Prose

The sweet smell of sugarcane is suddenly replaced by the odour of pine trees and when the road meanders up a hillock, they suddenly see pine forests as far as the eye can see.
 
“It would be the easiest thing to set a ambush down there somewhere,” Ryno remarks and he notices that Maria is caught by the scenery and do not hear what he is saying.

They drive down the little hill and pine plantations on both sides of the road, flash past the car.   It is suddenly as if they are in their own private little world.

Unexpectedly Ryno is happy to be with Maria and he stops the car at the side of the road.   “Let us go and stretch our legs.   I am getting stiff,” he suggests and gets out of the car.

Maria stretches her self out comfortably like a cat and they walk into one of the pine plantations.  Around them doves are cooing and Ryno draws her into his arms.

He kisses her on her face, her eyes and her soft lips and feels her breath blowing into his neck, when he draws her still closer against him.

A few steps from them a group of pheasants pass and they stand motionless, while they watch the birds without being noticed by them.

”If I had a rifle or shotgun we could have feasted on one of those birds,” Ryno remarks and looks longing to where they had disappeared into the bush.

”Do you want to kill everything that you see?  Are you always thinking about hunting?”  She wants to know in a sharp voice.   “Pheasant is almost just as nice as chicken, if you prepare it well.”

”You have eaten just a while ago?  How can you now be so hungry?”  She wants to know astonished.  “That had been just now.  To flee with a beautiful lady like you is hard work.   But pheasant meat is not the only thing for which I am now hungry,” he says with a naughty expression in his eyes.

When he reaches for her, she loosen herself from his embrace and flees laughing and yelling away from him and they are heading back to the car, where he catches her and both laugh so much that their breaths burn in their throats.

”Come, its not far anymore,” Maria remarks before she gets into the car.   “When we are at our destination, we will have the whole day for ourselves,” she says as he looks at her in tenderness when he gets behind the wheel and her eyes are full of promises.

They drive for a while along the twisting road.   “Turn off with that road,” she instructs and suddenly Ryno swings the car into a dust track that runs away from the main road while it meanders into one of the pine plantations.

After a few kilometres sugarcane fields replace the pine plantations once more.   The road meanders further to the top of a kopje and Ryno drives carefully to the top.

A hidden small valley with an open stretch of grass veldt and burnout ruins of where there had once been a big villa lies suddenly in front of them.  Some plantations surround the ruins and the scene is so much like a picture, that Ryno stops the car.   A postcard could not be more beautiful, than the little valley.

Through the lenses of his binoculars it is clear that everything had been burnt down and plundered and that the garden is still lovely, but that it is in a neglected condition.

There’s a little fountain that bubbles out in a small pond that is next to a small Venus statue.   The place looks as if at a time it had been idyllic and Ryno detects the remains of two burned down barns farther away next to an open piece of ground.

There is no sign of life and the stream flowing through the bottom end of the garden looks cool and inviting.

”So what do you say about my own piece of paradise,” Maria wants to know next to him.   He still is scouting the aria with the binoculars, as if the scene has caught him somehow.

”You do not have to worry.   There’s nobody living near to here,” she assures him before she takes the pair of field glasses from him.   There is an unknown kind of joy in her eyes, when she looks at him and he is happy that they can still spend some time together.

”You are right, Maria.   What an idyllic place this is.  But how did you discover it?”  He asks inquisitive when they again get into the hot car.

”I did not discover it.  This is the place where I did grow up,” she answers when he starts the car and they drive on.   “I have told you that Angola is in my blood,” she says and there is some heartache on her face.

Ryno parks the Peugeot under a blue gum tree next to the ruins of the house and she takes him by the hand when they walk nearer.

From nearer it is clear that a small war had raged at this place, as there is bullet holes on the walks at the porch.

They walk right into the ruins and Maria leads him, to where her room had once been.   She scratches around in the ash with a peace of wood and lifts a half burnt piece of floor plank and they discover a small doll that had escaped the heat and flames by some kind of miracle.

For a while she stands rigid with the little doll in her hands and big tears are running down her cheeks.   Suddenly there’s a hissing sound about four meters away from them and when he looks up Ryno notices a “Mfesi,” of about a meter long that draws its head up and in the same moment he knows that the cobra is going to spit.

The movement of the snake is lightning quick, but it is to Ryno as if time has stopped and every part of a second is moving very slowly passing like a movie which he is watching frame by frame.

He notices how the olive grey skin of the snake gleams in the sun and the fine tongue is flashing to and thro, as if it is testing the wind direction.

It is desperation that brings the knife from his boot and in the same movement has it flashing through the air.

He turns with all his power away from the snake and covers Maria’s face against his chest.   He hears the knife entering something and as it pegs into the floor and waits for the burning spray of the snake’s venom to hit them and for it to strike.

There is no burning pain and for a moment it is deadly silent and when he turns around, he notices that the knife had pierced the head of the snake neatly where it has entered one of the charred floor planks.

There’s however another moment about fifteen meters from them that draws his attention and when he notices the other spitting cobra, he grabs some loose bricks and throw them at the hissing beast.

Two steps takes him up to the snake that had been pierced by his knife and he drags the knife loose and cuts the head of the snake cleanly off.   When the other snake displays signs of life again, he smashes its head with another brick.

As if paralysed, Maria is watching him and he draws her quickly into his arms.   “Come let us get out of this nest of snakes,” he says after a while and they walk up to the little stream where he cleans his knife.