‘Who?’ She had the letter open before he could answer.
Esther dear,
Who knew time could pass so slowly …
Minutes plod with boots of lead,
Slow march honour of the dead.
Mournful morning, mournful day,
When did it get to be this way?
I don’t mind telling you that I never cared much for anything. My life itself I regarded as an incidental thing; I was here in the flesh only. Now, of course, all is different. Lightning has struck the spire and the monster has come to life. What it feels is longing, hope and pain. It’s as if I have looked through a window and seen a place where I can be with you, and because of that one change it is a world wholly different from the one we’re in. I am stretched between these realities – my limbs taut, almost torn – and the suffering is heady joy. I want to be with you. I will be with you. I am with you.
Always,
Gideon
Steyn tried to look only at the clock while she was reading. The minute hand made three jumps. He knew it was going to come and still it was a surprise every time the metal needle jerked. The clock, he noticed, was made in England.
‘Help me cover this up,’ Esther said.
They folded the cloth back over the front of the clock, tucked it in around the cabinet and Esther tied up the ends of rope to keep the cover in place. Nothing showed of the clock, just an upright shape draped in white, doggedly meting out time.
‘I’ll give you a note to take back to him when you leave.’
Steyn had the letter in his shirt when he set off with Matzdorff shortly after lunch, the Jew uncomfortable on the bony, dappled-grey mare that used to belong to Triegaardt, the man killed in the action where Matzdorff was wounded. They made good time and by early afternoon were approaching the stream where Steyn and the Dutchman had intercepted the Sotho spy. Steyn was regaling his companion with a tale of how someone in the commando had killed this giant puff adder two weeks before. Steyn said he had never been much afraid of snakes, but one time one had scared him when his was lying flat on the ground during a fire fight, with English bullets splitting the air. Having death come at him from two sides was just too much, and since then he had been all for killing the evil reptiles.
Matzdorff wasn’t paying much attention. He had his own thoughts to deal with.
The world was not acceptable to him, nor he to it. The only places he wanted to be were in his shop or in the arms of his wife. In the shop he understood every transaction, he knew the costs and gains, he was master. In Francine’s arms he was loved. But the shop was gone, its goods requisitioned or ransacked. He had no idea what Francine’s arms were up to. This damn war. What were the Boers fighting for anyway? What use was a country? His own people hadn’t had one for centuries and they were doing well enough. If it was good enough for the Jews not to have their own country, then, by God, it was good enough for the Boers.
‘Your horse looks tired,’ said Steyn. ‘Let’s stop a while.’ The boy slid off his mount, put his rifle on the ground and knelt at the edge of the water, drinking water from his cupped hands.
Matzdorff walked up, seemingly to do the same, but he picked up Steyn’s weapon instead. He was determined to lay down arms, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. Steyn swung around when he heard the sound of the bolt being worked. ‘Stay right there.’ Matzdorff pointed the Lee-Enfield at the boy. His voice was calm. ‘I don’t want to shoot, so don’t make me. I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go further on my own. I’ll take your horse with me until I’m far enough away. You’ll find it back at the Calitz homestead. Then you can go back to the commando, just leave me be. Tell them I’m done. I’ve had enough of the war and I’m going home.’ He took the reins of both horses, mounted his and set off to the burnt ruin.
Steyn stood amazed. What is it with this place? Last time he cornered someone here, this time he let someone else get away. Wait till he tells the commandant about this. The ingratitude! They’ve just nursed this Jew back to life and this is how he thanks them. Steyn finished drinking. Then he set off walking back the way he had come only minutes earlier, cursing his outsize shoes.
