From: avjohn@iiasa.ac.at (Aviott  JOHN)
Subject: the kloof
Organization: IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 17:39:08 GMT


THE KLOOF (published in Eotu, USA, February 1989)
Aviott JOHN
e-mail: avjohn@iiasa.iiasa.ac.at

He wandered down the kloof in search of game, following the ancient
ritual of the hunter.  His weapon was non-lethal, a motor driven 35mm
camera and the ammunition pouch at his waist carried only ten extra
rolls of colour film.  Albert had strictly warned him never to go out
unarmed or alone and now he was neglecting both warnings.  'You're a
stranger to these parts,' Albert said, 'and don't know enough about
the wild animals.  They don't know,' he added with a mischievous
grin, 'that you're a white man, and therefore superior.  They will
smell your fear just as readily as they would mine.'

Robert laughed uncertainly, not knowing if the remark had been to
emphasize the apartness between them.  In his three weeks here he had
quickly grown accustomed to the whiteness of his skin in contrast to
Albert's.  This strange country was almost a continent, and he felt
vulnerable, a member of a weak minority.  The ritual kowtowing and
deference to his white presence was all a farce and could not shake
off that impression of carefully disguised contempt
exuded by the hotel staff.

He had spent a week in Johannesberg, feeling cut off from the
population of that powerful city; black, white and colored.  There
was energy here, but he was not a part of it.  It was a measure of
the country's corrosive effect on him that he now automatically
slotted people into racial groups without the slightest realization
of what he was doing.  Of course he was no racist.  But he was not a
false liberal.  Most of the liberals he knew were phonies who carried
their own bigotries around them, these bigotries often in the form of
slogans on readily unfurled banners.  Robert was the best kind of
liberal, a man who did not particularly think of himself as one.  He
did not root about for causes to pursue; merely followed his twin
loves of travel and photography while earning an unobtrusive living
in London as an accountant.

With no special aptitude for accountancy, he had wanted a
profession that afforded reasonable financial reward for hard work. 
Now after five years of training and an equal period of employment,
he knew that the big money he dreamed of was to be made in branches
of the profession that he did not care to enter.

Hence this holiday trip to South Africa.  The country was in the
news very often these days and he resolved to visit it before
political developments or trade and travel embargoes made tourism
impossible.  And once the trouble started (as he was sure it
eventually would), there was no way of saying when stability would be
restored.

His girlfriend was 'involved' and she gasped with indignation when
she heard he was planning to visit South Africa.  'But you can't do
that... prop up the economy of that racist regime.  The least you
could do during your stay would be to take part in a few
demonstrations or protest marches.'

Robert mildly remonstrated, 'I don't want to be taken for a police
spy and lynched.  Besides, I don't know enough about the problem.'

 'It's an immoral system, and that's all there is to it.  What more
do you need to know?'  She conveniently ignored his first objection. 

 'The Boers and their descendants are chiefly responsible for the
economic development of South Africa and its prosperity today.  And
they've been living there for generations.  A thorough knowledge of
the historical roots of the present situation is essential to
understanding the precise nature of the problem,' he began
pedantically, but she cut him off with a pithy explosion of contempt.

 'Bullshit!  This prosperity was built on the sweating backs of the
original inhabitants who've been rewarded for their contribution to
the economy by relegation to ghettoes and denial of their human
rights.'

In her ideological book, the Afrikaaners were soul-less
bloodsuckers, parasites battening on the labor of millions of people
who lived in sub-human conditions.  And the blacks were a perfect
people, the rightful owners of this magnificent country, who would be 
restored to their own just and joyful selves if given a chance to
rule.  For Robert the matter was not so clear cut.  He saw shades of
gray everywhere.  True, apartheid was an abominable concept.  But it
existed, and if every man had the right to protect his own hard won
property, a people had so much more.  There were so many divisions
among the black peoples themselves.  Each group had as little right
to rule as the Afrikaaners did; there existed no cohesive body which
could justifiably say, 'WE should logically be the rulers of this
country.'  And without a cohesive ruling group, there would be chaos
and an end to economic prosperity.  The most cursory glance at
history would prove that beyond doubt.

