THREE

“There is not one world, but two.” Words attributed to Rraditshipi.

On the third day, I am feeling lonely. I cannot bare to think of the single bun and few drops of water that remain for me. My feelings of peace yield occasionally to feelings of desperation and depression. The pain has worsened, but fasting makes me numb and dizzy, so, when I am not moving, it is easy to sleep and ignore it. I have grown accustomed, in this brief period, to the rhythms of the day. I enjoy the heat, and tear off my clothes to try to absorb it, because the cold at night is less pleasant, and filled, it seems with wild monsters.

I am impressed that the Earth has places like this, where nights are filled with the raucous chatter of wild animals. It is surreal that the Kalahari resembles emptiness and yet is filled, by the sounds of it, with so much. If lions and elephants can live here, there must be more to it than meets the eye. Even the engineers at Orapa know this. They know there is more here than just sand. The sand is filled with diamonds. I wonder what I am not seeing. I wonder how I can make a home of this place, rather than simply trying to endure it. I wonder how one can live daily and happily in the Kalahari. I have come to a place where I believe this is possible. I just do not know how. I am intrigued. I sleep. My body melts against the prickly heat of the seat. I begin to flow through the plastic, through the chemical veins and hard bolts to the silky grains. I fly through a trillian capillaries, and finally bump my head against a thick tubular thing in the ground. I drift up through the soil, along the hard undulations of the tube, upward to breath in the sun filled tree. The tree haunts me. Lions walk by it. Occasionally huge cumulous clouds sail by it, sometimes deploying thick bolts of lightning that rip at the earth and shake the heavens. These bolts turn the grasses into fire. Lines of fire sweep towards the tree. Flames lick against the dark, gutted trunk. But always, the fire has to move on, and the tree survives once more.

I try to go back. I feel raked out of the soil and wake but I seek the dream again. My discomfort and my thirst is very great now, so I begin to imagine that I need to leave the ship. I see I am going to die here. Before I do, perhaps I should at least try to cover some distance. I plan to inspect the engine in the afternoon, and try to bring her back to life. If this proves unsuccessful, I will have to drag myself over the dunes, and I know, lie in the sand at night, while lions lurk nearby.
It occurs to me suddenly that the dream is trying to tell me something. It hits me like a slap on my cheek.

You are the tree. The fire represents your suffering, and you can endure it. If you are to survive, you must stay where you are. Listen. Stop trying and Remember who you are.

At this, I melt. It is a reassuring thought, but to know that I must remain here, and do nothing, fills me with unutterable grief. I know that my suffering will become excruciating. How long must I wait?

I find myself waiting, and occasionally, resisting the urge to cry, to shout, to scream. Always, something draws me away. A big spider on the seat, or a bird with a big beak that visits me. I return to a condition of waiting, and then the agony returns. I decide to stop waiting. It is a difficult decision, because I often forget it. It is a subtle contract I have with myself now. I decide to touch…I touch my own fingers, my nose, my tongue…the glass. I feel. I get lost in this. Somehow I feel irresponsible. I feel like I am playing, when I should be walking or analysing something. But I continue. The day hardens, then softens and is gone.

TWO

“When a sorcerer (medicine man) dies, his heart comes out in the sky and becomes a star.” A Busman interviewed by W.H.I. Bleek and L.C. Lloyd, 1870-1880.

Outside the spaceship is the redness of Mars. The sand seems to swell, to glow with light. The fields of lava redden and breathe, as though the wind stirs their fires within. I hear, under my shirt, a loud growl from my belly. Air pockets bubble through my intestines. Slowly I am able to expel the gas, first from my mouth, and soon from the other end. I am preoccupied with this for time, and then I try to comfort myself that the hunger I feel is nothing compared to the gnawing malnutrition millions of African children, and their parents, endure every day. And you don’t hear about them in the news bulletins. Thus, I reason, I can endure this without trouble.

I wonder where John is? I am grateful that he is gone. I still cannot decide who is in a better position. I guess that he must be, but I am not convinced. Where would he have slept last night? Perhaps he’d not slept at all?

The last time I was this isolated, I remember, was when I was six years old. I had gastroenteritis. They put me in an oxygen tent to bring my life threatening fever down. Because my mother was pregnant she was not allowed to touch me. I was naked, and in pain, and when you are six years old and bedridden, a day feels like a week. So you see Andy, you’ve been through this sort of thing before.

I shut the door on any rebuttal, but eventually one slips through. You don’t get discharged and walk into a parking lot with someone holding your hand. Here, you’ve either got to be rescued, or…you’ve got to find your own way.

I watch Venus sparkle in the bright blue heavens. I watch the dunes fill with red light, and then soften to shades of sulphur, ivory and ochre. It is magnificent, rather than beautiful. Again, this feeling of needing to cry overwhelms me. I resist it.
I drift off, dreaming about my big black spaceship, and how it brought me here, to all this space. I dream I am drifting over the ship, and through it, like a ghostly astronaut (but even in my dream I am stiff, and my neck throbbing). I dream that hordes are moving from afar towards the ship. They believe it can save them, that this is not just another derelict spacecraft in the desert. When they are much closer I see that they are not coming to be saved, but are shaking their tiny little fists at the sky. They want me to leave, except I can’t.

Their anger turns to despair as, despite their gesticulations, this machine that has sullied their graceful field, merely remains. They cry like the children of grossly negligent parents. The Mi-26, haunting their world, draws their deepest despairs like poison from a wound. Once spent, they turn and return, unburdened, lightened, to their homes on the horizon somewhere. I know now that they came to the machine to exorcise their hatred of all the inhuman things they have seen and known. They exculpate themselves here, at this symbol of the Empire. I see further, across Africa, through my ghostly eyes, to all the woe and untold desolation that is Africa.

It is frightening and ghastly and bewitching. I see, through all this, beyond yellow rivers of tears, something magnificent. I see a tree in the desert. Other broken trees, scattered and wrecked and mere skeletons under the sun surround it. This one has survived the elephants, its own thirst, and bursts of lightning above its head. Though mostly burnt, I see it is managing to produce fresh green buds, and small new shoots. This capacity to survive inspires me, even in my dream. When I awake my heart is beating like a drum. I want to get up, and run. I know I have dreamt this dream before, before I even came to the desert. I feel a pang as I realise that this dream came from here, and perhaps, has brought me here. I am suddenly filled with a sense of well being, and peace, and purpose. I am happy to know that me being here is not a fluke. I look out over the Kalahari with a little more love in my eyes, and watch the sands fill with light and heat