The Raft: A Novel (5 page)

I struggled to breathe. My heart beat faster. My body knew what my mind couldn’t fully register: I was more than nervous. I was scared.

His left foot moved forward. Then the right. Then the left.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
My hands scrabbled for purchase on the bank behind me, I pushed myself up with my feet, crawling backwards as fast as I could. He was gathering speed, lurching towards me, hands out, grabbing at air.

I’m sorry,
I told him.
I don’t have any more.

He wailed from his throat, disappointed and aggrieved. I continued to crawl backwards, realising he was not going to stop. He was begging now, yowling for food and no matter what I said he would not accept that I had nothing left to offer. He would not stop. I flipped over and dug my feet into the mud. I would have to run.

Moneta, it is time to run for your life,
I told myself.
This is what you must do. No time to think it through, Moneta. Run.

And so I did. I ran.

If there’s one bit of advice I can give you, it’s this: take care of your body. People forget it’s the only one they’ve got, flippantly putting all kinds of poisonous things into it, never doing enough to keep it fit and strong. People don’t realise that when it finally gives in, there is no replacement. That’s it.
You’ve ruined it, rotted it away, and now you’re stuck in it, my friend.
People also don’t realise that, yes, they will get older. Their bodies will weaken and there will be some things they won’t be able to do, like climb a tree or jump over a fence. Or run. Oh, I would give anything to be able to run again. Anything to have my young legs, my young lungs and my young heart! And let me tell you, as a young girl, I could
run
all right. On that hot summer morning, in the thick, evergreen woods of Tsitsikamma, with gangling, lizard-faced Burt ploughing through the woods after me, I ran.

I ran like I’d never run before. I hurtled through that forest. Each tree was a rushing blur. The air pumped in and out of my lungs. My heart thumped against my rib cage as I clambered up slippery muddy banks and splashed through puddles.

I ran as fast as I could, but running in fear is not like running to win a race or get in shape. Running in fear, your legs are never fast enough for your racing mind. I had no idea how far he was behind me, if I was losing him, if he was gaining on me, or if, at any second, his bony hand would snatch me by the shoulder and jerk me to the dirt. I simply ran and hoped. I hoped I’d make it out of the woods in time. I hoped I’d be able to burst into the kitchen and throw myself into my mother’s arms. She’d be standing in her apron over a boiling pot of something good. She’d throw her arms around me and I’d cry. She’d rub my back and tell me,
It’s okay, sweet pea, everything’s going to be all right.

But I was not in the kitchen. I was not even in the lodge. I was in the middle of the woods. The man in the woods was an unknown distance behind me, with legs so long it probably took him only one or two steps to cover my five or six. I didn’t stand a chance.

I glanced over my shoulder.

There he was, ten to fifteen metres back, his arms and legs flapping like cooked spaghetti as he tore through the woods towards me. He let off a sound, a cross between a growl and a groan. Fury and despondency filled his wordless utterings.

Strange, yes? And possibly hard for you to believe. But it is what happened next that you may struggle with most. I wouldn’t blame you. As I grew older I somehow convinced myself that it hadn’t happened—that it was the wily invention of a child’s fancy—but these days, in these late years, I have come around. I now know that what I came to witness that day occurred just as I remembered it. This is another of a long life’s little lessons: there is no greater ignorance than the belittling of a memory for the sake of what you believe to be the truth at
that
point of your life. Once you decide the events of your past did or did not occur in the way that you once believed, you harm yourself in ways you cannot fathom.

Oh, young man. Take this with you: tread lightly. Your memories are what are left of your experiences, and a memory that has been tampered with is not easily fixed. It took me the better part of a hundred years to remind myself of exactly what happened that day in the woods. A hundred years to identify and then dispel all of the supposed
insights
I’d accumulated since then and restore my memory like a conservator restores a weathered old painting, stroke by careful stroke.

Remember that.

As I ran through that forest, something mystical took me over.

