Smythe-Sinclair,’ the cherub next to Emil volunteered.
‘Your misfortune is almost as severe as mine,’ Master Archie said, shaking Courteney’s hand.
When he introduced himself simply as ‘Emil Coetzee’, while shaking Master Archie’s hand, Emil deeply regretted that his parents had never thought to give him a middle name.
‘Not so difficult that, now was it?’ Master Archie said before adding, ‘Gentlemen, I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’
There was a genuine sincerity in Master Archie’s voice that made Emil smile, a smile that was long and lasting.
‘Would you like to help us skin him?’ Master Archie asked, inclining his head towards the campfire.
To finally be part of the hunt! Emil eagerly nodded. He glanced over at Courteney, who, even with the warm glow of the hurricane lamp on him, still looked green in the face. Feeling sorry for him, Emil walked up to Courteney, stood next to him and stared at him until they both sort of nodded at each other. Courteney looked at Master Archie with new-found courage and nodded his head but not as enthusiastically as Emil had.
There. Just like that. Emil had made a friend, as easy as you please.
By the campfire an African man was cutting the animal’s heart into pieces. Emil watched, absolutely enthralled, while Courteney ran to a nearby bush and retched. The man speared through the pieces of the animal’s heart with his assegai and offered each man there a piece. Each man accepted the piece and popped it into his mouth. Master Archie did likewise when a piece was proffered to him.
Emil had not been expecting to receive the piece of the heart that he now held in his hands and so was surprised by the warmth of it … the texture of it … the weight of it. He found that he loved the reality of the thing that, until that moment, had existed for him mostly as metaphor.
‘You have to eat it while it is still warm,’ Master Archie said.
Emil focused on the piece of the heart in his hand and was suddenly overcome with sorrow that its beauty was so ephemeral.
Mistaking the reason for Emil’s hesitation, Master Archie said, ‘Quite naturally, you do not have to eat it if you do not want to. No one is expecting you to. It is not every man that can eat the heart of an animal.’
Emil carefully put the still-warm substance in his mouth and slowly chewed it. It tasted like … the heart of something. It was neither delicious nor dreadful. He chewed for quite some time as he broke it down. Once he had swallowed the masticated heart, Emil looked at Master Archie and smiled a bloody smile.
The other men laughed and some patted Emil on the back until he felt like he had passed some secret test.
For his part, Master Archie studied Emil but did not laugh or pat him on the back. Instead, he said to him, ‘To kill something is a very serious business, never to be taken lightly because life itself is so precious. We eat the heart while it is still warm so that the animal does not die in vain. We metabolise it so that it continues to live within us. You are now carrying that animal within you and shall continue to do so for the rest of your days.’
CHAPTER 5
As hard as it was for him to accept it, in time, Emil had to admit to himself that he preferred to be at school rather than at home. He felt guilty about this, to be sure, but even with the sporadic bullying that he received at the hands of the boys that he collectively called ‘The Bootlickers’, he was never alone at the Selous School for Boys. At the Selous School for Boys, Emil always had Courteney.
It was with Courteney that he sought the sanctuary of the library before supper and after the gruelling sessions of compulsory sports and cadet training. Together, Emil and Courteney consumed the entire oeuvre of the school’s namesake, Frederick Courteney Selous. Within the pages of such books as A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa, Twenty Years in Zambesia and Sunshine and Storm, Selous captured the imagination of Emil Coetzee and soon became his second hero.
In all honesty, Emil did not actually read the works of Selous, Courteney did. Emil began well enough with A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa:
On the 4th of September 1871, I set foot for the first time upon the sandy shores of Algoa Bay, with 400 pounds in my pocket, and the weight of only nineteen years upon my shoulders. Having carefully read all the works that had been written on sport and travel in South Africa, I had long ago determined to make my way into the interior of the country as soon as ever circumstances would enable me to do so; for the free-and-easy gipsy sort of life described by Gordon, Cumming, Baldwin, and other authors, had quite captivated my imagination, and done much to determine me to adopt the life of ever-varying scenes and constant excitement, which I have never since regretted, and for which an inborn love of all branches of natural history, and that desire so common amongst our countrymen of penetrating to regions where no one else has been, in some way fitted me.
In spite of this awe-inspiring beginning, Selous’s dense and dry prose soon started to drift away from Emil and so, as a result, it was Courteney who, in summary, would tell Emil all that he needed to know about the man who had been the inspiration for H Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain, Emil’s first hero.
Emil often imagined himself, at nineteen, setting off on a great quest – an adventure that would be the making of him, and he could hardly wait for this future to come into being. While he waited for this future, he sat next to Courteney in the school library and reread the works of Haggard, Burroughs and Kipling. He would occasionally gaze up at the portrait of Frederick Courteney Selous that hung in the library and admire the quintessential outdoorsman with requisite hat, boots and rifle. Some day that will be me, Emil would think with pride.
Courteney was not as taken with Selous as Emil was and actually read him only in order to provide Emil with summaries and to improve their collective vocabulary. An uninspired Courteney wondered if his parents had named him after Selous, but never remembered to ask them this in the biweekly letters that he sent home.
They were not exactly cut from the same cloth, Emil and Courteney, but the friendship of the Two Unfortunates of 1937 had taken root fast and held strong.
It was with Courteney that Emil enjoyed Master Archie’s English class, struggled through Master Findlay’s Science class and suffered through Master Duthie’s History class. In truth, Courteney was too intelligent to struggle or suffer through anything academic. Preferring to challenge himself mentally and not exert himself physically, where Courteney truly suffered and struggled was on the sports field, where he was expected to participate in rugby and cricket, and in the wide open veld where he was expected to build a fire, pitch a tent and shoot a moving target with equal degrees of determination. Yet he made every effort to enjoy these pursuits because of Emil, who was happily in training to be an outdoorsman. In return, Emil understood and appreciated the particularity of Courteney’s friendship and made every effort to love poetry and enjoy plays the way that not only Courteney but Master Archie would wish him to.
By the time Emil returned home after his first term away, his parents had already grown accustomed to their quiet existence. In Flat 2A, notes were delicately written back and forth on pastel-coloured paper. Collars were now starched and shoes were now laced without a word being spoken or a song being sung. Meals were eaten at the kitchen table and Emil used as an emissary to pass the salt, the butter, the gravy and the vegetables. For most of the day, the only voices to be heard within their flat came from his mother’s His Master’s Voice gramophone and his father’s Philips wireless radio.
During
