Who Killed Piet Barol? Page 14

  It provoked an uproar. Those in the village, and there were many, who doubted their Chief’s negotiating skills swarmed round Piet Barol to strike their own bargains with him. The Elders, knowing what was proper, pulled them back, beat them if necessary. “You must return tomorrow,” said the Chief, who knew there were many he should consult with, “and bring us the full animal”—by which he meant all the details.

  “There’s no time like the present,” said Piet Barol. But he was silenced by a look from Luvo, who came up to him and said: “You must never rush the Bantu. Everything must be discussed, and discussed again. If you wish to get your way, you must observe the proper form.”

  “Tomorrow then,” said Piet.

  “And you must ask only for the tree you first saw, with which you were well satisfied,” said Luvo gravely. “Even to ask for a tree in the Grove of their Ancestors will cause offence.”

  “Then you must help me to ask without causing offence. We could build their ancestors shrines elsewhere. Handsome ones.”

  “That will not do at all.”

  It was clear to Piet that without Luvo’s support his task would be far harder. He looked at the young man, thinking of his teachers, and found a better approach. “It is up to us,” he said, “to liberate these natives from their superstitions. You must help me in that noble endeavour.”

  —

  WHEN THE MEETING CONCLUDED, Piet repeated the names of everyone he had met—Mzwamadoda, Ntombizodwa, Xolani and a host of others impossibly hard to pronounce. It was a terrific party trick and made many people, the ladies especially, roar with laughter. After years in Cape Town posing as a French vicomte, Piet was used to having people fawn over him, and he did not like it. Others’ shyness of him made them dull. He hugely enjoyed appearing at a disadvantage.

  He made his farewells and jogged up the mountain, feeling strong and alive. He could hardly wait to be alone. He was used to many solitary hours in his workshop and the burden of discourse in a strange tongue with so many strangers induced euphoria at the prospect of solitude.

  He walked across the neat green grass of the garden that divided the spaces of the Zinis’ goats and geese and sheep and pigs. Dark clouds were rolling in from the sea, made dazzling by the lightning within. The Zinis had an adolescent ram, whose fury at being prevented from mounting the nanny goats who called to him from the other side of a fence had led him to spend all day charging it. Piet was just in time to see him break it and leap into the enclosure of the nanny goats. He pretended not to have seen, and hurried to his hut.

  When he opened the door, he saw that it had been made ready for him, in ways that had not been possible the evening before. He had been brought an extra grass mat, which was rolled beside a pan made of a pumpkin, and filled with spring water. A fire had been laid in the centre, in one of the only tin buckets in the entire village of Gwadana. The roof was blackened with soot. He decided to be cold, rather than subject his lungs to smoke in a confined place, and was glad that two extra blankets were also folded on the polished floor. The hut had a strong smell that Piet could not place, and he opened the door and let the sea air in, which took the edge off it.

  He rolled the second grass mat out above the first, and lit the lantern on a ledge built into the wall. Its warm, generous light was the perfect complement to the other colours in the space. It cast his shadow huge against the wall, and he looked at himself, so large and strong, and felt certain of victory. He felt that in Luvo, properly managed, he had the strategic insider with whom he would be able to navigate all obstacles.

  The thunder roared overhead. Piet felt cosy and at peace. He took from his wallet the photograph of Stacey and Arthur, and looked at them. To his surprise, he found himself praying.

  He prayed for his wife and his son. To be reunited with them. He gave thanks to God for sparing his family from the destruction of families that was going on in Europe. He gave thanks for the commission from Percy, for his discovery of a wood he could truly be worthy of. He reached this point in his prayer after several minutes sitting quite still and staring at the lantern flame, which had blue and black at its centre.

  Piet had drawn things since he was a little boy. He had become exceptionally good at capturing an object or a glance and had an instinctive grasp of the telling detail. He thought of the pieces he might make for Percy Shabrill. All the shapes of nature, a portrait of the forest made into chairs and tables and beds. He felt ready to make a work of art, to embrace imperfection as a means to an end. He reached into his pack and took his sketchbook from it, his concentration heightened by the cold.

