Читать книгу Oliver Strange and the Journey to the Swamps - Dianne Hofmeyr - Страница 7

Mosi-oa-Tunya

The Victoria Falls station was hardly a train station at all. There was no platform. Just a strip of gritty cement that was a long jump down from the last step on the train.

As Ollie jumped, his train ticket fell from his pocket into the dirt. Printed in large capitals he saw the name … OLIVIA STRANGE.

Olivia! No wonder he had been put in a compartment with a girl. His aunt or whoever had issued the ticket wasn’t a very good speller.

OLIVIA!

He snatched up the ticket before Zinzi could see.

The air was hot and steamy with an earthy smell of growing things. A hot, mouldering, jungle odour of mango and manure and something sweet-smelling like vanilla ice cream.

Ollie sniffed deeply.

“Frangipani flowers,” Zinzi said.

Women in bright wraps sat under umbrellas on straw mats that were piled high with pyramids of corn cobs, peanuts, oranges, mangoes and watermelons as fat and round as babies. Monkeys kept jumping down from the trees to steal oranges and peanuts. The women shooed them away with their umbrellas. Under a palm-leaf awning, some were selling woven baskets. Crocheted white tablecloths hung like giant snowflakes from thorn trees. A sharp tang of oil came from a man polishing some hippo carvings. They glowed and gleamed so that when Ollie touched one, it felt as if energy was pushing right out from under his fingers.

“Don’t waste time!” Zinzi was dragging an old, rusted supermarket trolley across the dust. “We have to be quick. Load up our things and let’s get them to the bus.” She pointed in the direction of an ancient vehicle belching smoke.

Sweat was pouring off Ollie by the time they had crammed all the crates and bags into the luggage space under the bus.

At least there was a floor between him and the python now. With any luck, the thick, black fumes would make the snake sleepier.

Zinzi handed him a can of Coke. It was warm and the bubbles caught at Ollie’s throat.

She bought some mangoes and a few cobs of corn from a vendor’s roasting drum and gave Ollie a quick look. “Your pale skin’s a giveaway. Don’t act English.”

“Why?”

“You’ll be charged the tourists’ entrance fee into the rain­forest. Locals get in cheaper.” Zinzi laughed. “Your neck’s going red already! Hang a hanky from the back of your cap so you don’t burn. Red necks are a sure sign that you’re a tourist.”

At the entrance gate to the rainforest, Zinzi handed in the exact amount of money for two local tickets.

Ollie heard a booming, thundering sound and there were tremors running beneath the earth under his feet. Through dripping trees he saw huge clouds of smoke billowing into the air.

Except it wasn’t smoke. It was water vapour.

A boy tried to sell them some plastic garbage bags with holes cut for the arms and neck, but Zinzi found a few discarded ones which they pulled on.

A man in a raincoat, sheltering under a big black umbrella, was striding behind them as they dodged under dripping leaves towards the roar.

A blanket of spray surged upwards. It hit them full on, and then swept up into the sky like rain going upwards.

Ollie froze.

Through gaps in the vapour, he saw the widest river he had ever seen. It roared and tumbled in frothing, white torrents into a rock chasm that fell steeply away at his feet into swirling mists below. They were on the very edge of the highest precipice he’d ever stood on. The only thing between him and this huge, bottomless pit was a small wooden railing as frail as a fence made of matchsticks. His stomach turned a complete somersault.

“See what I mean!” Zinzi bellowed over the roar. “Mosi-oa-Tunya! The smoke that thunders!”

“Mosi-oa-Tunya …” Ollie echoed the words.

Zinzi put her hands to her mouth. “Mosi-oa-Tunya … Mosi-oa-Tunya …!” she shouted into the swirls of water vapour. The sound wove into the thundering voice of the river.

Ollie took a deep breath and shuffled a tiny bit closer to the matchstick fence. The ground was muddy and slippery. The height was terrifying. One slip and he’d be over the edge.

It was then that he saw the man again. He was standing a little way back in his dark raincoat with his umbrella pulled down low.

“He’s following us.”

“Who?”

“That man.” Ollie indicated with his thumb.

“He’s not following us. He’s a tourist.”

“He’s giving me the creeps.”

“He’s a tourist, Ollie.”

“He’s not dressed like one. He doesn’t have a camera.”

Zinzi laughed. “Nor do you! Not every tourist wears safari clothes and carries a camera. Don’t be so spooked. Quick-start! Come on, Ollie! There’s no time!” She grabbed his arm. “Let’s get to the bridge.”

They ran along a muddy pathway which zigzagged through the dripping forest. Shafts of sunlight made triple rainbows in the vapour. The man was still following them. Then they were out of the forest and into the sunshine on the road to the bridge.

A signboard with big red letters read:

YOU ARE APPROACHING THE BORDER

BETWEEN ZIMBABWE AND ZAMBIA.

NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONS.

PASSPORT NEEDED.

The sun was in Ollie’s eyes. He caught a flash of colour. Then a shape plunged over the bridge railings followed by a long, drawn out scream.

His stomach turned a cartwheel. “Someone’s” – he could hardly get the words out – “someone’s jumped off the bridge!”

Zinzi laughed. “It’s a bungee jump, silly.”

“Bungee what?”

“Bungee jump. He’s tied to an elastic rope. Everyone knows that!”

Ollie gulped. Everyone except him. Now he read the sign attached to a cage-like structure that hung out over the railings in the middle of the bridge.

BUNGEE VIC FALLS!

LEAP INTO THE UNKNOWN!

WE DARE YOU!

111 METRES OF PURE ADRENALINE RUSH!

Minimum age 14 years

Minimum weight 40 kg, maximum weight 140 kg

He saw the loops of cable and winches and harnesses hanging from the side of the cage. Then he glanced down over the railings. His stomach twisted. Far, far below, the Zambezi River was churning through a narrow gorge of white rapids.

Worse than that, a boy who looked no more than a tiny caterpillar on a thread was hanging upside down by his feet, still bouncing and twirling back and forth on the end of a rope with his head barely skimming the frothing water.

Why? he wanted to ask. But he swallowed hard. Zinzi wouldn’t understand. He gave her a quick sideways glance, trying to hide the sick feeling in his stomach and nodded. “I knew it was a bungee jump!”

A man in a helmet whizzed down on a winch to help the boy come back up to the bridge. Ollie watched the next nervy jumper get harnessed up and creep out onto the caged platform. The gate was clipped open and he sat dangling his legs into nothing but air. The river was a long, loooong way down. Ollie could see the instructor mouthing things at him. Then suddenly the person leapt with his arms outstretched, his eyes closed tight like Icarus falling to the earth.

Plunging down … down, dowwwn! A never-ending fall.

The cable seemed to stretch to its limit but still he dropped. He was going to die. To hit that water and die.

But no. Just at the last moment the cable sprang back again and bounced him upwards into the air like a puppet, then down he went again. Above the noise of the river he heard people at the railing cheering.

Zinzi jabbed him with her elbow. She had an excited, fearless look in her eyes. “I’d do it if we had more time.”

“Then lucky for you we don’t.”

“I would. I’m telling you.”

“You’re not fourteen.”

“I could tell them I was.”

Ollie smiled back weakly. Try as hard as he could, his face wasn’t able to match Zinzi’s fearless look. Things in Africa were making him dizzy.

As they turned to go back across the bridge, he saw the creepy man in the dark raincoat turn as well.

A shiver ran through him.