Red Dog

by Willem Anker

  When the sun sets, we don’t make fires; the next morning the area between the tents and wagons is criss-crossed with the tracks of lions and hyenas and leopards. Rather these creatures than the Bushmen in whose hunting ground we’re making ourselves at home.

  With the sun full in our eyes we see a lion in the distance, so huge that the missionary believes the children when they tell him it’s a hairy elephant.

  Kemp looks more exhausted than ever, his eyes water and he walks stooped over with a hand clutching his breast. I ask him what’s the matter. The missionary strokes the front of his shirt, tells me how he lay under the wagon the night before to get out of the rain. At some stage of the night the horses tied to the wagon balked at the sudden stink of lion on the wind. Kemp scrambled out from under the wagon to find rest for body and soul somewhere, then one of the horses kicked him squarely in the chest. He unbuttons his shirt and shows me the purple bruise.

  You’ll live, the horse wasn’t kicking with intent.

  Yes, Buys. It’s nothing really, says the missionary, a trifle reluctant to admit that his wound is not life-threatening. But Buys, he adds immediately and excitedly, not an eye could I shut for the rest of that night. The lions were circling me and roaring.

  Then we can only thank the Lord that you are still with us, Brother Kemp, I say, and hold back my smile until my back is turned.

  Kemp contemplates the bruise and keeps his shirt unbuttoned till that evening.

  On 10 January we draw up in front of steep mountains and we rest. My hands are cramping. Maria rubs them with her dear rough fingers. Krieger and Faber are sent to reconnoitre. The next day it’s back across the river, around a mountain as far as a great plain. In front of us lie two rivers, the one winds from east to west, the other south to north. The river closer to us is in flood, but I’m anxious about what Ngqika will do when his Caffres turn up at the Great Place without his Khula and Jank’hanna. We will have to cross here. We unload most of the supplies from the wagons to make them lighter. We wade through the stream with packs on our heads. Then back again through the river to bring through the wagons and cattle. The stream claims a few cattle, but for the rest we get to the other side unharmed. We stop before the second river in a thorn forest.

  Say what I like, the lot decide to stay here till they’ve had news from the Colony. Nobody can decide on a final destination. Some want to get to the other side of the Great River, others simply want to get back to the Colony. For two weeks we camp right here in this fair and fertile valley, with the Storms and Bamboes Rivers only a few days’ trek away. All too soon old routines reassert themselves. The women do what women do, the men ride around or hunt or sit and gaze and ruminate on the world. Kemp starts teaching again and Maria follows him around all day and laments the fate of her soul. We see a few Bushmen, but the scum run away. Before the end of the week we’ve built solid laagers of branches around the campsite to keep out the Bushmen and the worst of the beasts. Here and there some of our people even build huts while waiting.

  For days on end Kemp walks around wailing to anyone who’ll listen about some scorpion bite that was more probably a mosquito. It is as if he’s become more frail since our departure, as if he’s used up the last of his resilience in surrendering his mission under the Caffres. Just when I think my fellow patriots have at last accepted him, he gets their blood boiling again by starting to pray and preach in focking English for the focking English deserters.

  Faber catches two Bushmen driving twenty-six Caffre cattle across the veldt. He can see, of course, that it’s stolen cattle, and he shoots and kills one Bushman from the saddle. The other one manages to stab or maim six of the cattle before Faber pots him too. Faber drives the cattle to the camp. The missionary is highly incensed when he is treated to the Christian’s story. I have to take the old man aside and calm him down before Faber does him harm.

  Kemp is seething, his whole body shivers like the reed that he is. I make him sit down and go and stand over him so that I become his shadow and say to him there is no life here without the spilling of blood. If he thinks that he, or the hosts of missionaries streaming into the Colony, are going to ennoble the people here in some way, that unity and accord are possible in this wilderness, then he’s in trouble. Here we devour each other. Christians, Dutchmen, Germans, French, Caffres, Bengalis, Hottentots, Bushmen and whatever else. It’s one great hunting ground. If he’s going to carry on sorrowing about it, it’s going to cost him his soul. His yearning for it to be different is going to consume him till there’s nothing left of him. He can try to save a few errant souls. But mankind has long been beyond saving.

  Upon waking up on 29 January, we discover that two Hottentots and the Caffre called something like Dakkam Jamma have absconded during the night with five of our horses and two saddles. Four of us ride out to search for them. Before the sun is shining from overhead, we notice three figures in a copse of thorn trees. The figures are stooped over, swaying. We dismount and walk closer when the deserters neither answer nor flee. The three men are being held upright by their guts that are twined around their arms and shoulders and tied to the branches. The bodies are perforated with arrow wounds. The throats of all three have been slit, the blood on their chests black with flies. The Caffre’s prick is sticking out of his mouth as if he is taunting us from the realm of death with a new tongue. I’m busy cutting the bodies free when we hear a whistling. We are surrounded by a horde of Bushmen who are running around us in the undergrowth and poking out a head here and there to whistle or shout or laugh. The German fires a shot that only elicits more laughter. We leave the deserters to their swaying and jump on our horses that are pawing the ground with rolling eyes and charge away with the Bushmen shouting after us mockingly, some of them with their pizzles in their hands. A stone hits me in the back and I ride on.

