Steenbok

The steenbok

by R. Eric Swanepoel

Escape. All you needed was a length of rope, a bucket, a metal chair
from the verandah, and the swimming pool, of course. The chair went in
first, to the deepest part of the pool. You had to be careful to put it
down gently so as not to damage the bottom. Then you tied the bucket by
its handle to the chair, and filled it with air. After four trips to
the surface to refill your lungs, the bucket was straining upwards, and
the chair was only just touching the bottom by one foot. Now you could
stay under for three or perhaps four minutes, if you minimized your
activity. Your world was the inside of a bucket, and the throb of the
pool filter. The adults on the verandah ceased to exist, you told
yourself, but secretly you hoped that your mother would worry and dive
into the pool to save you. She never did. She was too busy knocking
back the gin, and complaining to her friends about how inefficient the
'kaffirs' were. The friends nodded, sitting there on their fat arses,
puffing on their fags - yes, the indolence and ineptitude of the
non-European races were 'beyond understanding,' and it was not as if
one didn't do 'one's best to help them...'

There were other ways of using the swimming pool to escape, though they
usually didn't last as long and demanded more effort. For a surge of
blissful nothingness, you dived in headfirst, somersaulting just under
the surface. A second of being back in the womb, a second of tingly
nirvana, before your brain returned to normal. You could also become
the centre of the world, if you wanted. You had to stand in the shallow
end, with your head above the surface, and keep your eyes on the rim of
the pool. Then you spun, pivoting on the ball of one foot, using the
other foot to propel yourself around, faster and faster, a scooter ride
to nauseous ecstasy. The only reality was the rim of the pool, like a
power line viewed close-up from the window of a speeding train, rising
and falling with the eccentricities of your revolutions and the
irregularity of the pool's perimeter. A blur of white where the
"madams" sat in the heat, in their cardigans, a ludicrous splodge of
diminishing importance against the greens and browns of Africa.

Then there was the best way of escaping, but it only worked if there
were no petulant voices in the background, and there were clouds above.
You floated on your back, and watched the sky, and fell into it. You
would imagine yourself up there, and flying away, perhaps soaring
vulture-like on a thermal... seeing the sunlight above the cumulus. Far
away to the north the blood heat of the Zambezi valley was waiting, and
Mana Pools and walking with the elephants. Away to the east, the
Chimanimani mountains - mist and chill and secret places. Away to the
south, that vast and sinister and exciting land of South Africa, where
anything was possible... but only a few hundred metres away to the
north you could be a black-breasted snake eagle high above the vlei,
scanning the micro-world of the rooigras and thatch grass, and termite
mounds, and the gray, sun-baked clay in the riverbed where water rats
would run.

Then you would get out of the swimming pool and go there. You would
take Robert's Birds of Southern Africa, and a pair of binoculars, and
your floppy hat, and the little cloth bag of ash, for judging wind
direction, and your Bundu book of wilderness survival skills, with its
pictures of spoor and droppings, and you would tell your mother where
you were going. This little island of "wasteland" was your paradise.
You would look for snakes, or imagine yourself running amongst the
coarse grass stems with the four-striped field mice, or you would watch
the electric red and black bishop birds buzz-display next to their
nests. If you were lucky there would be some buck there - reedbuck or
the delicate little steenbok, and you would try to stalk them. You
never managed to get close to the reedbuck, but their bouncing,
whistling, tail-in-the-air flight was the essence of wildness, and
wildly exciting. And then you could go up and smell the fresh dung, and
admire the rapidity with which the flies found it. Africa at your
nostrils and fingertips.

But the best moment was when you succeeded in approaching to within two
metres of a steenbok. There were two of them, but the one closest to
you was lying just upwind of a small bush, chewing the cud. Perfect. It
was half an hour of stopping and starting, of agonising balancing on
one leg, of back-cricking crouching, of breath-holding, but now you
could touch the bush. Slowly, slowly, you straightened your screaming
legs. You could hear the jaws working. Slowly, slowly the head came
into view, looking away. And then it turned and looked you straight in
the eyes. For ten seconds, perhaps, you were the most important being
in the life of another, and it was the most important being in yours.
If you'd been a hunter-gatherer you would have eaten well that day.
But, today, getting there was enough. You were plugged into the
wilderness. The whole universe centred on the locking of those pairs of
eyes. Transcendence. And then it was over, and it ran away with its
mate, leaving you drained, ecstatic and lonely. With whom could you
share that?