So this is where the Colossus comes to be alone with the Alone; to think his Great Thoughts, to have his Big Ideas; to gaze across the scrubby land to the pale frill of ocean with blue ripple of mountains beyond. Your hinterland is there!
This is the settler summerhouse on the foothills where he sits and stares out. Evidently those stolid Dutch gardeners had a feel for views as well as vegetables. Oleander and plumbago tumble out of the nearby ravine, from the depths of which rattle forth the relentless semiquavers of a mountain stream. A simple fountain stands in the rose garden.
Now my Maria flits among the white roses. Her movements are different from those of the English children I know. She has a quick agility which suggests imminent flight in any direction. She has never been trained to sit still or curtsy: she has made a contract with the sun and the earth, a contract unknown to children of the North. She somersaults unashamedly down a grassy slope and crawls back on her hands and knees. She cartwheels in perfect circles among the rosebushes. She is getting dirty already.
Her mother has not come with her after all. When I arrived at the appointed hour, panting with the exertion of lugging my heavy equipment up the long mountain track, I found Maria paddling in the fountain, her boots and stockings thrown anywhere.
‘Where’s your mommy?’ I smiled brightly (no pointless greeting today).
‘My mommy says she can’t come. Mr du Toit came so my mommy must stay.’ The child scratched at a scab on her knee.
My grey heart burst into colour. ‘And who is Mr du Toit?’
Maria became aware of my camera, which I was erecting upon its tripod. ‘What’s that?’
‘Have you never had your photographs taken before? First you must tell me who Mr du Toit is. Then I’ll tell you what this is.’ I began to unfold the black cloth.
‘He does the knives.’ The child crept up to the camera, mesmerised by its strangeness. ‘He brings a stone and sharpens the knives. Then he fixes things what are b-broken. How can that make a picture?’
I show her how. She hovers like a humming-bird, examining the lens, glancing at the plates. She pulls the black hood over her head and shrieks with excited terror.
I feel the years drop away from my tired body.
I position her in profile and she enjoys pretending to smell the odourless petals. I tell her Dodgson’s story of the gardeners who painted the white roses red.
‘Why?’
‘Because the wrong roses had been planted. They were supposed to be red – for the Queen of Hearts, you see.’
Maria appears to have encountered neither the most famous children’s book of the century, nor even a pack of cards. I resolve to put this right before I return to England in three days’ time.
She soon understands what I require and freezes into patient poses, gathering rosebuds, scattering petals, brushing a full-blown bloom against her cheek. She is quite wrongly dressed for a session of this sort, in her dark serge frock with inevitable white pinafore. I have not asked her to replace her boots and stockings, as bare feet seem more appropriate to the mood of the pictures.
It is growing hot. I wish I had a Panama hat, like Kipling’s. The shadows are sharp and black. I try to adjust my lens to the brilliant light, and hope for the best.
This fully operational fountain has taken me by surprise. I can only assume that the Great Granary’s gardeners keep it serviced. It is not an ambitious fountain: a large stone basin with central pediment releasing three fine jets of water. Perhaps it is a Netherlandish assertion of triumph over water; a nation which can reclaim land from the seas and reverse the flow of rivers can build a fountain on a mountain.
Maria’s skirt is wet at the edges; splashes of damp stain her pinafore. I move the camera closer to photograph her as a tomboy Narcissus leaning over the water which shimmers back her image. The whites of her eyes and teeth flash in the wavelets. She sits on the edge of the basin and kicks her feet.
As I change plates I notice she has found something of interest on the basin rim. She bends over and exclaims in delight.
‘What is it?’ I move over to her side.
On her hand is a lizard-like creature with a face like an Oxford gargoyle. Its delicate, prehensile fingers cling to her flesh. Its long tail curls upwards with a Baroque flourish. Its bulging eyes are heavily hooded and remind me of Sir Alfred Milner.
‘He can change he’s colour!’ she announces.
The chameleon is bright green, but even as I watch its pigmentation starts to flush. ‘He’ll go the same colour as my s-sleeve,’ she explains. The fact that her sleeve is dark blue and the chameleon is now a dusky pink seems immaterial.
I photograph her trying to establish eye contact with the shifty-looking creature. It begins to crawl up her arm, its two eyes rolling about in opposite directions. I can see its heart beating fast inside its rosy skin.