  Nobody sleeps that night and nobody makes a fire and nobody talks and the following morning we hitch up quickly and cross the next river and trek north to a next river that could be a tributary of the Kei and outspan on the bank and this night as well nobody sleeps and nobody makes a fire and nobody talks, except for the German who stands guard and now again thumps his chest with his fist and shouts searing defiance at the dark bush.

  With the coming of the red dawn on the last day of the month we trek further across the plain. To the north, east and west the plain dead-ends in mountains. We linger past bush pigs, antelope, wildebeest, ostriches, buffaloes, lush grass and every conceivable edible root and bulb and fruit. We are surrounded with plenitude and peril.

  Bezuidenhout recounts that when he was patrolling the surroundings last night, he encountered two lions and shot and killed one and the other one fled and he reloaded and pursued the lion and shot and killed her as well.

  A week later Maria arrives at the wagon all aflutter, fidgets here there and everywhere and wails away at one of Kemp’s hymns. I sit with my back against the wheel chawing a plug of tobacco. In the wagon tilt above me she drops a saucepan and giggles to herself. I spit out the tobacco juice slowly. The bitter black syrup hangs suspended between my lower lip and the grass at my feet before it falls. I get up and peer into the wagon tilt.

  What is it, woman?

  I’m going to be baptised. I’m going to Jesus and my children are going to Jesus.

  You’re going nowhere.

  He’s going to baptise me in the river and the river is going to wash away my sins.

  We’ll see about that.

  I walk to Kemp’s tent where the old man is at his eternal scribbling.

  You want to baptise my wife and this is the first I hear of it?

  Mijnheer Buys, good to see you. I was just –

  You don’t do a thing with my wife and children without reckoning with me first.

  But Buys, I assumed you’d be in favour of their souls being with you in the house of the Lord –

  And then you want to go and wash them in the river. I’m the only one who washes my wife. If you want a woman
, just say the word. But you leave Maria alone. As it is, you’re talking to her more than is acceptable. You put all sorts of things into her head and then I’m stuck with it.

  Kemp gets to his feet.

  Buys, I have no designs on your or any other Christian’s wife. Yes, I baptise by partial immersion. For me it designates being buried along with our Lord Christ in death and being resurrected along with him. I believe with all my heart that this accords with the Word. Was our Lord himself not baptised in a stream by the Baptist? If you have problems with my liturgy, you must say so.

  I hold my peace. Kemp sits down again, starts writing and after a few seconds looks up again to see if I’m still there.

  If you want to baptise my wife, then you do it as is proper, I say.

  Kemp smiles:

  So let’s hear it.

  I sit down across from Kemp at the table. On the folding riempie stool on which I take a seat I’m just as high as Kemp on his wooden chair. I lean forward and grip the table on both sides. With every sentence I lift the table and on every full stop I put it down again hard.

  Right. You sprinkle her, just a few drops as is proper. No drowning or burying or whatever.

  The table slams down. Kemp sits back a whit, tries to hide his smirk.

  If that is your wish, any time, Mijnheer Buys.

  You baptise her on a Sunday.

  Something in the table creaks.

  I understand.

  Right.

  I let go of the table, sit up straight. Then grab the table again and lift it.

  You baptise her after a church service.

  The table hits the ground. A few papers float to the ground.

  A good idea, Buys, then there will also be more witnesses before the Lord.

  This time the table goes up and down before I speak.

  And when you baptise, you say only the things that are said in the Dutch churches. No focking English church is going to take her soul.

  Focking?

  That’s English.

  Kemp looks away, but I can see he’s laughing.

  I am acquainted with the term.

  The table slams down again.

  Do you understand?

  That is in order, Coenraad.

  I lean further forward, another hand’s breadth and we’ll damnwell be kissing.

  And apart from the little ones, you’ll baptise Bettie as well.

  Kemp moves his chair back.

  Coenraad, Elizabeth knows by now what she wants and doesn’t want. If she does not convert of her own accord, I cannot baptise her.

  I want to lean back, remember too late that there’s nothing behind me, opt to fold my arms instead. I smile.

  Brother Kemp. If you want to baptise Maria, then you’ll baptise Nombini’s children as well. She does not care a fig or a fart for your God and my God and I have no problem with that. You should know by now, you can’t convert a Caffre. Her children are not mine. You can see that for yourself. But I am their father and I will see them baptised.

  Kemp jumps up and I follow suit. We stand facing each other, our heads brush against the tent roof.

  What do you want of me, Buys? You know I can’t do it. You know I can’t baptise children of Heathen parents. If your concubine does not convert of her own accord, I can’t baptise her children.

  Is that how you feel?

  I’m only doing my terrestrial duty, Buys. I cannot save those who are beyond salvation.

  I put on my hat. Take that. I put out my hand.