Matzdorff sped away from the Boers and their cause. By the time Steyn alerted anyone to his desertion he wanted to be far, far away. At the burnt farmhouse, he tied Steyn’s horse to the remains of a window frame and set off. The boy’s horse was better than the one he had been given, but despite what the Boers might think he was no thief. So he set off again on Triegaardt’s bony pony, riding hard, pushing the animal. A mile or two further, the rhythm of its gait broke, recovered momentarily and then its legs collapsed under it and the creature went crashing chest first into the dirt, throwing its rider clear. Matzdorff put out his arms to break the fall, but they, too, collapsed, making him mimic the horse’s fall. As the man lay gasping for breath, the horse let out a stifled whinny through its foam-flecked lips and died, the event punctuated by the ellipsis of a soppy fart. Then all was quiet. Matzdorff gulped the air, still clouded with the dust his ride had kicked up. He worried that his wounds had opened up, that he had broken bones or was in some other way incapacitated. He pushed himself to a seated position, moved his arms about and pressed his fingers to the scar on his chest. Everything hurt, but everything was intact. He got to his feet and dusted himself. He prodded the horse with his toes, but the animal was beyond response. The implications settled on him along with the powdery dust. How would he get to Bethlehem, Francine and her pearl-white arms? He could walk, but it would take days and he feared he wouldn’t make it. He needed a horse. They were not things you could just find and claim, not when there were so many combatants needing mounts everywhere. There was a horse, of course, temporarily unguarded, back at the burnt farmhouse. He could go back there and take it, young Steyn be damned. The boy would get over it. Having already lost his youth, innocence, father and brother, surely the loss of a horse would at best be a minor inconvenience for the boy. Matzdorff picked up his hat from among the stones, slapped it against his thigh and pulled it low over his brow. Then he set off walking back the way he had come only minutes earlier, cursing his bad luck.
So there were the two of them, the old Jew and the young Boer, both approaching the ruined farmhouse on foot, from opposite sides. The horse was on the shady side of the house, shaking its skin to frighten off flies. A stray billy goat looked at this from inside the building, two animals staring at each other with little comprehension. Blithely accepting as Taoist sages, they did not wonder at how weird the world was.
Steyn saw the horse from a long way off. He was glad the Jew had kept his word. It would be embarrassing enough to admit he had his rifle taken from him and had been deserted by his companion, never mind arriving back at the commando on foot. A man without a horse was useless to them. Early on in the war there had been pedestrians on the Boer side, but since the fighting fronts had collapsed, you had to be able to move quickly. Steyn wasn’t that tired from the walk, but his feet hurt. He wasn’t used to going far on foot. Making matters worse was that he didn’t have any socks to stop the big boots chafing him. He looked forward to being in the saddle again, though not to the admission he’d have to make at the end of the ride.
He had become quite proud of his position in the commando, how Commandant Eksteen used him for errands. But perhaps people would say a grown man wouldn’t have been caught out the way he was. The distinction between youth and maturity was sacrosanct among his people, but he understood it less and less. What did the men know that he didn’t? Was there some significant secret he had not been let into, one to do with sex perhaps, alcohol or religion? When and how did one become a man? Was there a horror or distilled potion that made the beard sprout from your face? Did he have to earn the rights of maturity by rites of passage; did he have to perform a feat above and beyond what had been expected of him so far? He had been watching the men carefully, and did not see that they were very different from him. They were hairier and had
deeper voices, laughed at comments he had to pretend not to hear. That was all. He had killed men like them. When bullets flew, everyone became equal. And then afterwards they treated him like a kid again. Some men liked to make jokes at his expense. The pranks were supposedly good-natured, but it wasn’t always fun, not for him. He hated being made to feel like a fool and that’s what Mr Matzdorff did to him today. How the men would tease him when they find out!
He got to the horse and was petting its neck when he heard something that chilled his bones. There was someone in the ruin! He gave a few quick steps and pressed himself against the wall, where he stood open mouthed, listening hard. He didn’t even have a weapon with him. He heard it again, a scrape against stone. It came from the far side of the house. He looked around, saw a pole just thinner than his wrist, three feet long. It had been meant to space fence wires, but made a useful club. He reached for it and then clambered through the window. Whoever was inside was probably looking outward and could be surprised from the back. When he inadvertently kicked against a chip of brick, he froze, waiting to hear the response. The occasional noises from across the passage continued. He had not been heard. Steyn peered around a charred door jamb and saw a billy goat chewing on a rag. He was relieved, but also angry at the animal for scaring him so. ‘Shoo, go!’ He chased it out the front door, watched the goat wander off in search of greener pastures, whatever that may mean to such an indiscriminate eater.
