Tandia (96 page)

Peekay explained that he could only stay a couple of hours and was on his way to Swaziland, news which was met with a great deal of consternation, particularly from the twins who'd rushed to the kitchen to rustle up a batch of pumpkin scones. Peekay wasn't going to chance bringing Gideon over the border, he'd bring him back over the mountains on foot, and so he got the twins to pack two sets of bush clothes. Then he told Dee and Dum to take food enough for two meals out to Eendrag farm where they would find a motor car parked outside the old house. 'The boot will be open; put the food in the boot.'

'We will wait for you, so we can cook you a proper meal,' Dum said. Peekay forbade them to do so and their bottom lips dropped simultaneously in an exact and unconscious duplicate expression of dismay.

Peekay called Gert at the prison and asked if he could borrow his half-ton utility and if he'd meet him at Eendrag farm. Gert didn't question him when they met, he understood that if an explanation was necessary Peekay would have made it. Peekay arranged to have Gert pick up his bakkie at an Indian store two miles into the border on the Swaziland side in two days' time, the keys left with the Indian storekeeper. Dropping Gert off at the prison, he left just after two in the afternoon for the drive over the mountains to Swaziland.

The road to Havelock is winding and not well used, so that Peekay felt he had the mountains to himself. It was an early spring day in September and the sky was an intense blue, turning the crags and bluffs around him to grey. The winter tussocks which grew on the high slopes shone silver with the late season, making a dreaming landscape around him. He imagined the stillness beyond the whining engine of the truck: the crystal cave of Africa was no more than a few miles from the road he travelled and he thought of Doe, the knight errant of Africa, his long thin body stretched out on his white throne.

Sudden tears welled in Peekay's eyes. 'Doe, the madness has won in the beloved country,' he said, looking up into the mountains. He pulled over and cut the engine, his tears making him unable to see the winding road. The total stillness swept around him and enclosed him as though drawing him into the dreaming time where Doc lay in his cave. 'Doe, please help me to fight the madness,' he whispered.

Peekay crossed the border and the road deteriorated almost immediately so that it took almost forty minutes to reach the little town of Pigg's Peak. He drove to the general store, bought a case of Lion beer and a carton of cigarettes and returned to the car. Then he drove to the open marketplace where twice a week the women from the villages brought produce for sale. He placed the beer in the back of the truck and the cigarettes in the glove compartment, got back in and waited. It was five minutes to four in the afternoon.

A few minutes later an African, wearing a shabby khaki army greatcoat, perhaps in his fifties, opened the door on the passenger side and climbed in. He smelt pretty ripe and Peekay extended his hand. The black man took it, and they shook hands in the traditional African double-grip manner. 'My name is Julius,' the black man said slowly in English, pausing between each word.

'Peekay, my name is Peekay. Thank you for being on time to meet me,' Peekay said in Siswati. The older man was delighted and threw back his head and laughed, showing only four yellowed teeth in his mouth. 'Now I know you are the
Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,
you speak all the languages of the people!' He pointed to four young men who stood outside waiting. 'Please, we can give for these boys a lift, they go to the same village.'

Peekay readily agreed and the four young guys, laughing among themselves, climbed into the truck.

Peekay turned on the ignition. 'Where are we going, Julius?'

'We are going to see Somojo. It is near the great mountain Bulembu, I think maybe one hour.' Julius held up his forefinger. It was almost back to the border he'd just come from, though Julius had no way of knowing this.

'Somojo? The Great sangoma?' Peekay was surprised, the greatest of the living medicine men seldom saw whites. 'He said we must bring the
Onoshobishobi IngeJosi
to him.' Peekay had expected that Gideon might be in hiding in a friendly village where they would have to deal with a clan chief and he'd brought three good white collarless cotton poplin shirts with him. The shirts were of the old-fashioned kind intended for starched collars; worn collarless, with a traditional stud to hold the neck together, they were much favoured by older African men of some standing. They were not a gift worthy of the great Somojo, Peekay thought; he would need to apologize profusely when he presented them.

