Darkest England (31 page)

With quiet dignity, I informed him I would not be a gypsy for much longer.

Once a gypsy, always a gypsy, the hateful fellow replied.

Maintaining my dignity, I said that my application for citizenship was receiving sympathetic consideration.

He grew even angrier and regarded me the way policemen do in the Karoo when they spy our donkey carts
traversing a farmers fence. Such a glance is usually the prelude to searching our bags for stolen meat or firewood.

But I had no bags, except the leather satchel, and that was empty.

Determined to put him in his place, I said that I expected to be made a knight shortly. If not a baron. I was awaiting the call.

The wretch returned that had he known I was connected to nobility when I checked into his hotel, he would have demanded his money in advance. And, without more ado, he ejected me into the street.

Chapter Eleven

Nightfall found me, seated on a bench in the Royal Park called Green, watching a crowd of ducks squabble gently. I had been there for hours. My hunger was growing and something more than hunger – impatience. I had come to this place because it was perfectly placed for my final assault.

The gates of the park were closing. One by one the last of the loiterers slipped away. A group of youths I had watched earlier, as they removed their shirts and stretched out on the grass in the watery sun, were now pulling them over their maggoty-pale bodies. I noticed that the sun had caught only the vulnerable part of them, the national nakedness, and turned it to the mottled pink of the fleshy pods of the clapper bush; each young man flew the familiar flag of the English when they visit the Countries of the Sun, a red neck.

Last to leave the park were several gentlemen in long coats who had spent their time strolling up and down with their hands in their pockets. I had taken them for
philosophers. Until a woman approached and I saw them, suddenly and expertly, open their coats. To my astonishment I spied that they were quite undone. One had the strong impression that this was an age-old custom. Red necks and exposure; these rites had probably been taking place in English parks for centuries. The woman on the receiving end of the unexpected manoeuvre screamed and hurried from the park. But no one seemed (or cared) to notice.

The park emptied. The gates were locked, leaving the world to darkness and to me. Beside the lake I built a shelter of willow branches; with fire sticks from my quiver I started a small, discreet blaze. I consulted my hunger. I studied the ducks. My cardboard suitcase abandoned, my precious gifts for Her Majesty lost, reduced to nothing more than a few last coins from the Farebrother donation, I cut a very sorry figure for the ambassador of the Red People about to present his credentials to the Queen of England.

I found myself hungering for the land I had left behind me: for gemsbok cucumbers, salt yet sweet; brandybush berries; and the woody delights of the Kalahari truffle that grows when the rains have been fat.

The rain began falling, yet it did not break the drought in my heart. This may have been the weather the cuckoo likes, but I could not say the same. I thought bitterly, what good is a shower of blessings upon atheists?

Too much water is never good; it sends people mad. !Kwha gave his creatures dry seasons, deserts, thirsts, so that they should ache for the love of the All-High and pray for his gift, the sweet she-rain to fall and make all below grow fat and moist. For everything God loves is wet.

In my country when it rains all creatures pray, for then all the world is holy. The green succulents step closer to
the edge of the old dam that has not seen water in living memory. After the rains the replenished dam sends streams of water down the cracked, weed-choked stone channels no one has cleaned in years into the peach orchard, where the fruit, heavy on the boughs, aches to be picked, as cows with swollen udders groan to be milked. The little half-frogs, with tails between their legs, that are also the rain's things, lie just beneath the surface of the water, eyeing water-spiders and flies that come for their first taste of life in a burning world. And, in the reeds, the black duck clears his throat. Once, twice. And coughs. Reeds that have had to live all their lives with their ankles in dust are suddenly up to their waists in water, and stand shaking their hair in delight, like girls bathing before weddings.

But in England their rain means nothing to them; they consider it merely water. What heresy! Windmills make water; clouds make water; man makes water. But only God makes rain. Blessed be the name of !Kwha.

If ever one of mine should read these lines, they should think this of me; there is a corner of some foreign field that is for ever Bushmanland.

A dinner of ducks roasted over a discreet fire. A shelter of willow branches. A hollow for my hips, lined with down. Then I laid me down to sleep. I turned to the east, as we do, at the very last; I watched as the moon began the nightly hunt through the dark fields of Heaven. Then I called on the High God by his seven holy names.

I slept as I imagine one will sleep at the last, when the after-world awaits, a land – it is said – of locusts and honey. Those of my family, knowing that water and melons and meat cannot last, will build me a shelter against wind and sand and hyena and, leaving what little they can in the way of wild onions and brandybush berries, slip away for ever.

I awoke to find on my cheek the warm touch of a miracle. The sky was high, dry and blue; the sun blazed; it was the finest hunting weather I had known since arriving in England. The High God heard my prayer; he whispered in my ear the old truth: ‘If the hunter does not go into the bush, how will Kaggen find him meat?'

And I knew shame. Was I not a Man of Men? A Red Man? A Man of the First People? The happy recipient of a culture so ancient it remembers the Early Times when animals were still people and all life slept together beneath the Great Tree?

I thought, yes, by George, now I will arise and go now. There is more than one way of frying a locust.

