed is to drain the land. — That’s all right: you can get the boys to dig more irrigation canals - you make some more furrows, then the water runs away. —

Jacobus considers a moment. — Is too much water. Too much. - He goes through the motions of pitching a spade, lifting earth, and then standing back, the imaginary spade has dropped, he is dismayed : — As soon you digging, the water’s coming again. Even in that camp up there, not so near the river, when I’m start dig, is filling up. —

- No, no, that doesn’t matter. That’s nothing. If you find the proper place, the proper slope, after a day that big water will have flowed away. Then slowly every day the earth will drain, it’ll dry - come I’ll show you where -

The third pasture, for instance, is half-emerged from water already; he can even make out, from where he has had to stop because he hasn’t gumboots on (he thought there was a pair at the house but they’ve disappeared) the tops of the stones that mark the place where a sheep was roasted. He can’t go any farther than this but Jacobus is instructed to go down all the way along the vlei and find out how deep or shallow this ground-water is. It’s ridiculous, just leaving land to turn back to swamp; water can’t be more than a few inches in most places, by now. Jacobus says nothing; which means he’s not too keen, doesn’t want to slosh around in the muck, no doubt he’s had enough of it, but that’s too bad. The place must be got going again. For everything in nature there is the right antidote, the action that answers. Even fire is not - was not - irreparable, organically speaking. Look how everything came back. How the willows must be laved by all that water, now! How brilliant, beetle’s-wing-green their leaves are... that ash, partly their own destroyed substance, must have fed them, in the end. Nature knows how to use everything; neither rejects nor wastes.

Down there Jacobus is taking giant’s steps. He wades and plods; he is too far away for his pauses and pressings-on to be interpreted. It’s not possible to walk much, wearing ordinary boots. All one can do, up here, is stride carefully from hummock to hummock, avoiding water as children avoid stepping on the lines of paving. He gives up; he’s simply standing now, and for the first time since he arrived, for the first time since the flood, he is exposed to the place, alone: it comes to him not as the series of anecdotes and imagined images it was while he was being told how it looked and what happened there in the past two weeks, but in its living presence.

A bad smell. A smell of rot.

No, not bad: ancient damp, vegetal dank, the fungoid smell of the pages of old books, the bitter smell of mud, the green reek of a vase where the stems of dead flowers have turned slimy. Twice in the short distance he has managed to cover he has seen a clot, a black coagulation aborted out of the mud. Prodding with a stick shows these to be nothing but drowned rats.

His gaze is the slow one of a lighthouse beam. Something heavy has dragged itself over the whole place, flattening and swirling everything. Hanks of grass, hanks of leaves and dead tree-limbs, hanks of slime, of sand, and always hanks of mud, have been currented this way and that by an extraordinary force that has rearranged a landscape as a petrified wake.

A stink to high heaven.

Yes, it
does
smell bad. The sun is a yeast. The whole place is a fermenting brew of rot, and must be; that’s life, that deathly stink. As there were the foetuses of hippos there’s a lump of dead rat. (Alas, young guinea fowl chicks will have gone the same way.) He feels an urge to clean up, nevertheless, although this stuff is organic; to go round collecting, as he does bits of paper or the plastic bottles they leave lying about. He has been so busy tidily looking he hasn’t noticed Jacobus has turned back and is coming straight up the third pasture through the shallow pools and mud and is almost upon him again.