Ben Kaplan sat at the breakfast table sifting through Darius’s photographs, sometimes turning them to examine the body’s position from a different angle. Occasionally he reached for a magnifying cube and placed it over a detail of the picture. The whole family had gathered in the kitchen the morning after the find.
Joe patiently watched over his father’s shoulder.
The remains of the family breakfast were scattered over the scrubbed, wooden table like the remains of an archaeological dig. Barbara brought over a cafetiere of fresh coffee.
‘How far down did they find the body?’ Ben asked.
‘I’m not sure. Six feet perhaps,’ Barbara replied.
‘The details of the uniform have largely gone, but there’s probably enough to identify it. I’ll need to check in regimental records, try and find a match,’ Ben said.
Joe picked up the Victorian pocket-watch and turned it on to its front.
‘It’s got to be him, Dad,’ he said staring at the faded initials carved on the back.
‘Who?’ Barbara asked, feeling excluded, as she often did when Joe and his father got into a huddle over something.
Ben sounded as if he was writing the headlines for an obituary.
‘James William Alexander. Scottish Captain of the British Army. Fought in one of South Africa’s Frontier Wars and then came to Namibia to study the Herero and Nama.’
‘Joe, how do you know about this?’ his mother asked, trying to break into the charmed circle of knowledge.
‘When I went with Dad to the archives at half-term, his was one of the boxes we emptied. Dad told me his story. It could be another person with the same initials...’
‘It could be. Never rule out coincidence. And never get prematurely excited about anything. Those are two things I have learned over the years,’ Ben reflected.
Joe was pleased to have his caution validated.
‘What about the date on the watch though? 1829. I thought you said he was exploring here in the 1830’s,’ Joe challenged.
‘He was. 1829 would be the date when he was given the watch… or perhaps when he purchased it and had it inscribed,’ Ben pointed out.
‘Of course!’ said Joe. ‘I was thinking it was the date he had died.’
‘Most people do. It’s a very interesting phenomenon,’ Ben said. ‘The tendency is to think of anything with a date stamped on it that’s found in a grave as the date of burial. It’s the way our minds initially grasp it. But there’s a whole preceding history in a grave. It has its own chronology, running backwards from death to birth.’
‘So, if this is the person you’re thinking of…?’ Barbara asked, wedging her way into the conversation.
‘If it is him, we know that he was revered by the local tribes,’ Ben replied.
‘So that would explain the garland around his neck?’ Barbara added.
‘Exactly. We also know that he was exploring a secret burial ground when he died.’
‘So, this site is that burial ground?’ Barbara suggested, finding herself now as wrapped up in this Victorian secret as her husband and son.
‘Ah but no, it isn’t,’ Ben said emphatically.
‘What do you mean, Dad?’ Joe asked.
‘You remember what I told you, Joe. He was searching for a sacred burial site that the Herero would not go anywhere near. They refused to accompany him. So, since we know from the garland that he has been buried and decorated by the Herero…’
‘We know that this can’t be the site he was pursuing: the one they were too afraid to go near,’ Joe said, pleased to be able to follow the logic of his father’s detective work.
‘Precisely. Barbara, how much of an area have they excavated round the body?’
‘I couldn’t say exactly, but not much. As soon as they had uncovered the body, they downed spades and found us.’
‘Good. Do we know if they have left the site untouched since then?’
‘We put tarpaulins over the body and left the site with “No Entry” signs dotted around. There’s always someone patrolling the site. So hopefully not.’
‘Excellent. Let’s just hope the Ministry hasn’t sent in their own archaeologists.’
‘It’s quite possible they have,’ Barbara started to explain. ‘Ilana…’
‘My friend Selima’s Mom,’ Joe intervened, explaining a crucial detail his mother had failed to mention.
‘Yes exactly, thank you, Joe,’ Barbara continued. ‘When I mentioned getting you to come and examine the site, Ilana said that Namibia had its own anthropologists.’
‘In which case, I need to phone the Ministry and stop them jumping in with both feet. We also need to get a permit from them to examine the site. That could be tricky. I’ve got to know a few people, win their trust, but they’re not senior enough to have clout.’
‘Wait!’ Joe had a brainwave. ‘My friend Freddie’s father is the British High Commissioner. Couldn’t we ask him to help us? He must be well-connected into the Government.’
‘Well it’s worth a try,’ Ben replied.
‘If we get a permit, we can go at the weekend,’ Barbara suggested.
‘Can we go with Hannah, Selima and Freddie?’ Joe pleaded.
‘It’s too many people,’ Ben objected. ‘You need as few people disturbing a site as possible.’
‘Hold on, Dad. Selima’s father, Darius, was the one who found the body in the first place. Her mother is an expert on tribal customs. They could be incredibly helpful to you. What’s more, Hannah’s mother is a linguist. She studies dialects. She might be able to help with any translations. They live in Swakopmund and so does Selima’s family. I’m sure we could stay with them if I asked.’
‘And what about Freddie and his family?’ Barbara asked.
‘They live in Windhoek. I can’t leave Freddie out, and if his father’s going to help us…’
‘Ok, we’ll see. Can you get Freddie’s father’s number for me? I’d like to speak to him as soon as possible.’
‘Of course.’ Joe started to message Freddie on the WhatsApp Group.
