Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [70]
I pushed the hair and sweat out of my eyes and several mopane flies were wiped to their deaths in the process. “I don’t know why you talk about the flies as if they were a plague of the past,” I said.
We brushed out into a clearing. The grass was flattened, as if livestock had spent the night here, or there had been wind bursts. Beyond the tips of the trees we could see morning fires belching smoke into the sky and then K suddenly stopped in a way that reminded me of a horse that has smelled or heard something that has put the fear of God into it. “Hear that?” he whispered.
I stopped panting and held my breath. It sounded like an ordinary early morning in Africa to me. Flies buzzed, cockerels crowed, goats bleated, and a chorus of dogs was howling furiously. “What?” I said.
“That.”
“I can’t hear anything.”
“Those fucking dogs,” K said. “Fuck. I heard them last night too. They must be everywhere.” He turned to me and grabbed my shoulders. “Let’s go.”
“What? You’re spilling my tea.”
“Quick.”
“They’re village dogs.”
“Not here, they’re not.”
We retraced our steps, although this time K did not bother with the chivalrous formalities of holding aside thorn bushes for me but shoved me ahead of him, like a shield, until we broke out onto the shore of the lake, where we frightened the goats with our sudden and hasty reappearance. K was gasping as if he had just run a great distance. He put his hands on his knees and stared at the ground and then he started to heave.
“Are you all right?”
K nodded. A silver yellow thread of vomit dangled from his mouth. He gagged again.
“Must have been the peanuts in green pepper sauce,” I said.
K stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Why don’t you sit down for a bit?” I suggested. “Here, have some tea.”
K put up his hand and shook his head. “Nah. No tea.”
“This is no time for fasting heroics, fergodsake, drink!”
K took a mouthful of tea, swilled it around, and spat it out into the sand. He rocked heel to toe, toe to heel. It was like watching a tree in a windstorm. Then he licked his lips, which had gone mauve and chalky.
“You okay now?”
“Ja.”
“Still queasy?”
K shook his head. “Fucking spook bit me is all.”
“Ja.”
“Those dogs,” said K. “Man, you forget. . . . Those were howling.”
“Dogs howl,” I pointed out.
K shook his head. “No.”
I followed K back to Connor’s camp, breaking into a run to keep up with him. Only once we were back in the open-air dining room did K stop breathing as if he had just finished a race.
I said, “Hounds of the Baskervilles stop chasing you?”
K said, “It’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
K sat for a long time with his arms crossed and his lips tight and drawn. He didn’t say anything. Then he said, “Most probably just village dogs, hey?”
“Most definitely village dogs.”
“It’s been ages since I was here.”
“Twenty-five years.”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Right.”
“Dogs only live . . . what?”
“Ten, fourteen years.”
“Ja.”
“Ja.”
“Things change.”
“They do.”
K leaned forward and ran his finger down my cheek. “Sheesh. I think it was the smell of the bush, and the way this land looks and then the dogs. . . . Shame, man. Are you square?”
“Smashing,” I said, pulling thorns out of my arms. “And I’m wide awake now.”
K laughed. Then he said, “I’m telling you . . . I had a major flashback.”
“Bloody hell. I’d say.”
“You know I told you, during the war no gondies were supposed to live here. If they were found by the Porks, or if we found them, we culled them.” K shook his head. “So they tore down their huts, killed anything they could eat, and they went and hid in the bush. But they must have found they couldn’t bring themselves to eat their dogs because those, they just chased them away.”
“How awful,” I said.
“Ja, so those dogs made huge packs of