Wilma Stockenstrom - The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

To everyone, myself included, the stranger’s reports sounded romantic rather than instructive and insightful. I took the heart-shaped palm fan and fanned myself. I nodded and smiled and passed a dish and made a witty remark and tried first with one guest, then with another, to shift the discussion into a lighter vein. I flirted and laughed naughtily and practiced my calling faultlessly. My benefactor looked satisfied. The scent of myrrh and the scent of rich foods, the scent of the multitudinous jasmine, the scent of the water I had washed myself with, the oil with which I had rubbed myself, the particularly complex composite aroma of civilization, that was what we breathed here. That was what the sultry city offered us.

That was how far my knowledge of warfare extended.

That it is innate in woman to have a spontaneous approach to atrocities, is a lie. Though I had already held death fast in my arms, though I had taken in my own hands a stillbirth strangled by the navel cord, and rolled it up in an old torn cloth like a parcel, and carried it off from our slave childbirth hut, though I had already heard sick people in delirium and heard the moans of slaves being punished, none of it has been of any help to me.

In the deepest, darkest, farthest corner of the baobab I hid. These screams, these war cries, this floodwater of fear dark over my head; this fear that cut through me, this bestial death rattle. I was cornered; like a rock rabbit in fear of death I trembled.

For days I did not dare go out. Then the stench of decay drove me out.

The wild rejoicing of the hyenas at night. I was too frightened to make a fire for myself in case it served as a beacon for those who had come to massacre. I crouched in the belly of the tree and understood the flickering train of thought in my baby who had chosen darkness over the light of life. It was an ecstasy of never being. It was the only true victory: neither death nor life had meaning. It was equilibrium. It was the perfection of non-being.

The stench drove me out. The fighting had raged nearly to the baobab, I could now see; for while I had been hiding both far and near had sounded the same, the same and everywhere, and I could not make out at all from what direction the attackers had come.

When the slaughter began, I caught a glimpse of the attackers. I had just started back from the stream, swaying along with the blackened waterpot on my head and my scoop, my ostrich eggshell, in one hand — that is to say, I imagined I saw someone, or more than one person, looking at me, and realized with fear, quietly walking on, that it was strange people staring, not the little people whose peeping, if I may call it that, was of unparalleled subtlety, in fact never noticeable. While these … Too clearly I felt eyes upon me, too clearly saw dark beings disappearing into the long grass. They must have been spies. And that same night. And it kept on. So long. The merest chance that I had a tree hiding place. Which they must not have observed and noted, for I was still quite a distance from it when I became aware of being pointedly watched. My self-trodden footpath seemed to me irritatingly long. With one eye on the tree I kept it in sight all the time. The distance between me and it refused to lessen though I lengthened my stride. There were spies. There were others here.

Others overwhelmed us. Who were these others? And from where?

It is disheartening to remain spared.

On the day when I at last dared to investigate, I picked out among the gnawed corpses those of the little people. The other were bigger. I do not know how to assimilate horror.

How the scavengers must have feasted. There was too much for them to consume. The offering was too great.

Most remarkable the spectacle of one of the other up in a tree, stretched out over branches, the berries of the eyes already nearly pecked out, the fruit of mouth and tongue rubbled at. Decay that turns form fluid.

The ants went mad. There was far too much. They would never be able to break down everything and transport it fiber by fiber to their store places, where there would anyhow not be space enough. The ants scurried on all sides.

The bluebottle flies swarmed with delight over messed entrails, formed green patches like dangerous flowers, larger and larger grew the shiny flower, till suddenly the disc divided itself into multitudinous floating parts. These settled and caked together to make a new flower. They were everywhere.

The corpses had been torn apart by jackal and hyena and vulture and dragged far and wide and rearranged in an order that suited them; but everywhere bluebottles swarmed.

It was not possible to determine who had been the victor in the slaughter. I could pick up as many weapons as I wanted and build up an arsenal in my baobab. I could pack it full of ironware, feed it on iron to satiety, reinforce it with iron from within, install spears like staves in the opening.

I could not find out whether there were more corpses of the attackers lying around than of the little people. It was so quiet, aside from the usual birdsong and the breath of the wind, and in the late afternoon, as ever, unperturbed, the arrival of the elephants, their expert insertion of trunks in a row into the water, and leisurely bathing and sand-throwing and tranquil retreat with the oldest cow in the lead after everything had been achieved that they wanted to achieve. I greeted them.

First of all I went to fetch myself a load of wood. For now I wanted to make myself a huge fire. For I did not care in the slightest if I were seen or by whom. For even if the long grass were to bring forth just as many attackers again, I did not care. For let death come, let the death blow fall. For nothing mattered any more. For it was the end.

On the return trip, the long bundle of wood on my head, I heard a groan, or imagined I heard it. Or was I not imagining? I listened intently and heard nothing more. I concentrated, turned my head carefully away from the direction of the wind to catch the sound, and heard nothing. Remained standing there a long time, then went on and set the wood down in front of the opening. But I knew I had to go and track down the groaning. I had to track it down.

The knowledge drove me on. Carefully I inspected all the remains of people, and forced myself to do it systematically, to scrutinize systematically and to watch carefully for the slightest sign of life. I searched and searched and searched. I forgot about the stench and the flies and the vultures watching the spectacle from the trees and the horrible appearance of human beings destroyed, and searched over and over all around the tree as far as there was anything to be seen that looked like a human figure, human remnant, and I arrived at an ant-heap and again heard a groan. Now I searched feverishly all about, and further, and back again. There were interjections from a lourie, but I knew, I was convinced I had heard the groaning of a human being. It was as faint as could be, only just audible, only just. If I could only hear it again. Distance is deceptive.

I went back to the tree and drew a stick out of the bundle of wood. Using it I now searched around the anthill, poking with the stick in the tangled grass and dense ground cover; but what did I think I was actually doing? Was my sense of relation totally disturbed, that I imagined what I was searching for had shrunk to dwarf size, to fetus size — was that what I was searching for? Why was I churning around with the stick? I was searching for a groan, a groan without a body. A groan got lost here. That was what I was searching for. A groan had sounded in the air and I wanted it for myself.

Now I began to laugh. Half-sobs, half-laughs came from my throat. They came from my insides like moans. One after the other I forced them out like clods, and when they were out I felt like someone who had vomited. With my stick I returned to the baobab.