So what is it, he thought, that binds me to this spot of earth as if to a home I cannot leave? We must all leave home, after all, we must all leave our mothers. Or am I such a child, such a child from such a line of children, that none of us can leave, but have to come back to die here with our heads upon our mothers' laps, I upon hers, she upon her mother's, and so back and back, generation upon generation?
There was a heavy explosion, and at once a second explosion. The air shook, there was a clamour of birds, the hills rumbled and echoed. K stared around wildly. 'Look!' said a soldier, and pointed.
Where the Visagie house had once stood there was now a cloud of grey and orange, not mist but dust, as if a whirlwind were carrying the house away. Then the cloud stopped growing, its substance thinned, and a skeleton began to emerge: part of the back wall with the chimney; three of the supports that had held up the verandah. A sheet of roofing swooped out of the air and hit the ground noiselessly. The reverberations went on, but K did not know any more if they were in the hills or in his head.
Swallows flew past, so low above the ground he could have touched them had he stretched out a hand.
Afterwards there were more explosions, for which he did not look up, guessing that the outbuildings had gone. He thought: No longer do the Visagies have anywhere to hide.
The jeep came bumping back across the veld. All around him they were clearing and packing up. In the acre itself, however, a lone soldier was still at work. He was digging up tufts of grass and laying them carefully to one side. With some anxiety K rose to his feet and stumbled across. 'What are you doing?' he called. The soldier did not answer. He began to shape a shallow pit, laying the earth on a black plastic sheet. This was the third hole he had dug, K saw: both of the others had neat piles of earth on plastic sheets beside them, and tufts of grass with the earth still clinging to their roots. 'What are you doing?' he asked again. The sight of the stranger digging up his earth agitated him more than he would have guessed. 'Let me do it,' he offered-'I am used to digging:' But the soldier waved him away. Completing the third hole, he stepped off eight paces and laid down another plastic sheet. As the spade bit into the earth, K squatted and covered the grass with his hands. 'Please, my friend!' he said. The soldier stood back, exasperated. Someone hauled K back by the scruff of his neck. 'Just keep him out of my way,' said the soldier.
K stood by the pump and watched. When he had dug five holes in a zigzag pattern, the soldier unrolled a long white cord to mark off the area. Two of his comrades brought a crate from the truck and began to lay the mines. As they laid each and primed it, the first soldier planted the grass and poured the earth back, handful by handful, patted the surface down, and brushed away all their prints with a hand-broom, moving backwards on hands and knees.
'Get out of the way here,' said someone behind K. 'Go and wait there by the truck.' It was the officer. Retreating, K heard the instructions he was giving: 'Tape two inside the struts at about waist height. Put another under the platform. When they trip it, I want the whole thing to go. '
Everything was packed in, they were about to drive off, with K in the back of the truck among the soldiers, when someone pointed to the heap of pumpkins they had left by the side of the field. 'Load them!' shouted the officer from the jeep. They loaded the pumpkins. 'And fix up that kennel of his so that it looks just the same!' he ordered. They all waited while the roof was replaced. 'Stones to hold it down, like it was! Hurry up!'
They drove off, bumping and jostling on the dirt road, following the jeep. K clutched the strap above his head; he could feel his neighbours holding their bodies stiff to avoid being thrown against him. A cloud of dust billowed up till he could see nothing of what he was leaving behind.
He leaned nearer to the young soldier facing him. 'You know,' he said, 'there was a boy hiding in that house.'
The soldier did not understand. K had to repeat himself.
'What does he say?' asked someone.
'He says there was another boy hiding in the house.'
'Tell him he's dead now. Tell him he's in paradise.'
Then after a while they reached the turnoff. The truck picked up speed, the tyres began to hum, the soldiers relaxed, and the dust blew away to reveal behind them the long straight line of the road to Prince Albert.
TWO
1
THERE IS A NEW PATIENT IN THE WARD, A LITTLE OLD MAN who collapsed during physical training and was brought in with very low respiration and heartbeat. There is every evidence of prolonged malnutrition: cracks in his skin, sores on his hands and feet, bleeding gums. His joints protrude, he weighs less than forty kilos. The story is that he was picked up all by himself in the middle of nowhere in the Karoo, running a staging post for guerrillas operating out of the mountains, caching arms and growing food, though obviously not eating it. I asked the guards who brought him why they made someone in his condition do physical exercise. It was an oversight, they said: he came with the new intake, the processing was taking a long time, the sergeant in charge wanted to give them something to do while they waited, so he made them run on the spot. Couldn't he see this man was incapable? I asked. The prisoner didn't complain, they replied: he said he was fine, he had always been thin. Can't you tell the difference between a thin man and a skeleton? I asked. They shrugged.
Have been struggling with the new patient Michaels. He insists there is nothing wrong with him, he only wants something for his headache. Says he is not hungry. In fact he cannot hold his food down. Am keeping him on a drip, which he fights against feebly.
Though he looks like an old man, he claims to be only thirty-two. Perhaps it is the truth. He comes from the Cape and knows the racecourse from the days when it was still a racecourse. It amused him to hear that this used to be the jockeys' dressing-room. 'I could become a jockey too, at my weight,' he said. He worked for the Council as a gardener, but lost his job and went to seek his fortune in the countryside, taking his mother with him. 'Where is your mother now?' I asked. 'She makes the plants grow,' he replied, evading my eyes. 'You mean she has passed away?' I said (pushing up the daisies?). He shook his head. 'They burned her,' he said. 'Her hair was burning round her head like a halo. '
He makes a statement like that as impassively as if talking about the weather. I am not sure he is wholly of our world. One tries to imagine him running a staging post for insurgents and one's mind boggles. More likely someone came along and offered him a drink and asked him to look after a gun and he was too stupid or too innocent to refuse. He is locked up as an insurgent, but he barely knows there is a war on.
Now that Felicity has shaved him I have had a chance to examine his mouth. A simple incomplete cleft, with some displacement of the septum. The palate intact. I asked him whether there had ever been an attempt to correct the condition. He did not know. I pointed out that the operation is a slight one, even at his age. Would he agree to such an operation if it could be arranged? He replied (I quote): 'I am what I am. I was never a great one for the girls.' I felt like telling him that, never mind the girls, he would find it easier to get along if he could talk like everyone else; but said nothing, not wanting to hurt him.