‘Sakubona, Pungushe,’ said Mark. ‘I see you, O Jackal.’
The man looked at him for a moment, thinking about the name and the style of greeting, the language and the accent in which it was spoken. The calm expression did not change, no smile nor snarl on the thick sculptured lips, only a new light in the dark eyes.
‘Sakubona, Jamela. I see you, O Seeker.’ His voice was deep and low, yet it rang on the still air with the timbre of a bronze gong, and then he went on immediately, ‘Sakubona, Ngaga.’
Mark blinked. It had never occurred to him that the jackal might think of him by a name every bit as derogatory. Ngaga is the pangolin, the scaly ant-eater, a small creature that resembles an armadillo, a nocturnal creature, which if caught out in daylight, scurries around like a bent and wizened old man pausing to peer shortsightedly at any small object in its path, then hurrying on again.
The two names ‘Jamela’ and ‘Ngaga’ used together described with embarrassing clarity somebody who ran in small circles, peering at everything and yet blindly seeing nothing.
Suddenly Mark saw himself through the eyes of a hidden observer, riding a seemingly pointless patrol through the valley, dismounting to peer at anything that caught his interest, then riding on again – just like an ngaga. It was not a flattering thought.
He felt with sudden discomfort that despite Pungushe’s wounds, and Mark’s position of superiority, so far he had had the worst of the exchange.
‘It seems that ngaga has at last found what he seeks,’ he pointed out grimly, and went to the mule for his blanket roll.
Under the bloody bunch of leaves there was a deep dark hole where the point of the buffalo horn had driven in. It might have gone in as far as the kidneys, in which case the man was as good as dead. Mark thrust the thought aside, and swabbed out the wound as gently as he could with a solution of acriflavine.
His spare shirt was snowy white and still crisp from Marion’s meticulous laundering and ironing. He ripped off the sleeves, folded the body into a wad and placed it over the gaping hole, binding it up with the tom sleeves.
Pungushe said nothing as he worked, made no protest nor showed any distress as Mark lifted him into a sitting position to work more easily. But when Mark ripped the shirt he murmured regretfully.
‘It is a good shirt.’
‘There was once a young and handsome ngaga who might have died from the fever,’ Mark reminded him, ‘but a scavenging old jackal carried him to a safe place and gave him drink and food.’
‘Ah,’ Pungushe nodded. ‘But he was not such a stupid jackal as to tear a good shirt.’
‘The ngaga is much concerned that the jackal is in good health, so that he will be able to labour mightily at the breaking of rocks and other manly tasks when he is an honoured guest at the kraal of King Georgey.’ Mark ended that subject, and repacked his blanket roll. ‘Can you make water, O Jackal? It is necessary to see how deep the buffalo has speared you.’
The urine was tinged pinky brown, but there were no strings of bright blood. It seemed that the kidneys may merely have been badly bruised, and that the thick pad of iron muscle across the Zulu’s back had absorbed much of the brutal driving thrust. Mark found himself praying silently that it was so, although he could not imagine why he was so concerned.
Working quickly, he cut two long straight saplings, and plaited a drag litter from strips of wet bark. Then he padded the litter with his own blankets and Pungushe’s kaross, before hitching it up to Trojan.
He helped the big Zulu into the litter, surprised to find how tall he was, and how hard was the arm he placed around Mark’s shoulder to support himself.
With Pungushe flat in the litter, he led the mule back along the game trail, and the ends of two saplings left a long snaking drag mark in the soft earth.
It was almost dark when they passed the scene of the buffalo hunt. Looking across the reed banks, Mark could make out the obscene black shapes of the vultures in the trees, waiting their turn at the carcass.
‘Why did you kill my buffalo?’ he asked, not certain that Pungushe was still conscious. ‘All men know the new laws. I have travelled to every village, I have spoken with every induna, every chief – all men have heard. All men know the penalty for hunting in this valley.’
‘If he was your buffalo, why did he not carry the mark of your iron? Surely it is the custom of the Abelungu — the white men – to burn their mark upon their cattle?’ Pungushe asked from the litter, without a smile nor with any trace of mockery, yet mockery Mark knew it was. He felt his anger stir.
