He paused for a moment, looking at me directly. ‘There was only one tusk.’
I instantly snapped out of my reverie. ‘What do you mean only one! Where’s the other?’
‘It’s gone. Stolen.’
‘How did that happen?’ I was shocked to the core.
‘It was there yesterday evening. I saw it myself, and today it’s gone.’ He continued staring at me, a rare gesture for rural Zulus whose culture demands that eyes be averted. I think he was as shocked as I was.
‘We searched for hundreds of yards around the body. Then I had every inch of the fence checked and there are no holes cut by poachers. Nobody broke in last night.’
I stared back, astounded.
‘Also I advised security and every car today has been searched. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.’
‘That’s unbelievable,’ I said, thinking back to our early poaching days, ‘I mean … who the hell took it then?’
‘It’s still on the reserve,’ replied Vusi confidently. ‘It’s one of the staff and it has been hidden somewhere here. Someone with a vehicle. I saw the lights near the body last night, but it was gone before I got halfway.’
Just then Ngwenya walked up carrying the second tusk over his shoulder and lowered it heavily onto the ground.
‘There is something that will interest you,’ said Vusi,abandoning the topic of the theft. ‘Feel here,’ he knelt down next to the magnificent piece of ivory, his fingers running lightly over its length. ‘There is a bad crack.’
I crouched next to him. I had always known that the tip of Mnumzane’s tusk had a slight crack, but as this is fairly common among elephants, I didn’t worry much about it.
But then I followed the path of Vusi’s fingers with my own and whistled. On closer inspection the crack was much bigger and deeper than I had realized; in fact the tusk was splayed right open at the end and the blackened interior was visible. A tusk is just an extended tooth. And just as with a human, a break like that in a living tooth is a magnet for infection and absolute torture, as anyone who has ever had an abscess will attest.
‘Yebo, Mkhulu,’ said Vusi. ‘There was a big swelling right at the top of the tusk, deep inside. I cut it open. It was rotten.’
I whistled again, for now everything made perfect sense. Poor Mnumzane had been in so much pain for so long that he just couldn’t stand it any more. That’s why he became so evil-tempered. And, I suddenly realized, that’s exactly why he went berserk and flipped the Land Rover over. When I reversed I jarred his excruciatingly sensitive tusk on the edge of the Landy’s window. He must have seen blinding stars in his agony. It took the gunshots from my pistol just to yank him out of it.
I sat down on the lawn and put my head in my hands. Although unusual to do with a wild elephant, all it would have taken was a dart of sedative, a good vet and some antibiotics and we could probably have taken his pain away. And he would have still been with us. A picture of him contentedly browsing before me during our ‘chats’ flashed through my mind. He basically had been a happy creature – despite the tragedies he had witnessed in his short life.
I shook myself out of it, forced myself to focus and then stood up. There was nothing I could do about it now.
‘Let’s get the tusk cleaned and then store it in a safe place,’ I said to Vusi. ‘Now at last we know what happened to him and why he went crazy.’
‘Yebo, Mkhulu.’
‘And let’s find that other tusk!’
I walked away astonished that one of my own staff could even think of stealing Mnumzane’s tusk at a time like this. I had wanted them mounted as a pair in the lodge as a commemoration of his life.
We never found the tusk. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still looking.
That afternoon I received a surprise phone call from Nkosi Biyela. We had been in regular contact, but more often than not through his izindunas, headmen, as intermediaries.
‘I would like to meet with you,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I will come to Thula Thula tomorrow afternoon late.’
‘I look forward to it,’ I replied heartened by the call, ‘and may I make a suggestion? Please bring your wife and stay the night with us at the lodge as our guests.’
‘Yes, good idea, thank you. It will give us time to talk about our game-reserve project. I will see you tomorrow then.’
The game reserve, the Royal Zulu, was the main reason I had come to Thula Thula all those years ago. My heart jumped – especially as he had referred to it as ‘our project’, which was a first since the project had first been presented to his father Nkanyiso Biyela twelve years ago. I had pursued the vision relentlessly but as so often happens in Africa, the delays and complications at times seemed insurmountable. Nkosi Biyela was the key to its success as he was by far the most powerful chief in the area and controlled the biggest chunk of the land. And he wanted to talk!
That afternoon he arrived and we drove through the reserve on a late Zululand afternoon, observing the lush wilderness and robust wildlife and talking about the future.
‘Whose land is that?’ asked the Nkosi pointing to a stretch of heavy bush just outside our boundary.
‘It is yours.’
‘Good! Then I would like to join it with you,’ he said. Simple as that.
I realized he wanted to continue and held off a reply. He then got out