She plucks it from her shoulder and places it on an oleander bush. ‘Now you can t-turn green again,’ she says to it.
It occurs to me that we might as well be in the Gardens of Versailles for the degree of mountain in my pictures.
The octagonal summerhouse is built entirely out of mountain stone, and painted over with whitewash. The inevitable teak beams and benches make it seem like another room in the Great Granary. On either side, at a distance of some fifty yards, are two stone benches for the slaves who would have carried their lords and ladies up the mountain slopes and awaited their commands without making their presence felt. Did they, too, enjoy the view?
Maria cavorts in the dark cavern of the summerhouse while I turn my tripod round and ponder exposure lengths. The sun rises higher in the sky and beats against my head. I feel I am being strangled by my high collar. The child will not notice if I loosen it. Nor will she care if I remove my jacket and work in my shirt-sleeves.
She poses under an arch, leans against a column, sits demurely on a bench, plucking at rose petals. My head is in a black bag. I cannot breathe. Sweat begins to roll down my face and body in torrents. I struggle out of the cloth and run to the icy waters of the fountain. Oh, what exquisite relief to feel coolness on my face, my neck. I splash joyously. The slender fountain-spray murmurs lies about rain.
Maria has joined me.
‘You hot, hey?’ Her eyes are enormous with concern.
‘Yes, I’m s-sorry,’ I stammer. ‘I’m not used to this heat, you see. Goodness me!’ I am recovering. ‘If this is your winter, I don’t think I’d survive your summer!’
The child looks around her in astonishment. ‘It’s not winter! In winter it rains and the squirrels go to sleep.’
‘Ah, but does it ever snow?’ My fingers, spread out in fountain water, have become numbed by the brimming cold.
Now Maria climbs back into the basin and begins kicking arcs of water into the air with her brown feet. I have learnt that she answers questions in her own time, and wait patiently for a response.
‘What’s snow?’ she enquires in a shower of self-made raindrops.
‘Snow is what happens in England when it is very cold. White snowflakes fall out of the sky and cover the earth. Children go sledging and make snowballs.’ I cannot put it more simply than that.
This is not good enough for Maria. ‘But what does it l-look like?’ she cries.
I rack my scientific brains miserably. ‘I suppose, once it has fallen, it looks like whipped cream – or ice-cream!’ I add in a flash of whimsical inspiration.
‘Oo-hoo!’ Maria jumps out of the fountain and runs round the rosebushes with her head thrust back and tongue stuck out. ‘Ook!’ she commands. ‘I ee ing I eam!’ This open-mouthed method of speech reduces her to a great deal of silly giggling, and I decide it is time to return to my camera and pack up. I have taken enough photographs.
I move into the coolness of the summerhouse where I pack and fold in meticulous order, out of the violence of the sun’s rays.
When I raise my head, I cannot see Maria.
With a screech of terror, I run down to the fountain.
She has thrown her clothes off and her tender young limbs slip through the water like long, sinuous fins.
I cannot stop looking at her beautiful body.
She swims round and round, then rears up sharply and, laughing, threatens to splash me. Her tiny shoulders form a perfect right-angle with her neck, yet there is a curve in them that breaks my heart.
I back away. I find a voice which says: ‘Maria, are you allowed to swim like that?’ She looks at me slyly. ‘I got all dirty from the ice-cream. So I had to have a barf.’
And in she plunges once more.
I return to the summerhouse and unpack my camera. In spite of the sun I drag the tripod, the black hood, the plates, down to the pool. I ask Maria to pose for me. She stands waist-deep in the water, hands held up high beneath the spray which slithers down her torso. Snap! She crouches on hands and knees, so that only her smiling face surrounded by hair that has quadrupled in size protrudes from the water. Snap! She stares pensively at the water-jet, a self-conscious forefinger on her chin. Snap!
I remove my head from the black bag and say as casually as possible: ‘Would you like to pose for me again among the rosebushes?’
‘Wif no clothes on?’
‘Whichever you please.’
The child springs out of the fountain and streaks over to the roses. I hardly dare to follow her with my eyes.
Her buttocks would fit precisely into my cupped hands. The slit between her legs seems to have been drawn with a pencil. I can see the stripes of her ribcage. She begins to dance.