‘This place was declared sacred, even by the old king, Chaka.’
‘No,’ said Pungushe. ‘It was declared a royal hunt, and,’ his voice took a sterner ring, ‘I am Zulu, of the royal blood. I hunt here by my birthright – it is a man’s thing to do.’
‘No man has the right to hunt here.’
‘Then what of the white men who have come here with their isibamu — their rifles — these past hundred seasons?’ asked Pungushe.
‘They are evil-doers, even as you are.’
‘Then why were they not taken to be guests at the kraal of King Georgey, as I am so honoured?’
‘They will be in future,’ Mark assured him.
‘Ho!’ said Pungushe, and this time his voice was thick with contempt and mockery.
‘When I catch them, they will go also,’ Mark repeated doggedly, but the Zulu made a weary gesture of dismissal with one expressive pink-palmed hand, a hand that said clearly that there were many laws — some for rich, some for poor, some for white and some for black. They were silent again until after dark when Mark had camped for the night, and put Trojan to graze on a head-rope.
As he squatted over the fire, cooking the evening meal for both of them, Pungushe spoke again from his litter in the darkness beyond the firelight.
‘For whom do you keep the silwane — the wild animals of the valley! Will King George come here to hunt?’
‘Nobody will ever hunt here again, no king nor common man.’
‘Then why do you keep the silwane?’
‘Because if we do not, then the day will dawn when there will be no more left in this land. No buffalo, no lion, no kudu, nothing. A great emptiness.’
Pungushe was silent for the time it took Mark to spoon a slop of maize porridge and bully beef into the lid of the pannikin and take it to the Zulu.
‘Eat,’ he commanded, and sat crosslegged opposite him with his own plate in his lap.
‘What you say is true,’ Pungushe spoke thoughtfully. ‘When I was a child – of your age,’ Mark noted the barb but let it pass, ‘there were elephant in this valley, great bulls with teeth as long as a throwing-spear, and there were many lions, herds of buffalo like the great king’s cattle,’ he broke off. ‘They have gone, soon what is left will go also.’
‘Is that a good thing?’ Mark asked.
‘It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.’ Pungushe shrugged and began to eat. ‘It is merely the way of the world – and there is little profit in pondering it.’
They finished eating in silence and Mark cleared the plates and brought coffee, which Pungushe waved away.
‘Drink it,’ snapped Mark. ‘You must have it to cleanse the blood from your water.’
He gave Pungushe one of his cigarettes, and the Zulu carefully broke off the brown cork tip before putting it between his lips. He wrinkled his broad flat nose at the insipid taste, for he was accustomed to the ropey black native tobacco, but he would not belittle a man’s hospitality by making comment.
‘When it is all gone, when the great emptiness comes here to this valley, what will become of you, O Jackal?’ Mark asked.
‘I do not understand your question.’
‘You are a man of the silwane. You are a great hunter. Your life is yoked to the silwane, as the herdsman is yoked to his cattle. What will become of you, O mighty hunter, when all your cattle are gone?’
Mark realized that he had reached the Zulu. He
saw his nostrils flare, and something burn up brightly within him, but he waited while Pungushe considered the proposition at great length and in every detail.
‘I will go to Igoldi,’ said Pungushe at last. ‘I will go to the gold mines, and become rich.’
‘They will put you to work deep in the earth, where you cannot see the sun nor feel the wind, and you will break rocks, just as you go now to do at the kraal of King Georgey.’
Mark saw the repugnance flit across the Zulu’s face.
‘I will go to Tekweni,’ Pungushe changed his mind. ‘I will go to Durban and become a man of much consequence.’
‘In Tekweni you will breathe the smoke of the cane mills into your lungs, and when the fat babu overseer speaks to you, you will reply, yehbo, Nkosi – yes, master!’
This time the repugnance on the Zulu’s face was deeper still and he smoked his cigarette down to a tiny sliver of paper and ash which he pinched out between thumb and forefinger.
‘Jamela,’ he said sternly. ‘You speak words that trouble a man.’