  For five hours Piet drew, getting up once or twice to stretch his back by pulling on the central pole that supported the roof. Sometimes he stood up and danced. The only effort was keeping up with the richness of the detail he saw. Legs, horns, tusks, leaves, flowers, became desks, chairs, console tables, library shelves. He drew the contents of Percy’s study till his hands were aching, and kept on. He felt joyful and wildly alive.

  When at last he had filled every page of the sketchbook, and most of its unused corners, he put it on his mat and lay with his head on it. He pulled the two blankets over him. He was again conscious of the cold. He understood why there were no windows—the draft would be unbearable on a night like this, with so ill fitting a door. He felt full of love and affection. He was a man who took great happiness from making others happy, and as he lay in the pitch dark, listening to the gorgeous crash of rain on thatch, the air sweet and earthy, he decided to do something he had not before considered.

  “I will be generous to them,” he said aloud, to the darkness.

  —

  THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GENEROSITY presented itself at dawn the next day, when Piet went for a piss and saw that the goats had got out in the night. The adolescent billy goat, having knocked down one fence post, had thrown himself twice as strenuously into gouging a hole in the vegetable-patch fence, through which he was just escorting his lady friends when Piet spotted them. The Zinis’ vegetable garden was abundant and well tended. Piet ran at the goats, who panicked and retreated—all save the rambunctious billy goat who had led them there. Watching him capture this animal, and return him to the goat pen, caused Nosakhe to frown. This white man had vigour as well as money. She knew how rare this was, and wondered whether perhaps he had been sent to aid her in a deeper battle than the conquest of cash. What did money purchase, after all, but “more comfortable couches on which to mate and die?”

  “It buys freedom from the British tax inspectors,” said Ntsina, when she put this question to him.

  —

  IN THE CHIEF’S COUNCIL HUT several hours later, Piet Barol made from memory the speech Luvo had written out for him. “It is good of you to receive me in this warm manner. I know the hard times many are having in this country. I have come with an undertaking that will benefit…” He struggled to remember his lines and grasped at sounds. “Village every family in the.” He grew frustrated with himself, and tried to summon the image of the page on which Luvo had written his speech. Certain words leaped out, and it was these he spoke: “Furniture wood for I need. Labour will I pay.”

  Luvo winced as Piet’s word order collapsed, but he was a little—he could not help it; he had judged the Declamation Competition in his final year—just a little bit proud of the Strange One who did such a creditable job despite his inexperience.

  Luvo had been raised in a school where sincere effort of any sort was perceived and rewarded. He could not but be moved when Piet, turning to him, made two different click sounds, each with a recognizable thwack, and said: “May I present my friend Luvo Yako. He is a lynchpin of this organization, since it is through him that we can all speak frankly with one another.”

  The Chief was so taken aback by this speech, and so moved to be addressed with such inspiring courtesy in his own language, that he said (for he could speak English quite well; he pretended not to for business purposes): “We will make a business with you.”
>
  It was a measure of Piet Barol’s personal charisma that, though the Chief acted strictly against custom, for no decision can be made without consultation, no one objected. And there were members of his council who spent their lives objecting.

  Piet’s was a nature that flowered in the goodwill of others. He listened with attention while Kagiso explained to him the many virtues of the Furniture Tree, and the fact that they were scattered far and wide in the forest, in places known only to the strong men (he did not mention the women) of his village. As Kagiso talked, Piet’s neck ached, for he was leaning close to Luvo, who spoke softly. He was aware that Luvo was translating only a fraction of the number of words Kagiso was using, and this made him sure that he was missing subtlety and nuance. What required no direct translation was Kagiso’s willingness, on behalf of the village of Gwadana (for he claimed this prize then and there, in the presence of his father and the Council), to undertake his side of the business. “He says he has many good men, much forest knowledge,” said Luvo to Piet at the end of a torrent of words.

