Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 67
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was obliged to take into account the fact that the accused was acting
like an animal in a trap, and I am satisfied that there was no element
of premeditation The sentence was eighteen years imprisonment, and all
sentences were to run consecutively. They were all confirmed on appeal.
As Conrad Berg said from his hospital bed with one heavily plastered leg
in traction, and a glass of Old Buck gin in his hand, Well, for the next
twenty-eight years we don't have to worry about that bastard, I beg your
pardon, Mrs. Morgan. Twenty-nine years, dear, Jane Berg corrected him
firmly.
In July the American edition of A Place of Our Oven was published, and
it dropped immediately into that hungry and bottomless pool of
indifference wherein so many good books drown. It left not a sign, not
a ripple of its passing.
Bobby Dugan, Debra's new literary agent in America, wrote to say how
sorry he was, and how disappointed.
He had expected at least some sort of critical notice to be taken of the
publication.
David took it as a personal and direct insult. He ranted and stormed
about the estate for a week, and it seemed that at one stage he might
actually journey to America to commit a physical violence upon that
country, a sort of one-man Vietnam in reverse.
They must be stupid, he protested. It's the finest book ever written.
Oh, David! Debra protested modestly.
It is! And I'd love to go over there and rub their noses in it, and
Debra imagined the doors of editorial offices all over New York being
kicked open, and literary reviewers fleeing panic-stricken, jumping out
of skyscraper-windows or locking themselves in the women's toilets to
evade David's wrath.
David, my darling, you are wonderful for me, she giggled with delight,
but it had hurt. It had hurt very badly. She felt the flame of her
urge to write wane and flutter in the chill winds of rejection.
Now when she sat at her desk with the microphone at her lips, the words
no longer tumbled and fought to escape, and the ideas no longer jostled
each other. Where before she had seen things happening as though she
were watching a play, seen her characters laugh and cry and sing, now
there was only the dark cloud banks rolling across her eyes, unrelieved
by colour or form.
For hours at a time she might sit at her desk and listen to the birds in
the garden below the window.
David sensed her despair, and he tried to help her through it. When the
hours at the desk proved fruitless he would insist she leave it and come
with him along the new fence lines, or to fish for the big blue
Mozambique bream.
in the deep water of the pools.
Now that she had completely learned the layout of the house and its
immediate environs, David began to teach her to find her way at large.
Each day they would walk down to the pools and Debra learned her
landmarks along the track; she would grope for them with the carved
walking-stick David had given her. Zulu soon realized his role in these
expeditions, and it was David's idea to clip a tiny silver bell on to
his collar so that Debra could follow him more readily. Soon she could
venture out without David, merely calling her destination to Zulu and
checking him against her own landmarks.
David was busy at this time with the removal of Conrad's game fence, as
he was still laid up with the leg, and with building his own fences to
enclose the three vulnerable boundaries of Jabulani. In addition there
was a force of African rangers to recruit and train in their duties.
David designed uniforms for them, and built outposts for them at all the
main access points to the estate.
He flew into Nelspruit at regular intervals to consult Conrad Berg on
these arrangements, and it was at his suggestion that David began a
water survey of the estate.
He wanted surface water on the areas of Jabulani that were remote from
the pools, and he began studying the feasibility of building catchment
dams of sinking boreholes. His days were full and active, and he became
hard and lean and sunbrowned. Yet always there were many hours spent in
Debra's company.
The 35-mm. colour slides that David had taken of the buffalo herd
before Johan Akkers had decimated it, were returned by the processing
laboratory and they were hopelessly inadequate. The huge animals seemed
to be standing on the horizon, and the ox-peckers on their bodies were
tiny grey specks. This failure spurred David, and he returned from one
trip to Nelspruit with a
600-mm. telescopic lens.
While Debra was meant to be working, David set up his camera beside her
and photographed the birds through her open window. The first results
were mixed.
Out of thirty-six exposures, thirty-five could be thrown away, but one
was beautiful, a grey-headed bush shrike at the moment of flight, poised
on spread wings with the sunlight catching his vivid plumage and his
sparkling eye.
David was hooked by the photography bug, and there were more lenses and
cameras and tripods, until Debra protested that it was a hobby which was
completely visual, and from which she was excluded.
David had one of his inspirations of genius. He sent away for pressings
of June Stannard's bird song recordings, and Debra was enchanted. She
listened to them intently, her whole face lighting with pleasure when
she recognized a familiar call.
From there it was a natural step for her to attempt to make her own bird
recordings, which included the tinkle of Zulu's silver bell, the buzz of
David's Land Rover, the voices of the servants arguing in the kitchen
yard, and faintly, very faintly, the chatter of a glossy starling.
It's no damned good, Debra complained bitterly I wonder how she got hers
so clear and close David did some reading, and built a parabolic
reflector for her. it did not look particularly lovely, but it worked.
Aimed at a sound source it gathered and directed the sound waves into
the microphone.
From the window of Debra's study they became more adventurous and moved
out. He built permanent and comfortable hides beside the drinking
places at the pools, and when his rangers reported a nesting site of an
interesting bird species, they would build temporary blinds of thatch
and canvas, sometimes on tall stilts where David and Debra spent many
silent and enjoyable hours together, shooting film and catching sound.
Even Zulu learned to he still and silent with his bell removed on these
occasions.
Slowly they had begun to build up a library of photographs and
recordings of a professional standard, until at last David plucked up
sufficient courage to send to African Wild Life Magazine a selection of
a dozen of his best slides. Two weeks later, he received a letter of
acceptance, with a cheque for a hundred dollars. This payment
represented a return of approximately one twentieth of one percent of
his capital outlay on equipment. David was ecstatic, and Debra's
pleasure almost as great as his. They drank two bottles of Veuve
Clicquot for dinner, and under the spell of excitement and champagne
their love-making that night was particularly inventive.
When David's photographs were published in Wild Life accompanied with
Debra's text, they reaped an unexpected harvest of letters from persons
of similar interest all over the world, and a request from the editors
for a full-length, illustrated article on Jabulani, and the Morgans
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