I always knew I could run, but I was no longer simply running. I was moving through the forest as if I had designed it myself. I knew every part of it. I anticipated every upcoming hole in the ground—every slippery slope, every fallen branch. I leaped from rock to rock. I swerved effortlessly through the gauntlet of trees and bushes. It felt as if I was running on air, as if the forest had uploaded the obstacle course in my head beforehand, or I had done the exact route a thousand times before. The woods opened up. I flew through a thick bush, barely touching it. I cannot explain how I managed this, but I did. The bush was riddled with thick thorns, but it left me unscathed as I slipped through it.

I looked back and saw the man crash into the same bush. The thorns ripped through him, shredding his coat and his skin. He howled as he smashed through the dried hedges and burst out with two thrashing fists. Once he was out, he continued running after me, cut up and bleeding, yet seemingly oblivious to the pain. I ran ahead of him.

I flitted through a clearing of tall grass and small shrubs. My bare legs were exposed to a poisonous ivy, but suffered not even the slightest reddening of the skin. Those rough leaves brushed past me like soft strips of cotton cloth.

The man rushed into the same grasses and crashed into the thick underbrush, landing on all fours. I spun to see him. The ivy was not nearly as forgiving to him. He wailed like a baboon in a trap. The ivy ran across his face, grazing and infecting him, intensifying the pain from his cuts. His screams echoed through the trees.

Now, I’ve felt ivy; it stings, but his was most certainly
not
a normal reaction. In just a few short seconds his face had reddened and swelled like a boiled tomato. On the mound of each of his lumps, white blisters began to form. His left eyelid bulged and drooped. His thin, indistinguishable lips were at once very distinguishable—fat and red.

I swear it.

Some people may tell you it is impossible, that ivy would never affect one so severely, but let me tell you, I saw it. It was as if scalding hot water had been poured over him. He yelped like a small dog, struggling to breathe as he slowly got to his feet. Even his hands were no longer long and white, but inflamed and disfigured. With a madman’s gusto, he staggered on towards me, his hands swimming through the damp air, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

I gulped and took a few quick steps back as he edged closer, reeling and panting. He threw himself against the trunk of a tree and wrapped his arms around it. His throat was so bloated it must have been virtually impossible to breathe. He wheezed and whistled, his face pressed against the bark. His lips and eyes drooped from his face like slivers of raw fish and yet I could still see an intensity in his face. There was still a busy and incensed mind inside that failing, bloated vessel, that was for sure.

My father’s words came back to me:
Plants have had to survive this world just like everything else.

He saw me—or perhaps he simply sensed me—and pushed himself off the tree with whatever strength of will he had left. I moved backwards. He swayed as he took a few steps, confused, battered, blistering, but still intent on stalking forward.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are weak or useless things.

A flying insect buzzed around his face, and he swatted blindly at it. The insect circled his head, infuriating him. I saw then that it was no harmless fly that had made its acquaintance. It was a hornet.

The hornet landed on his face and stung him. He shuddered, froze in his spot, and shrieked. I looked up. A second hornet was spiralling down from above. Then, a third. Soon there were hundreds, literally
hundreds
of them, descending from the trees and engulfing him. He flung his arms madly and let off a high and unearthly screech. They stung him in the neck and face. They slipped beneath his clothing and plunged their stingers into his body. He beat himself with his fists, throwing himself forwards and backwards, spinning on his spot like a top, yapping and wailing as they flew into his mouth, as they stung him in the eyes, as they injected their poison into his blood.

He tried to walk but at that point he could barely stand. His legs began to wobble, and then he dropped to his knees.

I grabbed my chance to leave.

With the sound of his screams following me, I ran back to the lodge as quickly as I could. The light of the sun lit my path. The bushes and trees parted. The wind escorted me. I ran flat-out for almost fifteen minutes.

My mother was drinking tea at the kitchen table, reading the paper. I burst in, sweating and panting. I left muddy tracks all over the floor. She pushed herself back from the table and stood. I ran into her, just as I’d imagined, and then I cried. She asked me what had happened. She asked me where I’d been, but I said nothing. She kissed me on the top of my head, rubbed my back in circles, and said to me the words I’d ached to hear, but at that moment they were the most impotent little words I’d ever heard:
It’s okay, sweet pea, everything’s going to be all right.