‘In the meantime, why don’t I speak to Ilana and ask them for a good bed and breakfast in Swakopmund,’ Barbara added.
The door to Ralph Wilde’s office was opened with a definite vigour.
‘Ben Kaplan and his son to see you, High Commissioner.’ Ralph’s secretary was always efficient and polite, qualities on which he had already learnt to rely.
‘Thank you, Tulela. Please show them in.’
Joe was curious to meet Freddie’s father. He had already formed a mental image of Ralph: very English, eccentric, probably with a cut-glass accent and slightly stern. He had also imagined him wearing a suit regardless of the weather. So, he was somewhat taken aback to find him wearing a crisp white shirt and no tie. His trousers though had been so well-pressed that you could have cut paper on their creases, and his shoes were polished enough to pass muster on a parade ground.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Kaplan, and, you must be Joe…’ His voice was soft, assured and light. They shook hands.
‘Joe, Freddie’s next door looking very bored. I’m afraid I’ve run out of even vaguely interesting jobs to give him. Why don’t you relieve him of his chores? You can go in through that door.’
Joe opened the internal door into the next room, deliberately leaving it slightly open.
Freddie was sitting at a computer screen, painfully entering data of some kind. On hearing the door open, he turned around, grateful for any kind of distraction.
‘Joe! Thank God. Entertainment at last.’
Freddie walked over to him, clasped hands and slapped shoulders.
‘Glad you think so. I thought perhaps you’d had enough of me by the end of last week.’
Freddie reeled back and looked at him quizzically.
‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘My strange obsessions,’ Joe said. ’I thought perhaps they were boring you.’
‘I don’t find them strange or boring,’ Freddie reassured. ‘In fact, you’ve shown me whole new ways of looking at things.’
‘I have?’
‘Of course. Now, please find something interesting in this data my father’s given me to crunch.’
Freddie got up, sat Joe down in his chair in front of the computer, then dragged a second chair to be next to him. They had already forgotten the awkwardness of their fathers meeting for the first time in the room next door.
‘So, you’re an anthropologist Freddie tells me…’ Ralph beckoned to Ben to take a seat opposite him at his meeting-table by the window.
‘Correct, yes. The cliché tells us not to dig too deep into the past. Well, I can’t dig deep enough.’ Ben was tired of how often he had said this by way of an introduction, but it remained, nonetheless, true.
Ralph poured them both a glass of iced water from a jug, freshened with lime, and passed one across.
‘I am imagining, Namibia is a treasure-trove for someone like you.’
‘You’re not wrong. I’m a child in a sweet shop here.’
Ralph laughed. ‘So, how can I help?’ he asked.
‘My wife, Barbara, has been excavating on a potential hotel site in Damaraland. They unearthed the remains of a Victorian soldier, whilst doing a test dig on the foundations.’
‘How inconvenient!’ Ralph commented. He added a coda on seeing Ben’s discomfort with his remark, ‘Inconvenient for them, but highly revealing for you I suppose…’
‘And that is my point. I think he may be a very distinguished explorer. Someone on the trail of something remarkable that he started to write up in his journals. I need a Government licence to examine the body and dig further around the site.’
‘Well, I’m only a couple of months into this job, so I am not entirely familiar with all the branches of the Namibian Government. My guess would be that the Department of Arts and Culture or Land Reform will be the places to apply.’
Ralph walked back to his desk, sifted through some plastic folders and removed a document.
‘I have the organisational charts here…’
‘There’s a further complication,’ Ben intervened. ‘It relates to one of Freddie and Joe’s friends…’
Joe was enjoying playing around with the trade data Freddie’s father had given him to analyse, converting it into charts it to make it more comprehensible. But he was not so engrossed as to miss his name being spoken in the next-door room.
‘Did you hear that? I think they’re talking about Selima,’ he said to Freddie.
‘If we move a bit closer to the door, we can hear everything,’ Freddie suggested.
‘There’s a Namibian girl that both of our boys have befriended,’ Ben continued. ‘Her name is Selima. Her mother is Ilana Van Zyl, a tourist guide who led their school outing to Sossusvlei. She’s on the war-path about environmental damage and preserving Namibian culture.’
‘Sounds admirable,’ Ralph commented.
‘I like your dad already,’ Joe whispered to Freddie. Freddie smiled and put his finger to his lips.
‘It is admirable, but she wants local anthropologists to be given the right to examine the find, not me.’
‘You think that I can stop them in some way. Is that it?’
‘It’s not so much a question of stopping them, as helping me get an urgent licence to work alongside them. I want to go back to the dig this weekend.’
‘Yes! Go for it,’ Joe whispered from behind the door, fist-pumping.
‘Please don’t take this question the wrong way, but on what grounds do you qualify?’ Ralph asked Ben.
‘I am a recognised expert on the Herero,’ Ben answered. ‘If I’m involved in the dig, I can also draw on the expertise of my academic peers back in America and the UK, in decoding what we find. I’m attached to the University of Columbia in New York.’
‘I see your predicament,’ Ralph replied, ‘but it’s possible that by interfering I might make them even more determined to keep foreigners out. It’s their country, their soil, their find.’
