The Covenant Part 24

The name for the rude domicile in which the nine Van Doorns would live for the next decade, and the other trekboers for the next century, would occasion endless controversy. It was a hartbees-huisie, and the contradictory origins proposed for the word demonstrated the earthy processes at work shaping a new language for the colony. The hartebeest, of course, was the narrow-faced, ringed-horn antelope so common to the veld, but there was no logical reason why this lovely animal who roamed the open s.p.a.ces should lend his name to this cramped residence. A better explanation is that the word was a corruption of the Hottentot /harub, /harub, a mat of rushes, plus the Dutch a mat of rushes, plus the Dutch huisje, huisje, little house. Others claimed that it must be little house. Others claimed that it must be harde harde plus plus bies bies plus plus huisie, huisie, hard-reed house. Whatever, the hartbees-huisie stood as the symbol of the great distance these Dutchmen were traveling physically and spiritually from both the settlement at the Cape and their progenitors in Holland. hard-reed house. Whatever, the hartbees-huisie stood as the symbol of the great distance these Dutchmen were traveling physically and spiritually from both the settlement at the Cape and their progenitors in Holland.

The first winter was a difficult time, with little food in store and none growing, but the men scoured the hills and brought in great quant.i.ties of springbok and gemsbok and handsome blesbok. Occasionally the Van Doorns, in their smoky hartebeest hut would dine on hartebeest itself; then Johanna would cut the meat into small strips, using a few onions, a little flour and a pinch of curry. Hendrik would roam the lower hills, looking for wild fruits which he could mangle into a chutney mixed with nuts, and the family would eat well.

The children begged their father to make one of his bread puddings, but without lemon rind or cherries or apples to grace it, he felt it would be a disappointment, and he refrained, but toward September, when the long winter was ending, an old smous driving a rickety wagon came through from the Cape with a miraculous supply of flour, coffee, condiments, dried fruits, and things like sewing needles and pins.

'You'll be the farthest east,' he said in a high, wheezing voice.

'How'd you get over the mountains alone?' Hendrik asked.

'Partner and I, we broke the wagon down, carried the parts over.'

'Where's your partner?'

'Took himself a farm. Down by the ocean.'

'How you getting back to the Cape?'

'I'll sell the things. I'll sell the wagon. Then I'll walk back and buy another.'

'You plan to come back this way?' Johanna asked. 'Maybe next year.'

'This'll be a nice place then,' Hendrik said. 'Maybe I'll build us a real house.'

No one believed this. Four years on this farm, a drought or two, a more fertile valley espied on a cattle drive, and the Van Doorns would all be impatient for a move to better land. But now there was food at hand, and a few rix-dollars to pay for it, so the entire family joined in fingering through the old man's stock.

'I'm not eager to sell,' he said. 'Lots of people on the way back want my things.'

'How many people?' Hendrik asked.

'Between here and the mountains... ten... twenty farms. It's becoming a new Stellenbosch.'

Johanna saw to it that they bought prudently, but at the end of the bargaining she said, 'Bet you haven't had a good meal in weeks.'

'I eat.'

'If you let us have some of that dried fruit, some of those spices, my husband will make you the best bread pudding you ever tasted.'

'That one?' The old man looked almost contemptuously at Hendrik, but when Johanna pressed him on the exchange, he began to waver.

'You got any mutton? Just good mutton?'

'We do.'

'Mutton and pudding. I'd like that.' So the barter was arranged, and while Johanna and Hendrik worked inside the hut, the old man sat on a rickety stool by the entrance, savoring the good smell of meat. Trekboers liked their meat swimming in grease.

It was a gala meal, there at the farthest edge of settlement, and when the meat had been apportioned and there was much surplus, Adriaan said, 'I'd like to give Dikkop some.' No one spoke, so he added, 'Dikkop and me, we're going on the walk, you remember.' So it was approved that the Hottentot could come to the doorway of the hut while Adriaan pa.s.sed him a tin plate of mutton. 'Stay here,' he whispered.

Now Hendrik brought forth the crock with no handles, placing it before the old man: 'You first.'

