Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie looked out at the inky darkness and lit another cigarette.

She reread Richard Sutton Senior’s letter, especially the part where he said he would spend “whatever it takes” to avenge his son’s death. What did he mean and how did money come into it? Was the lateness of the hour getting to her or was there just a hint of menace in that wording?

“Look at these, Natalie. Aren’t they beautiful?” Kees van Schelde stood over her, his hand outstretched.

Natalie, crouching by the wall of the korongo , stood up and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt.

“My God, Kees, yes. What are those?”

“It’s obsidian, volcanic glass. You find it all over the ancient world—North America, Central America, Scotland, Indonesia, Greece, here in Africa. Go on, feel them, touch them.”

She took the slivers in her hands. They were cool to the touch, with sharp edges.

“I’ve heard about obsidian,” Natalie said. “But I’ve never seen it in the wild, so to speak. Where did you find it?”

He pointed. “Upstream of the knee joint but at a slightly more recent level.”

“Are they hand axes?”

“They could be, but if they were they would have been ceremonial. Obsidian is both soft and yet brittle, too weak to be used as proper tools.”

She thought for a moment. “So early man had a ceremonial life?”

Kees tugged at an ear with his fingers. “Too early to say. It could be. But obsidian has one other property—other than the fact that it is shiny and sharp, and could have been polished to serve as mirrors or jewelry—and that is the fact that its chemical makeup varies quite a bit from area to area.” He took back the slivers and put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. “There are three or four sources of obsidian known in Kenya and I should be able to check if these came from any of those sources. They are all some way off and may tell us about early man’s trading patterns.”

Natalie put her hand on Kees’s shoulder. “Brilliant. But if it came from far off, what would early man have traded it for, what did he have to barter?”

“Good question—and the answer is: we don’t know. Rare wild plants maybe, with medicinal properties? Hand axes made of local rock that were super-sharp or super-hard? We just keep looking.”

Natalie took a water bottle from her bag, lying at the foot of the korongo wall, and offered some to Kees. “Do the Maasai use obsidian as jewelry?”

“I don’t think so. From what I’ve seen they use bloodstone and Krobo powder glass.”

“Maybe it would be a good move to offer them some. After what’s happened.”

Kees nodded. “If I find any more I’ll certainly suggest it. These two pieces are precious, though. I need them for analysis.”

He drank more water, wiped his lips with his hand, and passed back the water bottle. “What do you make of all the recent… goings on?”

Natalie took the bottle and shook her head. “I can see that from Eleanor’s point of view these are uncharted waters, and potentially disastrous. But a murder has been committed and that’s not a small thing, not at all. Ndekei could hang.”

“Are you in favor of the death penalty?”

“I think I am, yes. There’s a lot of talk in Britain, right now, of abolishing it, and the arguments on both sides are compelling.” She drank some water. “How do you see it?”

“Well, the death penalty was abolished in Holland a long time ago, in 1870 I think—”

“What! As early as that?”

He nodded. “Yes. It was reintroduced at the end of the war because the government was worried people would take the law into their own hands and assassinate collaborators. Under the reinstated law, about forty collaborators were executed legally, but no one since 1952.” He looked at her. “It was the right thing to do, in postwar circumstances, but not anymore. I agree with that. The law should be more ready to move with the times and take into account wider circumstances and someone’s background, how they are brought up—any of those things can be mitigating factors.” He paused before adding, “I do sympathize a little bit with Eleanor, that Richard and Russell brought it on themselves.”

“But not to the point of being killed, surely?”

Kees shrugged. “It seems harsh, yes. And a machete is a messy, bloody way of going about it. On the other hand, the machete is a traditional weapon here and only emphasizes that we are guests, outsiders, who should show some respect for Maasai ways.”

Natalie was sweating. Was it Kees’s argument which got under her skin, or was it the still, hot air of the gorge?

He wouldn’t give up. “Maybe you could say that you will only give evidence if the prosecution doesn’t ask for the death penalty. That would bring justice, but save a life.”

“I’m not sure that’s allowed.”

“And that’s my point. We accept the rules too easily.”

“The rules have evolved, Kees, changed gradually over a long time, and for a reason, just as there’s a reason for human evolution beginning here in this place. I’m sorry you feel the way you do,” she said, sighing. “But I can’t change my view. It’s my background, how I was brought up.” She placed her water bottle in her bag. “You don’t seem to find that a mitigating factor where I am concerned.”

“You choose.” Jack Deacon held out a stack of records. “My mother says you come from a musical family. You can decide what we listen to tonight.”

Dinner was over and Natalie had just settled into her chair near the fire. She loved watching the flames dance among the logs and listening to the cracking and occasional hissing sounds they gave off.

So Eleanor had told Jack about her background. What else had she told him? On the one evening the two women had shared a tent, Natalie had revealed quite a few intimate details about herself. About Dominic. About her mother’s death, about her estrangement from her father. She had asked Eleanor not to broadcast these … not failings, exactly, but… blemishes , aspects of her life that she wasn’t eager to have known more generally. She didn’t want people feeling sorry for her, feeling pity, condescension, making allowances. She had already found a Pelorovis skull and an ancient wall, if she was right about those stones, and she was beginning to make her mark. That’s what counted now. Her anger flared for a moment.

Jack was sitting in the canvas chair next to Natalie with a pile of brown wrappers on his knee, each with a record inside. Every wrapper had a hole in the center, so the record label could be read.

“Go on,” said Jack. “Other people can choose other nights. Here.”

He passed the stack of records across.

She began to sort through them: Bruch’s violin concerto, Brahms’s Third Symphony, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden , Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 4, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Satie’s Gnossienne no. 1, Liszt’s Sospiro .

She handed him the Barber.

“You like sad music, then?”

“They’re your records, Dr. Deacon.” She met his direct gaze. “I usually find beautiful music sad.”

“Oh, really? Even Mozart or Haydn at their most jolly?”

She nodded. “Yes, I agree, Mozart can be jolly. But music is so mysterious, and so many composers had unhappy lives—Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Schönberg. Don’t you think that’s the underlying attraction of music for most people—that it is consoling? That implies sadness, wouldn’t you say?”

He took back the records. “Do you have a Ph.D. in music as well, Dr. Nelson? You chose something I find very sad-sounding … Does that say something about you, I wonder?” Without waiting for an answer, he cranked the machine, put the record on the turntable, and lowered the needle to the outer edge.