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On a small, even patch in a dry streambed high up on the hill I
built an altar and stacked some firewood on top. It wasn t easy to
decide on a sacrifice. I looked at the fox terrier which had accompa-
nied me, an eager little bitch with gaping mouth and an excitable
stump of a tail. But I felt reluctant to give up my dog. In the end I
decided on my new pocketknife, the one I d promised Mpilo.
Opening both blades to prove to God it was no ordinary knife, I put
it on the altar and fell on my knees to pray for fire from Heaven
making sure I was a good distance away in case God didn t aim
accurately.
Every few minutes I opened my eyes briefly to examine the sky
for any sign of descending fire, with no doubt in my mind at all
about the imminence of the event. Then, seeing the sky still clear, I
would return to prayer, more fervently than before.
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I recited everything I d ever heard Dad or Grandpa pray about
the poor and needy, the authorities appointed over us, those near and
dear to us, the dominee and his council, road workers and servants,
the preaching of the Gospel in heathen lands, the lot. But nothing
happened. Was I lacking in faith then? Surely not. I started right from
the beginning again until my knees were aching on the hard ground.
The Lord s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, And have not love,
everything I had memorized in my short life, including a few secu-
lar recitations. Still nothing. And night was beginning to fall.
I was beginning to be plagued by memories of the priests of Mount
Carmel, but I resolved to give God a fair chance, in case He was oth-
erwise occupied at the moment. I decided to leave the knife on the
altar for God to consume with fire sometime in the course of the
night: perhaps He was reluctant to make it happen in front of my eyes.
More or less by way of ultimatum I gave God a full and final brief on
the whole situation, and then set off at a fast trot in the disquieting
dusk.
During the night one of the typical Eastern Cape storms came
up, raging and thundering over the farm, uprooting trees and tear-
ing the earth open and sending wild streams of red water gushing
down the hills. By morning it had cleared up, only the wind was still
blowing. I slipped out of the house to investigate. The streambed on
the hillside was littered with rocks and stones and driftwood swept
down by the sudden short-lived flood. There was no sign of either
the altar or the knife.
I was left with a disturbing uncertainty: had God heard my prayer
and consumed my sacrifice, not in the manner prescribed by me but
in His own inscrutable way? Or had He poured his wrath over me
and my little altar as He had done with Cain s? Or hadn t He been
involved in it in any way: had the storm wreaked its destruction
blindly and on its own? (Or was wrath and love so closely related that
I couldn t yet distinguish between them?)
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One thing was certain: never again in my life would my faith be
as fervent and as fierce as on that day. It was as if a source of energy
had been extinguished inside me. And thinking back that night I
realized: somewhere between the child I d been and the man I was
something had changed irrevocably. Somewhere I d lost that wild
innocence. What made it happen? And was it really quite inevitable?
The first faint dawn was filtering through the stoop window.
Cocks had begun to crow. In Ma s room the baby was whining again
and she tried to comfort it.
I got up to pour myself some water from the earthenware carafe
on the washing table. The glass tinkled against the neck of the carafe.
Are you awake too? asked Louis.
I turned round, but it was still too dark to see him in his bed.
I thought you were asleep? I said.
No, I can t.
It s a bad thing that happened, isn t it?
Wasn t she a beautiful woman, Dad?
Protected by the dark it was easier to admit than otherwise: Yes.
One felt quite shaken.
It was very cold and I crept back into bed. In a strange way it
unnerved me to find that he had also found her beautiful. It was
different from the day beside the swimming pool or the day in the
crowd encouraging the man to jump.
Without being able to explore it or to explain why, I remembered
a day when Louis, a small boy of five or six, had come running into
the house from the garden, his blonde hair dusty and unkempt,
shouting excitedly: Dad! Dad, you know what?
No, what?
I was standing against the tree. You know, the pear tree. And
suddenly I could hear my heart throbbing inside the trunk.
Somewhere between that day and this early dawn he, too, had
changed. He d never wanted to talk about it. But perhaps, in this
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newly discovered intimacy in the dark, he might let his defenses
down.
I suppose you ve seen more than your share of dead bodies in
Angola? I ventured, as casually as possible.
He didn t reply immediately. In fact, I d already given up hope
of getting an answer, when he said in the dark: Yes. A lot. But I don t
think it makes all that much difference. Before one has seen a corpse
you expect it to be something terrible. Then it happens, and you
discover it s it s very ordinary. So vulgar, really. He fell quiet for a
while. That s what I can t understand, Dad. That everything should
seem so ordinary.
You ve changed a lot, I said.
Naturally. Briefly, the bitter, defensive tone returned to his
voice: They say war makes a man of one, don t they?
What really happened, Louis?
I don t know. Perhaps one just gets blunted. Or initiated. Or
something.
Women?
He laughed contemptuously. How can you be so Victorian,
Dad? Do you really think initiation means one thing only?
I didn t answer. The conversation was balancing on such a fine
edge that I hesitated to prod it in either direction.
Without warning he relented again: It was part of it, I suppose.
Women. And after a long silence, as if he d had to think it over first:
That day we passed Sa da Bandeira. We d been driving for twenty
hours nonstop. I was on one of the Unimogs. They d already cleaned
up before us, so there wasn t really any danger, except for the
occasional landmine or sniper. Then we reached one of the villages.
Almost nothing left of it, all blown to bits. We set up our HQ, in a
tumbledown little municipal building. It was just papers and torn
files and things all over the place. We were like zombies, we dropped
down to sleep wherever we could find an open spot. Then, some
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time in the night, there was a rumpus. They brought in some
women the Black soldiers who were with us, the Unitas. One young
Portuguese girl. I don t think she could have been older than four-
teen. I heard someone say she d got caught when her folks were try-
ing to escape from Luanda. There were refugees wherever we went,
those days. She didn t cry or anything. She didn t even plead to be
left alone like some of the others. Perhaps she was a bit soft in the
head. Her eyes stayed wide open all the time. She never seemed to
blink at all. They passed her on from the one to the other. She didn t
have any clothes left, just a bit of frayed collar round her neck where
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