by Willem Anker
Christians have to look after each other here among the Caffres.
But King Gaika says every day that he won’t harm a hair on our heads.
Ngqika likes talking, yes, but his people don’t listen to everything he says. I’m telling you now: The Caffres don’t want us here any longer.
But Mijnheer Buys, it’s not only you and me here either. Surely all your comrades and their Hottentots are here, all of them with guns and horses.
I look at the men around me. Time is gnawing at their faces; convicts age more quickly than freemen. They’re missing the Colony. They lost everything when they were reduced to seeking refuge here. For them it wasn’t a choice as it was for me. It was survival.
This bunch is building you a house because they’re still wary of me, I say. But every single one of these miscreants would cut your gullet if he thought it could improve his lot.
And not you?
Not at the moment. I can talk to you.
We don’t really talk.
I talk more to you than to any of these … these …
I gesture towards the blackguards around us and the empty kopjes over there in the distance when the appropriate abusive epithet doesn’t present itself.
In any case. Thank you. Coenraad. Where can I be of use?
You just carry on chopping reeds, then I’ll make you a roof that will stand up to the Flood.
You’re mocking me, Mijnheer Buys.
And you notice it. As I say: I like chattering with you.
Kemp paces off the plan of the house with his long ostrich legs. It is late in January 1800 and the sun is stifling and the earth is sweating.
It looks right to me, he says. About twenty-four or -five feet by nine or ten.
Is that big enough for you?
Mijnheer Buys, I’m not anticipating many guests.
Sounds familiar, I think. We pack stones on the outline of the house. We sit down in the prospective home, the stones the only markers that this is inside and that is outside.
A fortnight later the house has arisen. A house of branches and reeds like mine and those of the other fugitives. Twenty-four feet by nine. I spared no trouble. The reeds are packed neatly and tightly, the clay plastered smooth and the rocks that we rolled out of the way have been used for a chimney. I must confess, I was foreman, I helped haul things and hollered where I had to, but the actual construction wasn’t mine. Building houses is a skill these hands would never acquire.
For the last few days I’ve kept Kemp away from the house. God’s gardener is busy trying to harvest Caffre souls all day, but just in case he should have an idle hour or so, I devise a plan. I offer the Bengali who prays to the setting sun and Mohammed every evening – called Damin, I’ve since found out – a few plugs of tobacco to keep Kemp occupied. The next day Damin is sitting piously muttering during the prayer meeting. As soon as Thomas the deserter and the four Hottentots lift their hind ends under the tree and Kemp remains sitting on his own and gazing as if the branches were talking to him, the Bengali comes asking Kemp to teach him to read and write. Kemp asks if he wants to learn Dutch or the Caffre language. Damin says any language that will bring him closer to the word of the Lord. Kemp enrols him in the Dutch class. When Kemp is not occupied with prayer meetings and sermons and classes, I keep him away from the house under construction by telling him to sand down the door which I could at least hammer together myself.
Kemp sees his house for the first time on 3 February when towards dusk I come to drag him away from the jubilating flock. I help him pile his meagre possessions on the cart and strike the tent. We walk next to the oxen up the slope to his new terrestrial home. The place is standing, but I’m not happy.
I’m sorry, Kemp.
You built me a house, why should you be sorry?
You know a builder by his chimney. And that thing isn’t going to draw. You’re going to smoke yourself out of there.
As long as I have a roof over my head and a place to rest my weary body.
These thugs are more used to breaking down.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Kemp laughs and says:
My dear Buys, the Lord sent you to me.
The house’s wattle-and-daub roof appears over the ridge.
We are none of us sent, I say. We come across each other, walk together for a while, then continue on our own and separate ways.
At the house the other Christian builders are awaiting us, with the few prudently preserved calabashes of brandy. A pot is simmering on the fire. One or two of them shake Kemp’s hand. I propose a long-winded toast to the house. Kemp is obliged to take a small sip of brandy on himself and his house. The missionary thanks me by name as well as the other outlaw farmers with an even more verbose speech containing no fewer than four Latin quotations of which nobody understands a whit. We’re boozing outside and the brandy disappears fast, the pot soon forgotten. When I look for Kemp, he’s nowhere to be found. I find him in the back room measuring the doorjamb with a leather thong.
What are you doing, Jank’hanna? We’re celebrating for you.
It’ll fit, he says absent-mindedly.
He looks around, as if he’s searching for something.
Will you help, Buys?
Of course. With what?
I want to move in tonight already. At least my bed and … there are a few things that I want to bring in out of the elements.
We’ll do that. I’ll just get shot of the gang out there.
I go out and separate a few brawlers and tell them to go and raise hell somewhere else. I grab half a calabash of brandy from Faber, who staggers mutteringly into me in pursuit of his pals.
Kemp and I start unloading the wagon. We hear the hyenas laugh.
There are more and more of the creatures hereabouts, he says. They’re here every night, ever closer; in the last few weeks they’ve been pissing on the tent flaps.
The scavengers are breeding furiously since the lions have all been wiped out, I say. This land is a torn-open cadaver.