Then he saw the figure down by the bend in the road, a lone man walking towards him. Steyn stepped back into the shadows. He had to get the binoculars, which were still in the saddlebag. He dashed through the house, got the instrument and was back. Who was that, one of the farmhands? No … Matzdorff. What the hell! The Jew walked with his head down, swinging his arms, trying to push the pace. He did not have a rifle with him. Something must have happened. Steyn realised that the day may turn out better than he had feared. When Matzdorff got close, Steyn snuck back to the room, near where the horse was tied up, hiding inside, his fence pole held ready.
Matzdorff was relieved to see the horse. So he did beat the boy to the house after all. He had been worried about that, trying to estimate the distance each of them had to cover. If he had got here and the horse was gone already … It would have meant a long, long walk, one he may not be have been up to after his wounds. He was hot and sweaty, thirsty as anything. He should have had a drink before setting off. He talked softly to calm the horse and started untying the reins he had tied an hour or so before. There was a shimmer of movement in the window and a sharp pain sparked in his forearm. He spun around, grabbing his arm. When he looked up, Steyn was standing there with a raised pole in his hands, murder in his eyes.
‘Lie down! On your back!’
Matzdorff did as he was told.
‘Don’t you dare move now.’
With the Jew prostrate and unable to act quickly, Steyn edged over to the horse and got a length of rawhide. ‘Now roll onto your stomach. Put your hands behind your back.’ Steyn put his knee into the man’s back and tied his wrists together as tightly as the unwieldy hide allowed. Using the other end of the hide, he tied the man’s ankles together too. ‘I’ll be back in a second, just wait.’ He got a pail of water from the well and manhandled Matzdorff again. This time he untied the feet and soaked the end of the hide in the water. When it was good and wet, he retied the man’s hands with the stretched, more pliable hide before undoing his original knot. No ways Matzdorff would be able to undo the new knot, once it had dried. He repeated the process with the other end of the hide and tied that to the same piece of window frame that held the horse.
‘Where’s my rifle?’
Matzdorff had been wondering about that these last few minutes. He must have been very shaken not to think about it earlier. ‘My horse died a ways down the road. The rifle must be there, unless someone has taken it already.’
‘I’m going to go get it. If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll hunt you like a dog.’
‘Can I have some of that water before you go?’
Steyn held a tin cup for the tied man to drink. Then he let his horse drink from the pail, and kicked it over, the water sinking away in the soil. He didn’t want Matzdorff to be able to use water to stretch the hide again. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, and got on the horse.
He saw the circling buzzards almost as soon as he set off. When he got to the dead horse, its eyes had already been pecked out, and pieces of tongue. The rifle was where it had fallen. Steyn took the saddle off the horse and left it in the shade of a nearby tree where it could be found later. Then he rode back.
He was thinking of making Matzdorff walk, but that would take too long. Neither of them were heavy, so he thought his horse should be able to take them both. He untied the man from the window and ordered him onto the horse. ‘I’m taking you back to the commando. The commandant will decide what to do with you.’ Steyn got on behind Matzdorff.
As they left the homestead, they saw the carcasses of dead sheep, the skeletons covered in scraps of skin. They heard a dog whimper, but couldn’t see it. The goat was up in a tree, clear off the ground, chewing the new leaves that had sprouted from charred branches.
There was a spot at Retief’s Nek where the road passed a cliff of some thirty or forty feet. This was where Jacob Eksteen decided to use the dynamite. He wanted to bring rocks down in the middle of a British column, split the group in two. His men wouldn’t follow it straightaway with the expected ambush, but would wait to see which of the groups presented the best target and take them a mile or so down the road, when they were on the way to Bethlehem or Fouriesburg, as the case may be, and no longer as alert as they were bound to be right after the explosion.
