1929 July 31 | A Month Walking to the Kiymbi River
Then – Kiymbi River, Congo
The last villages and settlements have flown by. The caravan keeps going as long as the weather holds.
At the break, François paces, lights a Camel, stops, consult the compass, puts a mark on his draft map and points further down at the wall of trees. Sometimes, the Guide crouches, looks ahead and proposes another route. That way, along this hunting trail? Less steep, slippery, more efficient with the loads. François agrees.
Suzanne has looked at him these past days, morphing back into the rugged explorer she had always imagined him to be.
He is more and more the Frans of the old photos, the pack of Malachite Manglers, the Old Pals of Back Then. In 1919, only 10 years ago, yet another life. With a foot on a rock, his map in hand, a cigarette holder dangling from his mouth, leather gaiters and bush hat tilted just so.
Savannah Frans, not Soissons François.
And so they walk for a month, setting up the tent and folding it every other night. Further and further in. Every day, new trails, new marks and samples. Always on, further on! Guide in front, machete in hand, a flintlock on a strap. Beaters upfront each side of the column, thrashing the bushes in rhythm with long swishing sticks, singing their passing through to animals and interlopers alike. François follows them, compass drawn and loaded shotgun at the shoulder; Suzanne is just behind him.
The song of the caravan bounces off rocks and trees.
And when the trackers’ song fades, the porters’ pick up. Each one takes his turn in the polyphonic chant, singing about hearth and kin, the day’s events, memories and dreams of the village. Each singer has his own polychromatic tone. The trunks sway, carried aloft on heads, latched with improbable ropes, or just thrown over the shoulder.
An harmony of time, space and motion; the ancestral song of the bush.
Distances and timings dissolve into the rhythm. A day, a month? Progress is now only a line with strokes on a piece of paper. For now, schedules fade away. It is not anymore 2 or 10 kilometres, it is just what we walked today. They walk as far as they can under trees that are there forever, through groves that were never disturbed, brushing against unknown thorns, amongst alien flowers, improbable smells and impossible colours.
Time unwinds. They are a prehistoric hunting party, the Sun shining on them in dusty rays through skylights in the emerald roof.
Here, now, millennia of history just never happened.
Something hoots, howler, or charge through brushes. There, a flash of acid green slithers away into deeper woods, soon only an after-image. Above, monkeys bray, parrots cackle, chimpanzees jostle to get a better view at the event of the day, no, the week! Reclining in a branch, baboons stare at them with infinite contempt. Under a redberry bush, a buffalo skull grins: I was huge, once, now, just ribbons of black flesh. As the caravan sidles by, flies swarm up to defend their find.
Day after day, further and further into the Green they walk, alert and ready, for both dangers and wonders.
They walk back in time, back into eternity.
Until the trail reaches the top of that hill. A huge rock pierces the green canopy. The column falls silent, packs and loads fall on the ground. Could it be? It looks a bit like a skull, no? The Guide is already nimbly climbing, machete now sheathed, hat in hand. François crawls up the large stone, Suzanne follows him. Atop the rock, they stand. They stare down at the valley, silent.
The view is breathtaking.
Far below, a demented river thrashes around a huge bend of red granite. It races to the edge, launches into the air, and crashes down below in a cloud a vaporised water: Kiymbi Falls. They look at each other, proud, happy, relieved: job done, promise kept! Behind them, the trees have already closed up, the trail has vanished, only a memory now.
The river at their feet, and, around them, as far as the eye can see, Africa.
It felt like standing at the edge of eternity.
Tonight, they would flip the calendar hanging in the tent, and tomorrow, it would be Thursday, 1st of August 1929. François would hand over the draft map, the samples and notes. And then he would start working on the final version of the trek.
… How Long is Forever? Sometimes Just One Second…
~ Alice in Wonderland
Tomorrow they will be once more part of the human timeline. In New York, the Graf Zeppelin bobs gently, pulling its cables taut, eager for the skies, ready to make the world that little bit smaller again.
A shoe shine boy shares his best stock tips with Joe Kennedy. He runs to the office: quick, sell all of my stocks!
Somewhere, in the living room, a radio enthusiastically shouts about a football match.
… Not a moment to be lost …
But not yet.
Tonight, they let the shadows and shades of the jungle swallow them up one last time. Beyond the trees, at the edge of hearing, the Kiymbi waterfall still roars its power as it has done for millions of years.
And for just a few decades still.
Now – Snap, crackle and pop; and that other thing that goes “bump” in the night
What was that?
It is the dead of night, truly.
So pitch-black you cannot even see your hand in front of your face. Wide awake, wide alert, you know that your eyes are open, only because you willed them to. You cannot even see the familiar grey light sneaking under the door.
A twig snaps like a branch breaking, a leaf crackles like a campfire, the canvas pops like a cork, … breeze sounds like a gust of wind, a squall. It thrashes leaves and whistles through the canvas; an evil chuckle blacker than night looms over the forest. You outstare the darkness. You wrap yourself tighter in a shroud of silence.
Damp now rises from the ground, vapor tentacles conjured up to slide around your neck with reptilian cold, spreading to your shoulders, then your wrists. You do not move and let the malevolent rheumatism spread. Survive the night, you will. You withdraw further in a defensive bubble, an ultra-dense black hole against the absolute discomfort that threatens to swallow you.
You stretch your senses until even vibrations hurt. You sail through the night, alone in the void of the tent, a sensorial deprivation to test the limits of your paranoia.
Tomorrow, all of it, any of it, will slide back into their lairs, will-o-wisps sinking back in the swamps with sighs of regret.
Some wrote about the Call of the Wild, the Night Song, even the Silence of Night, and the appeal of rocks, woods and waters.
I know concrete, steel and glass.
What was that?
You read part 11 of Transvaal Blue Skies: the true story of how, early last century, Suzanne moved to Africa and built her laager. This is a series of loose dots weaved in a chronological thread, wrapped into a story to be plucked and observed, heard and remembered, recognised and judged. Suzanne Dulière was my grandmother.
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