The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories (26 page)

We reached the summit of our Mount Everest with about ten minutes of daylight to spare. Lappies had already arrived, his eyes fixed on the sky as it roped in the first stars.

War has a way with landscapes. It can saturate the land with a beauty or oblivion that is never encountered in peacetime. Stars look especially different; they seem brighter, pricking away at the darkness and at our dreams. Perhaps Lappies understood this. Within minutes Staff had spread out a map in the dust and weighted the corners with four fist-sized stones. He orientated his compass and called our radio operator, Pretorius. I liked Pretorius. Unlike Badenhorst, Pretorius was someone I could talk to. He always carried a pocket-sized exercise book with a stub of pencil attached to it, even on patrol. I think he wanted to be a writer.

The radio crackled static as Staff confirmed the grids.

‘Two Niner Zulu! Two Niner Zulu! This is Bravo Leader, over!'

‘Proceed, Bravo Leader.'

Once the grids had been confirmed, Staff surveyed the depression with his binoculars and that's when we spotted them. Their skittish firelight had been hidden by the dusk, but as the darkness deepened it gave away their camp piece by piece. There must have been about thirty FAPLA down there, eating their dinner of samp and offal. We surveyed them in silence. Their laughter and the smell of bad meat were lugged up the koppie by the crisp night air. Our Mirages would vaporise them before their morning piss. A guard was posted, and not a word was said as we tried to puff the cold from our sleeping bags in that strange space of half-sleep. Lappies sat out the night, welded to a large, flat outcrop of rock, silhouetted in an army blanket, watching his ancestors hunting across the Milky Way.

At first light Staff Volskenk explained our role in the attack.

‘Okay, manne, set up a firing line on the ridge. Check your sights, and Badenhorst, no kak, hey. Use tracer, I want to see where the hell you are shooting. No shooting until I say so. Wilmot, I'm talking to you! Fok, man, listen!'

Suddenly the radio hissed, ‘Bravo Leader, Bravo Leader Victor Victor! MiGs inbound, take cover.'

Within seconds of the radio's warning, two Angolan MiG 21s cracked open the sunrise, contrails feathering off the wingtips into the dawn haze. I could see the lead pilot's white helmet clearly beneath the reflections of the plexiglass canopy as he turned his machine on its wingtip, hoping to get a better view of the terrain. The FAPLA camp erupted in cheers. Some fool even let off a few salutary rounds.

It was over in seconds. The MiGs levelled out, waggled their wings in acknowledgment and headed home for breakfast. Badenhorst let out an almighty ‘Bladdy hell! That was close!' Our Mirages were due shortly. We had fifteen minutes to set up our killing field. As I checked my R4, I kept looking at Lappies and the way his eyes took us all in, into his universe of dunes, ancestors and now-vanished Eland.

I turned to Pretorius, who was scribbling in his exercise book. ‘Hey, Johan. I wonder what Lappies's Bushman name is? Do you reckon it's something we could pronounce?'

Pretorius looked at me and yawned, ‘No idea, boet, but I wish I had a camera to photograph the little raisin.'

They came with no radio warning, two silent insects at the speed of sound. They were over us in seconds, filling the sunrise with a massive sonic boom. The Mirages pulled up as one, and lobbed four 500-pound high-explosive bombs in slow motion towards the depression. Two fell short, one failed to detonate and the fourth exploded right on target in a divine flash of white phosphorus that set off the buried munitions. We all ducked instinctively. I thought of the FAPLAs who were caught in the open as I watched the shockwave whip Wilmot's bush hat clean off his head. Lappies had nocked an arrow in his frail bow. Was this his war too?

Within seconds the Mirages had vanished to a rumble in the blue. We waited for the dust to clear. Wilmot was doubled over in a coughing fit, hammering at the earth. Staff gave him a klap on the back, shook him by his webbing and told him to focus. Not all the FAPLAs were dead. I could see at least four or five emerge from the dust cloud in a drunken stumble, some still in their underwear, hands holding their heads in place. They were all painted white in the flour-fine dust of the explosion. One dragged his sleeping bag behind him in a daze, leaving a smooth trail of black ash from the blast area.

