Thokozani S.B. Maseko - Like a Lily on a Mountain, Love Grows on Rocky Terrains

Damn! it was freaking cold. How freezing it is? She jested with herself. It’s so freezing that …

Something scuttled over her left foot and started to work under her right one. She drew and held her breath and stayed absolutely motionless, saying her prayers without even stirring her lips. She could scarcely feel any motion under her right thigh. What was the best thing to do? That was the question. Should she lift her foot to let the intruder pass by, or would it be invited to bite her soft tissue through her stiff denims?

Fortitude is virtue, Hannah. Be courageous, she encouraged herself, conscious that whatever it was, was gradually making its way out from under her foot. A second more, two at the most. Like a flash, she was up, trampling and yelling and hopping and shouting in the gloom as though the interloper had finally made its mark on her foot. Some people could settle in the centre of the wilderness and wait for the sun to come up, Hannah thought, but she wasn’t any of them. She fumbled in the dark; walking in what she prayed was the right direction.

With the soreness on her feet, she imagined she had been walking for a couple of hours when she eventually noticed some smoke. It looked like an ash cloud against the murky sky, and it took her nostrils to confirm what she had seen. Civilisation! She scuttled towards the dirty fog, her feet ablaze as her sores rubbed against her damp socks and hard boots, shocked by how much further it was than it seemed. Who could have imagined that nostrils could smell smouldering stuff kilometres away?

Candlelight glowed in the window, a male voice droned a hymn that seemed a lullaby, and a scent of fried chicken crammed the air. But she couldn’t creep up to the house yet. Not now. Not until she had dried her tears and collected herself. It took her a while.

***

Finally, a man came to the balcony, and a second one followed, much shorter, with a tall lean dog that had lost an ear. Were these the guys who were to meet Musa and his father? Could there be such a pleasant coincidence? And they were crooning a lullaby. Had Musa already arrived? She cleared her throat, and the two men dropped to the porch floor. The dog exposed its fangs and snarled. In the soft glow that showed through the windows, she could see that the men had rifles, and that they were aiming them in her direction.

“Who’s it?” One of them shouted into the dark.

She didn’t know how to respond. Telling them her name would mean nothing to them and introducing herself as a member of the Social Welfare Child Section might only infuriate them and terminate any hope that she had of conning them into betraying themselves.

“I … am,” she started to say in a rather gentle voice. She cleared her throat again. “I eeh,” she said more sturdily, “I apologise for troubling you, but I’ve missed my way, and I …”

“Stand in the light so that we can see you,” demanded the man who had shouted before.

“And don’t try anything stupid,” the other one added.

He appeared younger than the one who had spoken before, more of an adolescent; and his short dreadlocked hair made him look more terrifying than she could have pictured.

“No mischief, I’ve just lost my way,” she said, as she stepped to the light in front of the house.

“There are ways of making sure you’re lost.”

On closer scrutiny it was apparent that these men were more aggressive than she had imagined. It was just the way the man at the shop had said, two men with hunting guns. He had only forgotten to mention the dog, who was stiff with distrust.

She felt a simple push on her back and cried out, certain that another dog had managed to sneak behind to her.

“Very scared, aren’t you?” a man’s voice said, and she turned to see a third man. This one held a rifle only centimetres from her abdomen.

“Oh my gosh,” Hannah said. “You terrified me to death. Where the hell did you come from?”

The man smiled at her. In the dark he appeared menacing; the light from the windows reflected off his eyes, reflected off a rough scar on his face, such that for a second, she felt that she was involved in a TV show.

“Hey, be cool,” she said, trying to show an audacity she didn’t feel. “Put away that thing, okay? See, if you guys want not to be disturbed, that’s completely fine with me. But would you allow me to stay on your balcony for the night only? I’m in fact not too comfortable with all this desert thing and I …”

A sneeze brawled from within the house. A frail, ill sound, and the guys appeared to have forgotten all about her. The younger one got up, placed his gun down next to the door frame, and went into the house, his head indicating irritation.

“Stay here, Topsy,” he said to the dog, who redirected his concentration back to Hannah. The other rose, initially kneeling and then he leaned against the balustrade.

The man behind her nudged her from behind and he motioned with his head for her to move towards the portico. A man whose teeth included two gold ones and a dog waited for her. Both of them were salivating as they observed her climb up the steps. It was noxiously quiet. She then heard a lady’s voice. It was soft, broken up by coughs and wheezes, but it was certainly a woman’s voice, and the man tried with difficulty to hear it.

The younger man came back, something around his riding boots jingled with every footstep he made, making him seem like some kind of concierge with many keys. He muffled something to the guy who still had his gun on her. He frowned, his pockmarked face pulsating, but he nodded and put the rifle down.

“She’s calling for you,” the younger man told her.

He opened the door and held it for her, and Hannah shrugged and walked in. Topsy remained on the portico.

The chalet was comfy, the light from a paraffin lamp casting a yellow glow on the little room. It was jumbled with the clear signs of three men living with no woman’s care. Dishes lay around; with their desiccated scraps of food stuck to them and were swathed with filth or dust. Someone had been generous enough to place curtains on the windows and covers on the settee; but now they dangled at angles and were about to fall onto the grimy floor at any instant. Hannah struggled with the urge to put things in to place as she walked across the room. Wood burnt softly in a bin, its whisper almost a sigh as if out of deference for the ill woman in the other room.

The fluffy bearded man stood intolerantly waiting for Hannah to come with him, apparently disgruntled with her inspection of the room. Her eyebrows lifted at seeing yet another gun, this one placed above the doorway in which he stood. He traced the direction of her eyes and scowled. Taking the gun, he jacked it open and took out two cartridges, or whatever it was they put in guns. Hannah was amused that he suspected that she would attempt to take the gun and point it at them. She hardly knew which end was dangerous. When he placed the gun back in its place by the door, it made a thumping noise that reverberated around the room.

“Ready now?” he asked as he opened the door. He beckoned her to come in after him.

The bedroom was dimmer than the first room. Dimmer and colder. It took a minute for Hannah’s eyes to adjust, and as they did, she cuddled herself for warmness. She’d lost hope that her damp socks would ever dry, and now she wanted to remove her boots to rub some circulation back into the veins. Perhaps they would allow her to stand in front of the fire a little before deciding to chuck her out into the cold night. She felt a wince in her chest – The chill? Or dread?

In the middle of a tiny bed lay a petite woman, her body scarcely visible under the weighty bedding that covered her. Her face appeared rosy in the flickering light by her bed. Her eyes were shut, but Hannah was sure that if she opened them, they would be light brown.