I wriggle my head into the hood and begin taking photographs. Maria points her toe, her hands in an arch above her head. Snap! Maria bends down and trails her fingers over her feet. Snap! Maria lifts one leg into the fountain. Snap! Maria bends her knees and prepares to dive. Snap!
Maria’s hand extends slyly into the oleander bush. She plucks out the chameleon, a miniature dinosaur who has not moved from his twig for a millennium of micro-seconds, and places him upon her shoulder.
‘Come closer!’ I call out. ‘So that I can photograph the two of you together.’
O, how Maria plays with the chameleon! She lies in the grass. I adjust my camera lens. He runs up and down her body. She giggles at the prickling sensation. He holds himself still, his own body now a diagonal slash across her navel. Maria’s fingers explore the grass idly and release a cloud of small flies. From the chameleon’s jaws a long coiled tongue thrusts, abruptly, but accurately.
My head under the cloth, I view the antipodeal scene, upside down, upon the plate glass. In the heat, my fingers tremble violently as I press the button to open the shutter.
And suddenly Maria is no longer there. I tear my head out of the hood and for a moment can see nothing with my dark-adapted eyes. I can hear bodies struggling. As my pupils dilate I can see that a woman has swept the child under her shawl, a woman whose frowning brow is now turned upon the extended lens which is fixed upon her like the barrel of a gun. Maria struggles and squawks but Mrs Kipling is used to dealing with children. She makes Maria don her abandoned clothes, ignoring me as I emerge from the protection of my hood.
I stand beside my camera, smiling sheepishly. She is already bustling Maria out of the rose garden, away from my contamination. Before descending into the gorge she turns to me with bitter eyes: ‘For shame, Professor!’
I have no reply to that.
1907
Dear Miss Schreiner,
You will no doubt be somewhat startled to receive this manuscript – a form of diary, I suppose – from someone you have undoubtedly dismissed with the greatest contempt as a man who did not keep his word. Eight years have passed since my peremptory departure from Cape Town, and not one day goes by without my resolving to write you an explanation, an apology, an excuse, call it what you will. For I live in hope of your forgiveness. Now Selous, who is visiting Central Africa, has very kindly agreed to deliver the enclosed to you on his return to Cape Town. It will reveal more than any letter ever could.
I still retain vivid memories of the last time I saw you – in the upper reaches of the Great Granary gardens, on the day before the Release of my birds was due to take place. In your arms you held two brightly painted toy automobiles which you had procured from a shop in the village below – I forget its name. (I often wonder whether you found it within yourself to present them to Salisbury and Chamberlain, even though my sudden exit meant it was no longer necessary for you to lure them away.)
I could have given you the telegrams then and there, and, bearing in mind the unmitigated disaster of the War that was to follow – a War that might just possibly have been prevented by the exchange of eight telegrams for two toy motorcars – I now regret most bitterly that I did not.
May I assure you that I had every intention of keeping to my side of the bargain.
However, an unforeseen chain of circumstances was to prevent this intention from being honoured. On returning to the Great Granary, I immediately shut myself up in the dark-room and spent the next hour developing and printing the photographs I had taken on the mountain slopes that morning. I pegged the pictures on the drying line and returned to my room to clean myself up and prepare for a light lunch. Imagine my astonishment when half an hour later, Huxley, the major-domo, knocked on my door and ordered me to join his master in the latter’s magnificent bedroom, wherein he often conducted his interviews.
‘And bring the telegrams with you!’ he barked, in a voice entirely devoid of respect.
On entering the bedroom, I was further surprised to find the Colossus, Mr Jameson, Mrs Kipling and Huxley standing in a row in the great bay window, for all the world like a quartet of opera singers about to break into a four-part fugue.
The Colossus said (his thatch of hair more dishevelled than ever): ‘You have completely betrayed my trust.’
Jameson said: ‘Come on, old chap, hand them over. You know I know you’ve got them.’
Mrs K said: ‘I have told them everything.’ (Her nostrils flared as she spoke, as if I were emitting an unpleasant odour.)
Huxley merely grunted.
Miss Schreiner, if you read my document, you will understand.
My host said: ‘I must ask you to leave this house within the hour.’
His best friend said: ‘Sorry it had to end this way.’
Mrs K said, or rather, spat: ‘You ought to be locked up.’