They arrived at sunset and Peekay was taken to a reception hut, a round beehive construction made of woven grass held into a conical shape by saplings, known as a
'guga'.
A woman brought him a huge old Victorian porcelain basin and jug filled with water for him to wash.' The floor was covered with a freshly woven grass mat; a small three legged stool in the very centre of the room was the single piece of furniture in the round hut. At the door was an earthenware water pot of dark clay with a small drinking calabash floating on top of it.

The four -young guys brought out the case of beer, his canvas overnight bag and sleeping bag and placed these within the hut. Then they squatted beside the doorway, talking in an animated manner, enjoying the importance of the occasion. From their conversation they appeared to know nothing of Gideon but had simply gone along to bring Peekay to Somojo's kraal. It seemed unlikely that they'd simply cadged a lift or they would have moved on after they'd arrived. Then it occurred that they were there to guard him in the event that they had been followed.

Julius, too, hadn't mentioned Gideon. Peekay walked out to the bakkie and retrieved the carton of cigarettes from the glove box. He broke out a pack and he handed it to the boys who were delighted and divided the pack between them, each lighting a cigarette and keeping the remaining four, sticking two behind each ear.

Using his rolled-up sleeping bag as a pillow, Peekay lay on the grass mat which was new and still smelt of the sweetness of the meadow. When it had grown dark in the hut and Peekay had been kept waiting an hour or so, sufficiently long for the old witchdoctor to assert his importance, a small boy came to fetch him. Carrying the three white poplin shirts, Peekay stepped out into the early evening. The village was a big one with perhaps fifty beehive huts built around a cattle kraal enclosure of wooden stakes and thorn-tree scrub. The cattle were being driven into the safety of the kraal for the night by the herd boys, one of whom was cracking a whip and really acting the boss. Outside the huts, fires were beginning to crackle and snap as women fed green thorn-bush branches into them. The smell of smoke, cattle dung and dust, the sound of the lowing cattle, the barking and yapping of the scrawny yellow mongrels and the laughter of the women as they prepared the evening meal filled the air and seemed to Peekay to be an altogether fitting way to close down a long and tiring day.

The small boy ran ahead of him. Moving between huts, scattering chickens who'd not yet flown to their roosts for the night. They came to a path on the edge of the village and Peekay followed the child down it. It was getting dark, as it does quickly after sunset in those parts where the high mountains snaffle the light. They came to a clearing completely enclosed with a high wooden fence made of heavy stakes. The child stopped at the opening to the enclosure and pointed inwards; then he turned and ran for his life back down the way they'd just come. Peekay turned and watched as the darkness swallowed the child up.

The small compound contained three beautifully constructed traditional conical huts, one large central one and a smaller one to each side of it. A fire burned outside the large hut and two jackal-skin karosses were spread over grass mats beside the fire. Almost immediately a young woman appeared from one of the smaller huts and silently invited Peekay to sit, pointing to one of the karosses.

Peekay removed his shoes and sat cross-legged, placing the. white shirts on his lap. Outside the compound a frog began to croak and almost immediately the night was filled with the the sound of frogs responding. Peekay had seen no water but guessed there must be a dam or stream nearby. He heard the sound of coughing coming from the large hut, then hawking and the pause of someone spitting. Then he made out the irascible voice of an old man saying something he couldn't quite hear.

Moments later the great Somojo stood at the entrance, being led by a second young African woman. He was a tiny little man, bent over with age, wrapped entirely in a bright purple blanket. He allowed himself to be led to the kaross next to Peekay where the first young woman waited for him. Together they placed him on the soft warm fur and pulled the blanket around him so that only his ancient head appeared above the purple mound. He sniffed and smacked his toothless gums; his rheumy eyes appeared not to see and his chest wheezed so that he gave the impression of someone who wonders where he is and is completely confounded as to how he got there.