Robert and she had staked extreme positions in their ideological
debate about a distant land and neither would compromise.  It was
with a sense of bemused regret for what might have been that she
packed her bags and moved out of Robert's apartment a week before his
vacation in South Africa.

And now four weeks later, he was none the wiser.  He had travelled
a bit, felt alien in a land where, in spite of the colourful mix of
languages and nationalities, he could make himself understood
perfectly; where the sunsets were the most gorgeous he had ever seen;
lavish displays of ochre and pink intertwined with majestic darkening
purples the color of wine or blood.  These sunsets were fascinating
sound and light shows, and the sound was provided by the land itself,
a deep murmur which seemed to resonate in the magnificent landscape
and the great open spaces; speaking of many peoples, great multitudes
crying out in love or sorrow.

The city was oppressive and he strove to get out of it as quickly
as he could.  There was something tainting about all human contact
here, regardless of race and color.  Even chance meetings were
circumscribed by irrelevant epidermal overtones, and he felt the air
around him was too opaque for verbal communication.  He did not take
a single photograph in Johannesburg.  The camera case hung like a
dead weight around his neck,its strap chafing the skin to soreness. 
There was nothing to excite his interest here, not even the
occasional animated face or knots of conversation on the sidewalks. 
Small groups of white youths sometimes demonstrated a certain
liveliness, but when seen closeup their gaiety was sullen and
strained.  And so he rented a car and drove out of the stifling
confines of the city to the cleansing air of the open country.  And
this was when Albert warned him.

 'You're a stranger here.  But the wild don't know it.'

Robert laughed uncertainly. 'Can't you see I'm just like you.  I'm
not in any more danger than you would be.'  And Albert replied, 'Yes,
you're not in any more danger than I would be.  But I'm not foolish
enough to expect wild animals to pose for portraits.'

 'I don't expect them to pose.  What danger is there?'  He patted
his 600mm lens.  'With this baby I'm nearly a mile away when I take
closeups.  And I use fine grain film which can be blown up.'  Albert
shrugged and resumed the work of cleaning Robert's hotel room,
humming softly to himself in a sonorous bass.  The voice reverberated
richly, like a full echo of the land itself and if you heard it
without seeing the man, you had a picture of a barrel chested giant,
tall with good humour and beer belly.

All the more surprise to see the lean figure, hollow cheeks and
straggly beard, two protuberant eyes like bloodshot headlamps that
pierced you with their intent, mournful gaze, wearing his
hotel "boy's" uniform of blue dungarees and white
tennis shoes, and if you
took a second look at him, the next thing you noticed were his hands;
large and beautifully shaped, caressing the air with gestures as he
spoke; the hands of an artist, or of an aristocrat, sensitive hands
with carefully manicured nails and prominent half moons.

The game park was the size of Switzerland and in its own way
contained ten times the riches of all the Swiss banks.  Robert
clicked away in the park, zooming in on unsuspecting feeding lions,
capturing a she-elephant's caress of its two ton baby, sitting in on
the chase of a cheetah, freezing the flight of a springbok in midair. 
Some of the scenes he photographed were spectacular, and he knew that
aperture, focus, depth of field and film speed were well synchronized
for truly memorable shots.  But even without developing and examining
the pictures he was certain something was missing.  The animals and
their wild habitat were superlative, there was no gainsaying that. 
The landscape emanated a grandeur and sweep that was rivalled only by
the Siberian taiga or the great plains of Canada.  What was lacking? 
The missing element was something inside himself; that undefinable
human spark that elevated mere technical perfection to the higher
plane of artistic brilliance.  He was cheating in the game park, the
landscape rolling by squarely as in a TV picture, framed by the
window of the automobile.