‘But it’s not their corpse,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s the remains, of a British, well Scottish to be precise, soldier. As the British High Commissioner, I imagine you have the rights to ask for the body to be returned to Scotland. There are almost certainly living descendants who would want the return of the body.’
‘And before it is returned, I, as High Commissioner, naturally want to ensure that none of his possessions…’ Ralph chimed in, cottoning on to Ben’s line of argument.
‘…are taken or despoiled,’ Ben finished Ralph’s sentence for him. ‘Precisely. You understand the situation perfectly, as I hoped you would.’
‘Your dad has got to win a medal for inventing diplomatic arguments,’ Freddie whispered, returning the earlier compliment paid to his own father by Joe.
‘I will see what I can do,’ Ralph said.
Ben shot his hand across the table and shook Ralph’s, trading a look of mutual resolve.
‘One other thing. I’d like you and your family to come with me at the weekend…if you feel you can,’ Ben continued.
‘Come with you? Is this for me to provide you with diplomatic air cover? Because…’
Freddie burst in through the part-open door, behind which they had been listening. This took Joe somewhat by surprise, who stumbled in after him, his prop having been removed. The fathers tried to look stern at their eavesdropping but were already both smiling inwardly at their sons’ shared conspiracy and their friendship.
‘Dad, please say yes. Joe and I really want to go. Mum and Clara can come too. Come on, you said we need to get out of Windhoek more. What better opportunity is there than this?’ Freddie was never less than comprehensive when trying to persuade.
‘Well, it certainly beats another weekend at the club being thrashed by your mother at tennis. We need to check she isn’t on duty at the hospital first. Where would we stay?’
‘Hannah and Selima’s parents both live in Swakopmund which is near to the site. I’m sure we can stay with them.’
‘A weekend by the seaside. What could be better?’ Joe chipped in.
Things moved on apace as they had to. Ralph used his Deputy’s connections into the Ministry of Arts and Culture to obtain a licence for Ben to examine the site. What’s more, it was agreed that he would have a clear week in which to examine the site without local archaeologists, providing that a member of the National Anthropology Museum could be present to supervise.
Anne Wilde was on weekend duty at the hospital but managed to swap duties with another consultant.
When Freddie had messaged Hannah that they were coming, Hannah’s parents insisted the Wilde’s stay with them, egged on by Hannah of course. The same was agreed between the Kaplan’s and the Van Zyl family. The ‘Four Teenagers of the Apocalypse’ WhatsApp Group whirred with excited messages: reminders of what to bring; of what to say and what not to say in front of each other’s parents; and warnings about their various eccentricities.
Since they numbered seven people between the two families, they agreed to travel in a convoy of two cars from Windhoek. They set off at sunrise on a Saturday to avoid travelling in the heat of the mid-day and travelled North from Windhoek on the B2 until they reached Karibib, where they had agreed to take a detour.
In order to maximise their trip, Ilana had suggested that they see the southern part of the Skeleton Coast - the Dorob National Park and its famous seal colony - before heading south down the gravel, coastal road to Swakopmund.
They drove through the Namib, the oldest desert on Earth, which, because of the miraculous inventiveness of Nature, still managed to sustain extraordinary plants and wildlife.
They stopped at one point because Clara was ‘bursting for the toilet’ in her characteristically melodramatic way. A few minutes later, she ran back to the car screaming, which Anne immediately assumed was an animal encounter of the wrong kind.
‘No, no come and look,’ Clara pleaded, dragging her mother by the hand. The others followed, curious to see.
‘Look!’
Where Clara had peed, the ground was alive with unfurling plants that were brightening into reds, oranges and vivid greens even as they watched.
‘I am pretty sure these are the famous fields of lichen,’ Ben said. ‘They survive by taking moisture from the fogs and the humid air. When you water them they change colour.’
‘It’s a flower garden in the desert. I’ve got magic pee!’ Clara danced a little triumph around the lichen.
Joe and Freddie meanwhile had wandered off, chattering away about school, and stumbled across, what looked like a giant, mangled cabbage. It was bigger than them both, and seemed to have been flattened by a truck.
‘What the hell is that?’ Freddie exclaimed.
‘Let me look it up,’ Joe suggested.
‘What? In your two-thousand-page botanist’s handbook that you just happened to slip into your rucksack before leaving home?’ Freddie responded.
Joe dug him sharply in the ribs. He’d got used to Freddie’s English sarcasm by now.
‘No, I’ve got a plant app on my phone. Plant Snapp. It’s extraordinary. Watch.’
Joe proceeded to photograph the giant, squashed cabbage with his phone, as Clara ran up and into Freddie’s arms, babbling away about her magic pee.
‘Whoagh!’ she said, finally noticing the giant cabbage. ‘What’s that?’
‘That’s what we are about to find out, Pumpkin.’
Joe read out the description from his app. By now all four parents had joined them, equally struck by this plant that dwarfed them all.
‘Welwitschia Mirabilis.’
‘“Mirabilis” is the Latin for marvellous or wonderful,’ Ralph interpreted, delighted that his GCSE Latin had finally proved of some value in his life.
Joe continued, editing out the dull bits.
‘Named after the Austrian botanist who stumbled across it…. Blah, blah, blah. It’s featured on the Namibian coat of arms and nicknamed the ‘living fossil’. They can live for over sixteen hundred years. They can survive for years without water.’
