Red Dog

by Willem Anker

  Walk on the missionary skin. Smell with the hairs on your body. Do you smell the rotten food and old excrement and half-chewed bones that tell you that there are people stuck here? Do you smell how their shit and sweat seep into the soil, how the diseases start breeding and the walls start pressing? Do you smell the sweet tobacco and civilisation in the missionary’s cheek? Do the little hairs vibrate when you smell his fear? He who here, hundreds of miles of barren plain from the border, prepares the people for civilisation with his droning, drawling voice. He who wants to wash every Bastaard white as the driven snow and outfit him with British vestments; the pious panoply of diligence, regularity and cleanliness. Shepherds who should cease their wanderings and rather, to please God, sit down on their arses by their orchards and munch cabbage on the little stoeps of their European stone cottages – solid, safe and square. Do you see, beloved Fly, who only deigns to settle on that which stinks, how the stone solidifies into church and Klaarwater becomes Colony?

  The cattle farmers and robbers still follow their routes as before, from one fountain or watering hole to the next. They know every well, outspan there only to leave it behind again at the break of day. Did you see, ancient Fly, all those many years ago, how the Bastaards and the Koranas and the Bushmen could stop at these fountains, one after the other? And do you see, Fly of yesterday, how by 1803 the Griqua State assumes possession of the line of fountains? The line of survival points extending for fifty miles, south-west and north-east from Klaarwater: Klooffontein near the Gariep, through to the wells of Rietfontein, Witwater, Taaiboschfontein, all the way to the northernmost point and Ongeluksfontein.

  Fear not, Fly, there is still plenty of refuse and remains for you to suck at. I understand you. I myself also fear the peace of the Colony much more than the constant wars outside its gates. We, the desert brigands, carry the mark of Cain with pride on our scorched heads, like plumes in our hats. Do you see me down there, Fly? Do you see me trek, how I can only truly settle when I’m in the saddle? The looters overrun the farms with their neatly squared little gardens. Enraged, they trample the beans and watercourses. The Colony, as you know very well, will vanquish them – us – and write up the history. Before there were Colonies there was no history, merely geology.

  Fly over these plains one last time and seek the heated herds, the fiery flocks that keep erupting outwards like fragments of creation, faster and further, before the Great Coagulation that is always panting icily down our necks. Fly forth and come and settle on my cheek here where, somewhere in the Nieuweveld, I am shaking the hand of a man named Danster.

  We left the last of the wagon tracks behind us so many days ago. There is no end to the Nieuweveld, the New Territory. There is no horizon here, only a haziness where the soil starts liquescing and the sky dusts over. The hordes of little table mountains make me crack my whip over the oxen; we’re not yet far enough away from the Cape. The skin around my big toe is purple, it looks putrid. The trek is dawdling and in the evenings I want to scream when the kaross touches my toe.

  The gout started at fifty. The pain comes at night. It’s the glow in your foot that wakes you up. The big toe feels swollen and dead, but if you dare touch it, you gnash your teeth. It doesn’t recede till dawn. Over the next few days the sore subsides. On such days I stay off my foot.

  I abandoned the Colony in the company of two northern sheep farmers, David de Kooker and Hans Opperman, two louts whose eyes sparkle when you say Elephant Tusk. And every day since then more souls join us. Any lost or fed-up wretch who sees our wagons and horses and guns gathers up his own little bundle and signs up. Quite a few runaway slaves, deserters, a bunch of Hottentots, a few Caffres and windfall women, succulent new bodies that I take as concubines. Together with De Kooker and Opperman’s families and my Buys clan we make up a fine little flock, sometimes up to a hundred, sometimes I stop counting at twice that; a small army on the march to oblivion. Nombini runs away one night. I catch her the following morning and tie her to the wagon until she calms down. For weeks we roam around. Then we get stuck at one watering hole for months. In the mornings, when the attacks subside, the skin around the toe itches and then peels off.

