Blood Safari (12 page)

‘Just Stef, my dear.’ He hesitated as if it were a weighty decision. ‘Perhaps we should have something to drink up there.’ He pointed a dirty fingernail towards the house.

We went out and I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that I had seen something vital.

The homestead was without character, a white house, bleached corrugated-iron roof, built in the unimaginative seventies, perhaps, and fixed up a bit later. We sat on a veranda made of paved cement blocks. I satisfied my hunger from a big bowl of biltong and drank three glasses of Coke. Moller apologised for bringing the refreshments himself on a tray. ‘There’s only Septimus and myself, no other labour. I’m afraid there’s only Coke, will that do?’

‘Of course,’ Emma replied.

He related his story for Emma. I could see that he liked her in a shy, apologetic way.

He said that he remembered Cobie de Villiers well. ‘He turned up here in ninety-four, March, I think, in a beat-up old Nissan 1400 pick-up.’ He spoke in a measured, unhurried way, like a man dictating to a dim secretary. ‘In those days I didn’t lock the gate. He came knocking on the door.’

When Moller answered the door, he found a young man standing with his baseball cap in his hand who said, ‘Oom, I hear you are making a game reserve,’ using the unique Afrikaans term of respect for elders.

Moller said that was so.

‘Then I would really like to work for you.’

‘There are lots of game farms with jobs for game rangers …’

‘They want guides to take the tourists around, oom. I don’t want to do that. I want to work with the animals. That is the only thing I can do. I heard you don’t go in for tourists.’

There was something about Cobus, a simple determination, and a strong conviction, which appealed to Moller. He invited him in, and asked for references.

‘Sorry, oom, I don’t have any. But I have two hands that can do anything and you can ask me anything about conservation. Anything.’

So Moller asked him whether it would be a good thing to plant ilala palms on the reserve.

‘No, oom.’

‘Why not? They are good food. For the fruit bats. And the monkeys and elephants and baboons like the nuts too …’

‘That’s true, oom, but it’s a Lowveld tree. It’s a bit too high above sea level here.’

‘And tamboti?’

‘Tamboti is good, oom. This is its area. Plant them near the rivers, they like water.’

‘Are they good for the game?’

‘Yes, oom. Guinea fowl and francolin eat the fruits and the kudu and nyala like the leaves that drop off.’

He put him to the final test. ‘Tamboti makes good firewood.’

‘Just don’t barbecue on it, oom. The poison makes people sick.’

He had heard enough. That night Cobie de Villiers moved into a renovated labourer’s cottage and for three years worked harder than Stef Moller had ever seen anyone work before – from dawn till late at night, seven days a week.

‘He knew just about everything about nature. I learnt from him. A lot’

‘Did he ever talk about his past? Where did he get all that knowledge?’

‘Ah, my dear …’ Stef Moller took off his glasses and began to polish them on his dirty T-shirt. His faded blue eyes seemed vulnerable without the protection of the thick lenses. ‘People.’ He put the glasses back on. ‘They come here, but they’re not interested
in how we healed the veld. They ask other questions. Where did I come from? How did I make my money? I don’t like that. You shouldn’t judge a man by how many mistakes he’s made in his life, you should judge him by how much he’s learned from those mistakes.’ He stopped, as if he had answered her question.

Emma took it to mean that he had not. ‘Why did he leave?’

Moller blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t know …’ He shrugged. ‘He didn’t say. He asked for two weeks’ leave. And then he left. He didn’t even take all his things. Maybe …’ He looked away into the distance, where the sun hung low over the green hill.

‘Maybe what?’ Emma prompted him.

‘The girl,’ Moller said quietly. ‘It might have had something to do with the girl. The last few weeks before he left…’ His thoughts drifted off, then he pulled himself back. ‘That’s when he came to ask for leave. The first time in three years. I thought he wanted to take her somewhere, but then she came looking for him a while later. We didn’t see him again …’

‘Where did he go?’

‘He didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell anyone.’

‘When was this?’

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Ninety-seven. August.’

Emma sat still, as if the information was enlightening. Then she opened her handbag and took out a pen and a sheet of paper. It was the web page printout of the Mohlolobe Private Game Reserve. She turned it over on the table and wrote something on the back. She looked up at Moller again.