Mark knew well that the big Zulu’s injury was more serious than his stoic acceptance of it would indicate. It was womanly to show pain.
It would be a long time before he was ready to make the journey by side-car over the rough tracks and rutted dusty roads to the police station and magistrate’s court at Ladyburg.
Mark put him into the small lean-to tool-shed that he had built on the far wall of the mule stables. It was dry and cool, and had a sturdy door with a Yale padlock. He used blankets from Marion’s chest and the mattress she had been saving for the children’s room, despite her protests. ‘But he’s a native, dear!’
Every evening, he took the prisoner’s meal down to him in the pannikin, inspected the wound and dressed it afresh.
Then while he waited for Pungushe to eat, he sat on the top step in the doorway to the shed and they smoked a cigarette while they talked.
‘If the valley belongs now to King Georgey, how is it that you build your house here, plant your gardens and graze your mules?’
‘I am the king’s man,’ Mark explained.
‘You are an induna?’ Pungushe paused with a spoon of food halfway to his mouth, and stared at Mark incredulously. ‘You are one of the king’s counsellors?’
‘I am the keeper of the royal hunt.’ Mark used the old Zulu title, and Pungushe shook his head sadly.
‘My father’s father was once the keeper of the royal hunt —but he was a man of great consequence, with two dozen wives, a man who had fought in a dozen wars and killed so many enemies that his shield was as thick with oxtails as there is grass on the hills in springtime.’ The oxtail was the decoration which the king grants a warrior to adorn his shield when he has distinguished himself in battle. Pungushe finished his meal and added simply, ‘King Chaka knew better than to send a child to do man’s work.’
The next evening Mark saw that the wound was healing cleanly and swiftly. The man’s tremendous fitness and strength were responsible for that. He was able to sit crosslegged now, and there was a new jauntiness in the way he held his head. It would be sooner than Mark had thought that Pungushe would be fit enough to make the journey to Ladyburg, and Mark felt an odd sinking feeling of regret.
‘King Georgey is doubtlessly a great, wise and all-seeing king,’ Pungushe opened the evening’s debate. ‘Why then does he wait until sundown to begin work that should have been started at dawn? If he wanted to avoid the great emptiness in this valley, his father should have begun the work.’
‘The king’s affairs are many, in far countries. He must rely on indunas to advise him who are not as wise or allseeing,’ Mark explained.
‘The Abelungu — the white men — are like greedy children, grabbing up handfuls of food they cannot eat. Instead they smear it over their faces.’
‘There are greedy and ignorant black men also,’ Mark pointed out. ‘Some who even kill leopards with steel traps for their fur.’
‘To sell to the greedy white men, to dress their ignorant women,’ Pungushe agreed, and that makes the score deuce, Mark thought as he gathered up the empty pannikins.
The next evening Pungushe seemed sad, as at the time of leave-taking.
‘You have given me much on which I must think heavily,’ he said.
‘You will have much time to do so,’ Mark agreed. ‘In between the breaking of rocks.’ And Pungushe ignored the reference.
‘There is weight in your words, for one who is still young enough to be herding the cattle,’ he qualified the compliment.
‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,’ Mark translated into Zulu and Pungushe nodded solemnly, and in the morning he was gone.
He had opened the thatch at the back of the roof, and wriggled through the small hole. He had taken his kaross and left Marion’s blankets neatly folded on the mattress. He had tried for the steel spring-trap, but Mark had locked it in the kitchen, so he had left it and gone northwards in the night.
Mark was furious for so misjudging his prisoner’s recovery, and he muttered darkly as he plunged along after him on Trojan.
‘This time I’m going to shoot the bastard on sight,’ he promised, and realized at that moment that Pungushe had backtracked on him. He had to dismount and laboriously unravel the confused trail.
Half an hour later, Pungushe led him into the river, and it was well after noon when he at last found where the Zulu had left the water, stepping lightly on a fallen log.
He finally lost the cold spoor in the rocky ground on the far rim of the valley, and it was almost midnight when he rode wearily back to the thatched cottage. Marion had his dinner ready and ten gallons of hot bath water bubbling on the fire.