This was a mistake. The old fellow took nearly half the pot; he hadn't had a sweet in ages, and certainly not one with bits of lemon rind and dried apples. The Van Doorns divided the remainder evenly, but Adriaan split his portion in two. 'Whatever are you doing?' Johanna asked, and her son said, 'I promised Dikkop a share,' and he pa.s.sed it quickly out.

Their journey was planned for November, when protea blossoms were opening like great golden moons. Dikkop, brown and barefooted, nineteen years old and well versed in frontier living, would be in charge. Adriaan, well clothed in rugged leather vest and moleskin trousers, and exceptionally informed regarding animals and trees, would be the spiritual leader. They would head for a wild terrain with lions and hippos and elephants and antelope unnumbered. And in the end, if they survived, they would wander back with nothing whatever to show for their journey except rare tales of cliffs negotiated and rivers swum.

In the late spring of 1724 they started east, carrying two guns, two knives, a parcel of dried meat and not a fear in the world.

It was a journey that could rarely be repeated, two young fellows heading into unexplored land without the least concept of what they might be finding, except that it would be an adventure which they felt confident of handling. Dikkop was an unusual Hottentot, skilled as a carpenter, like a Malay, but also beautifully adapted to the wild, like many Hottentots. He had a sense of where danger might lie and how to avoid it. He dreaded physical confrontations and would travel considerable distances to escape them; he was, indeed, something of a coward, but this had helped him stay alive in difficult surroundings and he did not propose altering his philosophy now.

Adriaan, in the wilderness, was a remarkable boy, afraid of nothing, confident that he could confront any animal no matter how big or powerful, and alive to all the sensations about him. If his grandfather Willem had been the first Afrikaner, he was the second, for he loved this continent more devoutly than any other child alive at that time. He was part of it; he throbbed to its excitement; he lived with its trees and bushes and birds; and if he could not read books, he could certainly read the doc.u.ments of nature about him.

They had no tent, no blankets. At night Dikkop, drawing upon knowledge ten thousand years old, showed Adriaan how to form a declivity in the earth for his hip and then to place bushes against his back to break the breeze. They drank whatever water they came upon, for none could be polluted. They ate well, of ripening berries, nuts, roots, an occasional river fish, grubs and abundant meat whenever they wanted it.

They climbed trees to survey distant areas, guided themselves by the stars, keeping a middle path between the mountains to the north, the ocean to the south. Occasionally they spied Hottentot clans, but they preferred to avoid them, for this was an adventure they did not want to share with others. In this way they covered more than a hundred and fifty miles due eastward. On the banks of one river, where all things seemed to be in harmonygra.s.s for cattle had they had any, flat fields for seed, good water to swim in, fine trees for timberthey remained two weeks, exploring the river north and south, testing the herds of game. In later years Adriaan would often remember that river, and would ask Dikkop, 'What do you suppose the name of that river was? Where we stayed those weeks doing nothing?' But they could never deduce what river it must have been: Groot Gourits, Olifants, Kammana.s.sie, Kouga, Gamtoos. It was a river of memory, and sometimes Adriaan said, 'I wonder if it was real. I wonder if we dreamed that river.' It was statements like this, heard by practical men, that gave him his name Mai Adriaan: Mad Adriaan. Daft Adriaan. Crazy Adriaan who sleeps in trees.

Thus the great journeys of boyhood mark a man, showing him possibilities others never see, uncovering potentials that stagger the youthful mind and monopolize an entire life in their attaining. A boy of twelve, sleeping in a tree, looks down upon an alien landscape and sees a lioness, lying in wait to trap an antelope at dawn, and as he watches in silence, a zebra moves unconcernedly into the arena, and the antelope skips free when the lioness leaps upon the zebra's back, breaking its neck with one terrible swipe of claw and snap of teeth. Mai Adriaan, the boy who knows how a lion thinks.

At the midpoint of their journey, when it was about time to turn back with enough stories to fill a lifetime of evening recollections, an accident occurrednothing of great importance and no harm donewhich in its quiet way symbolized the history of the next two hundred and sixty years in this region. Adriaan and Dikkop, white and brown, were traveling idly along a swale that showed no sign of animals, when suddenly Dikkop halted, lifted his head, pointed eastward and said, with some concern and perhaps a little fright, 'People!'