‘I would like to talk to the girl.’

‘She worked at the resort.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Melanie,’ he said, the Afrikaans pronunciation, with a long ‘a’. With just a hint of disapproval in his voice. ‘Melanie Lottering.’

Emma wrote that down too.

Moller blinked and said with admiration, ‘You really believe that he’s your brother.’

Her voice was barely audible as she answered. ‘Yes.’

*   *   *

Emma picked up her bag and was ready to leave, but she hesitated and said very carefully: ‘Would you mind if I asked you one question about the reserve?’

He nodded. ‘You want to know why. You want to know what the point is if there are no tourism facilities.’

‘Oh dear, is that what everyone asks?’

‘Not everyone. Some. But I understand. It must be difficult to grasp when someone behaves differently. People expect you to spend money in order to make more. You develop a game reserve so other people will pay to see it. If you don’t do that people wonder what you’re hiding. It’s only natural.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘I know you didn’t. But most people think like that. That’s one of the reasons I lock the gate at the entrance. They used to come in here and ask questions. Mostly, they didn’t understand my answers and went off shaking their heads. Or maybe they did understand, but didn’t like the answers. They wanted the right to see, to enjoy, to drive around in the reserve and show the animals to their children.’

Moller looked in the direction of the gate and said, with nostalgia, ‘Cobie understood.’ Then his gaze returned to Emma. ‘But let me explain to you, and you can make up your own mind.’

Blinking, he organised his thoughts. ‘Up till ten thousand years ago, we were hunter-gatherers. All of us. On every continent and island. We moved around in small groups in the search for food and water, depending on the availability. We were part of the balance of nature. We lived in harmony with the ecology, in the same rhythms. For a hundred thousand years. The principle of “make hay while the sun shines” was in our genes. When there was abundance, we enjoyed it, because we knew that the hungry years would come. That’s nothing unique, all animals are like that. Then we discovered how to domesticate cattle and goats and we learned to sow grass seed and after that everything changed. When we stopped moving on, we made villages. We multiplied and we sowed and our cattle and sheep and pigs grazed in one area. We lost the rhythms of nature. Are you following me so far?’

Emma nodded.

‘I’m not saying that what happened was wrong. It was inevitable, it was evolution. But it had enormous implications. The academics say the place we first began to farm was in the Middle East, the fertile crescent of Iraq in the East, through Syria and Israel to Turkey. Go and see what it looks like today and it’s hard to believe they call it the Fertile Crescent. It’s just desert. But ten thousand years ago it wasn’t desert. It was grassland and trees, a temperate climate, good soil. Most people believe that the climate changed and that’s why there’s nothing there today. Oddly, the climate is just about the same. It became desert because people and their agriculture exhausted the Middle East. Overgrazed, over-farmed and over-utilised. Because of that urge to utilise abundance fully, there might never be a tomorrow …’

Moller wasn’t the natural evangelical speaker that Donnie Branca was. His voice was softer, the tone infinitely courteous, but his belief in what he said was equally immovable. Emma sat transfixed.

‘We can’t change history. We can’t wish away all the technology and agriculture and we certainly can’t change human nature. The peacock with the longest, most colourful tail has the best chance to get a mate; whereas we rely on the number of cattle in our kraal, or the name of the car in our garage. That’s why money controls everything. People are not truly capable of conservation, though they make all the right noises. It’s just not in our nature. Whether we’re talking about pumping oil or chopping down trees for firewood, the environment will be the loser. The only way to keep a proper ecological balance today is to keep the people out. Completely. The entire concept of public game reserves is failing, regardless of whether they are national, provincial or private game parks. Do you know how many rhino have been shot for their horns in game parks this year?’

Emma shook her head.

‘Twenty-six. Twenty of them were in Kruger. They arrested two game rangers – the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. In KwaZulu two white men drove into the
Umfolozi Game Reserve in broad daylight, shot two rhino, cut off the horns and drove out. Everybody knows there are rhino there. That’s why I lock my gates. The less they know, the greater the chance that my animals will survive.’

‘I understand.’

