A Blade of Grass (19 page)

I
N THE DRY
, hard place where the garden lies hidden, Tembi brings her bucket of water. The earth must drink, the plants must drink. As she walks around the side of the koppie to the secret place that is hidden by rocks and scrub, her heart lifts in anticipation of seeing the flowers that grow. She sets the bucket down and flexes her arm to remove the ache in the muscles and clambers over the rocks—and the gladness in her heart is removed in one swift blow.

The flowers are gone.

She pushes aside the barrier of scrub, heedless of the thorns that rake her arms. The plants are there, yes—all is not lost—but where are the flowers? Has some animal found its way into the enclosure? Her hands reach in among the leaves, gently parting the vines, and her fingers touch the unfamiliar shape of small round objects, smooth to her careful touch. She bends lower to the ground, her heart beating, and in wonderment touches the new fruits that have sprouted. Small, green, flecked with yellow. The new life, strong and healthy.

She feels the trembling in the soil under her hands, she hears the pulse and beat of life in the air. The tremor in the air is loud, coming in quick surges that seem to push the air forward, and the vibration becomes a beat, then a steady mechanical shudder.

Tembi looks up to the sky.

In the fields where the cattle used to graze, the small boys also look up to the sky.

The women who bend to clear the weeds from the rows of maize straighten their backs and lift their heads and look up to the sky.

The men who pull the strands of wire tight as they repair a fence let the strands go slack in their fingers and look up to the sky.

The finches in the willows beside the river dart deeper into the screen of branches, and the doves in the bluegum trees beside the farmhouse flutter and wheel in confusion.

All look up to the sky, to the metallic roar hurtling towards the farm.

Sweeping low over the koppie, three squat helicopters drop down out of the sky. Three dark machines, the color of mud, squat, bristling, hard-shelled like swollen locusts. The sky shakes with their metallic clatter. One helicopter hovers above the house while another banks and circles over the kraal. The third makes a fast, sweeping pass down to the river and back, bristling with aerials and gun barrels, like some menacing giant insect.

The doves wheel and flutter in panic over the roof of the farmhouse. In the fields the small boys shake their willow switches at the helicopters and shout up through the grind and groan of the engines.

From the kraal a figure breaks from the entrance to a hut and runs in the direction of the river, through the orchard towards the screen of willow trees on the banks of the river. He runs quickly, desperate in his flight.

One of the machines tilts up and dives in pursuit like an angry insect, rotors whining. As it arcs over the koppie, almost on its side, Tembi looks up and sees the men in the open door of the helicopter, helmeted, goggled, arms pointing at the fleeing figure—the insect men inside the belly of the locust. The blades of the machine hack at the air, the smell of fuel is a rain from the sky, a gun barrel sweeps back and forth as the helicopter plummets upon the figure in the long grass.

The guns speak, and their words are the rapid chatter of steel against flesh. A man stumbles, then runs on. Now the running figure is in the last patch of empty ground before the shelter of the riverbank, and the machine swoops down, spitting flames. The running man falls, flung to the ground as if by an invisible fist, his feet and his hands and his face broken by the bullets that spit down from the machine.

Tembi crouches in her small acre of the world, an acre that spans only the distance between her two spread hands. She crouches against the hot
wind of sand and pebbles whipping across the soil, and the smell of machine fuel everywhere, and the voice of the bullets. She crouches with her body hunched over her green seedlings.

M
ÄRIT IS AT THE DESK
in her office with the accounts ledger spread open, her mind fixed on the financial future of the farm. How will she handle the finances alone? How can the farm survive without the cattle? She has telephoned the police in Klipspring about the theft of the cattle, and they have promised to investigate, but nothing has happened. Losing the cattle will mean that there is no future income for the farm. The mealies and the fruit, when ripe and harvested, will bring next to nothing. There are too many other farms with the same crops.

A faint tremor passes through her body, then the pencils in the jar on her desk begin to rattle. A boom and shudder shakes the house. Märit pushes her chair back and rushes to the window. Is it a storm? An earthquake?

