Mouroir

Flight Aid

We had lost the sea battle and on rafts or clutching to pickle vats and flotsam we washed up soaked right through on this godforsaken stretch of beach — but our enemies were vengeful, they weren’t going to let us get away with our lives. . Or, as castaways, expatriates, refugees and at a loss in this strange land, we remained on the lookout towards the sea all the days and all the nights, for where else could our succour come from? and then suddenly we noticed the ships, two, but they could not approach the land for anchorage among the cresting waves. . I no longer know, Minnaar, and it is futile that you should keep on questioning me on the how and the why of our being there — it has escaped me as so many other causes did too, the way my words now leave me in the lurch, a runniness. The only clarity is: we were on a sand strip stretching in a half moon around the bay and there was no civilization or settlement or metropolis or dune farm or neon sign or lighthouse or caravan park or life-saver’s hut or hamburger stall anywhere near, and we were parched right down to our chapped snail-tongues. The sky was blue. The sea was blue but swollen. Away from the beach, still unfathomably deep in the heaving waters, to port and starboard two ships stood. Three-masters both, and the wind was lavish in the rigging and the sails so that these were bulging like men’s fists or like small clouds in the lower sky. Heeling in the water they were, but still they could get no nearer to the land. Nemesis? Deliverance? We (that is Murphy and Don Espejuelo and Breytenbach and I, and our companions — Mooityd, Sweetime, Elefteria, Levedi Tjeling and Marlin Manrob) turned our backs on the thundering ocean slithering over the wet sand and we started searching for direction about us. The long dresses of the women were sodden up to the hips, and clusters of sand grains were glistening in the folds. On the ridge of the nearest high dune an Arab all at once loomed large and after staring for a long moment (at us? at the ships in the bay?) with a hand like a falcon above the eyebrows to protect his eyes from the sun — or was he, because of a sore back, praying on his feet to a Mecca around the curve of the horizon? — after thinking through his eyes for a long while, he waved to us to come closer. Over his white robe in which the wind was trapped like the wings of anxious seagulls he wore a jacket buttoned to the chin and around the head he had wrapped a turban and on his face he had a pointed beard. He thoughtfully fondled the sharpness of the hairy little sword on his chin and carefully and slowly explained to us from deep in his throat that he could, upon request, rapidly accompany us to a place where we might obtain assistance, but only the men would be allowed to come. This after all, was dictated by the customs of Islam. And concerning the women we weren’t to worry excessively for they would be safe here during our brief absence. But we had to take our shoes off. With the guide we clambered over the sandhill and sunk to our knees in the shifts and the slides of the surface. Behind the hill we saw the grey sandflats decorated with shadows of all shapes. Like more palpable shadows there were also broad drawers standing upright, half buried in the sand itself, with shiny knobs by which they could be opened upwards. There were five different drawers. The Arab with the burnt-out eyes asked us whether we wished to arrive at our destination quickly or less quickly or less slowly or slowly or in God’s own time then. We said: as soon as possible, please. Rather, that was my answer, and I assume the others answered in the same way. Thus he opened the left most “drawer” and we climbed in. And with a giddy speed we tumbled down, transported by a vertical conveyer belt, black and rough like sandpaper, down, down, down, until down below we were spilt head over heels on a square. In the middle of the square was a fountain. Around this square with its fountain there were the fronts of tall buildings — some were even palaces. A crowd of people with smiles wreathed around their mouths strolled up and down and then stopped to listen with cocked heads how the spouting water plunges back with a rinkletinkle. It was warm in that place. And it was evening because spray-lights lit up the buildings and shone through the tree of water. I think it must have been in Switzerland. A long long time ago.