1972 - A Story Like the Wind (14 page)

The lion, however, was a far more serious matter, as everyone knew. Once the goat had been dragged back into the clearing at a safe distance from the crocodile’s hiding place in the river, the boys all rushed to the aid of their friends who were engaged in scaring away the lion.

Unfortunately the lion was refusing to be scared. Whenever a stone hit him too hard, or any of his tormentors came too near, he would charge, snorting, claws bared and pawing the air in a frightening manner in order to drive them away. It was François’s first demonstration at close quarters of the extraordinary speed and power of the lion. Indeed, as he was to hear later, its speed is so great that over short distances it is one of the fastest animals on earth. In consequence the little boys, agile and athletic as they were, had to run as never before when it made one of its lightning rushes at them. Even then they might not have succeeded in getting clear if the other flank of their little army, which had infiltrated the clearing at the back of the lion, had not come rushing after it, pelting it from behind with stones and hurling sticks, staves and high-pitched abuse at it. The lion would then be compelled to whirl about and face this new threat in its rear.

They were helped, too, because the lion was just then not interested in killing any more. It was just waiting to enjoy its supper, and merely resented this unwarranted intrusion into its business and comfort. Indeed, François might have found the expression of outraged dignity which the lion wore on its face almost comic, if he had not feared so greatly for the safety of his naked companions. But they seemed to have gone mad with determination to prevent the lion from having his kill.

François’s fear increased as his companions steadily became bolder and more reckless when the lion continued to fail to catch, let alone hurt any of their number. One little boy charging from behind the lion even appeared to François to be on the verge of reaching out to try and snatch at the lion’s tail, presumably in order to twist it. From all that Franjois had heard about lions he was certain that this would be the last indignity and most certainly change the lion’s mood from one of outrage to one of implacable retribution. Fortunately the lion whirled about just before this became possible so fast that the reckless little black boy half stumbled in the quick side-step he was forced to take in order to evade the lion’s retaliation. The stumble was providential because it spoilt the aim of a lightning thrust from the lion’s left paw, the claws just missing the exposed naked flank of the boy by a razor’s width. Had the lion swerved aside after the boy, François had no doubt that he would easily have overtaken him, so much had the boy been thrown out of the rhythm of his long stride, but the lion obviously had no taste for minor issues and was concentrating on the bulk of his enemy fleeing straight in front of him.

It seemed to François that the climax of this episode had arrived and that the lion had reached the limits of what passed for patience in him, and he was about to attack in earnest. He pursued the little boys at this moment far longer than before and at such speed that they were forced to take to the trees. They would not have achieved this successfully were they not as adept as monkeys in leaping for the nearest branches and swinging themselves clear of the ground, and had not the lion, on the critical point of launching himself full out at the nearest enemy, been distracted by the most determined attack of the afternoon in his rear. Yet already the change of mood had made itself manifest in the deepest growl and quickest turnabout of the whole afternoon. François knew it could not go on much longer like this without one or more of his companions joining the dead goat and cow. The little boys did not have it in their power to kill the lion. Equally, the lion did not possess the patience to endure indefinitely this intrusion into what was to him legitimate business. He was clearly just as determined not to be scared away from his meal as the little boys were determined not to allow him to enjoy his kill.

So perturbed was François by all this that he was thinking of jumping from the boulder and running the three-quarters of a mile to Hunter’s Drift for help. Luckily he was spared so desperate and foredoomed a mission, since he could never have run that distance in time to save the situation for his companions. At that precise moment a great shout of deep bass voices, joined as one, went up from the bush.

The words of the shout were uttered with a passion and force that blurred their shape for François, but their meaning was clear: ‘Kill the wizard, kill!’ it commanded with all the authority with which freedom from fear invests the voices of the men of Africa.

All this made strange sense to François. It was one of the firmest beliefs of the pagan world at Hunter’s Drift that wizards often assumed the shapes of lions for hunting when they felt like having roast beef for their midnight supper. Whatever the precise meaning of the words, however, their intent was clear and became clearer when suddenly !#grave;Bamuthi burst through the bush, his ox-hide war-shield on his arm and his great spear
U Silo-Si-Lambile
(The Hungry Leopard) in his hand. He was followed by half a dozen other herdsmen similarly armed.