Six weeks later, Pungushe returned to the valley. Mark sat astounded on the stoep of the cottage, and watched him come.
He walked with the long gliding stride that showed he was fully recovered from his wound. He wore the beaded loin-cloth and the jackal-skin cloak over his shoulders. He carried two of the short-shafted stabbing assegai, with the broad steel blades, and his wives followed at a respectable distance behind him.
There were three of them. They were bare-breasted, with the tall clay headdress of the Zulu matron. The senior was of the same age as her husband, but her dugs were flat and empty as leather pouches and she had lost her front teeth. The youngest wife was a child still in her teens, a pretty plump little thing with jolly melon breasts, and a fat brown infant on her hip.
Every wife carried an enormous bundle on her head, balancing it easily without use of hands, and they were followed by a gaggle of naked and half-naked children. Like their mothers, the little girls each carried a headload, the size of it directly proportional to the age and stature of the bearer. The smallest, perhaps four years of age, carried a beer gourd the size of a grapefruit, echoing faithfully the straight erect carriage and swaying buttocks of her seniors.
Mark counted seven sons and six daughters.
‘I see you, Jamela.’ Pungushe paused below the stoep.
‘I see you also, Pungushe,’ Mark acknowledged cautiously, and the Zulu squatted down comfortably on the lowest step. His wives settled down at the edge of Marion’s garden — politely out of earshot. The youngest wife gave one of her fat breasts to the infant and he suckled lustily.
‘It will rain tomorrow,’ said Pungushe. ‘Unless the wind goes into the north. In which case it will not rain again until the full moon.’
‘That is so,’ Mark agreed.
‘Rain now would be good for the grazing. It will bring the silwane down from the Portuguese territory beyond the Pongola.’
Mark’s astonishment had now given way to lively curiosity.
‘There is talk in the villages, common word among all the people that has only recently come to my ears,’ Pungushe went on airily. ‘It is said that Jamela, the new keeper of the royal hunt of King Georgey, is a mighty warrior who has slain great multitudes of the king’s enemies in the war beyond the sea.’ The Jackal pause
d and then went on, ‘Albeit, he is still unbearded and green as the first flush of the spring-time grass.’
‘Is that the word?’ Mark inquired politely.
‘It is said that King Georgey has granted Jamela a black oxtail to wear on his shield.’ A black oxtail is the highest honour, and might loosely be considered the equivalent of a M.M.
‘I am also a warrior,’ Pungushe pointed out. ‘I fought with Bombata at the gorge, and afterwards the soldiers came and took away my cattle. This is how I became a man of silwane, and a mighty hunter.’
‘We are brothers of the spear,’ Mark conceded. ‘But now I will make ready my isi-du-du-du, my motorcycle, so that we may ride to Ladyburg and speak with the magistrate there of matters of great interest to all of us.’
‘Jamela!’ The Zulu shook his head grievingly, like a father with an obtuse son. ‘You aspire to be a man of the silwane, you aspire to fill the great emptiness – and yet who will there be to teach you, who will open your eyes to see and your ears to hear, if I am in the kraal of King Georgey breaking his rocks?’
‘You have come to help me?’ Mark asked. ‘You and your beautiful fat wives, your brave sons and nubile daughters?’
‘It is even so.’
‘This is a noble thought,’ Mark conceded.
‘I am Zulu of royal blood,’ Pungushe agreed. ‘Also my fine steel trap was stolen from me, even as my cattle were stolen, thus making me a poor man once more.’
‘I see,’ Mark nodded. ‘It remains only for me to put out of my mind the business of leopard skins and dead buffalo?’
‘It is even so.’
‘Doubtless I will also find it in my heart, to pay you for this help and advice.’
‘That also is so.’
‘What size is the coin in which you will be paid?’ Pungushe shrugged with disinterest. ‘I am royal Zulu, not a Hindu trader, haggling in the market-place. The coin will be just and fair,’ he paused delicately, ‘always bearing in mind the multitude of my beautiful wives, my many brave sons and the host of nubile daughters. All of whom have unbelievable appetites.’