Prose

The short time that they are still together before Ryno have got to leave is for both of them like a great holiday.   In the few day that Ryno is still recovering, Maria takes leave and secretly they explore the river with a canoe, catch some fish and disappear into the veldt, where they have picnic and walk long distances while they really start to get to know each other.
 
Both know that the farewell is just around the corner and every moment that they spent together is precious for both of them.   “Come back with me to South Africa,” he asks her one night while she is lying in his arms.

”You know that I really would like to, but that I cannot...”  “How can I live on without you?”  He asks and for long moments they look at each other.  She does not answer his question, but draws him tightly against her.

”Life does not always run as you plan it,” she remarks somewhat later.   “Life is what you make of it and the choices that you make determines how it goes,” he answers her and there is a knob in his throat.

”Here are too many people that are dependent on me,” she tells him and also about her work for the intelligence service and that she had learned too late that you couldn’t just walk away from an intelligence agency, as you would want to.

A few days later it is time for Ryno to leave her and from somewhere Maria had got some Angolan identity papers and civilian clothes for Ryno and it is still dark, when they sneak away from the villa to the river where Maria had hidden a canoe.

It is icy cold at the river and Ryno is thankful when Maria gives him a jacket and he notices that she is shivering from the biting wind.

”I will see you then in a hour’s time at the small choral,” she says with a husky voice and she is in his arms and he feels her hot body against him.

”Hold me so tightly against you, as if you are never going to let me go,” she whispers in his neck and he smells the odour of her hair before her lips burn on his.

Her eyes are big in the moonlight and there is grief in the way that she looks at him, when she helps him to draw the canoe down to the water and holds on to the canoe, while he gets into it.

He smiles at her and disappear over the breadth of the river into the night.   The sound of his rowing is just for another moment with her, before it disappears along with the dark dot of the boat.

Life is unfair, she realises while she walks back to the villa.   She has eventually found someone that really cares for her and she loves him and he has got to go away and she cannot accompany him.

It is not yet goodbye, but it is the start of their journey.   Suddenly she is tired of playing spy and being a doctor in the middle of nowhere and suddenly she starts crying.

There is a slight breeze blowing over the water and Ryno notices the Southern Cross above him.   The river however is strong after the good summer rains and Ryno is sweating from exhortation, when he eventually reaches the other shore.

The morning star is already shining and he realises that it will not be long before it gets light.   He carries the canoe some distance away from the river, before he hides it in the undergrowth of a Jesse bush.

The phosphorus indicators of his watch tells him that he still have got enough time to reach their place of rendezvous and he takes a north-westerly direction, which makes him move away from the bridge at the river.

When he reaches the road, the bridge is out of his sight and he sneaks from bush to bush at the side of the road, until he reaches a deserted choral.”

For two hours he waits in the bushes next to the kraal and hears the sound of an approaching motorcar that is coming along in the distance.   The lights of the vehicle are really sharp and when it draws near to the kraal, the lights flash twice in quick succession.

Ryno walks carefully up to the Peugeot, but when Maria notices him she stops the car, gets out of it and runs into his arms. “Birr it’s cold.  You must be frozen?”

For a moment he keeps her in his arms and gives her a light pat on her behind.  “Come!  Lets go.  Just now one of the guards at the bridge realises, that the car have stopped.”

”They are sleeping,” she answers cheerfully and gets into the car while he holds open the passenger door for her.

Ryno drives away quickly and in the lights of the dashboard he once again realises how beautiful she is and when she puts her right hand possessively on his upper leg, he presses it lightly.

The road is really bad but Ryno drives as if he is using it every day and he is determined to get away as far as possible from the guards at the river and from Mahambo and his men.

At times the car shakes so much that it feels as if it going to fall apart, when they have to pass through potholes and Ryno fights to keep control of the vehicle.

The day breaks early and with sunrise they stop next to the road under a camel-thorn tree and eat some of the provisions for the journey, that Maria had brought along in a picnic basket and steaming coffee from a thermo flask.

Somewhere in the veldt a group of guinea fowl are calling and it almost feels to Ryno if he is back in the bush veldt.   It is still cold and he notices that Maria is shivering and fetches the jacket from the car for her to put on.

The glow of daybreak causes Maria’s face to look soft and vulnerable and suddenly she looks even more pretty and he holds her in his arms for some time.

”Come back with me to South Africa,” he almost begs.   It is one of the most difficult things in her life to now say no to him and she swallows at the knob in her throat.

”I would really want to do so, my darling.   It is impossible,” she answer and that sorrowfulness is back in her eyes.

He decides to remember her like this and saves her image deep in his thoughts and he notices a small vein moving at the side of her head, when his fingers stroke through her pitch black hair which feels silky.

Early it already gets very hot and although all the windows of the Peugeot are opened wide, it feels somewhat like an oven.   They drive past forsaken huts and branch kraals and there is not an animal or person in sight.

Later the bush veldt savannah environment makes place for sugarcane plantations.   The sugarcane fields are however in such a neglected condition, that the cane is either rotting on the lands or is totally dried out by previous summers and winters.

”Where did everybody go and what has happened to everything?   It looks like the backside of the world.   So lonely and dilapidated,” Ryno remarks while they look at the damage around them.

”Years previously you wouldn’t have said so,”  Maria remarks bitterly.   There is suddenly fire in her eyes.   “This is what war, mismanagement, famine and socialism does to a country.   Where everybody previously had something, although it was just a bit, now everybody has nothing.”

They have driven just a while longer when they reach a burnt-out car wreck that is next to the road.   “It looks like the work of a landmine,” Ryno remarks and its almost as if hostile eyes are watching them from the sugarcane fields.

The trip further is unnerving as they expect to at any moment drive over a landmine or that some soldiers will start firing at them from the cover of the plantations.