Late the next morning, with the Kalahari sun
a furnace upon our skulls, we were out in the vineyard of the DeBruyn Brothers
Boerderie. Anton DeBruyn briskly led us to the section that was infested by the
dread bug of grape growers the world over. It didn’t look bad, the vines had
not yet felt the full pinch of what insects the size of a pinhead can cause,
when a bunch of them get together to enjoy a party. The little group of humans
carried two picks, two shovels, two pruning shears, indelible pens, plastic
bags, and one notebook. Not high-tech work. Two Tswana men carried the picks
and shovels.
“This
is about the middle of it, right here.” announced Anton, pulling up to a halt.
“Is
it just this block?”
“Pretty
much.”
I
knew that wasn’t true. It took a few years before the symptoms appeared and you
could pretty much bet the little fuckers had already made it over to the next
block, at least. I explained the sampling plan to the Tswana guys, and gave
more detail to Hugh so he would have an idea of what it was I was trying to do.
I
was very uncomfortable with the two staff doing all the work. It had always
been me hoisting the pick against rock hard clay; in fact, in my experience the
whole team sweat and ached, working in the egalitarian spirit. It was an
American trait that I was proud of. But the soil there in the Northern Cape had
enough sand that we didn’t need the picks. The shovels slid beneath the roots
with a few beats of the gumboots. I was down on all fours leaning into the
holes, clipping off samples of roots. Hugh had volunteered to hold the bags to
receive the samples. He stood with the open bags stretched in his sweaty fingers
like some beggar hoping for crumbs. Some of the roots appeared to have the tiny
golden globs sprinkled along them, like a spice, and were blistered and scarred
from their bite.
Ah,
grape phylloxera!
Few
insects have wreaked such havoc upon an agricultural industry. It nearly
brought the French economy down in the mid-1800’s, simply by taking advantage
of the wonderful opportunity humans had provided them. The fact that the
industry involves wine holds special place. Eat our broccoli, our squash, our
tomatoes, fine, but our grapes? That is too much! The elite need their wine, the history of
it, the aura of it, the swirl of it, and the opaque status that knowledge of it
seems to bring to them. The word ‘phylloxera’ brought shivers all along the
bones of grape growers and wine lovers the world over.
All
in all, a magnificent insect. That something so small could plunder something
so large in such a way was something to ponder.
“Here,
let me try for awhile.” I said.
I
took the shovel from the Tswana worker, whose sweat gleamed off a middle-aged
face, grey hair like a white pepper sprinkled on his scalp. He stood back in
his blue coveralls and looked displeased.
Digging
in, the shovel slicing into the soil with a dull shi-ick sound, the sweat began
to pour off my forehead, finding its way into my eyes to burn like an acid. I
became rabid, salivating over each new shovelful, leaping into the pit with
pruning shears poised, pulling out a bundle of roots lined with droplets of
gold.
Ah,
grape phylloxera! A magnificent insect!
It
laid waste to the human race. How the mighty shall fall! The grand and
wonderful human race was nothing before the onslaught of a tiny bug. The Great
Chain of Being indeed!
But
the message was lost among that crowd, the restaurant and fine dining set, the
supper party bunch; wine will always win out.
When
we had our samples we all trudged back through the churned up soil, headed for
the bakkie and a few cold ones. The two Tswana held back a bit behind Hugh and
I. I didn’t like the feeling, the stink of ingrained subservience like a polluted
gulf between us. It was a stink that held the whole history of this place in
its fumes, indelible along the linings of one’s nostrils.
Back
at the bakkie I opened the cooler and cracked beers open for myself and Hugh. I
looked over to the workers, whose names I’d been told but couldn’t possibly
pronounce. Hell, I’d failed first year French.
“You
want one?” holding up a can of Castle.
“No
baas.”
No
baas. What was with that? It was 11 years since the fall of apartheid.
“I’m
not your baas. I’m Jack.”
“Yes
baas. But no beer baas.”
The
voices of workers singing, unseen among the vines, wafted across the oven baked
air like a cool breeze.
I
looked at Hugh and Hugh looked at me. We tilted our heads and lifted our
eyebrows. That’s it. Let’s go.
We
waved as we drove off, dust clouds billowing behind us.
The
myth of the dark continent fell over the other continents like a sheet, but a
mystery remained even when the myth was shattered. It wasn’t an ancient mystery
though, it was a mystery born a mere few hundred years before the time Hugh and
I waved goodbye to two Tswana men standing in blue coveralls before a backdrop
of green grapevines, the peaked roof of the palatial DeBruyn estate just
visible on the horizon.