  Piet thought of the work that would have to be done before any tree, of any kind, could be made into furniture, and decided not to introduce a topic that would create awkwardness among his new friends. Far better to wait until they knew him better, and to collar the Chief alone with his proposal of new shrines, than to ask for an Ancestor Tree and risk sullying the impression he had made.

  So he said: “We will make a plan this afternoon. I will list the tasks to be done. You tell me how many men you can provide, what their skills are, and how much you think is a fair payment.”

  The Chief looked at his son. His hatred of money was a bristling subject between them. Kagiso looked back, and his face said: Leave Me Be.

  His father did leave him be. But it made him angry to be put in his place by a youth barely past his circumcision. He felt the first stirring of the knowledge that he would one day be old. It was because he was a good man, and a devoted father, that he said “I will leave you with my son Kagiso. Together you will draw up the plans. In three days, we will meet to discuss terms. Until then, you are an honoured guest of the village of Gwadana. We who thought for ourselves salute you,” with no trace of bitterness.

  —

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Piet saw that he had been wise to refrain from asking for an Ancestor Tree. He would have caused offence without necessarily getting his way. Far better to let the cheeriness around him forge into friendship, and to ask when the right moment came.

  At Gwadana, no one cowered in the presence of a white man—or called him “master,” as they were obliged to do in other parts of the country. With Luvo at his side, Piet was able to be himself—or at least the version of himself that Luvo judged appropriate, for Luvo’s translations were much shorter than Piet’s speeches. Often this annoyed him, and he told Luvo to keep up. But he knew that sometimes things are said that are best left untranslated, and his animal senses told him that he was thought well of, and this was Piet Barol’s ideal atmosphere.

  —

  DAYS OF FURIOUS EFFORT FOLLOWED. Those who stood Piet’s pace knew the intoxication of being well led. To Ntsina, the active presence of Kagiso, the bosom friend of his youth, the sense that they were taking on the mantle of the village’s great deeds from the generation above, made him struggle to sleep at night for the difficulty of waiting for the day to come. Kagiso and Ntsina undertook to find the men to do the jobs that Piet and Luvo listed on pages and pages of notepaper, full of diagrams and Piet’s arresting, incomprehensible handwriting.

  Piet sent a boy up the hill to collect from Nosakhe a cupful of the brandy he had brought, with which he made an offering to the ancestors of everyone in the room. In isiXhosa, learned from Luvo in the dark hour before dawn, Piet asked for assistance in their endeavour: for them to be given strength when it failed them, and good humour when discord arose among them. “You can ask to be paid a monthly salary, or you can be paid in shares in the business,” he said. To learn that they might be owners in a business founded in such glamorous circumstances made Ntsina and Kagiso and the boys very happy.

  Piet overruled Kagiso and Ntsina, who said they could get the wood out easily enough by getting it to the river and building rafts. “In the high season it is deep enough for floating,” said Kagiso, seriously. Piet knew that this stream might do for forest mahogany, but it would not be at all practical for a large bed made from a single block of ancient wood. “We need a road,” he said. “If we hack through one of the elephant paths, it should be easy enough.”

  This road was the subject of a heated argument that evening in the King’s Place.

  “There must be no tracks between our village and the Strange Ones beyond the forest!” shouted the Chief, while his four wives watched and Noni sat under his legs, stroking his knees.

  “The Strange One needs a road. He wants to transport all year round. He cannot be expected to wait until a river fills,” said Kagiso, trying to sound reasonable. He looked at his older brother for support, but his brother sided with their father, and was beside himself with jealousy that Kagiso should have met the Strange One in the forest.

  The Chief said nothing. At length Kagiso said: “We need only build a path from the Furniture Tree to the edge of the forest. It wouldn’t come close to the village. We can cover up the other end with thorn bush.” He threw himself at his father’s feet. “I promise this will work, Tata.” Noni touched her brother’s head. She wanted to support him, for she understood his yearning. But something deep within, a sense of the brilliance of the Strange One’s colouring, prevented her.