The road layout made a U-shape, which lent itself to this plan. From their position halfway between the two legs of the U, the commando could quickly get to different places that were far apart by road. And if the Khakis decided to leave in one group that would be too hard for the commando to defeat, they would hopefully have to leave some of their wheeled vehicles on the far side of the obstacle. There might be worthwhile loot. If not, it would make a bonfire that would lift the commando’s spirits. So whatever transpired, Jacob expected a positive outcome. He took up a position below the bottom of the U, high up where he had a view of the road. The rest of the commando was out of sight, with only one man watching him through binoculars. He would tell them what to do by waving a flag, with agreed signals for left, right and come straight here. It was a Tuesday, and according to their information, time for the supply column from Bethlehem to come through the neck. Jacob and Gideon had built a small sangar of rocks and bushes that would be all but invisible from the road. In its shade, Jacob took a swig from his water bottle. The Dutchman was down to the left somewhere, setting the charges. Jacob hoped the man knew what he was doing. Two sticks of dynamite weren’t much, but then it might not take much to topple the cliff, which seemed to be teetering anyway.
Jacob was happy to be doing something constructive – destructive actually – for a change. All this hiding and waiting ate at the morale of the men, and the business with Tromp had made things even worse. There was a feeling afoot that the war had entered a new phase, with their own countrymen turning on them. The Boers’ resolve was their biggest asset, and as commandant he had to make sure it didn’t waver. He had to be ruthless with dissenters or they may as well all roll over and die. He had to show the men that as a fighting force they could do more than simply elude the enemy. Albeit on small scale, the possibility of combat victories remained, and with that the possibility of ultimate victory as the Khakis lost their resolve. The bastards should know the Boers still had fight in them.
Gideon had a small shovel – the very one Tromp had used to dig his own grave – but he preferred to set the charges in existing crevices. Wedged tight in the rock, the dynamite would have the greatest effect. He considered a few spots, but in the end went fairly close to the edge of the cliff. Better to have som
e rocks tumble down, even if it didn’t completely block the road, than to have a big bang that didn’t move the earth. He crimped the fuses into the blasting caps, made sure the fuses were of equal length and tied them together to a third fuse. The shorter the fuse, the more control he had over when the explosions would go off, but it also gave him less time to get away. He measured the distance to the sangar with his eyes, estimated how many seconds it would take to cover and figured out how long the fuse would have to be to burn that long. He had talked to the commandant about the pros and cons of running across the open veldt, and they agreed to take the risk. He would be out of the enemy’s line of sight except for the last few yards. By that time being seen by the British wouldn’t matter anyway, as the explosion would presumably come before the British would be able to react. He was going to light the fuse on the commandant’s command and run for the shelter. When the fuses were ready, Gideon placed a pierced tin of glowing coals a safe distance away. He didn’t want to rely on matches when the time came. The coals would burn for hours still. It was common for the men to keep tins of coals to make it easier to light campfires after a day on the move.
‘All set,’ he said as he slid back into the shelter with the commandant. There was nothing to do now but wait.
Jacob cut a piece of biltong and passed it to Gideon. The dried, salty meat made one thirsty, but they had ample water. ‘It’s from the kudu Von Waltsleben shot up in the kloof that day, remember?’
So he got some of the animal’s meat after all, thought Gideon. He had been looking forward to this time alone with Commandant Eksteen, to cementing their relationship. He just hoped the man wouldn’t ask too many questions about his fictional life in Java and decided to strike first. ‘Did you do a lot of hunting before the war?’
Jacob nodded. ‘We had to shoot for the pot mostly, but it was more fun to go after something dangerous like a buffalo or leopard. I haven’t had the chance to shoot a lion or elephant yet. Maybe after the war. Maybe I’ll become a professional hunter. There’s nothing like the thrill of the kill. I shot a hippo once. You wouldn’t say so by looking at them, but that’s one animal that will kill you in two ticks. Their mad little eyes. We don’t get them around here any more, more in the Lowveld, up towards Nelspruit, there in the Limpopo. I think in Zululand too.’ Jacob kept his eye on the road, with a glance in the distance now and then, in case he could spot dust.
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