We carry in the cot, the small wooden table, the even smaller desk, the two chairs, the trunk with clothes and books. In the back of the wagon is a large crate and three smaller crates, meticulously wrapped in thick cloths.
Where do these go? I ask.
In the back room.
You must help me, it’s damn heavy.
The large crate, taller than me and heavier than the two of us together, doesn’t budge. I go and fetch three Hottentots. With some effort we manage to drag the crate into the back room.
What kind of thing is in here?
A printing press.
So show us.
It’s late, Buys. Some other day.
The excitement has drained from his visage. He once again looks as if gravity is dragging him down to somewhere under the deepest depth.
Then just a last sip?
Just one, you hear.
Just one.
An hour later we are drunk. We are sitting in his house, on the ground by a small fire. Kemp tells me about a remarkable whore in Amsterdam who could do handstands. My eyes remain fixed on the door opening into the back room.
She could, just like that, with her blonde hair brushing the floor, walk towards you where you’re sitting on the bed and then embrace you with her legs around your neck. Oh, my dear Buys, where were you then?
Show me that press.
It’s almost light. I’m preaching tomorrow.
Their souls aren’t going anywhere. Show.
I help him to his feet and drag him along behind me. I open the crate and start chucking beams and screws and bolts onto the floor.
De Buys! That’s a delicate machine!
It’s just wood and iron, not the tender flesh of a headstand whore.
But Buys, it could be, you can tell anything with this thing. The whole Bible.
You don’t say.
I’m befuddled. This is a task for another day.
Why so? Come. Seems to me this beam has to stan
d upright, and this lies across it.
Get away, let go. Let me.
You can make a whole Bible with this thing?
As many Bibles as you could want, Buys.
And stories of the flesh? I can read, Kemp, but I’ve never come across anything like that to read. Do people write such things?
There’s a man in France, they locked him up on account of his stories; there were too many naked women being whipped in his books. Last I heard, he was in the Bastille.
And you can make any story you like on this thing?
Any story. But I must have the text to hand to pack the right letters into the press. I don’t have that marquis’ books. I can’t think up his stories, and so help me God, I don’t want to either. That life is over. These days I read only the Bible.
So let’s make a Bible. I want a Bible for Maria. Then I can give it to her as a present tomorrow when she wakes up.
Tomorrow?
That’s right. What’s your problem?
You don’t understand, Buys. Oh, dammee, let me show you. Pass that pole here.
Kemp trips over the empty floor in front of him.
I hold the upright poles so that Kemp can bolt together the structure. When the contraption looks like a gallows, Kemp slides a large screw into the top end and next to the flat plane a cast-iron lever with a wooden haft.
Are we making wine now or books?
Exactly. They say the first printing press was nothing more than an abused wine press.
From one of the smaller crates Kemp takes out a metal plate that looks like a frame.
This is what we pack the letters in. One by one, but wrong way round, as in a mirror. The English call it the casket.
Where are the letters?
Over there, in the crate.
I upend the crate and blocks of wooden and lead letters spill all over the floor.
Dammee, Buys! Careful! As it is, I’ve got too few esses. You’re going to break the things.
Sorry, Bible-writer.
Kemp is on the floor gathering the letters and carefully packing them back into the crate, kind by kind.
Just let me be, he says. I’ll pack the stuff.
What must I do?
Well, after this we have to ink the text.
He looks up:
I don’t have ink. I write with roots. We must get ink. Thick ink, not watery root juice.
We’ll make a plan, I say. You just pack your letters.
While Kemp starts setting down a verse of text letter by letter in the casket I stand around touching and rubbing the frame. I tell him about the book I picked up in the road, the maps and lists.
Yes, Buys. Lists are the opposite of description. The less you can get your mind around something, the longer your list grows.
I strain at the screw. It resists. I tell him about the sketches of the impossible animals in the book. I go to fetch oil. When I come back, I see Kemp’s bedroom: hardly more than ten by ten feet, reed ceiling, clay, no floor, a cot, a desk with his papers neatly piled, a chair, a trunk and, in the opposite corner next to the window aperture, the three-by-five-foot printing press extending all the way to the roof and outside the night barking and yowling.
I press against the pole keeping the top level, making sure it’s stable. Kemp carefully slides the text onto the frame and locks it in place. I regard the framed text. Most of the words are spelt out with individual letters, but some, such as mouth, have been cast as whole words on their own plates. The whole phrase sweet as honey has also been cast as one plate. I wiggle at the sweet-as-honey.
This honey is so sweet that the letters are sticking together.
It’s a stereotype. The French talk of a cliché. Some words and phrases that are used regularly are cast as units. You don’t have to set the whole thing every time. Sweet as honey occurs often in the Bible.
There must be many such blocks if you want to print the Bible, I say. The same things over and over. And God. I suppose there’s a block for God as well.
Kemp starts laughing, where he’s standing on unstable feet, hanging by an arm from the big scaffolding around the Biblical text.
Yes, Buys; God is a cliché.
He looks past me.
In Europe he’s a cliché. But in this land … Here there aren’t even loose letters for him, never mind a word. Here where they worship anything and everything, our Lord is an aberration.
You’ll see yet, I say. The further you travel from the Colony, the more the words dry up. And the words for the things you can’t touch are the first to go.