But the sky is clear except for the high haze of cloud. A sound like hail falling on a tin roof rattles above, just as a dark shape flies over the house.

As Märit runs out to the veranda, a machine swoops low across the pasture, spitting little tongues of flame that make a chattering noise, like hail striking iron. A second machine is hovering just above the kraal. And now a third helicopter descends, larger than the others, and settles itself heavily near the house, the long blades spinning dangerously close to the trees. Before it has even touched the ground, uniformed men bearing weapons are spilling from the helicopter. Some scatter towards the kraal, while others make for the house.

Märit is stunned speechless. Everything is happening so quickly.

It is war, she thinks. But war is outside her knowledge except as pictures in magazines, old newsreels from another time, stories from elsewhere. This is different—the noise and the stench of the machines, the shouting, the purposeful and urgent men in khaki uniforms spreading across the gardens, and everywhere the ugly weapons, some even pointed at her now. She stands in a stillness at the center of this vortex, detached from this sudden tornado of activity, and her mind cannot grasp what she sees.

But it is war—for what other word is there to describe the violence that has descended so swiftly from the sky?

Tembi appears, running towards the house from the direction of the kraal. In her hand she carries a red plastic pail, and Märit’s mind focuses on this one detail, as if in a dream, wondering why Tembi carries a pail, wondering why it is a red pail and not some other color.

The soldiers see Tembi, and one of them shouts and runs to intercept her, grasping her arm roughly as she passes. Tembi stumbles, dropping the pail, then manages to free herself. But with a curse the soldier is quickly upon her, and this time he jerks her to the ground.

“Leave her alone!” Märit screams. She leaps off the porch and races across the driveway. But before she can reach the struggling Tembi, other hands grab her, pin her arms tight against her side; a rifle barrel digs into her back.

“Let me go!” But the arms squeeze tighter, lifting her slightly off the ground, pressing the breath out of her lungs.

“Genoeg! Verlos haar.”
A sharp voice of command. Enough. Leave her.

The arms let Märit go. Tembi scrambles to her feet and runs to Märit’s side.

A man emerges from amongst the soldiers in the khaki uniforms with their weapons and radios and equipment—a man in a light blue safari suit and dark sunglasses. The soldiers draw back, making way for him. He walks unhurriedly towards Märit, and a step or two behind him is a young soldier with a bulky radio on his back, the long aerial waving in the air, a mutter of voices and static emanating from the radio.

The man removes his sunglasses, revealing pale eyes, but Märit has already recognized him—Gideon Schoon.

“Mevrou Laurens.” He nods. He takes in her appearance and shakes his head, his lip curling in disapproval.

“This is outrageous!” Märit’s fright comes out in a surge of anger, her voice trembling. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing to my farm?”

“Forgive the manner of our arrival, Mevrou, but it is necessary.”

“What are you talking about? What’s necessary?”

Schoon withdraws a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolds it.

“Under Section Four of the Emergency Measures Act, I am here to conduct an antiterrorist action. Specifically, to locate and arrest any subversive elements that represent a threat to the state.”

“Terrorists? For God’s sake, this is a farm. What terrorists? Do you mean us? This is absurd.”

Schoon refolds the paper and fastens it back into his breast pocket.

“I have information, Mevrou Laurens, that certain individuals, who have no legal status in this country, are being harbored on this farm. Certain individuals whom we consider to be engaged in criminal activity prejudicial to the stability of the state.”

“Your information is wrong. You’re talking rubbish. I want you off my farm!”

“I think it would be in your best interest to cooperate with us, Mevrou.” Schoon permits himself a little smile, but his voice is hard underneath the elaborate politeness of tone.

Märit remembers the way Eloise Pretorius spoke to her outside Patel’s store in Klipspring, the same veiled politeness, the same threat.

“It is not in my interest,” she retorts. “There are no criminals or terrorists here, unless you’re referring to me. Is the way I live now an illegal act?”

“This document,” Schoon says bluntly, tapping his pocket, “empowers me, should I so wish, to arrest every individual on this farm, Mevrou. Yourself included. So let’s have no more of your nonsense.” He is impatient now. “With your permission, Mevrou, we will have a look around.” He turns to the soldiers, directing them to begin their search. “
Ondersoek die huis. Kyk wat is daar.
Search the house!”

