A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto Read Free Book Online

horns, heraldic, regal, like a royal headdress. On the tan hide, thin white vertical stripes are like further emblems of royalty. A bearded fringe dangles below the animal’s chin, brushing its neck.
    Recovering from her fright, Märit is left grateful and trembling, seized for a moment with an almost overwhelming desire to embrace the kudu. Could it be the very same kudu she saw that first day she came to the farm with Ben, when they disturbed one as it was drinking at the river? Kudufontein, the name of this farm, given for the presence of this animal.
    Märit remembers a picture she saw as a girl, in a book of paintings, of a walled garden and a lady in white kneeling before a white unicorn that had the same expression on its face as this kudu. The desire to embrace the animal, to touch it, comes upon her again.
    Märit feels herself in the presence of some wise and beneficent dignitary, a creature from mythology, something priestly and good. And in this presence she feels herself also to be good and wise and without malice or harm. Slowly she lowers herself to her knees and folds her hands before her chest, in a gesture of prayer, of worship. The kudu dips its head and looks at her, wide black nostrils flaring slightly to take in her scent. She smells the kudu’s breath, a scent of warm grass.
    She looks up into the creature’s eyes and sees no guile, no malice, no fear, only the kudu’s knowledge of itself. She sees its soul. And her own soul is tarnished and flawed in comparison, compromised in some manner that she fears will never be purified.
    Gently she reaches up to touch the bearded fringe, to stroke the chevron of white across the nose, to be taken up onto that strong back.
    She is emptied of doubt, of trespass, of fear.
    “I am Märit,” she whispers.
    The kudu ceases chewing for a moment, then emits a soft pant, like an answer, and again she smells the warm scent of grass, the very breath of the animal.
    She stretches her hand forward, wanting just one touch, and she feels the warm breath on the tips of her extended fingers. Then the kudu steps back, and the regal head reaches up, and the wide shell-like ears swivel away. It turns without looking at her and moves back into the trees, unconcerned.
    The soft thud of the footsteps fades and the rustling of the leaves fades, and the silence returns.
    The tears that come to her eyes are hot and bitter, and filled with great sadness. Some great opportunity has passed. As if the hope of grace has been offered, then withdrawn from her forever. She remains kneeling on the ground, head bowed, hands clasped.
    Eventually, Märit rises to her feet, a supplicant whose prayers have remained unacknowledged, and she is chastened and disappointed. She rises and brushes away the dust from her knees and turns again to the way she has come, to the farm, to the fence, to the house where she must live.
    As she walks slowly back to the house Märit recalls a story she once was told of a traveler who lived amongst the Bushmen of the desert, those nomadic wanderers who slept under the stars and carried nothing and left nothing behind, moving with the winds of the seasons. The traveler asked them one day, How is it that you never become lost? They had no maps and there were no roads, no signposts, yet the Bushmen moved unerringly to where there was water, and food, moving like the breezes of the desert.
    They laughed at the question, for it was strange to them. How can we become lost, they said. The birds know us, the animals know us, the wind knows us. At night the stars see us and they know where we are. So then, how can we become lost?
    But nobody knows me, Märit thinks. And I am lost.

8
    T HE DAY is dark. The hour is early, too early to even be called morning. The sun has not risen, the world is still immersed in the silence of night. Only a single bird in the darkness, calling with a cry like water falling on stone, announces that daylight will come, that this darkness too