‘Yes, oom. Guinea fowl and francolin eat the fruits and the kudu and nyala like the leaves that drop off.’
He put him to the final test. ‘Tamboti makes good firewood.’
‘Just don’t barbecue on it, oom. The poison makes people sick.’
He had heard enough. That night Cobie de Villiers moved into a renovated labourer’s cottage and for three years worked harder than Stef Moller had ever seen anyone work before – from dawn till late at night, seven days a week.
‘He knew just about everything about nature. I learnt from him. A lot’
‘Did he ever talk about his past? Where did he get all that knowledge?’
‘Ah, my dear …’ Stef Moller took off his glasses and began to polish them on his dirty T-shirt. His faded blue eyes seemed vulnerable without the protection of the thick lenses. ‘People.’ He put the glasses back on. ‘They come here, but they’re not interested in how we healed the veld. They ask other questions. Where did I come from? How did I make my money? I don’t like that. You shouldn’t judge a man by how many mistakes he’s made in his life, you should judge him by how much he’s learned from those mistakes.’ He stopped, as if he had answered her question.
Emma took it to mean that he had not. ‘Why did he leave?’
Moller blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t know …’ He shrugged. ‘He didn’t say. He asked for two weeks’ leave. And then he left. He didn’t even take all his things. Maybe …’ He looked away into the distance, where the sun hung low over the green hill.
‘Maybe what?’ Emma prompted him.
‘The girl,’ Moller said quietly. ‘It might have had something to do with the girl. The last few weeks before he left…’ His thoughts drifted off, then he pulled himself back. ‘That’s when he came to ask for leave. The first time in three years. I thought he wanted to take her somewhere, but then she came looking for him a while later. We didn’t see him again …’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell anyone.’
‘When was this?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Ninety-seven. August.’
Emma sat still, as if the information was enlightening. Then she opened her handbag and took out a pen and a sheet of paper. It was the web page printout of the Mohlolobe Private Game Reserve. She turned it over on the table and wrote something on the back. She looked up at Moller again.
‘I would like to talk to the girl.’
‘She worked at the resort.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Melanie,’ he said, the Afrikaans pronunciation, with a long ‘a’. With just a hint of disapproval in his voice. ‘Melanie Lottering.’
Emma wrote that down too.
Moller blinked and said with admiration, ‘You really believe that he’s your brother.’
Her voice was barely audible as she answered. ‘Yes.’
* * *
Emma picked up her bag and was ready to leave, but she hesitated and said very carefully: ‘Would you mind if I asked you one question about the reserve?’
He nodded. ‘You want to know why. You want to know what the point is if there are no tourism facilities.’
‘Oh dear, is that what everyone asks?’
‘Not everyone. Some. But I understand. It must be difficult to grasp when someone behaves differently. People expect you to spend money in order to make more. You develop a game reserve so other people will pay to see it. If you don’t do that people wonder what you’re hiding. It’s only natural.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know you didn’t. But most people think like that. That’s one of the reasons I lock the gate at the entrance. They used to come in here and ask questions. Mostly, they didn’t understand my answers and went off shaking their heads. Or maybe they did understand, but didn’t like the answers. They wanted the right to see, to enjoy, to drive around in the reserve and show the animals to their children.’
Moller looked in the direction of the gate and said, with nostalgia, ‘Cobie understood.’ Then his gaze returned to Emma. ‘But let me explain to you, and you can make up your own mind.’
Blinking, he organised his thoughts. ‘Up till ten thousand years ago, we were hunter-gatherers. All of us. On every continent and island. We moved around in small groups in the search for food and water, depending on the availability. We were part of the balance of nature. We lived in harmony with the ecology, in the same rhythms. For a hundred thousand years. The principle of “make hay while the sun shines” was in our genes. When there was abundance, we enjoyed it, because we knew that the hungry years would come. That’s nothing unique, all animals are like that. Then we discovered how to domesticate cattle and goats and we learned to sow grass seed and after that everything changed. When we stopped moving on, we made villages. We multiplied and we sowed and our cattle and sheep and pigs grazed in one area. We lost the rhythms of nature. Are you following me so far?’
Emma nodded.
‘I’m not saying that what happened was wrong. It was inevitable, it was evolution. But it had enormous implications. The academics say the place we first began to farm was in the Middle East, the fertile crescent of Iraq in the East, through Syria and Israel to Turkey. Go and see what it looks like today and it’s hard to believe they call it the Fertile Crescent. It’s just desert. But ten thousand years ago it wasn’t desert. It was grassland and trees, a temperate climate, good soil. Most people believe that the climate changed and that’s why there’s nothing there today. Oddly, the climate is just about the same. It became desert because people and their agriculture exhausted the Middle East. Overgrazed, over-farmed and over-utilised. Because of that urge to utilise abundance fully, there might never be a tomorrow …’
Moller wasn’t the natural evangelical speaker that Donnie Branca was. His voice was softer, the tone infinitely courteous, but his belief in what he said was equally immovable. Emma sat transfixed.
‘We can’t change history. We can’t wish away all the technology and agriculture and we certainly can’t change human nature. The peacock with the longest, most colourful tail has the best chance to get a mate; whereas we rely on the number of cattle in our kraal, or the name of the car in our garage. That’s why money controls everything. People are not truly capable of conservation, though they make all the right noises. It’s just not in our nature. Whether we’re talking about pumping oil or chopping down trees for firewood, the environment will be the loser. The only way to keep a proper ecological balance today is to keep the people out. Completely. The entire concept of public game reserves is failing, regardless of whether they are national, provincial or private game parks. Do you know how many rhino have been shot for their horns in game parks this year?’
Emma shook her head.
‘Twenty-six. Twenty of them were in Kruger. They arrested two game rangers – the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. In KwaZulu two white men drove into the Umfolozi Game Reserve in broad daylight, shot two rhino, cut off the horns and drove out. Everybody knows there are rhino there. That’s why I lock my gates. The less they know, the greater the chance that my animals will survive.’
‘I understand.’
‘That’s why I don’t want tourists here. Once that starts, it gets harder to control. The accommodation in Kruger is insufficient, the demand continues to grow. Now they are going to build more. Where does it stop? Who decides? Certainly not the ecology, that’s for sure. The pressure is political and financial. Tourism has become the lifeblood of our country, a bigger industry than our gold mines. It creates jobs, brings in foreign currency, it’s become a monster that we must keep on feeding. That monster will consume us, one day. Only the places like Heuningklip will remain. But not for ever. Nothing can stand in the path of man.’
15
In the Aventura Badplaas holiday resort’s barbecue restaurant we waited for the manager to track down Melanie Lettering’s current place of work.
