the injustice done to them over the centuries, were able to forgive. At least as long as they had a leader like Nelson Mandela.
Unfortunately, they had also proved, in other African countries, that they knew what genocide was. They thought nothing of large-scale acts of revenge. Nor did they shrink from other major atrocities. But if you had the stomach to look at things from a historical perspective, the Europeans could hardly boast. They hadn’t managed much better, even in just the twentieth century, even amongst themselves. And you didn’t need to have studied economics to be shocked by the lasting havoc Europe had caused beyond its borders, primarily in its former fiefdoms.
Improving the local schools and infrastructure did little to lessen the responsibility, no, the liability, of the Old World. It was going to take generations for the West to even slightly redeem itself. That couldn’t be said often enough, flying in the face of all that Eurocentric cynicism. What’s more, Tony, like Martine, considered the black man to be more handsome and noble by nature than, well, representatives of all the other races. Race was a word they didn’t like to use, but there was no other way to describe it. If you disregarded the unfortunate high number of dictators—their existence frequently playing a part in Europe’s continuing interference—blacks were simply more photogenic and more likeable than the other inhabitants of the planet. This was something he and Martine had been able to experience during their admittedly brief stay.
The wealthy tourist received a warm welcome in every holiday paradise in the world, but the genuine, good-humoured geniality to which Tony and his family were treated for ten whole days? Even on the street? And by all the South Africans—not just the blacks, but also the coloureds, and even the whites? Their love of life was almost unsettling. Certainly when you returned to the self-proclaimed navel of the world, that country of your birth, where you were re-confronted with all those snarling voices and sour faces, for whom a friendly word seemed equal to an insult, which could only be answered with a real insult. Even Klara—who, with her blond curls and her freckles, had been the centre of attention for ten days, treated to cries of admiration and tickling games by adoring strangers—seemed to sense it. “When are we going back to all the smiley black people again?” she’d pouted one evening at bedtime. And to friends and family, to anyone who had wanted to listen, Martine and Tony had been full of praise for the overwhelming country of their dreams, where, sure, inequality hadn’t quite been eliminated, sadly enough, which they’d travelled to with a sense of apprehension, yes, that, too—but where, from the first day onward, they’d been treated like royalty and friends, and where the motorways, hear this, were better than those in Belgium.
And it wasn’t as dangerous as you thought. But now Tony was being forced to watch a black man take advantage of a uniform aimed at tourists to commit a crime against the resources and the progress of his own country. He knew that he was ill-placed to lecture others, but it made him seethe. Everything that went wrong in Africa, everything that made its future look so hopeless, came together in this spectacle, this tragedy in a nutshell.
What had got into the man’s head? In a region and a time of towering unemployment, you finally get offered a decent job, expenses and housing included, clothes on your body and a car beneath your ass, in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and in a sector where the visitors’ tips alone equalled the basic income of three quarters of your less-fortunate compatriots—and what do you do? You take them for a ride. You start poaching, too, thus increasing the damage perpetrated by those international gangs. You saw off the branch you are sitting on. How stupid could you be? And this, too, was Africa, with its epidemic skulduggery, its short-sightedness, its corruption at every level that just couldn’t be stamped out. The ease with which you could buy a stolen pickup here, a rifle, even ordnance. Just like that! On the street, no questions asked. Tony kept a roll of South African rands in the glovebox of his pickup, brand-new notes in the highest denomination, now featuring a picture of Nelson Mandela, if you please. Notes he’d use to bribe customs so that his luggage, horn and all, would be set on the conveyor belt unchecked. Prior contact wasn’t necessary; guts and canniness about human nature at the crucial moment were enough. This was something else he’d found out during his ten-day stay. Traffic fines? Half the money as a backhander to Mr. Friendly Policeman, and he’d tear up your ticket. No authorities ever needed to know. A wink and a mutual nod sufficed. The rituals of corruption were pathetically simple and catastrophically efficient. And then they were shocked that their rainbow nation remained a sunless mess.
But Tony’s anger cut deeper than that. It had to do with the man himself. The man was acting in total cold blood. It was surely not the first time he’d got up to something like this. Everything about him was arrogant, focussed, and offensively authentic. Tony’s safari outfit was a parody; the guard’s was the real thing. He was a professional; Tony was a hobbyist, a miserable impostor, even in deceit. Without realizing it, the man was holding up a shaming mirror to Tony. He saw that clearly, now, and it shocked him. This was what he had wanted to do. This was how far he’d sunk.
But, in spite of this, he still felt a primitive envy of this part-time poacher, and it made his blood boil.
The uniformed brute didn’t wait until the rhino’s legs had stopped thrashing. He hobbled over to the dying animal, stood with his legs wide apart, and placed the roaring chainsaw against the root of the largest horn. Tony had to stop himself from screaming. The bastard! At least put the creature out of its misery first!
The man braced himself. The chainsaw’s roar changed into a bellow, softer and yet warlike, triumphant. It sliced through Tony like a knife. The chutzpah of it—the man daring to use a chainsaw rather than an axe! You could hear the racket for miles. And he sawed deeper than necessary, too, not wanting to miss a scrap of horn. Drops of blood and bits of bone flew into the air. Tony loathed the man from the bottom of his heart. A faint smell of burning hair and hot bone reached him. He felt his teeth grate; he gagged in disgust. The man got ready to remove the second, smaller horn.
And then it happened. Still clearly visible despite the looming darkness—half of the sun had disappeared now—the rhino calf charged.
Tony had lost sight of the animal. It had probably run off with the zebras and only just returned. In any case, it charged desperately, with its still-virgin nose low to the ground. This was how it reached the giant, sideways from behind, not head-on. But it was still enough to send the man with the bad leg pitching forward.
Deafened by the roar of his saw, the giant hadn’t heard the calf approaching. In order not to fall, he had to make a clownish jump, chainsaw in his hands, over the mutilated head of the rhino cow. His swearing was audible above the singing of the saw.
He regained his balance and turned around angrily to face the calf, who began a second charge from close by. Then the giant did something he shouldn’t have. He raised the chainsaw, ready to mow down the calf. And Tony shot him.
In a fraction of a second, he had aimed and pulled the trigger, all signs of paralysis gone, and just as accurate a shot as ever. It was a gift, and Tony possessed it, even though he was a programmer and number cruncher by trade. He could see the result through the gun’s sights. His shot had hit the giant below the neck, not far above his heart. Interrupted in his counter-attack, the man let out a gurgling scream, head back, mouth and eyes wide open in pain and astonishment. The chainsaw slipped out of his hands and fell across his knee, separating his thigh from his lower leg. Blood spurted out, mixing with that of the rhino cow. The man himself toppled theatrically, away from his amputated limb. For the second time that evening, the crack of a shot echoed deeper and deeper through the rocky crevice.
The howling of the chainsaw had stopped. It stood upright in the loose sand, like a knife in a tabletop.
The remorse would come later, along with the shame and the permanent dent in his self-image. (‘Am I really capable of something that monstrous?’)
For the time being,