Obviously the noise of the contest on the river bank had reached them, even in their kraals. Reading its urgent meaning at once they had rushed to the scene. The boys promptly withdrew to the edges of the clearing as if knowing that they had done as much as they could do and from now on would only get in the way. They resumed their role of spectators, unaware of how deep and how fast they were breathing from their desperate labour and how near to collapse they were with fatigue. They just stood there, their dark supple bodies shining like silk in the sun from the sweat running down them, their wide eyes bright and intense, watching the last act in this afternoon matinee of a classical theatre of fate in the life of the bush.

Led by !#grave;Bamuthi, the herdsmen began manoeuvring to try and surround the lion. Instinctively the lion knew that any element of license there might have been in the afternoon was gone as far as he himself was concerned. From now on all would be a matter of life and death. Accordingly he sunk down low on his haunches beside the dead cow. His claws tested and re-tested the earth beside him as the toes of a runner would an Olympic track just before the starting pistol, in order to be certain that he had the right stance and grip for launching himself forward when the real danger came. All expression of anger and outraged dignity had gone from his broad brow and topaz eyes. His features and bearing, so like those of a great elder statesman of the bush, were joined in a tightly-strung mood of intense watchfulness.

First !#grave;Bamuthi approached the lion slowly, a foot at a time, from the front, crouching behind his shield with the long spear at the ready, to give the impression that he was coming in for attack, so convincingly that all the lion’s attention focused on him. Meanwhile, equally slowly, the other herdsmen began to close in a rough circle around him. The lion must have been aware of this because a sudden uncertainty showed on his face. His tail started beating the ground in a passion of unease and with such force that the red dust rose in the air and with it a noise that put fear into François’s pounding heart. For a moment the lion looked as if he would whirl around to have a quick look behind him. But at that moment, !#grave;Bamuthi raised himself to his full height, as if about to hurl his assegai. Taken in by so convincing a performance the lion appeared to gather himself for charging !#grave;Bamuthi. He was about to spring when two of the herdsmen dashed in from behind and stabbed him in the flanks. Immediately the lion turned about with such speed that an assegai was wrenched from the hand of a spearman and left sticking in the lion’s side. His yellow coat stained red with blood, deeply wounded, and with the assegai waving over his back, the lion yet managed to throw himself at his treacherous attackers with undiminished power and speed.

As he did so !#grave;Bamuthi and two other men rushed in and stabbed the lion again and again, forcing it once more to whisk about. From then on the lion was whirling about with such speed, and his attackers dancing about him with such fury, that he vanished from François’s sight in the clouds of dust sent up from the earth. The lion was clearly doomed, yet, with the characteristic courage of its species, he refused to accept defeat and went on rounding on his attackers with undiminished tenacity. As a result, judged by any standard of time, the battle between !#grave;Bamuthi and his men and the lion lasted long. To a heart as anxious as François’s it seemed to continue for ever.

Finally, a silence fell on the scene and !#grave;Bamuthi and his companions walked out exhausted from a vortex of dust. One of them had the calf of his leg flapping like a red rag where the lion’s claws had torn it; another had his buttocks streaming with blood. When the dust finally settled, François and his companions went forward fearfully to gather round !#grave;Bamuthi and his six herdsmen all leaning on their shields, their broad chests heaving, as they silently and solemnly looked down on the dead lion with five spears in its body, lying beside the cow it had just killed. A snarl of defiance was still on its face where it had been arrested by death. They all stood looking at the lion with admiration as the men of some vanished Homeric age might have looked on the body of an heroic enemy. Then the birds in the bush could be heard once again, taking up evening song. A night plover or two piped up-river to show that the sunset hour shadows were lengthening and darkening the illuminated bush. It was all a little too much for the eight-year-old François. He could not have prevented himself from bursting into tears if !#grave;Bamuthi had not done something to distract his attention.

!#grave;Bamuthi had turned his black marble back on the dead lion and was surveying the concourse of little black boys around him. Then he spoke in that deep, solemn voice that always came to him when a feeling of traditional authority and tribal responsibility claimed his mind and feelings.