Instinctively the two boys took cover, fairly certain that their movements had been so silent that whoever was approaching could not have detected them. They were right. From the far end of the swale came two young men, s.h.i.+mmering black, hunting in an aimless, noisy way. They were taller than either Adriaan or Dikkop, older than the former, younger than the latter. They were handsome fellows, armed with clubs and a.s.segais; they wore breechclouts and nothing more, except that around the right ankle they displayed a band of delicate blue feathers. They had apparently failed in this day's hunting, for they carried no dead game, and what they intended eating this night, Adriaan could not guess. However, on they came at a moderate pace which would soon put them abreast of the hiding watchers.

It was a tense situation. The newcomers might pa.s.s on without discovering the two boys hiding, but then the problem would be how to skirt either north or south to avoid them. More likely, the newcomers would soon spot the strangers, and then what might happen no one could foretell. Dikkop was trembling with apprehension, but Adriaan merely breathed deeply. Then, without preparation, he spoke loudly but in a gentle voice, and when the two blacks turned in consternation, he stepped forward, holding his empty hands forth and saying in Dutch, 'Good day.'

The two blacks automatically reached for their clubs, but now Dikkop moved out, his hands before his face, palms out with fingers extended: 'No! No!' The two blacks continued their movements, held up their clubs, brandished them, and faced the strangers, whose hands were still extended. After a very long time, while Dikkop almost dissolved in fear, they slowly dropped their clubs, stood looking at the unbelievable strangers, then moved carefully forward.

In this way Adriaan van Doorn became the first of his family to meet blacks inhabiting the land to the east. Willem van Doorn had landed at the Cape in 1647, but it was not until 1725 that his great-grandson stood face-to-face with a South African black. Of course, from the early days at the Cape, men like Commander van Riebeeck had owned black slaves, but these were from Madagascar and Angola and Mozambique, never from the great lands to the east. Thus the Van Doorns had occupied the Cape for seventy-eight years before this first contact, and in those fatal generations the Dutch had become committed to the policy of Europeans in whatever new lands they encountered: that whatever they desired of this continent was theirs. During all those years they had paid scant attention to reports from s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners and Hottentot nomads that a major society existed to the east. Because of arrogance and ignorance, the impending confrontation would have to be violent.

'Sotopo,' the younger said when the matter of names was discussed. He came, he said, from far to the east, many days travel, many days. The older boy indicated that they, like Adriaan and Dikkop, had gone wandering at the end of winter and that they, too, had been living off the land, killing an antelope now and then for food. But this day they had been unlucky and would go to bed hungry.

How did they say this? Not a word of the black language was intelligible to the farm boys, and nothing that Adriaan or Dikkop said was intelligible to the other pair, but they conversed as human beings do in frontier societies, with gestures, pantomime, grunts, laughs, and incessant movement of hand and face. The problem of talking with these strangers was not much different from the problem of talking to strange slaves that the Van Doorns would buy from time to time. The master talked, and that was it. The slave understood partially, and that was enough. What really counted was when Dikkop tried to tell them that with the stick he carried he could catch them an antelope for supper. They were too smart to believe this. A witch doctor could do many things with his magic, but not to an antelope. So the four boys crept quietly to the edge of the swale, waited a long time for animals, and finally spotted a herd of springbok drifting along the veld. Very patiently Dikkop moved into position, took aim at a healthy buck, and fired. When the noise of the gun exploded, the two black youths exclaimed in fear, but when the springbok fell and was collected by Dikkop, they marveled.

The canny Hottentot, aware that this night would probably be spent in the company of these two, used many gestures to warn them that if his stick could kill a springbok far away, it could certainly kill them close at hand. And he further showed them that even if they stole the stick, they would not be able to kill the white man, because they would not have the mystery, which he was not going to explain. They understood.

Onto the embers of the blazing fire went the springbok meat, and as it roasted, the four young men made careful calculations of their situation, each pair speaking freely in its own language, a.s.sured that the other could not understand whatever strategies were proposed. Dikkop, who was terrified of the situation, suggested that as soon as they finished the evening meal, he and Adriaan should start back toward the distant farm, relying on their guns to keep the blacks at bay should they attempt to follow. Adriaan laughed at such an idea: 'They can run. You can see that from their legs. We'd never escape.'