  Well, so be it, Kemp. Then we understand each other. You’re not baptising a soul in my house. You can catechise till Maria can write better psalms than David. But you keep your sprinklings or your rivers or your goddam waterfalls for yourself and your tame Hotnots.

  Kemp tries to escape the hand that insists on shaking his. When I walk out:

  And please do stop encouraging the poor woman to sing. If it gives me so much pain, just think what it must do to the great and pure ears of our Lord.

  Still no final destination has been resolved upon. The little band of refugees start irritating one another; something is coming apart at the seams. At the beginning of March the Bushmen’s dogs roam the camp at night. In the mountains we see thirteen and sometimes fourteen fires burning. Life drags on. By the middle of the month the Christians are starting to squabble among themselves about where to next. Back to the Colony? Further eastward? North, over the Great River? Each has persuaded himself of his own scheme. I listen to my fellow outlaws talking. I see the English deserters watching us and wondering if they joined the right gang. I see the Hottentots starting to lift up their eyes unto the hills. From whence will cometh help for them, away from these errant Christians? Perhaps back to the wilderness from which they were tamed, perhaps back to the Bushmen and back to hunting and gathering and sleeping in caves. I see Bezuidenhout walking up and down in the camp as if there were fences and at night I hear the redbeard battering his wife.

  On the 19th we come across a few runaway soldiers. The deserters share their wine from the Colony with us. The swilling ends in a boozing, blaspheming, blathering and buggering. The German flattens Bentley in the yellow grass and gets his breeches down before the Englishman can make his escape and seek refuge with the praying Kemp in his tent. In the early hours I fall into Nombini’s tent and mount her but get nothing done and only wake up the following afternoon.

  Late one clear and warm evening at the end of March Faber and I are sitting around the fire mounting guard. I trawl in the pot for a bone that hasn’t been picked clean.

  What is your plan, Buys? Do you want to head back to the Colony?

  A man can use the Colony. They pay well for tusks and hides. But to go and establish myself there again? I don’t know.

  I am told the border is open once again, he says. Most of the people have moved away. The Caffres made it impossible for them there. We could trek back over the Fish and vanish into the bush there. The English wouldn’t know where to look for us.

  I don’t hide.

  We can’t bugger around in the wilderness for forty years like the Israelites, Buys.

  The focking English think we’re trash. They don’t want us back in the Colony. The Caffres no longer want us in Caffraria. The Bushmen don’t want us in their hunting grounds. And the lot here are going to start murdering one another by next week if we don’t find something for them to do.

  What do you suggest, he asks.

  What is every man looking for in this land? What is all this fighting about?

  Well, Buys, people do say that your head on a post would solve most problems hereabouts.

  Exactly, Faber. Because a land of robbers asks for the main robber to be hanged, so that the other rascals can plunder in peace.

  Buys, you’re stirring shit again.

  No, listen. If in these parts you find a woman or a head of cattle, then you know it used to be another man’s. Everything is always already stolen. Let’s go and fetch ourselves some fresh cattle.

  And women, Faber laughs.

  And women, yes. We go and take ourselves fresh cattle and women and make a herd so strong that we can buy cannon to protect the kraals and velvet on which to nail our women.

  Faber, grinning, scrabbles with a stick in the coals.

  And where are we going to find these treasures, Buys?

  I answer the question I’ve been waiting for all evening:

  We bash our way through the Bushmen all the way to the Tambookies.

  By the next morning the whole camp knows of my plan. Every Christian and Englishman walks with a bounce to his step and winks at me in passing. In the course of the next few days we start melting kitchen utensils for bullets again. Kemp gets to hear of the plan and starts trembling with dismay. His forehead blushes blood red when he faces me foursquare.

  Buys, what are you doing with these people? You know you can’t do it. You can’t incite them to do evil.

  You play your games, Kemp. I play mine.


  Play? I don’t play, Buys, I am in service of the kingdom of God.

  And I’m in service of the kingdom of take what you can before this place takes what you have.

  A day or so before we were planning to start our campaign to the Tambookies the horses start pegging it. On the Monday two keel over, three on Tuesday and all the rest are ill. Some people think the disease keeps to the plains. We drive the horses up against the Stormberg. By Wednesday evening we are informed that three more have died. On Thursday morning Kemp accompanies me up the mountain to where the horses are kept. The missionary has recovered his health. Even though he’s much older, he keeps up all the way and doesn’t say a word when he stumbles or when branches scratch him. His jacket, which he still constantly wears without a shirt, shows white under the arms. He gabbles on incessantly about souls that he will save in Graaffe Rijnet, about the land lying fallow before him to convert. The Hottentot herders are glad to see us. They say they see Bushmen in the night. The scoundrels keep their distance, but make sure everybody knows they’re there. I give the herdsmen the lead and powder I can spare.

  Kemp takes off his jacket and cuts open one of the dead horses. He messes around up to his elbows in the animal’s innards. With bloody forearms he shows where the guts are inflamed. Especially the colon and volvulus, he says. The good tidings, he says, is that there is no gangrene. He tugs at a gut, then he’s back into the horse with only his shoulders sticking out.