A Far Off Place Read online

  Luciana, barely adolescent, is in the charge of a formidable sort of Portuguese Ousie-Johanna, a governess called Amelia. François spends some of his happiest days introducing Luciana to the life of the bush, sharing some of the things he and Hintza treasure most. He shows her a “baboon finishing school” and animals so familiar and dear that they are almost personified and carry human names like the great male lions, Chaliapin and Caruso, and a lioness with a passion for being left alone, called Garbo. One bird, in particular, an African partridge called a francolin, is held up to her as the bravest of the brave, as he discovers her barely visible in the hissing grass, defending her clutch of eggs with the transparent armour of utter silence, immobility and stillness, an example of courage and total acceptance of danger and fear that never leaves the two of them.

  Overjoyed that Luciana and her father are going to be permanent neighbours on land which her father calls Silverton Hill, François and Mopani are amazed by the sense of order and speed with which Sir James sets about building his new home. He is helped in this by seven-ox-wagon loads of Cape-coloured builders and artisans and their vivid gypsy families. He feels desperately bereaved when Sir James is suddenly recalled to Britain to serve on a Royal Commission and takes Luciana out of his life so soon after she had entered it.

  Although François is not aware of it, he has had as great an impact on Luciana as she on him. She writes to François constantly, sends Hintza a metal-studded collar for his protection and François a painting of the patron saint of hunters, St. Hubert. Despite his Huguenot prejudices, François takes the painting to Xhabbo’s cave and installs it there. Just above the painting there is a red cross painted on the rock long ago by a Bushman artist.

  From then on the indefinable feeling of menace in the life of the bush builds up. The tension caused in François by Luciana’s absence, and above all by the failure of Xhabbo to return, becomes almost unbearable. It is all the more acute because Lammie, now in sole command of Hunter’s Drift, threatens to send him away for his education. Secretly he is determined that he will not leave until he has seen Xhabbo at least once more.

  This tension, both in the bush and in François is at its highest when Sir James, Amelia and Luciana return unexpectedly after the absence of more than a year. Everyone at Hunter’s Drift is overjoyed. Both Luciana and François, too, are excited to see Lammie and Sir James, who had not met before, taking a great liking to each other.

  Luciana, by this time, had ceased to be “Luciana” to François. He had given her a name of his own—Nonnie—which literally means “little mistress.” The day of reunion ends with one of Ousie-Johanna’s best dinners, complete with the finest wine and brandy from the great cellar under the house. The meal goes on for so long that Nonnie is peremptorily ordered to bed. But not before she and François have reaffirmed their secret pact to meet at dawn for their first excursion into the bush.

  François, however, is woken well before dawn by Hintza. Even half-asleep François recognises Xhabbo’s pre-arranged call sign of night-plover and then jackal. He jumps out of bed immediately and is dressing as fast as he can when the call comes again in a way which suggests that it is of imperative, even desperate import. As he dashes out of his room, gun in hand, a torch flashes in his face and he finds Nonnie, fully dressed, waiting for him. The excitement at the prospect of accompanying François into the bush has woken her earlier than arranged. He has no option but to tell her to follow. As he speaks, the call sign breaks again on the silence.

  Soon they are all three outside, and Hintza leads them in the direction from which the call had come, so fast that they have to run to keep up with him. Hintza leads them parallel to the river towards the hill of Xhabbo’s cave. On the way, François thinks he sees an ominous mass of something moving by the river half behind them, but has no time to stop and observe it closer, because at that moment the call is repeated more urgently than ever.

  Almost at once he finds himself in the presence of Xhabbo, who wastes no time in formal greetings, but commands them to follow him. He leads them fast and straight up the hill and into shelter just behind the great boulder which hides the entrance to the cave. There François and Nonnie meet Xhabbo’s Nuin-Tara, “daughter of a star,” who Xhabbo describes as his “utterly woman.” He then tells François how he and Nuin-Tara have travelled for many, many days, marching by night and hiding by day, to come and warn him that thousands of armed Africans were coming from the north-west to attack Hunter’s Drift and invade the country beyond.

  At that moment they hear the great voice of ’Bamuthi calling out, pure and unafraid, the Matabele equivalent of the medieval knight’s “To me!” and hard on that, an outburst of automatic rifle fire. This is followed immediately by a piercing blast on military whistles all round the homestead, and then the full discharge of sustained rifle and automatic fire from hundreds of infantrymen.

  Xhabbo wants them all to withdraw into the cave at once, but François refuses. He announces that whatever happens he at least must answer ’Bamuthi’s call. Nuin-Tara and Nonnie are therefore made to go into the cave and Xhabbo and François carefully make their way into the bush where they find several African soldiers in uniform lying dead in the track, and not far away the body of ’Bamuthi. They are prevented from retreating to the cave itself immediately, both because the bush itself is now swarming with soldiers, and because they find the body of a mortally wounded Matabele kinsman of ’Bamuthi’s, a man called Mtunwya, (Messenger) also one of François’s beloved companions. They manage to hide the wounded Mtunwya in a ledge under the rocks where François had once given Xhabbo a provisional shelter.