'So what we do, Baas?' Dikkop asked, almost impertinently.

'We stay here, keep watch and find out as much as we can.'

To Dikkop such a strategy seemed irresponsible, and he said so, sternly; the compromise that evolved was ingenious. As Dikkop explained it, 'We sleep in that tree, Baas. With our guns. You sleep first and I keep guard. Then I waken you, you keep your gun trained on them. Shoot them down if they try to kill us.'

But after they had eaten, the strangers licking the antelope fat from their fingers, Adriaan and Dikkop were astonished to see that the blacks headed immediately for a tree, disposing themselves so that they were protected should the two young men try to kill them in the night. Adriaan, as he hollowed out a place on the ground from which he could aim his gun at the tree, noticed that they had taken their warclubs aloft with them.

And so they spent the night, two above, two below; two awake, two asleep. Only when daylight came did the blacks climb down out of their tree.

They were together four days, with Dikkop in a state of near-exhaustion because of the fear that gripped him. The blacks were so much bigger than he, so powerfully muscled, that he could not avoid imagining them swinging their clubs at his head, so that even at the moment when he fired his gun to bring down another antelope, he expected to be brained. He was not unhappy when the accidental partners.h.i.+p showed signs of breaking up, the blacks explaining that they must return eastward eighteen days walking, Dikkop saying with relief that he and Adriaan must go westward their thirty days. He told Adriaan, 'About same distance, Baas. They move much faster.'

The parting involved no great emotion, but all felt it to be a pregnant moment. There was no shaking of hands, no abrazos abrazos in the Portuguese style, only a moment of intense quiet as the two pairs looked at each other for the last time. Then, as if to epitomize the unfolding history of these racial groups, Sotopo thrust out his hand to grasp Adriaan by the arm, but the Dutch boy was frightened by the unexpected movement and drew away. By the time he recovered his senses and wanted to accept the farewell touching, Sotopo had stepped back, mortified that his gesture had been rejected. Dikkop, the Coloured man, merely stood aside and watched, partic.i.p.ant in nothing. in the Portuguese style, only a moment of intense quiet as the two pairs looked at each other for the last time. Then, as if to epitomize the unfolding history of these racial groups, Sotopo thrust out his hand to grasp Adriaan by the arm, but the Dutch boy was frightened by the unexpected movement and drew away. By the time he recovered his senses and wanted to accept the farewell touching, Sotopo had stepped back, mortified that his gesture had been rejected. Dikkop, the Coloured man, merely stood aside and watched, partic.i.p.ant in nothing.

The two blacks moved off first, but after they reached the eastern end of the glade they stopped and turned back to watch the strangers walking to the west, and there they stood as the two figures grew smaller and smaller, their miraculous fire-sticks over their shoulders.

'Who were they?' Sotopo asked his older brother.

'Like the ones who came across the sea, before Old Grandmother's time.' The lads had been told about these mysterious creatures; they had arrived by sea in a floating house that had broken to pieces on the rocks, and they had come ash.o.r.e. There had been a few killings, on each side, after which the strangers had split into two parties, one walking overland and peris.h.i.+ng in the empty s.p.a.ces, the other waiting by the sh.o.r.e for many moonsmany, many moonsuntil another floating house came to take them away.

They had left no visible impact on the tribes, only memories to be talked about at night by warriors in the kraals. But clearly, the little fellow with the white hair had been of that breed. As for the other? 'Who was he, Mandiso?'

'He looked like one of the brown people from the valleys,' the older boy replied, 'but there's something different.'

And when the strange pair vanished in the western distance, the two black travelers turned toward their own homes.

They were Xhosa, members of the great and powerful tribe that lived beyond the big river, and when they returned to their family they were going to have much explaining to do. They could hear Old Grandmother screaming at them: 'Where have you been? Where did you take your little brother? What do you mean, a white boy with a stick that threw flame?' Each night as they moved closer to home, they devised a different strategy.

'You explain it, Mandiso. You're older.' And that night it was arranged that Mandiso would tell how they had wanted to know what lay west of the big river, beyond the hills where the red-paint earth lay.