‘Extraordinary. Given the way our planet’s going, that’s the kind of adaptability we are going to have to learn,’ Barbara said.
‘Time has a different meaning in these landscapes,’ Ben pondered out loud. ‘This plant started to sprout in Roman times.’
‘Everything seems so still here and yet it’s not. It’s alive,’ Clara said quietly.
On the way to Uis, they passed a small cluster of mountains, including the Spitzkoppe which towered several hundred metres above the plains. It stood sentry over the Namib and was nicknamed the ‘Matterhorn of Africa’ because of its resemblance to the famous Swiss Alp.
The landscape flattened as they got closer to the sea, passing the vast Messum Crater, twenty-two kilometres across, visible from space and the site of an ancient volcano.
As they approached the Skeleton Coast, the famous early morning fog started to appear, descending with a silent menace. They stopped at a small roadside stall to have a rest and see if the fog would clear. It was selling marula juice and coffee and was on the banks of the Messum river: one of the several rivers that threaded its way from the highlands down to the icy sea. These rivers sometimes disappeared beneath the sand and then reappeared two hundred metres later.
As they sat chatting, a most unexpected sound arose from behind a small clump of trees. It was the sound of a slightly-out-of-tune piano playing a beautiful Beethoven sonata. It sounded very formal and European after the simple joy of African chants in the Boma.
‘Is that a radio playing?’ Anne asked the man running the stall.
He laughed revealing two rows of teeth more gap-toothed than even the landscape that surrounded him.
‘No, ma’am. That’s the real thing. Go and see. There’s a little path through the scrub.’
They finished their drinks and made their way towards the cascade of notes. Ahead of them, through the trees, they could make out the figure of a man in a white T-shirt and khaki shorts, sitting bolt upright in that self-conscious manner of concert performers, at a piano. His sheet music was propped up in front of him. His ‘stage’ was a clearing in the scrub. Nearby stood a small and very simple church and they could only assume that the piano had been moved from there to sprinkle its blessings on the great outdoors.
As they entered the clearing, they fell silent on seeing a giant figure six to eight feet from the piano. It was an elephant, standing stock still, entranced by the melody. It swayed its trunk backwards and forwards in a gentle rhythm, its eyes half-closed, as if in a trance.
The pianist clearly didn’t feel any sense of danger. The elephant only needed to take a few steps forward to crush the piano into matchsticks. He would stand no chance were it to charge. Yet, here they were, elephant and man, bonded in music and in trust.
The man, hearing them enter the clearing, turned towards them but carried on playing, lulling the elephant.
He said two simple words to them in the softest voice imaginable.
‘It’s blind!’
Then he turned back to his music and his loving, and loved, audience of one.
The reason they had deviated from the straightest route to Swakopmund was shrouded in a fog which slowed them to a snail’s pace. Yet, they could smell it through the open car windows from several hundred metres away.
‘Oh my God! What is that horrendous smell?’ Freddie exclaimed.
Clara pretended to be sick.
‘Clara, don’t do that’ Anne admonished. ‘It’s bad for your throat.’
‘It’s the seal colony. That’s what we’ve come to see,’ Ralph pointed out.
‘Right,’ Clara said. ‘Well now we’ve smelt them, can we leave please!’
‘I’m with Pumpkin on this one,’ Freddie chimed in. ‘Unless you’ve packed the gas masks!’
‘This will be a unique experience,’ Ralph said, trying to maintain his dignity amidst the mocking laughter and then finally succumbing with his own guffaw.
‘Yes, well being eaten by piranhas is also a unique experience,’ said Anne, ‘but not one I would necessarily recommend.’
Ben signalled from the car in front that they should park.
‘Welcome to Cape Cross Seal Reserve,’ Ben said as they tumbled out.
‘Welcome is not the word that my family have in mind, may I tell you,’ Ralph retorted.
Ben refused to let his enthusiasm for wildlife be curtailed. ‘Ah but…being highly organised as I am, I have the perfect accompaniment for this little outing.’
As they stretched the car journey out of their limbs, Ben opened the boot door of his jeep, fished around and pulled out a small, zipped bag. Inside were ten or so nose-clips with cotton-wool clamps to go over each nostril.
‘Aromatherapists use these to take away your sense of smell. We sometimes use them when we’re opening plague graves,’ he explained, as he dished out the clips. ‘I think you might find they make our little expedition more…palatable.’
They took a selfie in front of their cars, with their nose clips in place and posted it for the Swakopmund crowd to see. The photo was labelled ‘Seven nasally-challenged explorers feeling sealy! Who “nose” what we might discover at Cape Cross?’
On the way to the seal colony, they stopped at the stone cross on the bleak and foggy headland, after which Cape Cross was named.
Ralph read out the Latin inscription, adding in his own observations as he did so.
‘Right! So, it says “Since the creation of the world 6,684 years have passed.” I think we now know it was a tad longer than that don’t we?’
‘6,684 sounds like a Jewish year,’ Barbara offered up. ‘So, who says the Jews weren’t explorers?’
Ralph continued the translation: ‘“And since the birth of Christ 1,484 years ago…’’’
‘Although scholars now believe, of course, that Jesus was born between 4 and 6 BC, so that date is also wrong,’ Ben observed.