Perhaps danger could provide the vital missing spark!  An element
of personal risk would add that intangible something to his pictures,
make the frozen photographs come alive for eternity.  His technically
perfect shots were only infinitesimally short of brilliance, and he
desperately wanted to bridge the gap because he suddenly felt there
was no future in accountancy.  The only creative challenges in
accountancy lay on the wrong side of the law and he had no desire to
live beyond its pale whatever excitement it might generate.

So he left the game park and followed the red laterite road
aimlessly into the bush.  The road surface was even and the land was
flat on either side.  The bush was slowly thickening and behind him
was only the cloud of red dust raised by his own passage.

After driving for an hour, he parked in the shade of a thorn tree
and sat for five minutes listening to the wind.  After a while, he
began to distinguish other sounds above the ticking of the metal, the
hum and scurry of insects and rodents.  He opened the door slowly and
got out to stretch his legs.  He sensed eyes on him and looked all
around.  There was nothing... until he raised his head and saw the
large brown timid eyes of a giraffe fixed on him.  It stood on the
far side of the thorn tree and as soon as he caught its eye, it moved
away with its inelegant, shambling stride.

It was past four in the afternoon and the winter sun was beginning
to lose some of its intensity, so he idly followed the giraffe,
carrying his camera.  The tall creature was already far away by the
time he uncovered and focussed the telezoom, so he did not shoot but
watched its enlarged image.   The land was pancake flat, dotted with
umbrella shaped thorn trees and dusty shrubs typical of the bushveld
landscape, the shrubs often wide enough to hide a full grown
elephant; but as he watched the giraffe suddenly seemed to disappear,
as though the earth had opened beneath it.

The last he saw of the giraffe was its head, the ridiculous knobbly
horns bobbing up and down above the level of the plain, like a
swimmer in a sea of rough grass.

The disappearance of the giraffe, as into a water hole, intrigued
him, so he began to move towards the spot he had seen through the
lens.  It took nearly twenty minutes to cover the distance that the
deceptively slow lope of the giraffe had traversed in less than
three, and when he reached the spot the ground split open almost at
his feet.  It was a furrow shaped ravine, or kloof as Albert might
call it and it began abruptly where he stood, steeply descending and
widening out.  The limestone walls were overgrown with thickets and
bushes.  There was a trail of sorts, faintly discernible, and he
wondered that the vegetation was so thick in this kloof, compared to
the country around him.  He began to move down the trail without
thinking of what he did, and there certainly was no inkling of
danger.  At that moment he had even forgotten the camera he carried.

In places the trail was so steep that he had to run a few steps for
fear of slipping and tumbling headlong into the green banks below. 
Once or twice he lost footing and sat down backwards with a painful
thump.  The ground levelled abruptly and a few paces forward, the
green walls on either side moved respectfully away.  It was a
different world inside this kloof, steamy and moist like a rain
forest; the vegetation was strange, foamy green plants with broad
leaves the size of umbrellas, twisting lianas that wound their way
into the branches of trees far overhead.

The crucial difference from a rain forest was the deathly
stillness, the absence of birds or larger animal life.  The silence
was all the more palpable for the vibrant growth of thick vegetation.

Robert stood still and readied his camera.  There was silence all
about and yet he had the inescapable feeling that his wish for great
pictures was going to be granted; somewhere in this mysterious kloof
he would find and take some shots that would be seen around the
world, set him apart, perhaps mark the start of a professional
career.

But the forest said nothing, letting out neither sigh nor whisper. 
He did not feel nervous or fearful, for the silence was not menacing;
although he had no idea what he would do if he came face to face with
a great carnivore.  The light that filtered through the treetops far
overhead was a cool green that seemed to have encapsulated time and
rendered it irrelevant.  He looked into the viewfinder, increasing
aperture until he had a satisfactory balance of depth of field and
shutter speed, then moved forward to see what this place held in
store for him.  There was no discernible path now but an unbroken
space threaded between the trees as clearly as a path and he followed
this, looking back occasionally to take his bearings.  There would be
no problem finding the way back as long as there was light enough to
see the walls of the kloof.

