An animal came out of the scrub, invisible until the moment of impact...
It is the 1930s. Frances McDonald, newly-married, is on her way to settle in the small Karoo hamlet of Aloe Glen. She and Julian, her husband, have crossed the forbidding heights of Bains Kloof Pass, and are heading into the drier reaches of the interior. Frances, raised in the gentle landscape of England, is staring at the stark mountains, the endless veld and the seeming lack of life when, out of the blue, an animal bounds across the road and crashes into their motor car.
At first, she struggles to understand what has happened. For one thing, all is silent. The car's engine has stopped, the sun is beating down, there's no-one around apart from themselves, and she is hit - a second impact - by the realisation of their vulnerability. If the car won't start, if they're stuck in this inhospitable landscape, if their water runs out...
And then she wonders about the animal that caused the crash.
It was a tiny antelope, a springbok, surely no more than a week old. Its fur was the colour of milky cocoa, its hooves so shiny they might have been polished that morning, its eyes were huge and terrified, scarred with the memory of the collision. I never imagined death could be so beautiful -
Julian reports that the car will start and that they should be on their way. Frances wonders what will happen to the little creature, and whether they should move him off the road. But Julian says the carcass will be scavenged soon by jackals, or the pair of huge birds already circling above.
"Every death serves a purpose in Africa, Frances."
Every death serves a purpose...
I must be careful, Frances thinks. I know so little about this hard country.
Out here, it will be easy to become a victim...
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