Past the Shallows (23 page)
Authors: Favel Parrett
And the food is good. Emanuel eats two full serves of stew and when he finishes his pudding I ask about Peter. He says that
Peter is a bushman. He comes and he goes when he feels like it. That is his way.
I say yes. I ask if we might see him tonight.
Emanuel laughs and says that Peter is a great tracker and guide but maybe he is a little crazy. ‘You know what they say in
Botswana about people who talk to themselves? They say they are talking to the ghosts of the people they have murdered.’
We sit for a while and drink our tea. We listen to the night, listen to the fire crack, and the air is cold.
‘He told me about the boy,’ I say.
Emanuel puts his cup down on the table and there is no trace of laughter now, no smile.
‘It was terrible,’ he says.
And we say goodnight.
But I can’t settle in my tent, can’t sleep. And I am not ready to leave. I take out my camera and look through some shots.
One-month-old lion cubs play fighting in the high grass – the youngest cubs I have ever seen. A whole family of warthog running
in a line with their tails up in the air. A male leopard sleeping high in a tree, his hind legs hanging down long and loose
– fresh blood on his mouth and the clean picked bones of an impala on the ground below. Yes, there are some great shots, but
there is only one photograph that matters to me. Only one that I love.
A Malachite Kingfisher sitting high on a reed. A brightly packed explosion of colour. Aqua blue, royal blue, emerald green
– the feathers finally bursting gold like the sun. The littlest kingfisher – so perfect, so small. Its long beak, its happy
face. Sitting still and waiting patiently. My Malachite Kingfisher on the lakes of the Okavango.
And Peter found him for me.
He stood lean and tall as he moved the low canoe though the water with a wooden pole, and I sat, reed insects falling on my
face and on my lap and I could see nothing but endless reeds. Little spiders, red and green – a tiny yellow one on my leg.
I brushed them all away again and again.
Peter asked me why I was here and I said for work, photographs for the new travel brochure, but he shook his head, no. He
asked me again, what did I want to see? I told him I wanted to see a Malachite Kingfisher. He was silent for a while. Then
he asked me to listen. What could I hear? Just the sound of the water and the sound of the reeds. He told me that thirty metres
behind us was a large herd of waterbuck grazing, then he said that I would not see a kingfisher. It was impossible. They were
too quick, flew too low. They were too hard to find.
Then he stopped talking.
He looked and he listened, his head twitching this way and that. Watching for hippo. Watching for crocodile and water buffalo.
And slowly he began to whisper and mumble, his tongue clicking softly. Speaking with the lake and with the sky – talking to
the air and to the reeds, and I stopped trying to listen for words, for sounds that I understood, because there were none.
Just a soft slow chant.
Peter’s song.
And time walked on.
The sun reflecting bright off the water, the thin clouds moving in the sky and I suddenly felt so tired. I suddenly felt as
if Peter was moving my body on the lake, not the canoe. I could feel my skin touching the
cool soft water. My body becoming part of the water, and I wanted so badly to close my eyes. To just listen to the song and
to the water and just listen to the sky.
But something moved.
Near my feet something was moving and my eyes opened wide. A spider. A real spider – dark and thick and as big as my hand,
moving up the bottom of the canoe. Moving up between my legs.
I called out for Peter. I turned my head and looked up at him but his eyes were closed. He was standing lost, chanting blind,
and he could not hear me. He could not help.
The spider moved steadily up past my knees and I could see all of its eyes and the tiny hairs on its legs and on its back.
I got my raincoat and wrapped it around my fist. With a swift movement I punched the spider hard. I twisted my fist into the
carved wood of the canoe over and over and over, and I kept my fist there. I did not breathe.
‘What was it like?’ Peter asked, his eyes suddenly open, suddenly awake.
‘Brown. Brown with black stripes.’
‘Bad,’ he said. ‘Very bad.’
Then he told me to look up.
‘There is your kingfisher.’
So close I could have reached out and touched him. The littlest kingfisher – so perfect, so small. And he stayed with us,
perched on his reed. He stayed still and let me take my photo.
He even smiled.
‘It is good luck,’ Peter said. ‘Good luck for us.’
I put my camera away. My bags are packed and ready and I wish that Peter would come back. I wish that I could say goodbye.
When he came to my tent last night he was angry. I hadn’t zipped my door all the way to the bottom and he said I was stupid.
He told me that I was just another stupid white person who didn’t listen, didn’t understand anything. I tried to say sorry
but he would not stop to hear me. He just kept on talking fast and wild.
And he told me about the boy.
Twelve years old and he wanted to sleep in a tent all by himself. His parents wanted it too because they were annoyed by their
boy. He was a bother to them – a bother on their holiday. Peter told them it was a bad idea but they would not listen. And
they got their way because they were rich, because they were guests and could do whatever they wanted.
Peter checked on the boy many times every night and he did not sleep so that he could be always
listening for the boy. He
always made sure the boy’s tent was zipped tight. But on the fourth night, hippos came into the camp and woke everyone up.
The boy wanted to take pictures of the hippos, so he unzipped his tent. Peter yelled at him to get back inside and the boy
did. The boy listened. Finally Peter heard the hippos leave and he heard the boy sleeping.
And finally, exhausted, Peter fell into sleep too.
But hyenas came.
They smelled the boy. Smelled the sneakers he had left by the door of his tent, and they smelled his warm body sleeping. And
the door to the tent wasn’t zipped all the way to the bottom.
Peter woke to the high-pitched cackle hyenas make when they have made a fresh kill. When he got to the tent they had ripped
the boy to pieces.
The sounds of the night die down and from inside my tent I imagine the light hitting the plains, warm and golden. The sun
is finally rising. The sun brings peace. Hunting animals are full and it is time for them to slumber in a shady place. It
is time for the gentle animals to gather on the banks of the river and drink, time for the hippo to take to the water and
rest weightless once more.
And it is time for Peter to walk his country – to survey all there is.
I can see him there, his head twitching this way and that. Looking and listening. Speaking with the trees and with the sky.
Talking to the clouds.
Just a soft slow chant.
Peter’s song.
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