‘Our little brothers called us and we came,’ he stated with massive deliberation. ‘But why was it necessary to call us and for us to come?’

François knew instantly from the tone and the rhetoric of the question that another kind of moment of truth in the long afternoon had arrived.

None of his black companions answered. Free for the first time in their minds and emotions to give thought to their share of responsibility in the events of the afternoon, they seemed overcome by the magnitude of it all. They looked at !#grave;Bamuthi with an unconscious plea of pardon as if they knew already what the final judgement of their conduct was going to be. But not even the oldest boy among them seemed to have the courage or the wit to speak.

‘Judging by the sound that brought us from our kraals,’

!#grave;Bamuthi reprimanded them, not without scorn, ‘you had words enough for the lion and one another. How is it that you have none for me?’

Even this brought no response from his hearers, who seemed shocked and hypnotized by their sense of guilt. In the end !#grave;Bamuthi was forced to observe ominously: ‘It is perhaps as well that you cannot talk of it now because so grave a matter will have to be discussed by all the clan in order to know what to do. Besides, there are the scattered cattle and sheep and goats to gather from the bush before it is too dark. Go to it at once!’

Preferring action to words just then, the boys immediately broke up into their original groups and dashed away into the bush where their herds had vanished. For a long while François could hear them calling out pleadingly to their favourite cow or goat to come to them. He himself stayed behind, physically and emotionally exhausted. He watched !#grave;Bamuthi and the others deftly skin the dead goat and cow, cut them into pieces, place the best of the raw meat on their shields, and leaving one man behind to protect what they could not carry away, start back for their kraals at Hunter’s Drift, bowed down with the weight of their burden.

Yet, loaded as he was, !#grave;Bamuthi had strength enough to extend the little finger of his left hand to François and say, ‘Come, Little Feather, it’s been a long, black afternoon for us all.’

François took the finger willingly and, encouraged by this sign of solicitude from !#grave;Bamuthi, asked out of fear of his companions, ‘But what is to happen now, Old Father?’

‘That will be for the
Indunas
[counsellors] to decide,’

!#grave;Bamuthi replied, as if he preferred not to talk about the matter at all.

François did not like his tone at all. He found himself stirred into defending his friends, saying, ‘But it was not their fault, Old Father. It all happened so suddenly. Everyone did their best to save the cattle. Honestly, you should have seen how brave they all were!’

He got no further, because !#grave;Bamuthi cut him short with unusual severity, no doubt because he himself was divided at heart.

‘Enough for the day, Little Feather. All this must be properly investigated before more is said. You too can speak at the
Indaba
[tribal council] if you wish. But more talk now will just be wandering in the belly of a bullock’—the Sindabele for groping in the dark.

So urgent did !#grave;Bamuthi consider the incident that the inquest, to give it its European equivalent, started that very night. From a talk with boys from his own kraal, !#grave;Bamuthi gathered that they were taking refuge in a plea that they had been bewitched and would not have been caught out as they were if not under the most powerful of spells. They themselves put this forward all the more convincingly because it was not just an excuse but something in which they now, with hindsight, profoundly believed. This was clear from the note of awe in the voices with which they presented their case to !#grave;Bamuthi. If no magic were involved, they asked him, how was it that a lion and a crocodile could have been brought to attack their herds at one and the same moment? Had there ever been such an overwhelming coincidence in the history of herding cattle among the Mata-bele?

!#grave;Bamuthi had to admit to himself that he knew of none and felt, as a matter not just of fairness but of the welfare of his clan, that he should make absolutely certain that no enemy of his people had enlisted the help of black magic to bring disaster to their cattle. Accordingly a messenger, with suitable gifts, was dispatched that very night over the hills to the rich valley a day and a half’s walk away where one of the greatest sorcerers lived. In fact he was more than just a sorcerer; he was considered a seer and a prophet as well. His name was uLangalibalela. This name possessed a hint of a Sindabele honorific appropriate to the ancient nature of the man’s high calling which one can only roughly translate as The Right Honourable Sun-is-Hot.