Without moving his binoculars from his eyes, Staff said, ‘Okay, on three, commence firing.' He shuffled over to Badenhorst and tapped him on the shoulder, indicating that he should direct his fire in a sweeping arc across the oblivion of bodies and debris. The army knew that at two hundred metres a man is reduced to no more than a cardboard target. The distance sucks the brother, father and son out of the equation and makes the killing easier. The dust would help too.

I picked a target and waited until he filled the sights of my rifle. He looked unscathed and that made me feel better. He wore an olive drab overall, with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He looked like a gardener who was late for work. My first round threw a spurt of white grit about a metre in front of him. He dived towards what looked like a scraping in the salt pan. Beautiful arcs of tracer from Badenhorst's MAG had ignited the skeleton of the FAPLA camp. The noise of the carnage was unimaginable.

I tried to slow my breathing and shifted my aim to about an arm's length ahead of the overall. I fired three shots and the steel butt kicked three times into my shoulder. I must have hit him in his lower back and foot. The gardener tried to get up to his knees, but slipped to his green elbow and then clawed at the dirt before rolling over in surrender. That was it: I had killed a man on a Monday morning and felt nothing but the taste of dust and cordite in my cracked mouth.

What followed felt like a deep bruise, a swelling of quiet that would grow in all of us. The blast area looked like a large splash of paint, with blackened men and shrubs splayed out from the centre. The morning birds had resumed their singing and the sun continued rising. We turned to laughing, swearing and herding the spent shells.

Later, I was on my haunches, rolling my sleeping bag into my pack. It was the first and last time our eyes made contact. Every line on his face flowed towards two black marbles floating in bloodshot pools of yellow.

Lappies half-smiled and then spoke,

‘Yes, meneer,' he said, pointing towards the depression, ‘Those dead men will become stars. They will be dancing around the moon tonight.'

Before I could reply he jogged off ahead of the section.

Staff clapped his hands and said, ‘In two minutes – twee minute – the train is leaving.'

Two weeks later, I was boarding a C130 at Grootfontein, homeward bound, just like that Simon and Garfunkel song.

 

I put his story down. The ruled strips of light on the table had dimmed. I looked to the window above the sink, framing a large cloud that was hiding the sun.

Sally, the loud one, arrived. She shouted a hello and started talking.

‘Did you get the group mail from what-his-name? The quiet guy with the nice voice?'

‘No,' I replied.

‘Oh. I did. No message, but there was a photo attached.'

‘A photo of what?'

‘A photo of him standing in the bush. Looks like he's packed up and headed north. Somewhere in Namibia, or one of those places that have Bushman paintings.'

I looked at the two foolscap pages in the fading light and felt that deep ache so many of us were left with. I thought of him, up north, watching the sky turn to blood, and wondered if his bruise would ease after all these years.

 

When I left, I stayed, the first night, in a single room in a house that a friend lets to university students. I stayed two nights. He had black satin sheets on the bed.

Then I moved to a closed-in veranda room in another friend's house. It was walled on three sides by windows covered with thin blinds. The bed was comfortable. The view from her house is beautiful, and it is right up the hill from my old house, so it was an easy stroll down to meet the kids to walk them to school. I stayed for a week.

I moved into a room in a house out by the cemetery, and stayed there four months. The house belongs to a friend, who is the mother of a friend. She rents a room. I rearranged the furniture: I switched the bed and wardrobe around, and moved the desk away from the bay windows so I could move the armchair in to catch the sun in the mornings, and TV in the evenings. I kept the room pretty straight and tidy. She has a Moroccan flag over the sink, but it turns out to be needed only for the feng shui of its pentacle. She has been married, and has children and grandchildren, and has seen everything that I have seen and a whole lot more, so it was good to stay there and get some perspective. We shared a bathroom. I did my laundry and hung it on the long line in the back garden. The kids stayed over – but it was cramped. I drove a scooter. To work and back, and out at night, along the winding road into the city suburbs where my friends stay. The house backed onto the cemetery and one night when I drove home a pack of homeless dogs was lurking around the cemetery gates. Only their heads moved – watching as I passed.