But on the next evening it would seem desirable that Sotopo do the speaking, since he was younger and would be accorded a more sympathetic hearing: 'We followed the spoor of a large beast, but could not find him, and before we knew it we were beyond the hills.'

On some nights they would mutually acknowledge the fact that neither of these explanations sounded convincing, but how to explain their hegira they did not know. The truth would surely be rejected. 'The reason we were away so long,' Mandiso said as they gnawed on roots from a succulent shrub, 'was that day after day we felt that when we reached the top of the next hill we would see something of magnitude.' He hesitated, and Sotopo continued the narrative: 'But whenever we reached the crest of the hill, all we saw was nothing. More forests, little rivers and a great many more hills.'

'Shall we tell them of the two boys?' Mandiso asked.

'That's difficult,' Sotopo said, 'because the little one with the yellow skin I don't think he was a boy. I do believe he was a Khoi-khoi, maybe twenty summers.'

'I liked the big one,' Mandiso said. 'He wasn't afraid, you know. The little one, you could smell him sweating in fear. But the white-haired boy, he seemed to like us.'

'But at the end he, too, jumped back in fear.'

'He did,' Mandiso agreed. 'You moved toward him and he leaped back, afraid like the little one.'

When they reached the banks of the big river and knew that they must soon encounter other Xhosa, they stopped speculating and faced up to the fact that before nightfall they would have to explain their absence. 'What we'll do,' Mandiso said with a touch of resignation, 'is simply tell them that we wanted to see what lay far to the west.'

'But shall we tell them of the two strangers?'

'I think we better had,' the older boy said. 'If we could smell fear in the little one, Old Grandmother will see excitement in our eyes, whether we speak of it or not.' So it was agreed that they would tell the entire story, embellis.h.i.+ng nothing, hiding nothing, and this resolve pacified their fears, and they went forward boldly to meet the scouts that guarded the perimeters, and with them they were quite brave and forthright, but when Old Grandmother started shouting at them, they crumpled and told a very disjointed story.

The Xhosa people took their name from a historic chieftain who ruled around the year 1500. Among his many accomplishments was securing for them the lovely chain of valleys they now occupied between the mountains and the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean. For half a thousand years they had been drifting easily south and west, enticed from in front by a succession of empty pasture lands, edged from behind by the movement of other tribes. They had been traveling at the rate of only a hundred and twenty miles a century, and although this had accelerated recently, as their population and especially their herds increased, they could have been expected to reach the Cape, and the end of their expansion, about the year 2025 had not the Dutch occupied the Cape and started their own expansion eastward. After the meeting of the four young men, it became obvious that trekboer and Xhosa would have to come face-to-face, and that this would take place rather soon, probably along the Great Fish River.

Well to the east, in a valley unusually well protected, lived the Great Chief, who had never even visited the western frontier where the family of Sotopo and Mandiso lived. All tribes owed allegiance to the Great Chief, though his effective powers over them were limited to precedence at festivals and rituals, and determination of the rights of the royal family, to which all chiefs of the tribal group belonged. The const.i.tuent tribes were organized geographically, Sotopo's being the westernmost. Tribal chiefs appointed headmen of various clans or 'neighborhoods,' which were large enough to permit their members to intermarry. The 'neighborhoods' were broken down into kraals, where intermarriage was forbidden, and Sotopo's father, Makubele, was kraal headman; he carried orders from above, served at ceremonies and postured a good deal, but everyone knew, especially Makubele himself, that the kraal was really ruled by the tongue of Tutula, Old Grandmother. The family consisted of forty-one members.

To say 'They owned a wooded hillside well inland from the sea' would confuse the entire point of this story, because n.o.body owned owned any part of the land. Sotopo's father owned many cattle, and if the cows continued to produce calves, he might well become the next chief. Old Grandmother owned the beautifully tanned animal skins she used as coverlets in winter. And Sotopo owned his polished hard-wood a.s.segais. But the land belonged to the spirits who governed life; it existed forever, for everyone, and was apportioned temporarily according to the dictates of the tribal chief and senior headman. Sotopo's father occupied the hillside for the time being, and when he died the older son could inherit the loan-place, but no man or family ever acquired owners.h.i.+p. any part of the land. Sotopo's father owned many cattle, and if the cows continued to produce calves, he might well become the next chief. Old Grandmother owned the beautifully tanned animal skins she used as coverlets in winter. And Sotopo owned his polished hard-wood a.s.segais. But the land belonged to the spirits who governed life; it existed forever, for everyone, and was apportioned temporarily according to the dictates of the tribal chief and senior headman. Sotopo's father occupied the hillside for the time being, and when he died the older son could inherit the loan-place, but no man or family ever acquired owners.h.i.+p.