  Mtunwya tells François that he believes that every man, woman and child at Hunter’s Drift, whether European or Matabele, has been killed and that Sir James himself has been shot down in the doorway of François’s home. Mtunwya dies late in the day with his hand in François’s, and it is only towards sunset that Xhabbo and François manage to make their way safely up the hill again to the cave, where they find Nuin-Tara and Nonnie, beside herself with fear, shock and anxiety.

  For a moment they all stand there as the last light of a red, mythological sunset dies away and they see the stars appear, and as the stars appear an extraordinary display of meteors flashing out of the sky, so that Xhabbo is moved to say to François,

  “Xhabbo knew that the stars who hide in light as do other things hide in darkness were there to see all today. For the stars do fall in this manner when our hearts fall down . . . and that they must, falling, go to tell other people that a bad thing has happened at another place. Tell this utterly your woman, Foot of the Day, that the stars are acting thus on account of us and that we are not alone.”

  Xhabbo pauses until François has told Nonnie and, in the telling, notices how the tension goes out of the hand in his. Hintza, too, is still, his head on one side, listening. Then they see Xhabbo pointing high, and hear him say, “Look, Foot of the Day, how those stars which have not fallen over are full of a tapping as I, Xhabbo, am full of a tapping. And their tapping is joined to Xhabbo’s tapping, seeking to tell me of the way we must go. I must go into the cave and sit apart, listening utterly to this tapping, in order to learn of this way we must go.”

  So A Story Like the Wind ends with Xhabbo, Nuin-Tara, Nonnie and Hintza crawling into the cave and François going last, as the book says, like someone turning for help to the last temple left on earth. A Far-off Place takes up the story at this point.

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  fn1 Ford

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Owl and the Cave

  SO GREAT AND deep a cave, of course, had to be dark. But it was even darker than François had expected when he crawled through the narrow entrance. Then he could tell from the feel of the sand underneath his hands that he was inside it in depth. He looked carefully all round him but could see nothing to indicate the presence of Xhabbo, Nuin-Tara and Nonnie. Were it not for Hintza, who as always, unless ordered away, was close to him, he could ea
sily have thought himself to be alone. The darkness, indeed, was so dense that it was almost tangible and as he stood up, silently and slowly, his left hand brushed the air in front of his face as if to clear the black matter from his eyes. It was a most unpleasant feeling, as if this profound darkness round him had found an ally in the darkness within inflicted on them all by the tragic events of the day. The whole was not just a sensation conveyed by the senses but a powerful emotion arguing with the voice of despair that the last light was about to be extracted from life on earth.

  Fortunately François, who so often before had had to find his way through the dark in the bush, knew that the glimpse of a distant fire, or the striking of a match, was enough to blind one’s eyes for a moment to such light as there always was even in the blackest of cloud-covered nights. In remembering this, the alliance of darkness without and darkness within was broken, and he realised, with relief, that the cave appeared so impenetrably and solidly black because for the moment he was star-blind. More, it was almost as if he were star-deaf as well.

  The intense and varied sounds which had accompanied the quick, piercing, dancing, starlight as it assailed their eyes from above when the five of them had been standing outside, had made, as it were, a single orchestra of cosmic proportions. First there had been the abiding background noise of the sea of darkness, breaking like a Pacific swell over a great barrier reef to produce the star spume and foam of light which men call the Milky Way. There, on what might be the beach of the universe, the horses of the seas of night perpetually pound with their lacquered hooves. All around were the millions of stars and satellites that produce the quick “tapping sound” to which Xhabbo had referred. There were some stars that naturally arranged themselves in triangles and sent out a kind of rhythmic tinkling to synchronise with the many that in one vast, wheeling movement let the blackness rushing by use them as wind instruments. The greatest, like Sirius, Aldebaran and the Santauries, stretched their wings of light taut between Heaven and earth to give each according to its nature, the violins, harps and ’cellos of this orchestra. There were star voices, too, to swell the volume like those of children lost in some deep valley in the mountains of the night, singing to keep up their courage. Then came the reassuring responses from the great stars such as the Three Kings, the Seven Sisters, Heavenly Twins and the vortex of Andromeda. Yet there in the cave, all this sound which had accompanied the light outside was suddenly and totally extinguished, and this made the silence as solid and opaque as the darkness.

  François listened in vain for some whisper or whisk of movement to tell him where his companions were. Then instinctively, he put his hands in his pockets, took out the matches he always carried and struck one.

  Even then he did not see at once any of the others. Perhaps because he was intent on lighting the candles which had stood there so long by the altar of pebbles below the painting of St. Hubert and the sign of the cross on the walls of the cave. Quickly, before the fragile light of the match could go out (for already some new awareness in him was warning him that even trifles like matches could no longer be wasted), he hastened to the candles and managed to light them just before the match faded. To him, the light growing from the two black wicks until their flames stood clear-cut and straight, was beautiful.