‘So that means that 2018 A.D. is not 2018, it’s actually 2022, or even 2024,’ Joe chipped in.
‘So much for the exactness of maths, Joe.’ Freddie couldn’t resist.
‘Nothing to do with math being wrong. It’s humans not using math accurately,’ Joe responded, punching him good-naturedly.
Clara pushed her way between the two of them.
‘So, if nothing is when we think it is, we’re all lost,’ she said, looking at the fog that had still failed to clear.
Ralph exchanged knowing glances with Barbara who smiled. ‘The perils of having bright children, eh? Anyway, it basically says that in 1484 Diego Cao, a Portuguese navigator landed here.’
Several hundred metres later, Joe tripped over something and fell cursing, his ankle cut and bleeding.
‘Goddam, what the hell was that?’
Barbara rushed forward. ‘Joe, are you OK?’
He nodded but his face was screwed up in pain. Barbara always carried a small, first aid kit with her and started searching for an antiseptic wipe.
‘Oh my God, this is it,’ Ben exclaimed. ‘Joe, you’re a genius. You found this slate.’
‘I tripped, Dad!’ Joe responded, nursing his wound ‘But of course that confirms my extraordinary detective skills!’
‘Ah, but as Ubuntu might say, is any trip ever truly accidental?’ Freddie said, managing to cheer Joe up.
Ben was too engrossed to notice his son’s sarcasm. He knelt down and wiped the sand and dirt off a piece of ancient slate, half-buried in the ground. Anne knelt next to him, relieved that, for once, she was using her own detective skills on artefacts and not patients.
Ben continued with his explanation. ‘A man called David Coulson describes this slate in his book called “Namib”.’
Anne read it out. ‘It’s in English. It’s dated 1838. “I am proceeding to a river sixty miles north, and should anyone find this and follow me, God will help him.”’
‘Who wrote it, Mummy?’ Clara asked, tugging at her.
‘There is no name darling!’ Anne replied.
‘That’s what Coulson says,’ Ben continued. ‘No one knows who wrote the message or what became of them. I think it might be our friend, Captain Alexander.’
A slight chill passed through them all.
The sound of crying babies added to their disorientation.
‘Seal pups,’ said Ben.
A hundred feet further on, they stopped in their tracks. In front of them lay a vast army of seals. The fog had cleared enough for them to see there were countless thousands, and this was after the cull that kept the colony ‘under control’: an annual bloodbath, against which Ilana and many others had fiercely protested.
Some seals flopped, others swam; many lifted their head to the sky, honking as if at some invisible ‘Sky God’, asking for release. The colony looked like a religious festival, whose pilgrims ranged from the pious and ecstatic to the bored and listless.
The smell was so pungent that it couldn’t entirely be stopped by their nose clips. The massive bulls honked and bit each other, fighting over territories. The pups cried like babies, some suckling from their mothers. Some cows dozed exhausted, enjoying a brief respite between demanding bulls and demanding pups.
As they looked more carefully, they could see that some of the pups were dead, and lay unburied. Some had drowned and been washed up on the shore. Others had lost their mothers and died forlorn. Worst of all were those who had simply been crushed by careless bulls rolling over on them. There was so much teeming life here, it could be killed without even noticing. Anne tried to distract Clara from the dead pups, but she was far too observant and started to sob, a little bit more than was believable.
There were boardwalks which enabled them to walk right into the midst of the colony. Joe felt as if he would drown in the noise and stench. It felt like being on another planet, a planet where life had dwindled to a single, surviving species, all diversity and beauty gone.
Then they saw her. At first, you couldn’t be sure. Not from a distance. But the majesty of the walk betrayed her. A lioness was prowling the perimeter of the colony, but no more than thirty feet from where they stood. She must have walked the river valley from the desert to the sea. Who knows why? She was slimmer and slighter than most lions.
Perhaps food was scarce. Perhaps it was an accident, a loss of bearings. Perhaps, she was lured by the smells of the sea and the colony, certainly by the prospect of fresh and easy meat.
Now she was surveying her prize, mesmerised by the choice. Several prides of lions could feast on these seals for weeks, but only she had undergone the journey. She was alone but too proud to be lonely. She appeared to almost smile. She had all the time in the world but was damned if she was going to take it. Not now, after the achingly long walk, through the river- beds, that would have lasted days.
Seals started to shift and honk and barge each other as she rose like a flame from the ground. She moved slowly, sadistically. A pup wouldn’t be enough. A bull might put up too much of a fight. So, a cow seemed perfect.
Instinctively, the two families all crouched together on the boardwalk, staying still and close together. Although they weren’t the hunted, they felt they could be. Their breathing slowed. Everything sharpened its outlines, despite the lingering fog. Colours looked brighter; sounds were harsher.
Then she was off. The seals moved as best they could, pups scattering in her path. Cows reared and honked, protecting their young. The lioness chose and pounced. The cow, bitten in the neck, succumbed like a sacrifice, swooning into the lion’s jaws and falling limp. She ritually gave herself up, as if dying for the colony. Several pups screeched like babies as she died. Bulls barked ferociously as if creating a wall of sound to shield the thousands. The lioness, dragged her prey, slowly but triumphantly, back to the rocks above the beach and proceeded to eat.
