Wilma Stockenstrom - The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

I made a fire. Spark. Flame. Fire. It flared high, for I threw more and more wood on it; I considered fetching even more, getting an immense fire going that would crowd out the smell of human death with the more pleasant smell of plant ash, and I also envisaged announcing my orphan presence via the fire. Let it be seen that I am. Let woodpecker and tapping beetle see it, let the leopard stay away from me, let kudu and duiker sniff fire and stay away, let what human beings remain see it and make up their minds. Do with me what you will. In godly impotence I walked among your corpses and achieved nothing, I whom nothing befell in the shelter of a tree, I who am not from here, do not belong here, do not want to be here. I heard your war cries, your child moans, your last sounds, and quietly remained in hiding, and when everything was over, stepped out of my baobab. Had eyes seen me?

Had they seen me shudder at what I saw?

If there are more of you, little or big, light or dark, come.

Gradually I got going again. It is winter again. Spent a summer, a winter, a summer, a winter here. Winter of hardship now, where I again have to rely on myself and have only the wind and now the phantoms too for company. White bones around the tree. The baobab clutches and claws at the sky. The grass stands pale and stiff. An aloe sucks the blood up out of the earth and wears it gaudily in a cluster of red knobs, splendid against the clear blue sky and only too attractive to the sugar birds. White skulls around the tree. Little by little the wind brings in dust to fill up the brain hollows and the pelvises.

I have to make new paths where skeletons block my way with their rib bones. I can do without the company of hyena and vulture.

Gradually going again.

A long time since I noticed baboons. Warthogs with upright tails often.

In fact gradually more and more slowly as if I were about to come to a halt. My territory contracts as my powers decrease. The humiliation of not being able to care for myself. Though I know what I can eat, I do not know how or where to look for it, and drift around again as I did right at the beginning; but resigned now. Why hysteria, after all? To what purpose fierce concentration? I let things go their course. On some days I find something, on others nothing. It does not matter.

There always remains the balm of the stream behind a ravelwork of lianas, its murmuring refreshment, the mood of coolness it creates, and there always remain the samango monkeys who announce their disapproval of my penetration with funny growls. In spite of all there is something familiar for me here. It has so happened.

The clattering stream and then the river into which it quietly and timidly debouches. The river runs towards where the sun and moon rise, towards where I once began to travel, towards the sea of the city from which we departed in search of a city on the sea at the other margin of the world.

I long for nothing any more.

Once, only once thus far, have I again undergone the pain of expectancy, when in the distance I saw a fire which developed into a veld fire that windingly sailed over the horizon and gradually devoured it. Fire snake, I earnestly willed, sail around me too and swallow me up. It continued to burn in the far distance and the smoke persisted as a pall in the air long after the flames had died. I got the smell of it, and I noted soot freckles on the bark of the tree.

Would whoever might be responsible for that destruction be aware of my nightly fire?

My answer is the poison that was set down for me one day during my customary trip to fetch water. Someone knows about me now. Someone has always known about me. But who? Here I can play a neat little game with my golden nails. I can count them out and simply accept what they say. Why not? I count them according to the rhyme. Ultimately useful, little nails that have joined together what was bygone and mysterious to me, precious little signs of a disappearing meaning. Now you help me to make my last moments amusing.

Good. I have counted them out and behold, the upshot is that I was not forgotten, which is as I thought all along. I will be thankful that my surmise agreed with chance. I no longer procrastinate. Recklessly I throw the nails up in the air. Let them fall where they will and lie and never rust. I was really a mistress and mother and goddess. Enough to make you laugh.

I stand before the crack and hold up in outstretched arm the last gift so as to be seen. Then I disappear into the dark interior.

Baobab, merciful one. My baobab.

I drink down my life. Quickly, water spirit. Let your envoy carry out his task swiftly.

Yes.

As a bird takes leave of a branch. Fruit falls. A bat. Like a bat, black and searching.

I dive into dark water and row with my wings toward the far side where in descending silence I am no longer able to help myself and deafly fly further and further. I will find rest in the upside-down. I fold my wings.