  When, one evening at the butt end of 1814, we were outspanning, the Redcaffres were upon us. I kick at the buggered-up disselboom, then the shouting is everywhere. We are surrounded. Caffres, all of them painted red and naked under leather karosses greased with red ochre and fat. Assegais, but also a plethora of guns, shiny in the setting sun. Three hundred or so of them, on horseback, on oxen, most of them on foot. The Redcaffres, the Blootcaffres, the bare Caffres. Among them also quite a few Hottentots and Bushmen, most of them in Christian clothes and every single one with a Colony gun. Ever since arriving in the Nieuweveld I’ve been hearing stories about this gang of plunderers. If half the stories are true, few of us will see the light of day tomorrow. I’m ready with the double-barrelled flintlock, then I see the smiles. These Blootcaffres aren’t picking a fight. A flamboyant little chap alights from his ox with sharpened horns and comes to meet me.

  You are Buys and I am Danster the Dancer. We must eat and drink and smoke and talk, he says in fluent Dutch.

  I shake his hand with a flabbergasted and cramping hand.

  Danster is wearing a tricorn hat with ostrich plumes fanning out, a blue jacket with the epaulettes and polished insignias of rank of a captain in the Waldeck cavalry, gold rings and pieces of copper on a richly festooned thong around his neck. On his feet brand-new top boots that reflect the sky. All that marks him as one of the Blootcaffres is his mask of red ochre. Under the clay his face is deeply grooved, the eyes dark unfathomable gashes. On his upper lip a moustache that he twirls obsessively.

  I make a proper fire and get out the brandy and introduce him to Opperman, De Kooker and my wives. The two farmers don’t have much to say and go and stoke their own fires. Danster tells his tale and I tell mine and in between we drink.

  Danster laughs incessantly as if he finds the world a joke. Every so often he gets up and stretches his legs with odd little shuffle steps and then sits down in a different place next to the fire. He doesn’t really hang on to the thread of his story. His thoughts cavort and tussle with each other, like my pack of feral dogs that nowadays scavenge in our wake on the abundance and superfluity.

  Danster says his name was once Nzwane. He says he’s the younger brother of the old stud bull Ndlambe. Under his moustache Danster sports a crooked grin. Initially he speaks more Xhosa, but as his biography leaves Caffraria behind, the narrative becomes ever more Dutch.

  He tells how, after the turn of the century, the Colony guards the eastern border day and night with the new British money. How the Rharhabe, nowadays the lapdogs of the focking Empire, expand and extend their territory to the Fish River, till the smaller tribes no longer have a foothold. Like pimples they are squeezed out from one side by the index finger of the Colony and on the other side by the thumb of the Rharhabe, northwards. Little detachments of Caffres hive off to the Gariep in search of ivory and freedom. They remain Xhosas, he says, they wear their clothes and speak their language, but they also learn to live and to loot like the people of these parts. He says here you have to look twice some days to see who is a Xhosa and who is Oorlam or Bastaard or Christian.

  In the hurly-burly of the Gariep River he baptised himself Danster. Here you have to make a name for yourself, he says. Your old name you leave behind in the Colony. You find a name and you blow it up as large as you can, with all the sound and fury at your command. The next prick you come up against watches his step, unsure whether you’re dangerous or crazy or both.

  I tell him about my years in De Lange Cloof and Graaffe Rijnet and Caffraria and the Couga. Throughout my chronicle he nods and grunts in affirmation, as if he’s heard it all before. It’s only when his hat falls off his head after a vehement nod that I realise that he is paralytically pissed.

  He says he was a son in the House of the Right Hand of the Rharhabe, but he took his
small gang and went tusk harvesting along the Baviaans River in the Winterberg up to about a quarter of a century ago. After this his name traced a criss-cross course between the Gamka River, the Cape, Bushmanland beyond the Sneeuberge as far as the bank of the Gariep and back to the Colony, away from the Bushmen and the droughts. In the Nieuweveld the gang rented themselves out as farm labourers until they could buy enough guns to hunt elephants and make war. By 1800 they were armed to the teeth and back in the Gariep.

  Initially Danster’s gang keep themselves to themselves around a great fire that towers over all the others. As the evening wears on, my Hottentots and Caffres start mingling with them. This crowd breathes new life into a company that in the last few months have seen more than enough of one another. And most certainly tonight new life is being breathed into quite a few young laps under and behind the wagons.