He walked for half an hour and his progress was swift and silent;
swift for the clear passage between the trees, silent for the soft,
moss-grown earth at his feet.  His steps quickened at the sound of
running water and suddenly there was a clearing, a patch of stony
ground where the trees thinned and there was sky overhead again.  He
stood on the rock strewn bank of a swiftly flowing stream.  There was
a narrow bank on the other side and then the wall of the kloof reared
up, a wall of pockmarked soft limestone nearly three hundred feet
high.  Robert perspired freely in the humid heat, so different from
the dry air of the plain above.

The water was refreshingly cold where it riffled close to the stony
bank and he drank a little.  It was clear and tasted sweet.  He
followed the stream, glad to be in strong light again.  There was
little difficulty for the bank was fairly even and he only had to
watch where he set his feet for fear of twisting an ankle on the
large stones.  A strained ligament would amount to a death sentence,
for no one would find him here, close to the highway though he was. 
He doubted if the ravine could be spotted from the air, unless it was
from a helicopter hovering low overhead.  From the land, on horseback
or afoot, there was no chance of finding this kloof unless one
literally stumbled into it.  He himself had found it only because of
the giraffe.

And where had the giraffe disappeared?  He had hardly asked the
question when he heard a sound that raised his hackles.  It was a
sound instinctively associated with death, a sound like the humming
drone of a large swarm of bees.  They were death beetles and they
pullulated around the ungainly corpse like a horde of zealous health
inspectors, their very presence pronouncing the immense creature
irrevocably, irreversibly dead.

Robert was no stranger to death having twice seen it in the streets
of London; one a traffic accident which had wrapped human bodies in a
gruesome package of twisted metal; the second an elderly man felled
in the underground by a coronary infarct, a few futile last words
bubbling to his bluing lips.  He had often seen it on his father's
face after a particularly trying day at the hospital.

Robert's father had been a geriatrist, and during cold spells or
heat waves his aged patients had died like flies; a particularly
unsuitable expression, for right now flies were the most emphatically
alive beings in the vicinity, buzzing and burrowing into the inert
body of the giraffe.

He examined the dead giraffe with fascinated distaste.  There was
something very ugly and ignoble about this death.  To die on a plain,
hunted down by a pride of lions for instance, was a glorious death
and somehow justified the giraffe's stately existence.

But this, this was pointless.  How had it died?  There was no trace
of poacher's spear or carnivore's claw.  He walked all around the
corpse and the flies buzzed around his head, filling his ears with
the collective roaring of their tiny wings.  He clubbed at them
uselessly with his hands and moved a few paces back.  The giraffe's
eyes were closed and except for the stillness and the flies it might
have been in a fairy-tale sleep.

It was a young male, he noted, probably almost fully grown,
stretched out to an impressive length on the ground.  It was when he
lifted the camera to take a couple of pictures that Robert realized
his hands were shaking and he was shivering uncontrollably.

This was laughable, ridiculous.  He had felt faint shock and
impersonal grief on his previous encounters with death in London. 
But the death of this giraffe affected him now beyond reason with
intimations of the frailty and impermanence of earthly existence. 
How foolish it was to be out here alone without even a handgun to
defend himself!  It was late and time to get back to the safety of
his car.

He turned and walked back the way he came, along the banks of the
stream.  The swiftly flowing water looked oily now, menacingly silent
in the failing light.  He plunged into the thickness of the forest
and for a while had no difficulty finding the way he had come. 
Gradually the way became less clear.  It was as though the trees had
moved closer, huddling for safety from the same unseen menace that
pounded at the walls of his chest and clouded his vision with a
blood-red haze.  He lost his nerve and ran, stumbling over unseen
roots, catching his feet in hidden hollows, heedless of fluttering
shirt and tattered trousers.  Blinded with panic he ran right into
the green wall of the kloof and crouched panting at its base while he
gradually regained his breath and senses.

