‘Both feet?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘There are many people in the Zambezi Valley with feet like that,’ I told him.
‘My mother was a Batonga woman,’ he answered. ‘It was this mark that qualified me for training in the mysteries.’
‘Does it hinder you at all?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he answered brusquely, and then went on almost defiantly in Batonga, ‘We men of the cloven feet outrun the fleetest antelope.’
It was a beneficial mutation then, and I would have enjoyed discussing it further but I was warned by Timothy’s expression. I realized the effort it had taken him to show me.
‘Will you have some tea. Doctor?’ He reverted to English, closing the subject. When one of his young African assistants had poured cups of strong black tea for us, Timothy asked, ‘Please tell me how the work at the City of the Moon is progressing, Doctor.’
We chatted for another half hour, then I left him.
‘You must excuse me now, Timothy. I am flying back tomorrow morning early and there is still much to do.’
I was awakened by a soft but insistent knocking on the door of my suite in the Institute. I switched on the bedside light and saw that the time was three o’clock in the morning.
‘Who is there?’ I called and the knocking stopped. I slipped out of bed, shrugged into a dressing-gown and slippers, and started for the front door, when I realized the risk I was taking. I went back to my bedroom and took the big ugly automatic .45 from the drawer. Feeling a little melodramatic, I pumped a round into the chamber and went back to the front door.
‘Who is it?’ I repeated.
‘It’s me. Doctor. Timothy!’
I hesitated a moment longer - anybody could call themselves Timothy.
‘Are you alone?’ I asked in Kalahari bushman.
‘I am alone, Sunbird,’ he answered in the same language, and I slipped the pistol into my pocket and opened the door.
Timothy was dressed in dark blue slacks and a white shirt with a windcheater thrown over his shoulders and I noticed immediately that there were spots of fresh blood on the shirt and that there was a rather grubby cloth wrapped around his left forearm. He was clearly much agitated, his eyes wide and staring in the light, and his movements jerky and nervous.
‘Good God, Timothy, are you all right?’
‘I’ve had a terrible night, Doctor. I had to see you right away.’
‘What have you done to your arm?’
‘I cut it on the window pane of my front door, I fell in the dark,’ he explained.
‘You’d better let me have a look at it.’ I went towards him.
‘No, Doctor. It’s only a scratch What I have come to tell you is more important.’
‘Sit down at least,’ I told him. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘A drink, thank you, Machane, as you can see I am upset and nervous. That is how I came to injure my arm.’
I poured both of us whisky, and he took his glass in his right hand and continued moving nervously around my sitting-room while I sat in one of the big leather armchairs.
‘What is it, Timothy?’ I prompted him.
‘It is difficult to begin, Machane, for you are not a believer. But I must convince you.’
He broke off and drank whisky, before turning to face me.
‘Yesterday evening we spoke at length about the City of the Moon. Doctor, you told me how there are mysteries there that still baffle you.’
‘Yes.’ I nodded encouragement.
‘The burial grounds of the ancients,’ Timothy went on ‘You cannot find them.’
‘That is true, Timothy.’
‘Since then I have thought heavily on this matter.’ He changed into Venda, a language better suited for the discussion of the occult. ‘I went back in my memory over all the legends of our people.’ I imagined vividly how he must have thrown himself into hypnotic trance to search. ‘And there was something there, like a shadow beyond the firelight, a dark memory that eluded me.’ He shook his head and turned away, pacing restlessly, sipping at his drink, muttering softly to himself as though he still searched in the dark archives of his mind.
‘It was no use, Doctor. I knew it was there, but I could not grasp it. I despaired of it, and at last I slept. But it was a sleep greatly troubled by the dream demons - until at last…’ he hesitated, ‘… my grandfather came to me.’
I stirred uneasily in my chair. Timothy’s grandfather had lain twenty-five years in a murderer’s grave.
‘All right. Doctor.’ Timothy saw my small movement of disbelief, and changed smoothly to English. ‘I know you do not believe such things can happen. Let me explain it in terms you can accept. My imagination, heated by my search for a long-forgotten fragment of knowledge, threw up a dream image of my grandfather. The one from whom the knowledge was learned in the first place.’