They all felt the same: the desire to be somewhere safe. They craved the oasis of the homes in Swakopmund. Even though they had never seen them, they could imagine their comforts.
Clara was the most disturbed by seeing the kill, but the adrenaline of it sang in all their veins for hours afterwards.
Once it was clear that they were safe and the lioness was dozing next to her prey, they carefully made their way back along the boardwalks back to the cars. Joe had a slight limp from his wound. They sat in momentary disbelief, and then set off on the gravel road to Swakopmund.
The young people wanted to be together and so Joe joined Freddie and Clara in the back of the Wilde’s car.
‘Are you all-right, Cluse?’ Freddie asked his sister. He always used this nickname when he wanted to cheer her up, to remind her of simpler times when a game on the floor had absorbed them both for hours, lost in a miniature world.
‘I thought lions lived in the jungle,’ she said, her eyes still glazed.
‘Lions used to roam the whole of the Old World,’ Ralph told her from the front of the car, looking in the rear-view mirror to check her reaction.
‘I am glad we live in the New World then,’ she replied.
‘It says here that lionesses do most of the hunting,’ Joe said.
‘Just as with humans, Joe,’ Anne replied with a twinkle in her eye and trading a cheeky glance with Ralph.
‘Yeah sure!’ Ralph replied. They were both relieved to be back in the safety of their car, with everyone inside, wearing their seat belts.
‘You’re not a lioness, Mummy,’ Clara observed ‘You’re much nicer.’
‘You haven’t seen her at the hospital,’ Ralph joked.
‘Yes, I have,’ Clara retorted. ‘Stop being mean, Daddy!’
Joe turned to Freddie.
‘Have you ever felt that way before?’
‘What way?’ Freddie asked.
‘Hunted. Out in the open. You and the elements. No civilisation to fall back on. Just you and a predator,’ Joe elaborated.
‘Never. Terrifying… but thrilling. I feel alive.’ Freddie said.
‘Look at that!’ Joe pointed to a shipwreck in the shallows of the ocean, buffeted by the South Atlantic waves.
‘That’s what I told you about,’ Freddie said excitedly. ‘Look, Mum, Dad, Clara, remember that first day and the shipwrecks? Sailing down this coast.’
‘They don’t look so scary now,’ Clara observed.
She was right. Now that the fog had lifted under the heat of the mid-day sun, the shipwreck looked more like an abandoned bath toy than a demonic presence. This wreck was more modern than some: a large fishing trawler, whose carcass was largely intact. Birds nestled on its every rusted inch, using its height to view their ocean prey. Its lilt to one side gave the illusion of motion: of a downwards move in the waves, but one that never came back up, stuck in the freeze-frame of its disaster.
Soon they were passing the industrial saltworks on the outskirts of Swakopmund, and opposite, nestling by the beach, was a small complex of satellite dishes, pointing at the sky at various angles.
‘Wow! A tracking station,’ Joe exclaimed.
‘I’m pretty sure that’s the one belonging to the Chinese government,’ Ralph responded. ‘I was briefed on it the other day by my team. The Chinese use it to track the re-entry of their space vehicles.’
This description lit up Joe’s head. Ever since he could remember, he’d loved space programmes. He’d watched recordings of the Apollo moon landings over and over. Ben and Barbara bought him a large telescope for his tenth birthday and had put it in pride of place by the picture window in the sitting-room. Every probe that set off to Mars or Saturn or the Sun, Joe tracked daily, marking its trajectory on graph paper.
After the trauma of the seal reserve, Swakop as it was often called, felt like civilisation. It had palm-lined, beautifully-clean streets, and German, colonial architecture. The Victorian buildings were painted in vibrant Caribbean colours as if to broadcast the town to passing ships. There were elegantly simple, Lutheran churches, well-kept parks and a stripy lighthouse like a stick of rock. It was all laid out in a neat, German grid system, parallel and at right angles to the sea.
‘Gosh it’s a real seaside town,’ Anne exclaimed, ‘in the middle of a desert!’
‘Yes, someone called it Germany’s most southerly Baltic resort,’ Ralph chirruped, breaking into laughter. Ralph always liked his own humour, even when no-one else did.
The streets were bustling with people from Windhoek escaping the heat of the desert interior at the height of summer. There were open-air bars and cafes with frothy cappuccinos and artisan ice-creams being served by the trayful.
Both families stopped to get an ice-cream and bask in the sun, the temperature made comfortable by a cheery breeze off the ocean. Then they checked the driving instructions to their respective hosts on Google Maps, agreed when they would set off for the site the next morning and went their separate ways.
Joe was excited to see Selima’s house for the first time. Sometimes people’s houses are exactly as you expect them in your head: their personality in bricks and mortar. Sometimes they reveal what has been hidden.
Selima’s house was modest but characterful, built in the 1970’s by South African architects: during the Apartheid era and before Namibian independence. Darius had liked the fact that it was built by South Africans given his ancestry. He had immediately felt at home on entering its hallway for the first time. Ilana liked it because it was light and airy and from the second floor you had a clear view of the sea.
Darius had kept the outside of the house perfectly maintained. His practicality was one of the things that had first attracted Ilana to this rough-round-the-edges, bearded farmer’s son. That and his blue eyes which always seemed to sparkle with the prospect of something new and glittering on the horizon. It was years before she realised that most of what glittered was an illusion.
