by Willem Anker
The first days of 1815 we spend trekking towards a fertile tract of land at the convergence of the Harts and Vaal Rivers. Rumours from the Colony reach my campfire. Danster and I are said to be gallivanting with the looting and heresy beyond the Gariep. Somewhere a little bird must have chirped. I don’t lie awake at night wondering why Opperman, his bedraggled little wife and snot-nosed kids chose to excuse and absent themselves in a hurry just now – that very same little goddam bird must have informed him that otherwise I would have sped him on his way with a horsewhip under his traitor’s arse.
At a remove I hear also that the landdrost of Uitenhage, one Cuyler, is warning his counterpart in Graaffe Rijnet, nowadays a Fischer, against me. I am apparently a ‘dangerous character’. Cuyler is said to have suggested that they should go and take tea with the Bezuidenhouts – at present burghers of the Baviaans River, I am told – to fish for information regarding yours truly’s address. With this calibre of clerk the whole world goes to pot! I’d give anything to see the Bezuidenhouts bringing out their best cups for the focking misters.
I am a rich man, but my toe torments me most nights and my hands swell and cramp. If the pain keeps me awake at night, I prick up my ears at the rustle of every bush outside and expect the end. Janssens, my dog, succumbs to the damned ticks. A fortnight later old De Mist stalks stiff-legged into the veldt and does not return. At least Danster and his rapacious Caffres are back soon and there is merrymaking again around the fires in the evening. If you’re living with Danster, you dance till you fall, drink till you drop and sleep till you get up. I don’t really dance. We plunder and smuggle. We get richer and fatter. I know who my friends are on this earth: they are the enemies of everyone else.
They say you know a man when you’ve walked a few miles in his shoes. Bullshit. You know a man when you’ve ridden a few miles on his horse. In his saddle, in February, on the banks of the Harts River. In his moleskin breeches.
I scratch my crotch and search for something to shoot. Game has been scarce these last few weeks. Strings of Klaarwater Bastaards cross the river every day and trample the antelope trails. They don’t mess with us, but the groups get bigger and more and more of them flock together in one spot. Danster regularly dispatches a few red-painted scouts to cast an eye. The Redcaffres report that at night the people talk loudly and angrily around the fires.
I ride to the river to have a drink of water. I lead my horse through the bushes and reeds. Downriver an unearthly swearing erupts. Women’s pelvises and God’s wrath collide and explode and make love in extended sentences of Dutch such as I’ve never heard. My eyes are not what they used to be, but I could swear I see a straggling of people standing and yelling on an oasis in the middle of the river. I ride up to them.
The river is shallow, but the bottom is invisible. A wagon’s wheel can get stuck between rocks under the muddy water. The wheel can break if the startled oxen try to dislodge the wagon by force. The wheel is particularly liable to break if it’s burdened with a whole damned forest.
I wade into the stream. I greet the people: an old Bastaard, a young one with a hump like an ox, an old woman and four little girls in dresses of the same blue cloth. On the wagon towers a luxuriant jungle with the lushest dagga trees and tobacco, the dagga heads downy and rust-coloured. The bushes protrude over the toprail, and tease-tickle the water. In between the dagga arises mouthwatering golden tobacco. See, the Flying Gardener has built a scaffolding on which is perched a second garden with the taller plants. The four poles on the corners of the wagon are hidden under the lush growth of the trees. The poles keep the upper storey up, full of shallow bowls of soil in which the trees are planted. So not the forest that I observed from the bank, but two gardens, neatly packaged for transportation.
When the young Bastaard notices me, he lowers his hump and clumsily manoeuvres the gun around his shoulder and into his hands and takes aim at my forehead. My gun is on my back and my hands are in the air. The children have stopped crying. Everything except the river is dead quiet until I’m standing in front of them, up to my waist in the water, with an extended hand wavering in the air before the hunchback. He lowers the gun and takes my hand.
The little band is quite amicable when I introduce myself. I help the men to wiggle loose the broken wheel. Two felloes sink, two spokes float away, the whole damned wheel is river fodder. We lift the wagon so the oxen can haul the other three wheels through the stream. It’s a bloody business. Two of us have seen better days, the marrow shrunk in our bones. The young Bastaard is a lean lad under the hump, one who swears with vigour rather than grips with conviction.
