Wilma Stockenstrom - The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

I did it. They approached talking among themselves, and I guessed they were coming to pick seeds as they had done a few days before. I took off the clothes, removed the necklaces, loosened the sandals from my feet and kicked them off, and before doubt and hesitation overcame me went and stood in the opening of the baobab. And they walked past, and up the same homemade ladder they had leaned against the trunk to get to the bee nest one of them now climbed, picked seeds and threw them down to his comrades on the ground, who nimbly caught them. Unconcernedly the picker then climbed down, carried the ladder around to the set it on the other side, and harvested there too. Then everyone walked off, each with a gathering bag on his back chock-full of the fruits of the tree.

I was deliberately not seen.

In this dream in which I am forced to live, I take refuge more often in the city of rose quartz, for thus have I already adapted the hunters’ story. Not only does the mountain glitter rosily, but also that city in which I wander in the company of many others like myself. We do not have to talk to each other, we understand each other naturally. I notice the stranger there too, but detect no need for his companionship, for I am of a self-sufficient crystallinity, transmuted into pure bliss. I am one whole, and divided too and present in everything everywhere.

Strange that the water spirit sends me to a desert, but I understand, for, see, the water too has become quartz, everything has, stone and water and man have the consistency of quartz and the glory and the glorious knowledge of splintering and remaining glorious. Then when I awake, whether in the night or the day, I feel crinkled and stiff.

The insult of not being allowed to be human, that I have overcome. All ugly visions too, of hairy huts and skew door openings that try to entice me in and lock me up, all false solutions, all wrong exits; for I myself determine appearance and reality. I rule. I dream outwards and with the self-assurance of those who have long ago discerned that it is all just appearance I smile to myself, follow my own path diligently, will drink this parting poison gift in the nourishing awareness that dream leads to dream.

There is no other termination. That I concede. I am used up. To myself as well; but whether that makes up part of their deliberations is barely relevant, and why should they in their grief make room for the feelings of someone who let them down, who so lamentably failed where she should have been able to offer a way out?

Let the gods stare over our heads, the stranger once said. They know what they see.

That was precisely what I did not know. Wanted to join in. So I thought.

The stranger had stories to tell about many gods and religions, about the strange customs of priests and enthusiasts and prophets in the cities where he touched in the course of his trading voyages, and about their mutual malignancy and their competition for the blind obedience of the masses and their competition for the favor of the rulers, which could lead to being financed by the rulers, and the acquisition thereby of positions of power for the preaching castes, and all, all just because man feared death, all just to exorcise these fears. Promises of the cycle and promises of resurrection, promises of a paradisal hereafter, of the friendly community of ancestors, of salvation through abstinence but also through investment and bestowal; and every religion recruiting shamelessly and rejecting every other shamelessly.

And death a commonplace! the stranger said, and fell silent, and waited for someone to contradict him. Stories to scare children, was his conclusion. A bore at best, sometimes amusing, like adventure stories. Let us tell each other fables rather than try to rend each other over religion. Who believes me that there is a land where people ride on elephants? Who believes me that there is a land where people ride on an animal with two humps? Who believes me that there is a land where people yoke buffaloes on their ploughed lands, that there is a land where people use milk to make light? But you believe, you philosophers and manipulators, in paradise?

The stranger laughed scornfully.

There are enough wonderful things in life that arouse my curiosity. I am avaricious out of eagerness to know. Look!

He took off one of the necklaces he wore around his neck, a gold chain with a huge bloodstone pendant like a beetle on it, artfully engraved to look like a ladybird, only crueler and bigger.

Which of you believes that this jewel was stolen from the neck of a dead man who is still alive? he asked.

I can still remember the startled exclamations and gestures of aversion and the growls and the forced smiles on the faces of some of our foremost citizens, those who could not afford to display ignorance and so had to conceal it behind airy smartness.

I wish, sighed the stranger, I could travel to the outer limit of the world. I am so greedy.

I also remember that the eldest son was present on that occasion, and how he listened attentively and slapped his calf with his cane but as usual said nothing. My benefactor, too, seldom took part in conversations like this. Too sick. Too dazed by fever. My heart was with him and with the stranger. My benefactor’s hand trembled when he slowly brought a spoonful of beans to his lips. What did he think of all the chatter about death, he who was touched by it? His eyes, deep in their sockets, betrayed nothing.

Of all the sorts of conversation carried on after his dinner parties, the ones that interested me least were those dealing with war. To be honest, when war was brought up I found a reason to dish up or clear the table or attend to something else of a domestic nature. There was talk of sea battles and of land battles, or armaments, piracy, of celebrated victories and the division of spoils, ransoms and extortion, raids, punitive expeditions and suchlike matters about which the men argued and tried to impress each other, and about which they could come out with the most divergent theses and get extremely spiteful and sarcastic about each other’s theories. The supreme game of profit, that was what the stranger called war, and he was at least one of the few at the table who could speak from experience.

The little fleet of dhows under his command had already been on the attack and also been attacked by pirates. He had already, in contrast to the cityfolk, been in fierce combat with warriors. He had killed. Had himself been wounded. He knew what he was talking about when he referred to a bloody slaughter, for to him memories clung to such incidents and every battle meant more experience for him, cumulative knowledge of a reality with which, against his own wishes, he was professionally concerned, and not fiction. Not just stories of heroism. He had seen injured men tumble overboard, seen hacked-off limbs floating, blood and commotion in the water that attracted sharks from near and far, and had heard the wretched drowning men defend themselves roaring against the monsters’ slashing bites, in vain. As calm and refined as he sat there talking, so barbaric the naked language he used. Chop, stab, mutilate, kick, stalk.

While the city folk, fat with prosperity in an uneasy peace on the edge of history, chattered about defense and building forts and ramparts, and simply chattered and did nothing out of laziness and envy and lack of mutual trust and above all out of stinginess, I suspected, and also because they themselves did not feel at all threatened. With the many dhows that came across the sea laden with wares they maintained excellent relations. Their own skiffs distributed the goods to smaller coastal towns and in exchange loaded leopard skins, ivory and ambergris, tortoiseshell and rhinoceros horn for shipment back to the coastal city and its wholesale merchants; and so long had this favorable arrangement lasted that they would not believe anyone who might predict a plot to ruin their flourishing trade. Who, after all, would be so stupid? It was to everyone’s advantage. There was no question that these strange caravels that had latterly begun to call constituted any danger. Besides, relations had quickly been established with these newcomers. There was no question that they were capable of snuffing out a long-established trade. No, not these simpletons who had to beg for water and fresh meat and fruit.