The beauty of the system was that since all the land in the world was free, when a dispute over succession occurred or a kraal became crowded, the aggrieved could simply move on; if an entire kraal decided to move west, as happened continually, they left behind unenc.u.mbered land open for others to occupy. In some other distant valley as acceptable as the one they had left, they would settle down, and life would continue much as it had done for the last eight hundred years. All that was needed to ensure happiness was unlimited land.

'What we should get on with now,' Makubele said, puffing his pipe after the excitement over the boys' trip quieted, 'is Mandiso's circ.u.mcision.' Everyone agreed, especially Mandiso, who was seventeen years old now and eager to become a man. The running away to the west had been a last childish adventure; now girls in the valley were beginning to look at him with extra interest, and unless he went through the painful ordeal of officially becoming a man, there was no chance that he could ever attain one of them, no matter how much lobola he a.s.sembled for a purchase. Their valley already contained one man, now in his forties, who had evaded circ.u.mcision, and no one would have much to do with him, women or men, because he had not certified his manhood.

Young Sotopo, only fourteen that year, had become aware during their expedition that his brother was changing, growing more serious; sometimes Mandiso had remained silent for most of a day, as if he were antic.i.p.ating the rites that lay ahead, and now no one was more attentive to the impending rituals than Sotopo. He kept wondering how he would perform, were he Mandiso.

He watched as the family elders visited other families to ascertain which of their boys wished to partic.i.p.ate, and he stayed with his father when the men visited the witch doctor to determine when the moon would be in proper position to build the secluded straw lodge in which the manhood-boys would live for three months after the ritual. He saw the designated boys set out to collect red-earth clay for ceremonial adornment, watched as they wove the curious rush-hats they would wear for a hundred days: three feet long, tied at one end, open at the other, but worn parallel to the ground, with the tied end trailing behind. He could imagine Mandiso in such a hat; he would look much like the crowned crane, sacred bird of the Xhosa.

The day came when the man who had been appointed their guardian a.s.sembled the nine manhood-boys and led them to the river, where in the presence of men only, with a few lads like Sotopo watching from hiding places among the trees, they stripped, went into the waters, and painted themselves totally with white clay; when they emerged, they were like ghosts. In this uniform they marched to the secluded lodge, where the guardian entered with them, initiating them into the verbal secrets of the tribe. After a long time he led the boys outside, where all checked to be sure there were at least nine ant hills; Mandiso identified his with two sticks, and the guardian left.

All that night the boys chanted old songs inherited from the days when the Xhosa people lived far to the north, long before the time when Great Xhosa gave them their name, and Sotopo, still watching, envied them their fellows.h.i.+p, and the singing, and the fact that they would soon be men.

Next morning, when the sun was well up, the guardian returned with his knife-sharp a.s.segai, strode purposefully into the lodge and cried in a loud voice, 'Who wishes to become a man?' and with pride Sotopo heard his brother answer, 'I wish to be a man.' There was a silence during which Sotopo could imagine the flash of the a.s.segai, the burning pain, and then the triumphant shout: 'Now I am a man!' Against his will, Sotopo burst into tears of pride; his brother had not cried out in pain.

When the nine were initiated, they left the lodge one by one, each carrying in his right hand the foreskin that had been cut away. This was hidden in the ant hill, each to his own, so that evil spirits could not find them and create spells. For three days a guard was posted at the ant hills to keep sorcerers away; by then the ants would have devoured all traces of the ritual.