The house was as loveably chaotic and colourful as the Van Zyl’s themselves. Shelves overflowed with Namibian pottery, jewellery, collections of rocks and gems. There were posters in loud colours advertising ‘Darius’s Unbeatable Sand Dune Tours’, copies of which they had seen in town. They showed his Land Rover poised precariously on a ridge, tourists in the back screaming with nervy delight. Darius’s tools seemed to nestle in every corner of the house, waiting to be used for some unfinished task. There were incomplete models of boats and cars dotted around and the architectural drawings of his parent’s old farm.
Ilana’s passions were also everywhere. Sepia and colour photographs of different Namibian tribes dotted the hallway and occupied one whole wall of the airy sitting-room. There were photographs of her leading tour groups across impossibly beautiful landscapes. A signed photograph with Nelson and Winnie Mandela, and another with the Namibian President Sam Nujoma, were, naturally, in pride of place. The fridge door was covered in vivid protest badges and flyers: some about the environment, others about protecting indigenous land rights.
‘I have to say I’m very impressed with Swakopmund,’ Ben said as they sat having cold drinks on the terrace. ‘It’s beautiful. Much more affluent than I expected.’
‘It wasn’t always that way I can tell you,’ Darius responded. ‘It was very run down for years and years, neglected, until the Rossing mine started in the seventies. Basically, the infrastructure of this place has grown to serve the mine.’
‘Besides,’ Ilana added, ‘you’ve only seen the affluent part of Swakop so far. Half the population live in the township: Mondesa. It was started during Apartheid.’
‘And it still has the areas that they designated for ethnic groups,’ Darius continued. ‘The Ovambo, Nama and Herero: they all live in their own separate neighbourhoods.’
‘We haven’t washed Apartheid away yet, I’m afraid,’ Ilana sighed.
‘That’s sad. But what we saw was very beautiful and clean,’ Barbara said, trying to lighten the tone a little. She was very conscious that the last time she had met Ilana was in the confrontation over the hotel site and she was trying to tread carefully. ‘In stark contrast, I might say, to the Seal Colony!’ she added.
‘Ah you went there, good,’ Ilana said. ‘That’s why I suggested that route.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘We saw a lioness make a kill,’ Joe interjected.
This news shook Darius. ‘A lion in the seal colony! My God that’s rare. There used to be many more. Gosh, it would have been two days away from the rest of the pride. There must be a shortage of food inland.’
‘It was amazing,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘You’re very lucky,’ Darius observed.
‘I’m not sure “luck” is the term I’d use,’ Barbara replied. She still felt wary of Darius, despite the kind invitation to stay at his home. Why had he failed to tell Ilana that he was working with her on the hotel site? She looked at the two of them trying to detect what kind of marriage they had. Darius did seem jumpy, wary of the strong presence of his wife. He leaned back as much as she leaned forward.
‘At least a lion only kills one seal… and in pursuit of its own survival. The annual cull is a disgrace,’ Ilana commented.
‘What’s the cull?’ Joe asked.
‘The Government kill tens of thousands of seals every year and then sell the fur. It’s a bloodbath. It’s supposedly to stop the fish stocks getting too low and to raise money to protect the colony. It would really be far better to raise money through tourism. They should leave the size of the colony to Nature.’
‘I am just going to show Joe the neighbourhood,’ Selima interjected, fearing the conversation could slide ever further into one of her mother’s moral lectures and keen to be alone with Joe.
They patrolled the quiet streets of Selima’s suburb, alone and happy. Joe felt a contentment stealing over him. They aimlessly wheeled around corners and ambled along pavements, occasionally stopping for Selima to point out a specific house, or to cheekily pluck fragrant leaves from a neighbour’s garden and put them under Joe’s nose.
‘So, how did you feel seeing a kill?’ she asked.
‘Look, I’m a city boy from Brooklyn, New York. To me lions are something you see at the Bronx Zoo when your folks can’t figure out what to do on your birthday.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Anyway, isn’t New York a kind of jungle as well?’
‘In its way! To be truthful, given my folks’ lifestyle, I’ve spent more time away from New York than in it, but still… How did I feel? You want the truth? I felt like an electric fence watching the kill. I was buzzing but shocked.’
Joe never expressed things in the way others would. That was part of his appeal.
‘In fact, ever since I arrived here,’ he continued, ‘I have felt more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life.’
‘And is that just because of the landscape?’ she asked, but without looking at him for fear of smiling too much.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, teasing her.
‘How do you cope with the crowds in New York? From the movies I’ve seen it looks like the streets are always crawling with people.’
‘I blank them. I literally air-brush them out.’
‘I can’t imagine that,’ she responded.
‘I couldn’t imagine here. Until now…’
‘Welcome to Swakop. Sounds like you’ve had rather too much of an adventure.’ Li Chiang always liked to be ready on the doorstep when guests arrived and this was no exception, alerted by their texts.
‘Hi, I’m Anne, and this is Ralph. You must be Li. Thank you so much for inviting us. This seems like a haven after the heat of Windhoek.’
Handshakes and polite kisses were exchanged, Sarah joining them, slightly flustered and taking off an apron dusted with flour.