The camera hung battered but still in one piece from his neck, and
he hitched the strap to a more comfortable position before moving
along the wall to his right.  It was almost pitch dark when he began
to climb.  He was physically exhausted but totally calm when he
reached level ground again.  In the numinous night-time haze of the
veld, he walked with certain stride to the road and the thorn tree
beneath which he had parked his car.

Three days later, driving back into Johannesburg late at night he
was stopped by a police patrol.  They flashed a light into his car,
took down his name and license plate number, and asked where he was
going.  They asked many questions, but he was able to satisfy them
that he was only a curious tourist who'd driven far.  They let him go
with a stern warning of the dangers of driving alone in the bushveld
at night.  He staggered into his hotel bed and fell asleep almost
immediately, still wearing sweaty, grass-stained clothes.

He awoke to find Albert's bloodshot headlights anxiously trained on
him.

 'What happened?'

Albert sounded very concerned, so Robert told him of the descent
into the strange kloof, the rain forest vegetation and the dead
giraffe.  Albert eyed him steadily for a long time.

 'Was born and brought up there, you know, near the game park. 
Living nearly forty years before I came to Jo'burg.  No place like
that, sure, or I'd know of it.'

 'But it's true,' Robert swore.  'I'll take you there.  I know the
spot.  I can find it.'

Albert's's eyes clouded over and his eyes took on a faraway look. 
 'My grandfather would say you had a vision.  He could interpret
visions.  And in your vision he would see signs for the future.  But
I'm modern,' there was a touch of pride in his voice.  'I don't
believe in that nonsense.'

 'You're quite right.  What I saw was no vision.  It was close
enough to touch.  I've been there and I can find it again.  I'll take
you.'  But Albert was not listening.

 'I didn't believe my grandfather and his talk of visions, but
you're a white man and a foreigner.  How could you have seen one? 
And what does it mean for us?'

 'It was no vision,' Robert repeated with a touch of exasperation in
his voice.  'The giraffe was right there, where you're standing, very
dead, very touchable, very real.'

 'That's what grandfather always said, you know, how real those
special dreams were.  Not every one can see like that, only a chosen
few.'

Robert sprang out of bed.  'Come with me.  Let's drive out right
now and I'll show you the place.'  Albert did not move.

 'You forget, my friend.  In this country I
am not a free man.  I cannot
travel without a pass.  And I don't want to risk losing my job.'

Robert seized the camera lying on a night table and thrust it under
Albert's nose.

 'In here, in this roll of film there are pictures;
photographs I took from the top of the kloof, pictures of the stream,
the vegetation and the dead giraffe.  I'll get them developed right
away.  Will you believe me when I show them to you?  The camera
cannot lie.  There is a rain forest in the deep kloof, I tell you.' 

Albert did not reply but continued to look silently and speculatively
at him.

Robert showered, shaved and changed into clean clothes.  He was
ravenously hungry but it was too late for breakfast, so he had an
early lunch at a nearby restaurant.  He then walked into Snyder's
(all photo requirements, developing, printing, quick service) Camera
Store clutching his precious rolls of film.  'Can you develop and
print these for me immediately?'

 'Of course.  You'll have them tomorrow.'

Robert collected the envelopes of prints next day and sat down with
a cup of coffee before examining the pictures.  The rolls exposed at
the game park had turned out well.  They were all there, the pictures
of the lion feeding, the elephants, the cheetah, the springbok.  The
envelope containing the last roll of film was much slimmer.  He had
only taken a few shots from this roll... he upended the envelope.  A
bunch of negatives, black strips of developed unexposed film fell
into his hand.  There were no prints.  Startled, he held the strips
up to the light.  They were all blank.  He counted the strips and
examined the frame numbers printed at their base.  They were all
there, thirty-six.