It was important, in this valley, to watch out for spirits, and when the nine boys had been in their shack for six days, the dreaded fire-bird struck to remind everyone of his power. Only a few people had ever seen this bird, which was fortunate, because it was so terrifying. It lived behind the mountains and ate prodigious quant.i.ties of stolen mealies, growing so fat that it became larger than a hippopotamus. Then, because it was a h.e.l.lish bird, it set itself on fire, its body fat throwing long flames as it flew through the sky, screaming with a mixture of joy at destroying kraals and pain at the consuming of its own body: thus came thunder and lightning.

When the fat was nearly burned away, the fire-bird dove to earth in a tremendous clap of thunder, buried itself deep and laid one egg, large and very white, which burrowed underground till it reached the bottom of some river. There it ripened until another full-grown fire-bird leaped out of the river to gorge mealies, set itself afire, and bring more thunder and lightning.

On this day, when Mandiso and his eight companions huddled in their lodge, the fire-bird was especially vengeful, sweeping back and forth across the valley until the earth seemed to tremble, so loud were the claps of thunder. As at any kraal, it was imperative that the headman go out into the storm with his a.s.segais, stand by the kraal where the beasts lowed in confusion, and with such magic as he had, defend his cattle and his family from the lightning. If the fire-bird did succeed in blasting a kraal, it was proof that the occupants had done something wrong, and then they would have to pay excessive fees to the witch doctor to get themselves made clean again.

Indeed, one had to pay the witch doctor for almost every act of life, but when the fire-bird wept, that was powerful proof that someone had transgressed. In certain storms, when the bird's fat burned too swiftly, the pain became unendurable, and the wild-flying bird began to cry, just like a baby, and as its tears fell they turned to hail, each grain bigger than a bird's egg, and this peppered the valley unmercifully.

In this storm the fire-bird wept so pitifully that vast sheets of hail came thundering down, breaking thatch and hurting cows until their cries penetrated the hut where Sotopo and his family huddled. One flurry of especially heavy stones struck Makubele as he stood outside endeavoring to protect his family, and he fell to the ground. Sotopo, seeing this, realized that if the witch doctor heard of it, he would take it as proof that it was Mandiso who had sinned in some way, causing the fire-bird to torment the valley. So although it was forbidden, Sotopo jumped from the safety of the hut, ran to his father, raised him to his feet, and then a.s.sisted him in fighting off the bird.

When the fire-bird left the valley to dive into the earth behind the hills, and the lightning ceased, Sotopo quietly gathered the three a.s.segais he had laboriously made and his one calf, harbinger of the herds he would one day own, and walked purposefully to the witch doctor's hut.

'I come seeking aid,' he said twice at the low entrance. From the dark interior a heavy voice said, 'Enter.'

Since the boy had never before visited a diviner, he had little concept of the mysterious world he was entering: the owl on the dead branch; the stuffed hornbill in the corner, red-wattled and forlorn; the sacs of dead animals; lizards and herbs; and above all, the brooding presence of the old man who wrestled with evil spirits, preventing them from overwhelming the community.

'I hear your father was knocked down by the fire-bird,' the witch doctor said.

'No,' Sotopo lied. 'He slipped when rain made the slope muddy.'

'I hear you left your hut.'

'I went to help fight off the fire-bird.'

'Why do you come to me? What other great wrong have you done?' 'I come to plead for my brother.'

'Mandiso? In the circ.u.mcision lodge? What great wrong has he done?'

'Nothing. Oh, nothing. But I want you to intercede for him, that he conduct himself bravely during these weeks.'

The diviner coughed. This was a bright boy, this Sotopo son of Makubele, grandson of Old Grandmother. He knew that it was all-important how a young manhood-boy behaved himself during the initiation; two years ago one applicant fainted with pain, and although it was discovered that his wound had festered, that was no excuse for fainting, and he was consequently given second status, which would mar him for the rest of his life. That Sotopo should be enough concerned about his brother to offer three a.s.segais and a cow . . .

'You bring me the a.s.segais?' the witch doctor asked.

'Yes, and my cow.'

'You're a strong boy. You'll be a wise man one day. Leave them with me.'

'And you will protect my brother?' 'He will do well.'

'And you'll forget that my father slipped in the mud?' 'I will forget.'

'Diviner, we thank you. All of us thank you.' Sotopo told no one of his clandestine visit to the witch doctor, and he was much relieved when he heard rumors from the ritual lodge that Mandiso was conducting himself especially well.