There was the impossible German couple, for example, characters in a story with a tragic ending. The Herr and Frau arrived, were served a good lunch, and went on a game drive with a reliable ranger. But they complained about the food, found fault with the ranger, and were disappointed in the animals. The Herr was milder than his Frau, who loudly objected throughout the afternoon drive, hectoring the ranger. The woman was a harridan and made you think of a scolding gray-headed bush shrike, crying, ‘Schlecht! Schlecht! Schlecht!’
At dinner, Mike Rattray appeared at their table, smacking his stick against his palm. No, he didn’t hit them though he wanted to. The woman began to articulate an objection, but before she was in full cry, Rattray said, ‘You are not enjoying yourselves. You are complaining. There is no charge.’
The couple, mollified by this apparent climb-down by the management, had returned to manipulating their forks and knives, when they saw that Rattray had not moved.
‘You are leaving tomorrow on the first plane,’ Rattray said, and quickly turned, and as he left he could hear the woman ranting.
Before leaving, the woman insisted that Rattray write a letter describing the circumstances of their departure and demanding that he state that they were leaving against their will.
‘Absolutely not,’ Rattray said. He oversaw the loading of their bags on to the vehicle, and turned his back on them for the last time.
Threats of a lawsuit arrived from Germany very soon afterward; many letters from German attorneys hinting at damages and an expensive legal process which would bring Mala Mala to its knees. This pettifoggery went on for a month or so. Then, just as quickly as the letters had started, they ended. Some months passed. The case had gone so quiet a discreet inquiry was advanced. Why the silence? The word came back: The German woman had killed herself.
The male guests at such game lodges could behave with a strange machismo, wearing shorts and knee socks. But for the visiting women the experience was either uncomfortable and insupportably buggy, or else such a fantasy of khaki and muscly stud muffins and animal desire they became smitten.
In a place where stalking was a way of life for the animals, the women guests developed a stalking mentality, too, and would not be dissuaded from their hunt. I heard a number of stories of this kind of infatuation. While the husband idled complacently in the lodge, swigging beer and staring at the elephants thrashing in the reeds in the river, the rangers were receiving the nudges and winks or smutty suggestions of the besotted wives. And so these rangers on a game drive for predators with an amorous client were in the curious position of stalking stalkers while they themselves were being stalked.
‘Afterwards, they write letters,’ a ranger told me. ‘They call from America or Europe. They say they want to leave their husband and move to Africa. “I dream of Africa.” It takes a long time for some of them to give up. But it’s unprofessional to have that kind of relationship with a guest.’
The stalker in one famous example at Mala Mala was a woman on her honeymoon. I had the presence of mind to murmur, ‘Shocking,’ but I was riveted by the story of the cuckold-in-khaki and new bride, two-days married, who fell for the ranger. Nothing came of it though no one held out much hope for the marriage. I regretted that the story was so short on sordid details.
There were three honeymoon couples at Mala Mala when I was there. They sat together in the bar. They dined together. They vied for attention in swapping stories of wedding-day foul-ups. They much resembled the bush creatures which mated for life and pawed each other, and traded feline nuzzlings, growling amiably in the shade of thorn trees throughout the hot afternoons.
Michael and Norma Rattray were not demonstrative but they were affectionate. They were never apart. They had seven grown children between them and numerous grandchildren. Michael’s task was management and infrastructure, Norma’s brief was the lodges’ décor. They conversed in animal imagery, and were delighted when one of the Mala Mala leopards appeared on the cover of the National Geographic. The leopard was not a wayward predator who had crept darkly from the bush to wreak havoc, but a familiar creature with a pet name, like a favorite over-indulged pussy cat, one of the family, and as Norma said in a doting and rather admiring way, ‘rather a show-off.’
‘Going?’ Michael said to me the morning of my departure.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Back to the States?’
‘Eventually.’
‘God,’ he said. He was concentrating hard, recalling city life. ‘Had some guests from New York. Friends, really. Most of our guests become friends. Chap says to us, “Look us up if you’re ever in New York.” So we did. Went to the chap’s house in this tall building. Couldn’t believe it! He’s way up here.’ Rattray waved his stick, demonstrating the height of the sky scraper. ‘The walls were glass, windows went from floor to ceiling. Norma could hardly look down! Couldn’t wait to leave!’
‘Like living in a tree,’ Norma said.
‘Worse! Chap’s stuck there like a gannet in a krans!’
His vivid image of animal horror made me laugh. I was sorry to leave — I knew I would miss him. And living in luxury in the bush was such a lovely way of passing the time — gaping at large unintimidated animals, bird-watching, reading, in a cozy hut with a desk where I could sit adding pages to my erotic story. This was a small part of the travel experience, the boutique game viewing, with superb South African vintages. I could understand why tourists gushed: it was pleasurable, it was simple and harmonious and safe, no strife, no starvation, it wasn’t upsetting; not many Africans, it was hardly Africa.
21. Faith, Hope and Charity on the Limpopo Line
Back in the dorp of Nelspruit, among the orange groves and jack-fruit trees and the fields of floppy-leafed tobacco, I looked at my map and saw that I was only seventy miles from the Mozambican border — about the same distance as Barnstable from Boston — and so I caught a cross-border bus to Maputo. I knew in advance that I would be doubling back across the border, which meant four immigration bottlenecks, two each way, and long lines. But anything was better than flying. I kept thinking of Nadine Gordimer introducing me: ‘He came from Cairo! On a bus!’
The bus was filled with Africans, many of whom were Mozambicans who had crossed the border to shop in Nelspruit for items that were unobtainable in Maputo. Two Indian men in skullcaps hogged the four seats on the front row of the top level. The men pulled off their shoes and sat cross-legged and the pong of their cheesy feet filled the upper deck. Because it had been advertised as a ‘luxury coach’ a movie was shown on the overhead TV set.
The movie, Jack, starring Robin Williams, had seemed a facetious thinly plotted and sentimental trifle when I first saw it in 1997. But travel-weary and with a big birthday behind me, the message of ‘live all you can’ from the prematurely aged Jack speaking at his high school graduation, made me absurdly emotional. A scene involving fart gas and explosive crepitation had the Indians clutching their sides in hilarity and laid one of them straight in the aisle, giggling. For a dose of reality I glanced out the window at the mud huts of the Swazi people in the direction of Piggs Peak, ruled over by the Ndlovukazi, their queen mum, the Great She Elephant of Swaziland.
Across the long hills, through the stone mountains, when we came to the first shanties I knew we were at the in-between land near the border. Riffraff mostly, no one looked at home here, people newly arrived or waiting to leave. The bus stopped. We lined up and walked through the formalities. The South African officials were efficient, the Mozambican protocols lacking in substance — for example, there was hardly enough ink on the immigration officer’s stamp to make an impression on my passport. About an hour and a half of this and then we were on our way, going down a good Mozambican road that the South Africans had built as a gift. We had passed Komatipoort, where there was a railway station, but there had been no trains running that day.