  “I will decide once the Princes have visited,” said the Chief. “I must consult with them.”

  —

  IN NO TIME AT ALL the wedding was upon them.

  Bela was woken by the sound of her four best friends giggling. She opened her eyes to see them at her door, ringing cowbells. They were the most popular maidens in Gwadana, and Bela was their leader. Lurking just beyond them, as she always lurked, was Bela’s sister Zandi. She held no cowbell.

  Bela hated the cold, but this morning she hardly minded the whip of the wind as she took her clothes off beside the waterfall. Her mother told her to wash her body well, since misfortune flows away with running water. Bela did so, and then everyone was laughing and she was shivering under a blanket and making her way back to the house.

  Ideas, borne by the birds, transmuted mysteriously through the great forest they had crossed not more than three times in their lives, had reached Bela and her friends. They had heard of ladies getting married in white satin, with long trailing veils. Thinking of the white satin made Bela’s blanket chafe her shoulders, but she bore this cheerfully.

  As they gathered on the grass to begin her journey from her parents’ homestead to her husband’s, her father clipped hairs from the tail of her mother’s bridal cow—a descendant of the cow Mama Jaxa had brought with her at their marriage. He gave Bela the longest, whitest one, and kissed her. “I am transferring you from my care to the care of another family, my dearest child,” he said. “You must be an obeying wife without asking questions. You must do exactly as you are told, or you will bring shame on us and our clan.”

  “I will obey, Father.” Bela bowed her head modestly.

  “Once you are married, you are never to enter your new family’s kraal, on the lives of all the ancestors. Not until you have brought your firstborn into the world and he is twelve moons old.”

  “I know it, Father.”

  “You will do our clan proud.”

  “I will, Father.”

  “What an arrogant bitch,” thought Zandi, and looked at the ground.

  It was hard on Zandi—both her parents knew it—that they should be marrying her attractive younger sister first, as if to acknowledge that no man would ever claim her. Or sex her. Zandi was a woman of strong natural appetites, and at the age of twenty-seven the strictures of chastity were hard to bear. Ever since catching her first trace
of Ntsina’s scent she had thought of him as she fell asleep. Sometimes she found herself thinking of the Strange One too. What would it be like…? Zandi could entertain this thought because it was so far-fetched it could be safely held in the chest of fantasies, guarded by porcupine quills, in which she stored treats to lighten the burden of virginity.

  Her ancestors had protected Zandi by making her far-sighted, which is not at all the same thing as having the gift of Farsight. She would not see how the women—it was always the women—looked at her as the smooth pink beer flowed and loosened tongues and hearts. She almost missed her sister’s sharpness, but on this day, watched by so many, Bela was as sweet as treacle to her, and won much approval for her tact and kindness.

  Their mother thought of Zandi’s humiliation. It burned her. And yet she knew that her husband had made the only possible decision. With one hundred cattles and six bulls, it would not matter whether any man took Zandi to his wife, saw the virtues of her constancy, her gentleness. What a lucky fellow he would be, thought Mama Jaxa, as she watched Bela set off in a crowd of her attendants, who had Zandi to love him through his life and tend to him in old age.

  —

  AT THE GROOM’S HOMESTEAD, festivities were well under way. Nosakhe had decided against purchasing any of the goods available from Strange One shops. Everything she served was made by Gwadanans in the old way, and she had bartered her eight best cattles, her talents in the matter of several long-running feuds, and the billy goat who had broken her fence, in order to purchase beer and honey and sweet fruits and chairs and plates. She had laid a charm for good weather—these were tricky, and apt to go off in quite the opposite direction from the one intended. But today she had done her work well and it was fine, with no promise of rain. The women wore their finest adornments, and Nosakhe’s were finest of all, for her grandfather had commissioned for her the full white regalia of a sangoma.