It seemed to me that, one after the other, the foursome then proceeded to lift their voices into an angry arpeggio – an accusing appoggiatura – an indignant discord – suspended in that great bedroom, requiring resolution.
‘Paedophile!’
‘Traitor!’ ‘Pervert!’
‘Thief!’
I looked around for help.
Oscar was standing beside the bed. Once again he wore his martyr’s arrows, and he was offering me his blackened smile.
Inside my ribcage a nightingale began to sing. The silver music slid around my fortressed heart, Miss Schreiner, and found some secret aperture into the very sanctum of my life’s blood. Then how the thrushes trilled! the wrens fluted! the blackbirds crooned! the starlings warbled cakewalk and telephones! Out of my mouth bubbled the song of my birds, liquid as the stream in the mountain’s cleft, potent as any wine. For my tormentors, I performed an entire dawn chorus.
‘Professor Wills, please stop that whistling! You look quite ridiculous!’
Yes, I am a ridiculous person, I can see that. And always have been. Worthy of ridicule: a laughing stock.
Oscar caught my eye and pursed his lips. His life has always perched on the edge of ridicule, a stylish bird who depends on song rather than wings for survival. Now he threw back his head sideways in the manner of his favourite saint, and winked.
The laughing stock began to laugh. Almost immediately unused muscles round my diaphragm went into spasm, causing me to bend over in pain, clutching my stomach, stamping my feet. Yet in the midst of my physical discomfort I sensed the draining away of a great weight; I became a light thing, as if borne by wings.
‘The man’s hysterical,’ said Dr Jameson.
‘I cannot see that this is a laughing matter,’ shrilled the Colossus.
‘This has gone too far!’ snapped Mrs K, and whirled out of the room, causing Oscar to jump sideways and raise an imaginary hat.
‘The telegrams, please.’ Huxley extended a hairy hand.
‘And you can have your dirty photographs back,’ smirked Jameson.
‘And what of the Release?’ I enquired.
The Colossus was towering above me. Had he suddenly grown or had I shrunk? His blue eyes, set within their red rims, had become transparent. ‘The birds can be released without you.’ He turned away to fiddle with papers on his desk.
I withdrew my hands from behind my back and placed the telegrams in Huxley’s extended palms. I said: ‘Tell me, Huxley, was it on your grandmother’s or your grandfather’s side that you are descended from an ape?’
A couple of hours later I stood on Cape Town station, surrounded by baggage and awaiting the Trans-Karoo Express. Mary the poodle pranced around my bags and left her mark upon them, while Challenger drew a map of the shortest route to his verandah-encircled house in Ujiji. He promised to join me within six months, a promise I am glad to say he has kept.
His Dodos turned out to be Whaleheaded Storks, more accurately known as the Shoebill species Balaeniceps rex. Though the bird looks like a stork or a heron it is neither, and has the honour of being the only species of its genus. I have become extremely interested in this clumsy wading creature, and somewhat concerned for its survival. It lives only among the local waterways and marshes, which hunters set on fire so as to flush out their prey. I fear that this can only result in the destruction of the habitat and the ultimate extinction of this unique species. I plan to lend my support to the creation of a National Park.
Mr Selous brings much news of Cape Town. He tells us that in the last year of the War the Colossus died in Jameson’s arms, in his little cottage by the sea. A massive lump of ice was lowered through a hole in the ceiling in an effort to cool the unusually hot and sultry temperature. I hope he did not curse me as he lay dying.
It seems inconceivable that JimJam is now the Colony’s Premier, attempting to unify a country riven with hatred. It does not help that Milner is busy anglicising the ex-Boer Republics. I am not surprised to hear he has been made a viscount out of gratitude for precipitating the Anglo-Boer War. Who gains by war? you once memorably asked him. We certainly know who the losers are: the British taxpayers who lost over two hundred million pounds in this venture, and more than fifty thousand British, Boer and Afrikaner men and women who lost their lives in bloody battle or in refugee camps (now referred to as ‘concentration’ camps, I believe), to say nothing of the thousands of black people who gave up their lives for what they thought was their country. Selous is convinced that JimJam will be knighted before long.
Selous also informs us that on the day of the Release, my songbirds flew off into the forest and were never seen again –except for the starlings, who have by now become a national pest. Some of them can sing like nightingales, he says.
Yours very sincerely, Miss Schreiner,