He slammed money down on the table leaving the coffee untouched and
hurried back to the store.  He strode in waving the disappointing
envelope.  'What's this?  This couldn't be the roll of film I gave
you yesterday.'

Mr. Snyder was balding and big, a powerful man running  
to fat in his early fifties.  He wore a short sleeved white shirt
with polka dotted bow tie, beige slacks and a jovial smile.  The
smile froze, turning to a scowl as Robert excitedly brandished the
envelope.

 'Let me see that.'  He unceremoniously snatched the yellow envelope
and read out the name on it.  'Is this your name, Robert Barnett?'

 'Yes.'

 'Then this is your roll of film.'  He tossed the negatives onto the
counter.  For him the matter was settled.

 'That's impossible.  I had at least a dozen photographs on that
roll, taken three days ago near the game park.'

The shop keeper turned an indifferent face to Robert's indignation.

 'You're not the first photographer to lose his masterpiece by
forgetting to remove the lens cover, you know.  Be more careful next
time.'

Robert almost hit him.  'My viewfinder is a through-the-lens
affair.  What I see is what I shoot.  And I saw the kloof.  Here,
look through the lens of my camera if you will.  I'm not a bloody
beginner.  Look!'  He spread the glossy prints of the earlier rolls
on the counter.  Mr. Snyder evinced keen disinterest in both Robert's
camera and his pictures, raising two hands to indicate force majeur
or fate.

 'Very good pictures,' he admitted in a conciliatory tone.

 'So where is my last roll?  The one with pictures of the kloof.'

 'I told you, this is yours... what kloof?'

 'The one I was in near the game park.  It was very deep, overgrown
like a rain forest, full of tall trees with lianas and there was a
dead giraffe.'

 'There is a tropical jungle in a deep kloof near the park and there
was a dead giraffe.  What else did you see?'

Robert ignored the mocking tone but in his frustrated desire to
convince he grasped Mr. Snyder's collar and was instantly hurled back
against the wall.  The envelopes were courteously held out to him.

 'Mr. Barnett, these are your rolls of film.  And if one of them is
blank perhaps it was not, for whatever reason, exposed at all.'

Albert came up to his room that evening, ostensibly to change the
sheets, but his face was expectant.  'Wheres the pictures?' he asked,
seeing Robert's disgruntled face.

Robert shook his head.  'There was a mix up.  They developed an
unexposed roll of film and claim it was mine.  There's no way I can
prove it isn't.  The pictures of the dead giraffe are lost.'

 'Oh, man!'  Albert clapped his hands.  'Maybe my grandfather was
right and there are visions.  Remember your own words.  The camera
does not lie.  Mr. Snyder spoke the truth.  There was no kloof and
there were no photographs.  And you're a white man who does not
believe his own vision.  That is why you take pictures to reassure
yourself of what you saw.  To say: I saw this lion feed, on such and
such a day I went to the national park and watched the klipspringer
leap and mate.'

 'I was in there.  I saw what I saw and don't need a camera to
confirm it.'  But the certainty in Robert's voice was less robust and
he saw Albert fleetingly smile into his straggly beard and the
headlamp eyes blinked a signal of collusion - Robert's secret was
safe with him.

A few days later, Robert was seated in a plane on his way back to
the damp remains of an English summer.  The handle of the knobkerrie
was clutched in his hand and its knobbed end rested between his feet,
transmitting the vibrations of the aircraft's engines all the way up
his arm.  It was like Albert shaking him and endlessly repeating his
words of farewell.  'Wake up my friend, everything you saw in the
kloof was a vision.  Your pictures and this knobkerrie are relics of
the past.  This one actually belonged to my grandfather.  It was used
by my people long ago, but it is no longer an adequate weapon.  Keep
this in memory of your visit.'

Robert was discomfited, for he felt he had nothing of significance
to give in return; but he solemnly accepted the club as a token of
circumscribed and truncated friendship.