A mother gives up

“I
t took me only three or four days to go back into the woods,” Moneta said, sitting at the iron table with her hands folded neatly on her lap. “But the woods were a different place. And I was a different person.”

Our tea was finished. It had been a while since I’d had tea, and I’d enjoyed it thoroughly. Moneta had undoubtedly used her own leaves. It had been strong and invigorating.

“Did you see him again?” I asked. As difficult as it was to believe the man had truly been attacked by plants, I had absorbed every word of her story. In fact, she’d not so much
told
her story as had it seep from her, filling the air until we were both steeped in it, like the steam from our cups.

“When I went back into the woods I decided to return to where I’d left him. It took me more than an hour to get there, far longer than it had taken when I ran out of the woods. I retraced each of my steps with dread. I didn’t know what to expect. Somehow I imagined he’d still be kneeling in the centre of the clearing, swatting at the hornets, but there were no piercing screams, no more buzzing. Even the brook in the distance seemed to have stopped gurgling. The woods were uncannily still, as if the trees had withdrawn into themselves, in mourning perhaps, or shame.

“And then, there he was. His dead body lying in the grass, still in his tattered coat. But what was most interesting was the underbrush. The grasses. You see, in the few days since I had left him, the plants had covered him. From what I could see of him: his arms, his legs, his hands, his feet—all that wasn’t obscured by his coat—they’d somehow grown over him, tied him down, either in an attempt to hide him or prevent him from standing. He had been wrapped, swaddled like a mummy in green bandages. If not for his black trench coat, I may have had trouble finding him at all.

“I stood over him for a few minutes, studying him. He was lying front down, his legs and arms bent and twisted. The plants hadn’t yet swallowed his head—it was turned to the side and his eyes were open and glassy, like a doll’s, looking at nothing. Surprisingly, I felt both sadness and guilt: sadness that he’d been punished for possibly not knowing any better, guilt that I’d run from him in the first place. He hadn’t hurt me. He’d only frightened me, and I wasn’t certain my fright alone had warranted his long and agonising death. But I knew too that I had had no choice. And the woods, it had seemed, had had none either. I sat on my haunches, tilted my head, and looked down into his eyes. He looked right through me. I expected him to blink, but he didn’t. He just lay there, a sad scarecrow who had fallen over. A beached sea creature. It was the first dead body I had ever seen.”

I listened as she spoke, but couldn’t help studying the small details of her face: the thin lines running down the sides of her nose, her grey eyes calm and wise, old inside a face that looked considerably younger.

A young boy ran to Moneta’s side. Short and wiry, he had a dark complexion and thin, tousled hair. She turned and beamed at him, and patted his cheek.

“Hello Junyap,” she said. The boy smiled back and then looked at me. I had not seen him before. “Say hello to the nice man,” she told him.

He greeted me in English, politely on cue, although I could tell he was not an English speaker. He said something to Moneta in his own language and she replied. They kissed each other on the cheek and then he left her side.

“He’s been in my care for a few months now. He’s a special little boy. Very sharp. He lives here with me and helps me with the plants. He loves them, just as I do. He once told me that his favourite memory is of his grandmother, sitting barefoot on the lawn of their old house, singing and pulling out weeds. It sounds like she was a warm and beautiful woman. We’ve been teaching each other our languages, Junyap and I, but he’s catching on quicker than I am. Children: they’re sponges.”

She watched him as he picked up a watering can and moistened the soil of the large wooden crate I had dragged in earlier.

“He was separated from his family—his mother, father, sister and two older brothers—and yet he has never cried a tear. He loves them dearly, but he is a realist. Pragmatic. Some may mistake it for aloofness, but I have come to understand him; he is a survivor. Astute. And yet, somehow, a gentle soul. So much so that there is no one else I trust more to take care of this garden after I am gone.”