‘Please forgive me. I was just baking for tonight’s supper.’
‘No need to apologise at all. We’re very honoured to be invited.’ Ralph was always like silk in his manners, something for which Sarah was perpetually grateful. The oil of his voice could calm most things, both within the family and outside.
‘Why are you all kissing when you don’t know each other? And why isn’t anyone kissing me?’ Clara protested.
Anne was charmed. ‘You must be Clara. Can I kiss you please?’
‘Yes, thank you, that would be very nice!’ Clara proffered her better cheek, the one she always turned towards the camera for photographs.
‘Sorry about my younger sister,’ Freddie said ruffling her hair affectionately as he did. ‘She rarely makes a quiet entrance. I’m Freddie by the way.’
‘Like father, like son,’ Anne thought to herself... ‘charming.’
Later, when supper was over and Clara had fallen asleep on the sofa, the six of them sat chatting at the dining-table. They had separated neatly, like a perfectly ripe fruit, into three segments: young people, mothers and fathers.
Ralph and Li were deep in diplomatic relations, politely circling each other to assess where they stood.
‘I saw the Chinese Satellite tracking station as we came into town,’ Ralph proffered.
‘Yes, it was actually a collaboration between the Chinese and Namibian governments,’ Li confirmed.
Ralph made a mental note for his next report to the Foreign Office.
‘So, how important is space exploration for the Chinese?’
‘Well, with 1.3 billion citizens, China has more incentive than most to find another colony out there in which to live.’
Ralph was struck by the term ‘colony’.
‘Gosh, I’d never thought about China’s population as an incentive to explore space. How stupid of me. We’ll all need to find another planet where we can live of course… if we carry on treating this one the way we have. Perhaps there’s hope, now that we know there’s water on Mars.’
‘Yes, it’s the size of Lake Windermere apparently,’ Li laughed. ‘Only the British could use the Lake District to describe space.’
Ralph felt slightly wounded, but was determined not to show it, something at which he had learned to excel. He took another sip of beer instead.
‘When you come to a place like Namibia… so pristine, so unpopulated…it makes you realise how much we’ve ruined Earth already,’ Ralph observed.
‘And here I am plundering their minerals,’ Li confessed. ‘Yet if we are to save the planet, we need more nuclear energy and that requires uranium.’
‘Not to mention for things like this,’ Ralph said, lifting his mobile phone from the table.
‘Well, we’re not going to be mining much, at- the- moment,’ Li said dolefully.
‘Why?’
‘Please treat it as confidential for now. We have discovered a mass grave at our test site.’
Everyone else’s conversation stopped. Hannah looked slightly surprised that her father had shared this news. She was worried that this might make him vulnerable. She knew perfectly well that his employers would be secretive, just as she knew that her father was cut from another cloth.
‘What kind of mass grave?’ Anne asked. ‘I mean, is it from a plague? Or radiation?’ She thought of her burn victims.
‘We have to wait for the Namibians to finish their tests. They’re carbon-dating the skeletons. But the circumstances, the way the bones are piled, all points in one direction…’ Li pronounced.
‘Which is...?’ Anne persisted.
‘Genocide,’ said Sarah. ‘The genocide the Germans committed on the Herero and the Nama.’
Ralph had been doing his research. ‘In October 1904, Lother von Trotha, under the instructions of the Kaiser, ordered the extermination of every Herero man, woman or child in the German Territory.’
‘So, we’ve closed the mine and we’re not sure we can continue. Meanwhile, the pressure builds from Shanghai for me to find another site.’ Li had hoped to escape the pressures of his work at the weekend, but he knew this hope was forlorn.
‘He’s been having nightmares,’ Hannah chipped in, not sure if she should, but wanting to share her worry about him. It was the first time she’d heard his wailing through the wall since her mother had miscarried.
‘Man’s inhumanity to man,’ Sarah sighed. ‘It’s been very tough for Li.’
‘Yes, but we have to carry on,’ Li said stoically. ‘We need nuclear power to save the world.’
‘Or destroy it,’ said Anne. ‘I have an outbreak of patients in the hospital at the moment with unexplained burn marks. Some people are suggesting it’s radiation leaks from the mines.’
‘Very unlikely,’ Li retorted defensively, feeling both under attack and worried.
After the parents had gone to bed, Hannah and Freddie stayed on the terrace talking, two tiny figures against the backdrop of a brilliant night sky. In the cities where they had both lived, the sky, if it was noticed at all, was squeezed between buildings and two-dimensional. Here the moon was a sphere not a disc and horizons lived up to their name.
‘You can see so clearly here,’ Freddie commented.
‘No light pollution. Not much pollution full stop,’ Hannah responded.
They both gazed at the carpet of stars.
‘Is there somewhere out there to live?’ Freddie asked
‘Would we want it to, even if there were?’ Hannah questioned.
‘What, you’d rather die here?’
‘I think so. I’d rather lie down on the warm grass I know and love, listen to one last bird and fall asleep. Look at that vastness out there. How would we find our bearings?’
‘We are hurtling through space all the time, as we go around the sun.’
‘Yes, I know but it’s our home. We’re travelling on our home.’
A shooting star shot across the sky. Another meteor reduced to a firework, seemingly for their pleasure alone.