The Swazis are small and lightly built, a mountain people, but Somojo was positively tiny and took up hardly more room than if the blanket alone had been carelessly dropped to the ground. It was hard to believe that this old man was one of the most powerful black men in Africa, the greatest of all the medicine men alive, the wizard of all the wizards. When the drums of Africa carried his name, kings and paramount chiefs trembled for the power of his witchcraft. It was said that he could turn day-old chickens into hawks and hawks into mighty eagles with wings that cast a shadow over the sun. Stories were told of how he could make the great black mamba dance on the last three inches of his tail, how he had reached through the king's chest, when King Sobhuza II was just a young boy, and pulled out his heart, making an incantation and putting it back in front of the eyes of all his counsellors, how the king had fathered seventy sons in the ensuing forty years and each year came more, each a mightier warrior than the last. At night, late, a white owl came to sit on the roof of his hut and if any man saw this great white bird, in seven days he would die of a madness which would make him take a knife and tear his own entrails from his stomach. Somojo's cures were legendary and his prophecies so profound that no great tribal decision from the Congo River down could take place until he had seen the sacred smoke, thrown the bones, examined the entrails of a red jackal and given his approval or sanction. The curse of Somojo the great was worse than death because it meant when death came there would be no return to the shadows of the dead man's clan. The dead one would become a ghost who wandered alone in the spirit world, howling in crags and mountain peaks, cursed and utterly forlorn, never again to sit beside a fire drinking beer in the company of his shadows in the spirit world.

Like Inkosi-Inkosikazi before him, Somojo was very rich and had travelled throughout the country in a great black Mercedes 600. He no longer travelled now, though, and the last time he had left his home in the mountains of Swaziland had been when he appeared at Sharpeville. His great black car had been given to the king and now he lay each night on his jackal-skin kaross between two young princesses from the royal kraal who kept his old bones warm and attended to his every need.

One of these young women brought two gourds of
mqombothi,
maize beer, and handed one to Peekay.

'I thank you,
inKosazana,'
Peekay said, addressing her by her title of princess. The young woman smiled shyly, surprised at this expression of respect coming from a white man. Then she kneeled and held the second gourd of beer to the great Somojo's mouth, feeding him the thick concoction as one might a small child. Peekay wondered if the old man was senile, for he'd given no sign that he was aware of his presence. He drank the sour beer, trying desperately not to pull a face and waited, for he dared not say a word until he had been formally recognized by the great medicine man. One of the young women appeared with a tin plate piled high with stiff maize porridge, known as
iPhalishi,
a small bowl of meat, and another bowl of peppered yams and greens picked in the wild. She placed these in front of Peekay. The second maiden appeared with food for Somojo and together the two young women proceeded to hand feed the old man, rolling the stiff porridge into tiny balls and chewing his meat for him before placing it in his mouth.

There is a moment in the high mountains that is like no other experience on earth. It comes when a full moon rises suddenly from behind the black outline of the high crags and peaks and lights the night world. It is a moment of moments, a sudden great golden orb that hangs so close above the peaks that the women in the mountain kraals rush from their huts to sing a song to encourage it to remain where it is and not to roll down the peaks and set the world on fire. The song is like a children's nursery rhyme and is meant to show proper respect as well as flatter the Lord New Moon so he doesn't get any crazy ideas about coming down the mountainside to have a look at how things are going on earth and, in the process, do all manner of damage.

Lord, Full Moon

Stay high
in
your mountain sky

Great eye of bone and golden light

watch the wily demon night

Stay high, stay high!

Peekay finished his simple meal and waited for the great Somojo to complete his own. It was now quite dark and only the embers from the fire threw a little light, though only sufficient to outline the old man and his two handmaidens. A grunt came from Somojo; the two women rose and, taking the plates, returned to the cooking hut. At that moment the moon came up and the young women came out of the cooking hut again, sang the rising moon song and then returned.