The thing to do was to get to Tsau immediately. This was my new solution for everything. Nothing interested me but that. Ostriches crossed our path several times that afternoon and I barely paid attention, even though this is one of the few birds I have any kind of curiosity about. One reason we had to get to Tsau faster than planned was because my tent was gone, which meant having to stop early enough each night to collect enough wood to keep major fires going throughout the night without fail. Being lax or nominal about this would not be possible. We picked up the pace considerably, and Baph was good about it at first.
We went too fast. Going faster meant needing to rest more. During one rest stop I fell asleep sitting against a tree and was awakened by being jerked over by Baph, to whose halter I had tied my hand. We resumed. I pressed us. I even got Baph to canter for short stretches.
I never whine but was whining then. We aren’t getting to Tsau, was what I was whining. It was as though I thought that by sheer urgency I could force Tsau to rise out of the ground. It irritated me that we would be unable to go in a beeline for Tsau because the remaining water points lay significantly south or north of our route. Why had I let myself make such cursory calculations of how much time would be consumed in deviations from our route?
Camping that night was macabre, What my map led us to was an abandoned cattle post, probably German, dating from the early protectorate and obviously derelict for years. There were tumbledown pens and stall fencing, a burst and heeling dip tank, piping, remnants of buildings, and at the center of the complex an ox pump, meaning a butterfly-shaped iron rig which two oxen could be harnessed to and then driven to turn, goaded to plod endlessly in a circle to raise the water. The nails I occasionally kicked up were antique. On the face of it this should have been a more sinister venue than the gray place, but it never registered that way with me. I was totally absorbed in hurrying.
I was manic. I threw myself into wrenching half-buried timbers out of the ground and dragging old planks and poles from the farthest reaches of the property to heap up in piles in a rough circle around the pump. Most of the wood went into a central dump which I would sleep next to and from which I would chuck replenishment into the barrier fires from time to time. What was left of the place, I virtually razed. This was arson, not camping. I hope the site had no historical value. Nothing could slow me, not even my cold fear about water. I had decided early on that very far down the well shaft something was glinting that must be water. How I would get it remained to be seen. The apparatus was rusted rigid, completely inoperable. But that problem was for the morning. Even when I sensed I had enough wood I went for more. I put off eating. I had failed to bring gloves of any kind, so in short order my hands had become rich with splinters I would have the pleasure of dealing with later. I know what I was doing. I was overpreparing the event because I dreaded my next task, which was to inventory my supplies and face what Mmo’s defection had done to them.
I laid out what was left. I thought we would survive if Tsau was where I estimated it to be. Food for me was more than adequate, especially now that I was so anorectic. Water was the dilemma. I had two plastic five-gallon jerricans, one empty and one a third full of water that was reserved for Baph. I had two canteens, one full. There were enough oats for two skimpy feedings for Baph. If we got there, he would arrive hungry.
I had started a new journal, in a separate notebook, in Kang. That was gone. This meant I had no sure fix on the date. I hadn’t paid attention to the date on the page I had written my farewell-to-Kang entry on. But all my Tswapong and Gaborone journals were safe.
A perfect index of the shape I was in was my reaction to losing my mirror. All my toilet articles had gone with Mmo. I couldn’t stand it. It felt like I had lost my left hand. I would have traded my first aid kit for my mirror and my comb. It was irrational. How could I look at myself, check myself, before I got to Tsau? I would need to look at myself. It was urgent because I knew that through fear and exertion, weight was dropping off me. I was certain I was in ketosis, since I was living on protein and water — pilchards and water, tuna and water, ghastly Vienna sausages and water. When I lose weight rapidly it shows first in my face, then go breasts, hips, middle. This was why I needed a mirror. I felt stabbed in the back by life, by my foul luck. Now I was supposed to present myself to Denoon with only the vaguest notion of how I looked, and uncombed. I was wild. I thought of trying to devise a comb out of the nails in the sand.
So I lit the fire. It was a spectacle.
Baph was exhausted, clearly, because he got down on his knees as soon as we stopped. I slept half on top of him, or half slept, after pulling a tarp over us both.
April nights in the Kalahari are cold, but we were hot. I got up three times to renew my paean to heat, light, and destruction. I burned everything. Even as day fell I threw more into the display.
The Well
The day began with the ordeal of fishing up water for us.
This was by the spoonful, almost.
The casing the ox pump shaft went down into was about eight inches across. There was a clearance of at most three inches between the shaft housing and the casing wall once I had battered and levered the shaft over as far as I could through brute force. My canteen was too fat to slide through the gap. I was stymied. I needed a thing, ideally, like a bayonet case that I could reel down to get water by increments.
What I did was pound, crush, and crimp my canteen cup into a travesty of itself, beating the side in and folding the bottom up over it and praying to god I wouldn’t pierce or break it. It was thinner than a pack of cigarettes when I was done with it, and it would hold about half a cup of water. I had dropped a ten thebe piece down the shaft and concluded that the water was forty or fifty feet down. I had a hundred feet of nylon cord. I made two holes in the rim to thread the cord through.
On my first try, the cup, crushed and compressed as it was, seemed to take a long time to immerse, even though I jiggled the line vigorously once it was in the water to tip it. So before the next descent I attached a sinker made of odd bits and pieces of iron fitments I scavenged from the area, and then we were all right.
It took hours to fish up enough water to fill all my vessels. I had to be in an excruciating position to do it. My knees and back were agonized. Whoever said he had measured out his life in coffee spoons was talking about me that day.
I made Baph slake himself before we left. That was difficult because I discovered a rent in the collapsible canvas bucket he very much preferred to drink from, which meant holding the rent pinched closed while he took his time, which could be done only by my assuming a position specially created to torture my already excruciated back. Finally we could go.
Walking erect was bliss for a while.
A Nadir
What transpired next survives in my mind as a medley, more or less. I was beyond writing things down. I may have had two identical days or I may have imagined one of them.
We went until late. When we stopped I had the strength for only one small fire, so we slept between it and a termite mound, which I thought I had heard lions disliked. I slept tied to Baph, as per usual. He was becoming very acclimated to fires, I observed. This time he stood all night. I remember this night scene, with the firelight flickering on the termite mound, happening twice, which is not possible.
In the morning I woke up with two songs I had forgotten I knew fresh in my consciousness — The Old Triangle, three verses, and Where Have All the Flowers Gone, all verses. They were both good trek songs.