Kemp takes a deep breath and shouts:
Source! Way! Rock! Lion! Light bearer! Lamb! Door! Hope! Virtue! Word! Wisdom! Prophet! Sacrificial victim! Scion! Shepherd! Mountain! Dove! Flame! Giant! Bridegroom! Patience! Worm!
Kemp! What the devil are you doing?
Those are the words for God in the Bible, Buys. There are more, so many more! Vine! Ram! Sun! Bread! Flame! Lover! Dew! Saviour! Avenger!
Stop it, dammit! I shout and walk out.
Creator! Majesty! Love! Abyss!
Through the window I see Kemp hollering his last holler. Then he goes to sit down on his cot and gazes out of the window into the black night.
At the outdoor cooking fire I scrabble the thickest bones from the untouched pot. By the little fire in the front room I churn loose the marrow with my knife and suck it up and spit it out into a tin plate. I shout at the missionary in the other room:
Come here Kemp! Here is the fat. We’ll make you some ink. Bushman ink.
As Windvogel taught me, I almost say, but I’m not that drunk. I hear nothing, go to check where Kemp is. Find him on the bed, still staring out of the window. When I touch his shoulder, I can feel he’s shivering.
Come and sit here by the fire in the next room, your machine is taking over here.
Of course, Mijnheer Buys. I’m forgetting my manners.
Kemp gets up and sits down again immediately.
It’s just a dizzy spell. They come and go.
You’re just boozed up, man. Come.
Of course.
I rootle a few live coals out of the fire with my hands, throw them into a bowl, place the bowl on the ground and crush the coals with my shoe.
Black. For your ink.
I lift the bowl onto the table and open my breeches.
What are you doing?
I’m pissing. We need piss.
Why?
The charcoal must dissolve. I’m not going to walk to the river for water.
I stand over the basin, swingle in hand. Kemp watches me. A thin stream trickles into the bowl and dribbles and dries up. I have a problem when people watch me.
I had a piss a while ago, there’s nothing left, I say. Come and do your bit here.
Kemp looks at me. Starts saying something, stops and opens his own breeches and steps up. Now I’m watching him. He pisses till the charcoal is covered.
That’s enough, oh mighty one.
Kemp blushes, but doesn’t stop.
Kemp! Stop it now.
He jerks his pizzle away from the bowl, piss splashes all over the table. He doesn’t stop, a pool foams up next to the table. My eyes are shut with laughter and I scramble to get out of the way of the stream under the table. Kemp shakes himself off excessively.
Shaking more than twice is nice.
He blushes even darker and closes his breeches. Then he laughs as well.
I take a swig of brandy and slide the calabash towards Kemp. He swallows. I cover the top of the basin with a flat hand and upend the basin and make the warm piss run through my fingers until a black mush remains. I pour it onto a plate and hold it over the fire so that the porridge starts to dry. Kemp watches me, starts singing a German hymn. I also hold the plate with the marrow fat over the flames. When both plates are too hot to hold, I empty them into the bowl and start mixing. I spit into the mixture until my tongue sticks to the sides of my mouth.
Spit, friend, my mouth is barren.
Kemp giggles.
Why ever not?
He comes to stand next to me, still muttering away at the hymn. He watches me, how I stand stooped over the bowl, summoning up slime from far down my gullet with choking sounds, until I’m empty. Only then does the man deign to contribute some preacher spit. I make him spit until it’s enough. Then I make him spit some more. I carry on mixing the lot.
Almost done. Now all we need is blood.
Kemp is clutching the table top with white knuckles, it looks as if his forehead is dragging him forward.
I am in my cups, Mijnheer. It’s been years since I’ve been drunk.
I hold out the brandy to Kemp.
Quite, you’re drunk already. What’s the point of stopping now?
For a few moments Kemp regards the calabash suspended in front of him and then accepts it.
Have you ever before mixed this Bushman paint, Mijnheer Buys?
I pretend not to hear him.
I would take it amiss if you made me spit and make water as a joke.
Goddammit, the missionary won’t let up blathering.
I once knew one of the savages. He told me stories of how his people used to paint before they were tamed. A Bushman is a pest, but he can draw an eland to life.
And the blood?
I see the Bushman throat gape open under my knife.
That apparently helps everything to blend together.
What about eggs? In Holland the painters mix pigment with egg yolk.
They say that if you’re painting an eland, the eland’s vitality must be in the paint. So the creatures mix eland blood with the paint. Otherwise you’re painting a dead thing, they believe.
I see Windvogel running for his life. Kemp puts down the brandy and takes the bowl from my hands.
We’re not painting an eland, Buys. The sun is starting to show.
I grab the bowl from him again, the stinking slush splashes onto Kemp. I start mixing again. Kemp steps back a pace.
I only wanted to show you the press. We must get some sleep.
You get out, I say. Go to bed. You have to start saving souls again soon. If I go home in this condition, I’ll never hear the end of it. Believe me, it’s better that I hang around here a while longer.
I stop mixing, look around me in the front room.
This concoction as true as hell needs blood. It flows, but it doesn’t really cling. They say the blood wakes up the paint.