They push past Märit and up the steps of the veranda. Märit half raises a hand in protest, then lets it fall. They are too many, they are too strong. And this is what soldiers are for—to subdue those weaker than themselves.

“You won’t find anyone in the house,” Märit tells Schoon. “Only Tembi and I live here.”

“For the moment I am not concerned with you or your
meid.
” The radio carried by the young soldier crackles a burst of words. The soldier
listens a moment, then says something to Schoon, who snaps his fingers at Märit and Tembi. “Come with me, please,” he says, striding off.

One of the other soldiers takes Tembi by the arm.

“Take your hands off her,” Märit snaps at him. “She doesn’t need your assistance.”

As they follow Schoon, Tembi whispers to Märit, “What do they want?”

“There’s nothing for them here. Don’t worry.”

“They were shooting, from the helicopter, into the fields.”

“Shh. We’ll see what it is.”

There are soldiers everywhere, like a pack of dogs scurrying about her land, and everywhere is the crackle of distorted voices from the radios, as if there is no language other than this mechanical static.

Near the kraal the farmworkers are gathered into a tight huddle surrounded by a ring of soldiers. As Schoon strides past the group, who turn frightened eyes to Märit, Tembi tries to break away, but her guard roughly pushes her back.

Schoon is making for the lower pasture, near the river, where one of the helicopters has settled, its long rotor blades drooping like the wings of an insect. Just past the helicopter a small knot of soldiers has formed. They stand aside as Schoon arrives.

Märit sees the man lying on the grass, legs outstretched, and she sees the blood on his clothes, and the big puncture wounds on his body, as if he has been stabbed repeatedly with some crude spear.

She looks at him uncomprehendingly. The soldiers nudge the two women forward.

Tembi gasps in horror. A dead man, the blood almost violet on his dark skin, and on the ground where the blood has seeped the soil is stained black.

The bile rises in her throat and she turns away.

The soldiers stare at Märit and Tembi. And this is the first time that the soldiers seem human to Tembi, when she can meet their eyes, look into the faces of men who seem little more than boys. But in their eyes she sees only contempt, because she is not one of them. They despise her, she realizes.
She is the enemy. And she wonders what they have been told to make them look upon her in this manner.

The grimness of these faces terrifies her, and she feels herself in the strangeness of a dream, where events unfold with a logical progression, but to some terribly wrong purpose. Has she been brought here to be shot and placed in the grass beside this butchered body? She wants to cry out, Stop! Something is wrong! But as in a dream she cannot find her voice, and her feet propel her inexorably towards the waiting horror.

Schoon steps up to Märit. “Do you know this man, Mevrou?”

Märit shakes her head, unable to speak.

“Look at him!” Schoon commands.

She half turns her head, with dreadful fascination. The ugliness of what she sees frightens and disgusts her, the obscenity of it, the ugliness of violence done against flesh.

She averts her eyes, but Schoon is insistent. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

“I don’t know him.”

The soldiers look down at the dead man with mute curiosity, apathy almost, as if at the aftermath of a traffic accident.

“Who is he?” Märit asks.

“They call themselves soldiers of liberation.” Schoon snorts with contempt. “A bandit. Nothing but a terrorist.”

“He doesn’t look like a soldier,” she says. Not compared to the soldiers who surround her. This man has nothing—just a pair of dirty sneakers and tattered clothes. Nothing that distinguishes him from the workers gathered near the kraal. No uniform, no radio, no helicopter.

Schoon snaps his fingers at the soldiers. “Show her. Show her the proof.”

One of the soldiers holds up a weapon, an old battered rifle with a worn barrel and stained stock.

“
AK
-47,” Schoon says. “Mass-produced, cheap, and dumped on this continent in the thousands. But a weapon all the same, no less deadly than ours.” The soldier holds the weapon high like a trophy.

“This bandit was found here on your farm, Mevrou, in the kraal of your farm.”