S. Naudé - The Alphabet of Birds

‘You’re getting us into serious debt, Sandrien. You’re taking food from our children’s mouths. What about their school fees, what about the farm? What about our lives, yours and mine?’

She ignores the wateriness in his eyes. ‘If we take a second mortgage on the farm,’ she says, ‘we can pull my patients through until the government can take over.’ Her voice is clear, her eyes fiercely blue.

‘Your eyes have changed colour,’ he says. ‘They’re now the colour of water.’

He leads her to bed, lets her lie against his chest until she falls asleep.

When she wakes up, a letter is waiting on the sideboard, her name in Kobus’s writing on the front.

My dearest,

It is not impossible for me to understand something of the powers that have grabbed you by the heart. I too have a heart. The deaths in the hills around us touch me also. But the degree of your self-sacrifice scares me. And the obstinacy. Somewhere, the light of reason must shine through.

Let me ask you — devil’s advocate — whether you’re starting to take a certain delight in the misery? I ask myself: could the dogged tenacity of a Mother Teresa and a henchman look the same? Seems to me you want to collapse the pain and stench into one blinding truth. Where do you make the people behind the truth disappear to? And do they understand your abstract manner of saving them?

I don’t want to make you choose between your patients and me. But we can’t both collapse under the weight of the despair. Why join the ranks of the departing? Is the anguish awaiting us, you and me, invalid? Minor sorrow, you call it, parochial, but is it nothing? And when you’ve been extinguished, who will be doing the caring then?

Do you know, Sandrien, where I find the truth? In the silence of our bedroom, the flashes of lightning passing between our skins. In the moments when you and I are lying here, under this roof, searching for breath. It is small here, yes, but when I stick out my fingers, I am touching real flesh. And for me that is enough.

What you could do, assuming you wanted to save us, you and me, would be to choose one, one of those under your care, to save. You’ll have to let go of the rest. Even that is more than the teetering formal structures could do. Those structures are locked churches. Outside the doors, the sufferers will be scorched to death after devouring the last blade of grass.

Choose one now, Sandrien, or let me go.

Kobus

It is Grace, on foot from Helpmekaar, who is bringing the news on a Tuesday afternoon. Ma Karlien has died.

‘Grace, how far have you walked? You can hardly stand up!’

‘I saw the house was looking cold,’ she says. ‘So I went to see. And then she was lying there.’

Grace is looking cold herself; she opens her mouth again, but then forgets to speak, or is unable to. She closes her mouth and waits.

Sandrien takes Grace back in the pickup truck, puts her back to bed. They search in vain for Brenda. Hours later Sandrien finds her where she is squatting behind the dam wall.

‘As she was dying, she grabbed me with a mad power. Like this.’ Brenda locks her hands around Sandrien’s wrists. ‘As if she wanted to drag me with her. As if she wanted to have a maid with her in hell.’

Sandrien sees the fear, sees a chance.

‘Brenda, that woman you sent me to, she wasn’t Xoliswe’s sister. And tell me, how did she get the throw from the Helpmekaar homestead?’

Brenda turns away, her mouth like a prune. Sandrien takes Brenda’s chin in her hand, forces the face towards her.

‘Tell me what’s going on here!’ She has Brenda by the upper arm.

‘They wanted her dead.’

‘Who wanted who dead?’

‘Everyone. Everyone wanted the black witch dead. The one on the game farm. The sangoma said, “Give her something from the one who kills everyone.” So we give the throw. But still she does not die. She lies there in that black cage, breathing, she just keeps breathing. Then the sangoma says, “Send the white witch to the black witch, let the one who brings the plague go and touch her.” And so it happened. You went. And you killed her. And my mother? You will do the same to her.’

Brenda tears herself from Sandrien’s grip. She runs away over hard ground.

Early that evening, the logistics of death settled, Kobus gets into his pickup truck. The ambulance took hours to reach Helpmekaar. By the time it arrived, the body had become stiff. He returns late from the bar in Venterstad, mildly drunk.

‘Ramotle bought drinks,’ Kobus says apologetically. ‘Only he and I were there.’

He is sitting across from Sandrien, looking down at the table. The alcohol, so it seems, makes him want to drown the words of his letter in a torrent of other words.

‘Ramotle has all kinds of news. Blurted out big secrets after a few. You remember I attended the launch of Twilight Lodge a few months ago, and was so surprised they’d managed to get all the planning and environmental approvals? And what a place! Right through to the presidential suite with glass floors above a waterfall. Anyhow. Big story. Believe it or not, after the soccer World Cup, the winning team will be coming to Twilight Lodge to relax for two weeks. All hush-hush. Well, not that discreet. The guys here are arranging parties to which everyone will be invited — municipal and provincial officials, cabinet members, business types, pop singers, you name it. There are even rumours the president will be here, but all low profile.

‘The funds are almost unlimited, it seems. They’re all getting contracts, the local officials, the lot of them — supply of game vehicles, catering, luxury transport, entertainment, the whole lot. There’ll be dancers, acrobats, fire-eaters, a veritable circus here in the hills. They’re even importing some grand boat from Austria for a function on the Gariep dam. Originally built to navigate the Rhine. And it all keeps getting bigger. Ramotle was here today to inspect more game farms, looking at the quality of accommodation. The famous people apparently all have a huge entourage. Everyone has to get here, sleep somewhere, eat somewhere … And everyone, so it seems, has to party.

‘Arrangements have been in process for months. You can imagine how elated Ramotle is about the prospect of so many celebrities and politicians here in his sphere. A real coup, as he refers to it …’

He stops, looking swiftly up at her, shy like a schoolboy.

Sandrien remembers Mayor Ramotle with his round head. She saw him at a petrol station in Aliwal. She says nothing of her night at the Twilight Lodge or the warning shot. Her mind is working rapidly, even though her eyes are clouding over with exhaustion.

‘Come to bed, Sandrien.’

But she walks into the dark guest room. She does not switch on the light, falls asleep in her clothes.

On Wednesday morning Sandrien leaves for her rounds later than usual. Even in the early morning it is warm. Approaching Helpmekaar around a bend, she notices a car in front of Grace’s little house. She stops and gets out the binoculars she inherited with the van. Three figures are trembling in the heat. Brenda is one of them. Next to her is the woman with the goatskin wristband. The third figure, she is convinced, is Lerato. The face is hazy, but the shape unmistakeable. Lerato is handing something to the other two.

Sandrien puts the van in gear. She rattles over the dirt road. When she enters the road turning off to Helpmekaar, Lerato’s car is well ahead of her, speeding away towards Burgersdorp. Sandrien turns off. At the end of the straight road, Brenda and the sangoma are standing motionlessly. The sangoma then dashes off to the right; only Brenda remains, standing alone, in the middle of her windscreen. Sandrien pushes down on the accelerator. Thick dust spews out behind the van.