pulling eight G's in a dogfight.
With one last explosive effort David pulled the knife arm around on to
the line of broken glass, and he dragged it down, sawing it desperately
across the edge.
Akkers screamed and his strangling grip relaxed, back and forth David
sawed the arm, slashing and ripping through skin and fat and flesh,
opening a wound like a ragged-petalled rose, hacking down into the
nerves and arteries and sinews so that the knife dropped from the
lifeless fingers and Akkers screamed like a woman.
David broke from him and shoved him away. Akkers fell to his knees
still screaming and David clutched at his own throat massaging the
bruised flesh, gasping for breath and feeling the flow of fresh blood to
his brain.
God Jesus, I'm dying. I'm bleeding to death. Oh sweet Jesus, help me!
screamed Akkers, holding the mutilated arm to his belly. Help me, oh
God, don't let me die.
Save me, Jesus, save me! Blood was streaming and spurting from the arm,
flooding the front of his trousers. As he screamed his teeth fell from
his mouth, leaving it a dark and empty cave in the palely glistening
face.
You've killed me. I'll bleed to death! he screamed at David, thrusting
his face towards David. You've got to save me, don't let me die. David
pushed himself away from the truck and took two running steps towards
the kneeling man, then he swung his right leg and his whole body into a
flying kick that took Akkers cleanly under the chin and snapped his head
back.
He went over backwards and lay still and quiet, and David stood over
him, sobbing and gasping for breath.
For purposes of sentence Mr. justice Barnard of the Transvaal division
of the Supreme Court took into consideration four previous convictions,
two under the wildlife conservation act, one for aggravated assault, and
the fourth for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
He found Johan Akkers guilty of twelve counts under the Wildlife
Conservation Act, but considered these as one when sentencing him to
three years at hard labour without option of a fine, and confiscation of
firearms and motor vehicles used in commission of these offences.
He found him guilty of one count of aggravated assault, and sentenced
him to three years at hard labour without option.
The prosecutor altered one charge from attempted murder to assault with
intent to do grievous bodily harm. He was found guilty as charged on
this count, and the sentence was five years imprisonment without option.
On the final charge of murder he was found guilty and justice Barnard
said in open court; In considering sentence of death on this charge, I
was obliged to take into account the fact that the accused was acting
like an animal in a trap, and I am satisfied that there was no element
of premeditation The sentence was eighteen years imprisonment, and all
sentences were to run consecutively. They were all confirmed on appeal.
As Conrad Berg said from his hospital bed with one heavily plastered leg
in traction, and a glass of Old Buck gin in his hand, Well, for the next
twenty-eight years we don't have to worry about that bastard, I beg your
pardon, Mrs. Morgan. Twenty-nine years, dear, Jane Berg corrected him
firmly.
In July the American edition of A Place of Our Oven was published, and
it dropped immediately into that hungry and bottomless pool of
indifference wherein so many good books drown. It left not a sign, not
a ripple of its passing.
Bobby Dugan, Debra's new literary agent in America, wrote to say how
sorry he was, and how disappointed.
He had expected at least some sort of critical notice to be taken of the
publication.
David took it as a personal and direct insult. He ranted and stormed
about the estate for a week, and it seemed that at one stage he might
actually journey to America to commit a physical violence upon that
country, a sort of one-man Vietnam in reverse.
They must be stupid, he protested. It's the finest book ever written.
Oh, David! Debra protested modestly.
It is! And I'd love to go over there and rub their noses in it, and
Debra imagined the doors of editorial offices all over New York being
kicked open, and literary reviewers fleeing panic-stricken, jumping out
of skyscraper-windows or locking themselves in the women's toilets to
evade David's wrath.
David, my darling, you are wonderful for me, she giggled with delight,
but it had hurt. It had hurt very badly. She felt the flame of her
urge to write wane and flutter in the chill winds of rejection.
Now when she sat at her desk with the microphone at her lips, the words
no longer tumbled and fought to escape, and the ideas no longer jostled
each other. Where before she had seen things happening as though she
were watching a play, seen her characters laugh and cry and sing, now
there was only the dark cloud banks rolling across her eyes, unrelieved
by colour or form.
For hours at a time she might sit at her desk and listen to the birds in
the garden below the window.
David sensed her despair, and he tried to help her through it. When the
hours at the desk proved fruitless he would insist she leave it and come
with him along the new fence lines, or to fish for the big blue
Mozambique bream.
in the deep water of the pools.
Now that she had completely learned the layout of the house and its
immediate environs, David began to teach her to find her way at large.
Each day they would walk down to the pools and Debra learned her
landmarks along the track; she would grope for them with the carved
walking-stick David had given her. Zulu soon realized his role in these
expeditions, and it was David's idea to clip a tiny silver bell on to
his collar so that Debra could follow him more readily. Soon she could
venture out without David, merely calling her destination to Zulu and
checking him against her own landmarks.
David was busy at this time with the removal of Conrad's game fence, as
he was still laid up with the leg, and with building his own fences to
enclose the three vulnerable boundaries of Jabulani. In addition there
was a force of African rangers to recruit and train in their duties.
David designed uniforms for them, and built outposts for them at all the
main access points to the estate.
He flew into Nelspruit at regular intervals to consult Conrad Berg on
these arrangements, and it was at his suggestion that David began a
water survey of the estate.
He wanted surface water on the areas of Jabulani that were remote from
the pools, and he began studying the feasibility of building catchment
dams of sinking boreholes. His days were full and active, and he became
hard and lean and sunbrowned. Yet always there were many hours spent in
Debra's company.
The 35-mm. colour slides that David had taken of the buffalo herd
before Johan Akkers had decimated it, were returned by the processing
laboratory and they were hopelessly inadequate. The huge animals seemed
to be standing on the horizon, and the ox-peckers on their bodies were
tiny grey specks. This failure spurred David, and he returned from one
trip to Nelspruit with a
600-mm. telescopic lens.
While Debra was meant to be working, David set up his camera beside her
and photographed the birds through her open window. The first results
were mixed.
Out of thirty-six exposures, thirty-five could be thrown away, but one
was beautiful, a grey-headed bush shrike at the moment of flight, poised