‘That’s why I don’t want tourists here. Once that starts, it gets harder to control. The accommodation in Kruger is insufficient, the demand continues to grow. Now they are going to build more. Where does it stop? Who decides? Certainly not the ecology, that’s for sure. The pressure is political and financial. Tourism has become the lifeblood of our country, a bigger industry than our gold mines. It creates jobs, brings in foreign currency, it’s become a monster that we must keep on feeding. That monster will consume us, one day. Only the places like Heuningklip will remain. But not for ever. Nothing can stand in the path of man.’

In the Aventura Badplaas holiday resort’s barbecue restaurant we waited for the manager to track down Melanie Lettering’s current place of work.

I ate a plate of vegetables and salad, which was all that I could tolerate after all the biltong I’d eaten at Moller’s. Emma ordered fish and salad. Halfway through our meal the manager returned with a scrap of paper in his hand.

‘She still works for Aventura at the Bela-Bela resort. They also have a spa.’ He gave the note to Emma. ‘She’s married now, her surname is Posthumus. These are the numbers.’

Emma thanked him.

‘She was very good with the guests. I was sorry to see her go.’

‘What sort of work did she do?’

‘Beauty therapist. You know, herbal baths, massage, thalasso treatments, full-body mud wraps …’

‘When did she leave?’

‘Jislaaik
, let me think … about three years ago.’

‘How far away is Bela-Bela?’

‘Quite a way. Just over three hundred kilos. The shortest route is via Groblersdal and Marble Hall.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

He excused himself and Emma took out her cell phone and began to call Bela-Bela.

When we left it was already dark.

‘This is going to be a long day, Lemmer, I hope you don’t mind,’ said Emma. She sounded weary.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘I could drive if you like …’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘We can sleep late tomorrow. There’s nothing more I can do.’

And then what? I wanted to ask her. Would she go back to Cape Town and wait until Cobie de Villiers came out of hiding? Did she hope someone like Wolhuter would keep her informed?

She switched on the roof light, took out the sheet of paper again and made notes. Then she turned the light off and leaned back in her seat. She sat silent for so long that I thought she was asleep. But then I saw that her eyes were open. She was staring out at the pitch-black night and the bright beam of the halogen lights ahead.

Melanie Posthumus sat on the couch of the staff house in the Bela-Bela resort with a child on her lap.

‘This is Jolanie. She’s two,’ she said happily when Emma enquired.

‘That’s an unusual name,’ said Emma.

‘We made an anagram with my hubby’s name and mine. His name is Johan; he’s got a function on tonight. He’s the catering manager and it’s that time of the year, you know. But we call her Jollie, she’s so full of sunshine, see.’

At first glance Melanie was pretty – black hair, blue eyes and a flawless complexion. The sweet Cupid’s bow of her red lips was like a constant invitation. She spoke in the accent of Johannesburg’s Afrikaans suburbia, with the exaggerated inflection that turned an ‘a’ into an ‘ô’. Her use of ‘anagram’ was not a good sign either.

‘I’ll make us something to drink in a sec. First I’ve got to get Jollie to sleep, she’s lekker tired and if it gets past her bedtime she gets her second wind and, as Johan always says, then it’s pyjama drill on the gravy yard shift.’

‘I know this isn’t a good time,’ said Emma.

‘No, don’t worry about that, you’ve come so far and I’m very curious. How do you know Cobie? I was very cross with him for ages, but you can’t stay cross for ever. You have to get closure and go on with your life, you must follow your destiny.’ She nodded at
the sleepy-eyed child on her lap. ‘It’s like Brad and Angelina. They had to wait before they found each other.’

‘It’s a long story. I knew Cobie many years ago.’

‘Like in boyfriend and girlfriend?’

‘No, no, as in family.’

‘I was just about to say, not you too …’

‘I’m trying to trace him.’

‘Family? That’s funny, you know, he told me he was an orphan, that he didn’t have any family.’

‘Maybe it’s not the same Cobie that I knew. That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Emma said with extreme patience. I wondered how disappointed she felt that her ‘brother’ might have been in love with this little bird of a woman.

‘Oh, OK, I was just saying …’

‘I’m trying to talk to everyone that knew him. I need to know for sure.’