  Together with Jager Afrikaner they plunder the Colony, the Bechuanas and the Koranas until there’s a squabble and Afrikaner abducts all the women and children of the Danster gang. Danster takes revenge with his depleted gang, but Afrikaner is too strong. They manage to rescue only the women; the children have to be left behind with that abominable Hotnot. Danster flees to the Gariep River islands and later back to the Langeberg where they’d lived originally. There they join forces with the gang of Olela, a dethroned chief, and Gola, a son of Langa’s.

  That time was honey, says Danster. Nobody could stand up to us. I was captain, nobody talked back at me. We were Xhosa and Bushmen and Korana and Christian, any man with his own gun or spear was welcome. We traded in sheep, tobacco, ivory and brandy. And by trading I mean taking, he says.

  When the night turns cold and the fire burns low, Danster wriggles himself into a thing somewhere between a kaross and an overcoat, assembled from rags of cloth and hide. The cloths were selected with an eye to their gaudiness and to their degree of shine. In the flames the cloak scintillates in reds and yellows and blues like suns and stars perpetually exploding.

  Only the Bastaards we steered clear of, he says, primed with genever courage.

  With Klaarwater they didn’t meddle; the mission station had too many guns and horses. But the rest of the Transorangia got hit hard. Klaarwater’s missionary, Anderson, was reportedly so terrified of Danster that he even went to the Cape to beg Baird, the acting governor, for protection. Danster leaps up and trots around the fire and falls flat on his backside with his boots in the coals. The fine tissue of betrayal and honour wears thin. Danster falls out with Gola and Olela and moves back to Caffraria to recruit a new gang.

  It is late at night when with slurring speech he tells about the time he was eventually caught. For sheepstealing he had to go to the Castle. Caledon loaded him and his followers on a ship to Algoa Bay to be posted back to Caffraria from there. Somewhere between Fort Frederick and the Fish River they overpower the soldiers and escape. He rustles up a gang anew and by 1811 he and five hundred men are back at the Gariep. He says they looted sheep and goats and cattle. The Briquas, the Batlhaping, as the lot call themselves, apparently were given such a hard time that eventually they quit that muddy ditch called Kuruman and went to squat at Dithakong. He says every single marksman in his gang could trade a man’s eyes for bullets from a hundred paces, even more. He swears, he says.

  Just before he rises to his feet one last time, just before he then stagger-dances, just before he falls face first in the sand, and just before I cover him with his coat of many colours like one who is dead, he jumps up, comes to squat before me and grabs me by the shoulders. The dark slits where his eyes should be are pure flame:

  Once, Buys, for three days on end we kept shooting and murdering and bleeding and pegging it and the only ones sleeping were the men dressed in dust. But by the evening of the third day the sea of cattle belonged to us, as far as the eye could see, and the ground we could no longer touch, because we were dancing on corpses.

  Maria says we have long since become too ingrown into each other to let go now. We’re together till we keel over, she says, but her body is no longer mine. Children we are no longer vouchsafed, and since leaving the Couga I have rounded up a veritable herd of young buck for myself.

  Godknows what you want, Buys; I’m no longer playing your game. If you want to start something, you can go and lie with your Caffre women.

  On evenings like last night – when she knows I’m too drunk to get anything done, other than crawling in behind her buttocks and to start snoring with kneading hands around her breasts – she still allows me to lie with her.

  When we wake up, Danster and some of his pals have settled in before a fresh fire, getting water on the boil. With these reprobates by our side the wilderness will stand aside for us as we trek past. No animal or Bushman will henceforth venture near us. Danster jumps up when he sees me. He is certainly not much younger than I, but he’s slept off last night’s brandy like a young man. I pick up my hat from where it’s lying next to the wagon, dip it into a basin of water, and pull it down over my eyes as far as possible. From beneath the small and merciful lean-to above my eyes I see that Danster is this morning wearing the Sunday suit of a missionary, complete with the tight-fitting little hat the men of God love so much. Underneath the jacket the red-smeared chest peeks out. For a moment the spectre of a sunburnt Kemp standing before me. I wonder how many outfits the fellow has. The black trousers tucked into the top boots.