  Turning away from the candles he saw, over the back of Hintza, first of all Nonnie, her eyes darker and wider than ever, and fixed on the candles as if not certain she could believe they were real. Beyond her, Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara, squatting side by side on the floor of the cave, turning their faces, alive with wonder and delight at what was to them (since they had never seen candles before), such magic of light. However it was Nonnie who caught François’s attention. Her whole attitude as she stood there looked so slight, forlorn, so very much too young for the tragedy inflicted on her that day. The shock of the disaster held her like someone in a profound trance and left her poised exactly on the frontier where candle-light ended and line of ink of the cave began. Indeed, he was so moved by the eloquence of her plight that he forgot his own and was about to go to her when her whole expression suddenly changed.

  For the first time since morning her spirit seemed capable of detaching itself from the horror of the day and to come alive. At the same time she must have noticed the red cross on the wall above the candles for slowly she herself made a sign of the cross, as if she were unconsciously imitating the movement of the hand which many thousands of years before had painted it on those ancient honey-coloured walls of stone.

  Clasping her hands together in front of her, she said as if speaking to herself: “Oh, how wonderful! How could I have spent a whole day in this place and not noticed it before?”

  It was an indication perhaps of how death, the sudden crumbling of a world and a way of life which all had seemed so real that one could be pardoned for having been deluded into thinking they would endure for ever, could abolish with unbelievable swiftness any desire in the human spirit to maintain appearances. For then Nonnie did something which she would never have done before except in the privacy of her room or in the protective context of a church. She went up to François’s home-made little shrine and knelt down in front of it to pray. She did not speak but merely stayed on her knees, her hands clasped in her lap, while she looked deeply and long into the copy of the painting which she had chosen for François a year ago on one bright summer day in a Europe which, at that moment, must have seemed to her more like something experienced in a dream than in measurable reality.

  François did not know precisely what was happening but the meaning of the act was plain enough and too important to be interrupted. He turned to look at Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara. Their glances met his and told him that, although they might not know what was happening to Nonnie, they realised it was something which should be respected with silence. All the same, to make it quite certain, François moved silently over to join them where they sat against the far wall directly behind Nonnie, motioning to Hintza to come to him as he did so. Putting his head close to Xhabbo’s, he whispered so low that the sound could not possibly have carried any further: “I think she is listening in to a tapping of her own.” He put it like that because he knew it to be the only way in which Xhabbo would understand an act of prayer.

  Xhabbo immediately leaned sideways and repeated softly to Nuin-Tara what François had whispered to him. Both turned as one to François. Their eyes were like old Koba’s, his Bushman nurse, full and overflowing with the first light of human life on earth, but still now brighter with understanding and approval.

  Xhabbo spoke almost inaudibly for them both: “She has gone utterly to the place for such a listening. For look, Foot of the Day, the sign on the wall!”

  Xhabbo was not only pointing at the cross above picture and candles, but going on to describe with his right hand stretched out, first a long horizontal movement from left to right, and then another with the palm vertical moving from high above, downwards, to make what seemed to François a perfectly symmetrical cross. “That sign is the sign we Bushmen, since the days of the People of the Early Race, have always made at the place where asking and tapping meet. Xhabbo too is going presently to sit by himself listening utterly for the tapping to tell of the way we shall have to go.”

  As if knowing how in those cataclymsmic moments no words are as eloquent as physical contact, he hooked the little finger of his right hand in François’s little finger, as the finger of his left was already hooked in Nuin-Tara’s. François instinctively put his other hand lightly on Hintza’s head, and the four of them went on sitting there with their eyes on Nonnie, as if she were leading them in some profound ritual of communion. So totally excluded was the world of appearance and illusion that not only was François not at all embarrassed, but felt as if this were the only possible preliminary to finding a way out of the terrible peril and unknowingness which now held them far more inexorably than that terrible lion trap in the track without had once held Xhabbo.

  How long they sat there it wa
s impossible to tell because in the manner of all meaningful things the moment vanished like the shadow of a dream. It seemed to him that time was only a flash of lightning between the moment when Nonnie had sat down on her knees and began to get up. Then suddenly from the main opening in the ceiling of the cave, there came the loud, prolonged and whistling, night-sea call of an owl.

  It was a sound François knew well but familiarity could not deprive it of its aboriginal freshness. Always it seemed to carry some new tone, some fresh meaning for him. Of all the calls of the many species of owls of the bush, this one, however uncomfortable and unendingly evocative, was his favourite. Quick, therefore, to identify the call, he had barely done so when the call was repeated more loudly and urgently, as if the owl had its head in the opening above them and were calling directly down at them.

  Nonnie, who had obviously never heard the sound before, was on her feet at once and turned round quickly looking strangely startled. However as the call was repeated a third time, François was happy to notice that it was only the suddenness of the sound which had startled her, and not its nature.