For a week I looked after a flat for a friend. His flat is very well appointed, open-plan, with wooden floors and large windows looking over the harbour lights. I listened to Cat Power on his stereo and worked at his dining room table.

Then I looked after a house for friends who were emigrating – and had gone down the coast for a family holiday. It is a big double-storey house, with a creaky wooden staircase and a lazy cat. I moved some furniture into the downstairs lounge, and the kitchen is downstairs, and a bathroom, so after two days I moved the bed downstairs as well, and never went back upstairs. I had the kids to stay – there was space for them to sleep over. I stayed there for three weeks, and my friends came back from their holiday.

So I moved in with my sister – to an upstairs room in her house – for a week. I didn't unpack. I laid a mattress on the floor and I hung curtains to keep the light from the streetlights out.

I moved back to the big double-storey for another month. The monkeys got in, and ate all the cereals and two-minute noodles, and crapped on the floor. I cleaned the kitchen completely. I got used to the new neighbourhood – it is a very upbeat neighbourhood, with bars and restaurants on the main street. It is close to the beach – about four minutes on the scooter. When the kids came over I went to get milkshakes at the fish & sushi place, and to get videos from the Blockbusters. We walked to the Spar and bought doughnuts and jelly and custard. The house got sold, and the new owners found tenants.

So I moved back with my sister, into a room off the lounge. I hung curtains, and pushed the sewing table to the side and made a comfortable room. I brought in a small desk fan. Her house is just over the ridge from the ocean, and faces inland – west – so she gets the sunset from her veranda.

And then I moved into the flat.

It is on the seventh floor of an old building, on the Berea, with an old trellis-gate elevator in the stairwell. It has a view down over the city and the sea, and the harbour. Sometimes I see the moonrise – a gigantic thick golden moon. At night I can see all of the city lights, and the lights out over the harbour, so silent. In the evening, from the other side of the flat, the sun's last rays quietly colour the neighbourhood buttery and warm. Birds fly past the windows. I have hung curtains, and rearranged the lounge and bedroom at least ten times. I have replaced the cool white light bulbs with warm white. I have set up a stereo system, and laid the table, and cooked a chicken and bought a kettle and planted three basil bushes in big 800-gramme tomato tins. I have bought an iron and cleaned and ironed my shirts. I have set up a room for my daughter, and a room for my son. Each night, I draw the curtains, and sleep in the deep, quiet darkness of the flat, and I don't dream at all. And each morning the sunrise comes flooding in – a big brilliant dead-set red, burning its way up over the ocean, opening wide the sky.

Mia Arderne
is a fiction writer from Cape Town. Her subject matter interlaces the urban, the magical and the criminal. She is currently completing her Masters in English Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. She has been published in the 2012
AfroSF
:
Science Fiction by African Writers
, edited and compiled by Ivor Hartmann.

Daniel Berti
is currently in Cape Town in his first year of a Masters in Creative Writing at UCT. He is producing a range of short fiction, as well as a novel that may include Platonism, anarchy, veganism, ideal love, psychedelics — and the sorts of friends whose hands can be held honestly in the face of our mortality.

Leila Ruth Bloch
is currently pursuing African studies and is a research assistant for the Jewish Digital Archive Project which digitises visual and narrative history. She writes lifestyle pieces, poetry and reviews. Visit
http://aerodrome.co.za/the-details-of-love/
, 
http://www.mahala.co.za/art/mr-augusts-garden/
 and the link, 
here
.
 

Lien Botha
is a well-known Capetonian photographer. Since obtaining a degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 1988, she has participated in numerous exhibitions locally and abroad. Her tenth solo show,
Yonder
, is at the Barnard Gallery in Newlands, Cape Town in March 2014. She is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Her work can be viewed at
www.lienbotha.co.za
.

Tembi Charles
 
was born in Zimbabwe in 1961, and raised and educated in Bulawayo. In 2012 she was awarded the Dulcie September Fellowship. She is currently studying for her Honours degree in English Studies at Stellenbosch University. In May 2012, as part of the multilingual creative writing programme at the University of the Western Cape, she published a poem, “This is my land” in the
UWC CREATES
anthology. “Long Life”
is her first short story.