  Buys, get your people into the wagons, then the Reverend Danster will go show you where the elephants graze.

  We skim ahead across the Transorangia, along what the people here call the New Gariep. Danster is a miraculous guide. I know these hereabouts merely as stories and rumours, a wild and wide world beyond the laws of the Colony, but still under the eyes of the missionaries, ever wakeful and lidless. I have some idea of where Klaarwater lies. Somewhere to the north-west of Klaarwater lie the home farms of the Afrikaner robber clan. South-west of Klaarwater lies the new mission station for the Bushmen, Tooverberg. Further to the north, I am told, dwell the docile Bechuanas with their hordes of cattle, waiting to be overrun. Danster has criss-crossed this area, he knows which wagon trails are dead ends, which watering holes have been poisoned and where the Bushmen and leopards lurk. What’s more, I can talk to him for hours without dozing off in the saddle. Opperman and De Kooker can only drivel on about stolen sheep and their difficult wives.

  To relieve the tedium of the journey, Danster and his crowd and I sometimes go and harass the London focking Missionary Society where they’re trying to convert the Bushmen at Tooverberg. On our first plundering raid we charge into the settlement and scatter the people. I scratch around in the missionary’s hut and appropriate a beautiful herneuter knife that the fellow has hardly used. The knife cuts a deep notch in the leather when I test it against the sheath. Something catches my eye. Through the window I see somebody standing in the doorway of the little school building. None other than goddam Master Markus. How in the devil’s name did he end up here? Is the slab of misery following me? He is standing motionless in the off-kilter doorframe, looking at the pillage raging around him. His shirt tucked in, without a wrinkle or a sweat stain. I lift my gun, keep his mug in my sights and walk up to him until the barrel is resting against his head.

  What are you doing here, Schoolmaster? I ask.

  I am teaching school, Mijnheer.

  You don’t recognise me.

  You seem familiar to me.

  I am Coenraad de Buys.

  How do you do.

  Do you in all truth want to tell me that you’ve never heard of Coenraad de Buys?

  I have heard of you, Mijnheer. I am Markus Goossens.

  I prod him in the face with the barrel.

  Stand aside, Schoolmaster.

  This is my school, Mijnheer. Here you don’t enter.

  The fellow remains standing and I remain standing. The gun is getting heavy.

  Excuse me, Mijnheer, he says. I have work to do.

  He turns on his heel and shuts the
door in my face. I stare at the closed door. The gun wavers in my hand. Behind me a converted Bushman yells in the Dutch the schoolmaster has fed him. I turn around to the screams of pain; the plundering sucks me in and I forget about the shut school door until we ride off with the looted cattle. Then I never forget it again.

  In the course of the next week we go and filch a few sheep every day and round up the little shepherds. Danster, who takes care to wear his Sunday best on such days, delivers eloquent sermons, so flagrantly blasphemous that I scan the blue heavens in terror. Danster converts quite a few Bushmen and they join our flock of sinners.

  (One morning De Kooker is nowhere to be found, but his wagons are bedded down in the sand and his family are making their morning coffee. His wife says he says he’s coming back.

  He said the children and I should trek with you so long, Mijnheer Buys. He didn’t say when, but he left a pocket of ammunition for the Caffre Danster as down payment to lead him back to us, as soon as he wants to come back.

  This fellow we won’t see again, I think and look at his wife and she looks away.)

  On my outings with Danster I also smear myself with clay and wear a handkerchief over my nose and beard, so that at a quick glance no bugger is going to see a Christian. North-east of Klaarwater, near Campbell, I unload my people and go looting with Danster.

  The pious converted don’t have a chance. The survivors can only forgive us, because the ways of the Lord are not for us to know and whatever. Danster takes his leave and moves north to go and strip the Hardcastle mission bare. With him as guide my knowledge of these plains, my herds and particularly my army – my nation – have increased considerably. The names Buys and Danster lure all that is robber and deserter. As long as he and I don’t molest Christians or put our paws into the hallowed Colony, the Colony’s little sweaty hands are tied. My red dogs come to scavenge as soon as the battlefields fall silent. The vultures have to wait for the remains of the remains.