The perimeter wall of the Palace, I saw, was fortified. Barbed wire, and the metal spikes were sown upon the nape of the wall, and I could guess what lay beyond: trip wires and spy cameras. I recognized a system very much like that employed by most of our farmers, who do not move without their walkie-talkies and their Alsatians and their shotguns. Much the same security arrangements as are enjoyed by the Dominee in Lutherburg, who has ringed his
Pastorie with razor wire and searchlights and great notices proclaiming that he enjoys armed protection from the ‘Make My Day!' 24-Hour Mobile Firepower Unit. ‘Rooting For You! Shooting For You!' The difference, I suppose, being that the Minister in Lutherburg cowers behind his razor wire because he believes his parishioners plot to steal his milk, and tup his wife, and hobble his cattle, and poison his wells. Whereas the Queen of England only protects herself from the love her subjects bear her.

It would be child's play to enter the Palace grounds. But, once inside, would I ever emerge to tell the tale? First of the hunter's rules teaches that however luscious the game, good the spoor, sure the poison and certain the knowledge that the quarry will soon succumb, he must still assess the height of the sun, the strength of his legs, the time elapsed since his last meal, the distance home to his campsite before moon rise and lion roar. A wise hunter will therefore forgo the loveliest eland, the most succulent giraffe's child he has stalked for days, even if at last within bow-shot, and turn for home, knowing that another step is one too far, that to continue the hunt may see him well fed by nightfall but dead by the following noon.

Another way must be found.

Before the Palace lies a little island around which the traffic prowls day and night, often striking down those who attempt the crossing. The island is sanctified, it seems, by its proximity to the Palace and the great gates and the soldiers in their black hats and red coats. In this sacred place the devotees assemble, hoping for a glimpse of the Sovereign.

On the island I saw something that signified the gods were with me. For there was a golden statue of the Empress, none other than the Old Auntie with Diamonds in Her Hair, and she lifted her hand to me as if to say, ‘Come,
David Mungo Booi, and all my children of the Far Karoo. Clamber, as these visitors do, into my lap.'

Without hesitating, I flung myself into the traffic and ran for the island.

I was received amongst the pilgrims gathered there without surprise. That a short, semi-naked man, wearing not much more than a big brown hat, bow and quiver, should be so easily accepted was as happy as it was unexpected. The dress and bearing of these people, each in its own way, was as individual as mine. Silken sheaths and conical hats; sandals and bangles and painted foreheads; a rainbow of robes, shift, smocks and pantaloons; a feast of bright eyes; a fluttering of excited hands; a stew of tongues; a warm humming hive of visitors. Mostly Children of the Sun, with here and there a foreigner from one of the mainland tribes, but not a single native to be seen in all that chirruping, excited island population.

Suddenly a fever swept the pilgrims on our island, a vision, a dream, a wild belief that they were permitted to enter the Palace, that now was the hour! Before I could advise them that the Palace was, and would be, barred to the likes of us, these enthusiasts produced tiny paper Union flags and, waving them like talismans to protect them from the killer traffic stalking their island, they flung themselves into the thick of it, carrying me in their mad stampede. I felt sure, if not of death in the traffic, then of certain disappointment.

Yet we made the Royal Pavement safely. We turned to the left and ran along the Royal Iron Railings that front the Palace yard. We came to a Royal Gate in the railings, and behold the gate was wide! My wonder grew with every step. And beyond the gate, lo, a Royal Door opened into the very Palace itself. My heart was sounding as loudly as the
rattles tied to the knees of those who celebrate the Trance Dance. Surely, now, I thought, we will be stopped and turned away? And there stepped into our path an officer of the Crown, raising his hand and bringing our charge to a halt.

So near and yet so far! My companions, however, paid no attention to my sorrow. Quickly they formed an orderly line, and the officer walked along the line, taking money from each, and I assumed that we were being fined for trespassing on Royal Property.

But when I saw my friends being ushered into the Palace, the scales fell from my eyes. This was not a fine they were paying; it was a fee!

What pains I might have saved myself had I begun at the Palace with a pocket full of money! I had endured the most exhausting trials; been detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure; dropped on my head; saved by a flying Bishop; assailed in the Mother of All Parliaments; collected by the Lord of Goodlove Castle; experimented upon by his wife-lings. I had nearly been knighted; assaulted by football fans; and locked up with lunatics.

Yet the answer I sought had been, all along, as plain as the duiker's footprint in river sand, as obvious as the perfume of the lynx, as simple as snaring the bustard – I had merely to pay a fee at the Palace door.

Simple. Straightforward. Common sense. Like everything from Tiny Alma to putting a question in Parliament. The spirit of the grocer prevailed. There was nothing that was not on the market.

Let those who look askance at this sublime pragmatism consider the magnificent old public washrooms in Lutherburg. When we come to town on pension day and wish to avail ourselves of the facilities, we must first put a coin in
the slot. Do those who obtain relief, at a price, feel any worse for doing so? And are the Lutherburg washrooms, with their majestic sea-green tiles, their gleaming copper pipes and their genuine neon lamps, any less grand, for being supported in this fashion? Well, then, why should the principle of individual contributions to public works not serve kings as well as commoners?