He had wondered if they were still there. Whether he and his son would see the descendants of the animals he had waited for with bated breath as a child. Did they still follow the same paths through the reeds and bulrushes?
Would he still know the paths? Should he stop here, take off his shoes and disappear between the thorn trees? Search out the same paths at a jogtrot; find that rhythm when you felt you could run forever, as long as there was a hill on the horizon for you to climb?
While Carlos was seated in front of the TV with a glass and a bottle of red wine, she took the syringe of blood out of her handbag and hid it deep in a cupboard where pots and pans were stacked, bright, new and unused.
She looked for a hiding place for the toy dog before she took it out from under packs of vegetables in the shopping bags.
Her hands shook because she would not hear Carlos coming before he was in the room.
They drove in silence for two hours. Beyond Grahamstown, in the dark of early evening, he said: ?Did you ever hear of Nxele?? His tongue clicked sharply pronouncing the name.
He did not expect an answer. If he did get one he knew what it would be. White people didn?t know this history.
?Nxele. They say he was a big man. Two meters tall. And he could talk. Once he talked himself off a Xhosa execution pyre. And then he became chief, without having the blood of kings.?
He didn?t care if the white man was listening or not. He kept his eyes on the road. He wanted to shake off his lassitude, say what this landscape awakened in him. He wanted to relieve the tension somehow.
?Exceptional in that time, nearly two hundred years ago. He lived in a time when the people fought against each other?and the English too. Then Nxele came and said they must stop kneeling to the white God. They must listen to the voice of Mdalidiphu, the God of the Xhosa, who said you must not kneel before Him in the dust. You must live. You must dance. You must lift your head and grab hold of life. You must sleep with your wife so we can increase, so we can fill the earth and drive the white man out. So we can take back our land.
?You could say he was the father of the first Struggle. Then he gathered ten thousand warriors together. Did you see where we traveled today, Griessel? Did you see? Can you imagine what ten thousand warriors would look like coming over these hills? They smeared themselves red with ochre. Each had six or seven long throwing spears in his hand and a shield. They ran here like that. Nxele told them to be silent, no singing or shouting. They wanted to surprise the English here at Grahamstown. Ten thousand warriors in step, their footsteps the only sound. Through the valleys and over the rivers and hills like a long red snake. Imagine you are an Englishman in Grahamstown waking up one morning in April and looking up to the hills. One moment things look as they do every day, and the next moment this army materializes on the hilltops and you see the glint of seventy thousand spears, but there is no sound. Like death.
?Nxele moved through them. He told them to break one of their long spears over their knees. He said Mdalidiphu would turn the British bullets to water. They must charge the cannons and guns together and throw the long spears when they got close enough. And they could throw, those men. At a range of sixty meters they could launch a spear through the air and find the heart of an Englishman. When the last long spear had been thrown, they must hold the spear with the broken shaft. Nxele knew you couldn?t use a long spear when you could see the whites of your enemy?s eyes. Then you needed a weapon to stab open a path in front of you.
?They say it was a clear day. They said the English couldn?t believe the way the Xhosa moved up there on the crest. Deathly quiet. But each knew exactly where his place in line was.
?Down below, the Redcoats erected their barriers. Up there, the red men waited for the signal. And when the whites sat down at their tables laid for midday dinner, they came down.
?From the time I first heard that story from my uncle I wanted to be with them, Griessel. They said that when the warriors charged, a terrible cry went up. They say that cry is in every soldier. When you are at war, when your blood is high in battle, then it comes out. It explodes from your throat and gives you the strength of an elephant and the speed of an antelope. They say every man is afraid until that moment, and then there is no more fear. Then you are pure fighter and nothing can stop you.
?All my life I wanted to be a part of them. I wanted to be there at the front. I wanted to throw my spears and keep the short assegai for last. I wanted to smell the gunpowder and the blood. They said the stream in town ran red with blood that day. I wanted to look an Englishman in the eyes and he must lift his bayonet and we must oppose each other as soldiers, each fighting for his cause. I wanted to make war with honor. If his blade was faster than mine, if his strength was greater, then so be it. Then I would die like a man. Like a warrior.?
He was quiet for a long time. A distance past the turnoff to Bushmans River Mouth he said: ?There is no honor anymore. It makes no difference what Struggle you choose.?
Again silence descended on the car, but it felt to Thobela as if the character of the silence had changed.
?What happened, that day?? Griessel?s voice came from the back.
Thobela smiled in the darkness. For many reasons.
?It was a tremendous battle. The English had cannon and guns. Shrapnel shells. A thousand Xhosa fell. Some of them they found days later, miles away, with bunches of grass pushed into their gaping wounds to stem the bleeding. But it was a close thing. There was time in the battle when the balance began to swing in favor of the Xhosa. The ranks of Nxele were too fast and too many, the English could not reload quickly enough. Time stood still. The battle was on a knife edge. Then the Redcoats got their miracle. His name was Boesak, can you believe it? He was a Khoi big-game hunter turned soldier. He was out on patrol with a hundred and thirty men and they came back, on that day. At just the right time for the English, when the British captain was ready to sound the retreat. Boesak and a hundred and thirty of the best marksmen in the country. And they aimed for the biggest warriors, the Xhosa who fought up front, who ran between the men and urged them on. The heart of the assault. They were shot down one by one, like bulls from the herd. And then it was all over.?
She tried to grind the pills in a flour sifter, but they were too hard.
She took the breadboard and a teaspoon and crushed the pills?some pieces shot over the floor and she began to panic. She used more pills, pressed. The teaspoon banged on the breadboard.
Would Carlos hear?
She wiped the yellow powder off the breadboard into a small dish she had set on one side. Was it fine enough?