They tell me that they’re moving away from Griekwastad, Griquatown. I tell them I don’t know such a place. They say it’s the new name for Klaarwater. The lad is not built for Colony uniforms, so now they’re clearing out. I say, wait a bit, begin at the beginning. The old man doesn’t swear as colourfully as his son, but he spins a good story. In between the wagon-lugging and tripping over my own big feet – the pestilential toe is throbbing again today – I am informed that all that is pot is boiling over at the mission station.
The oldster tells that Brother Campbell – the very one after whom the Campbell station is named, apparently a bigwig in the focking Missionary Society – went on a tour two years ago to all the little cherished flocks here at the foreskin of Africa. Apparently never braves the daylight without his little parasol. He visits every mission station and pronounces blessings as appropriate. Of course names a godforsaken town after himself. When Campbell ended up in Klaarwater last year, the light of Heavenly inspiration struck him like a migraine. He hears the people calling themselves Bastaards. And, what’s more, quite proud of it. Surely that cannot be, must not be. He is profoundly insulted, in his own being, but especially on behalf of the wretched dumb Heathens themselves. He assembles the little congregation and allows the Bastaards to choose themselves a name. Somebody remembers a name from his ancestors, Griqua or some such. By teatime every Bastaard, Korana, Hottentot and Bushman at the station has been dubbed a Griqua, and by suppertime Klaarwater is called Griquatown. The mouth of God’s envoy drools with fervour. Right there and then he devises a constitution, as you can read in the writings of our learned ameliorator: In the history of the world there was no account of any people existing and prospering without laws. Thus do you create a pedigree, a nation and a state in one afternoon.
On dry ground we examine the wheel properly. There is not much to be salvaged. Smashed to the nave. We break off branches and devise a sled for the buggered axle tree to rest on. They say they still have some distance to travel. To family awaiting them. About half a day’s journey from the Buys nation and the Redcaffres. With all our yelling every blessed buck and hare this side of the Gariep has been scared off, so I offer to accompany them for a while. A travelling garden of smoking materials is not something you behold every day.
With his mouth behind his hand, as if the stones had ears, the lad tells me about Griquatown’s missionary. Focking William Anderson: was on the point of getting married, but then opted to come and live with the Gariep Bastaards for almost twenty years instead. The lad says Anderson must be over forty, but he has no wrinkles from shouting or laughing.
One of the little blue-frocked girls starts bawling to her mother. The old father sees to her with a reed cane while interrupting his eldest and only and deformed son with a tirade about the Society.
The missionary is the eyes and ears and lips and I’m telling you Whiteman also the teeth of the Cape. God take their teeth and curse their spit!
Go and see for yourself in the archives how these bureaucrats could hone their words. In 1809 the Lord focking Caledon writes to Anderson that every possible assistance will be rendered him by the Cape, not because God’s word is being brought to the Heathens, but on account of the mission stations’ most beneficial effects in recalling the Natives to habits of Industry and Regularity, without which it will ever be impossible to bind them in Society. Be
hold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, indeed!
The father and the hunchback son keep interrupting each other while we make a fire at dusk. They tell me about the crazy Hottentot who came to preach at Klaarwater. Kupido Kakkerlak was his name, Cupido Cockroach. The lad says Anderson was fulfilled with Heavenly wrath when the Hotnot broke into song between the huts every night at nine o’clock until the whole congregation bleated along with him. The wauling then carried on till the next morning. Anderson was highly upset that, while some were singing, there was also much talking and laughing, which according to him would open a portal to impurity and immorality; and that it bred, the morning after such exuberant nights, a certain slothfulness among the flock. Anderson says he has no objection to singing, but does it have to happen late at night?
A congregation that get too carried away with the Lord sometimes forget to work their fingers to the bone, says the oldster.
Goddam phthisis-tool! I shout.
My spirit also pukes with a joyful noise, the hunchback pipsqueak affirms.
They say that Kakkerlak did not last long in the State of the Griquas and apparently soon left for Dithakong. The Hottentot missionary sounds like a rare bird, indeed. Sorry I never met the fellow.
The old woman throws a few sweet potatoes into a pot and there is a scraping of porridge for everybody. She sits watching us eat. Her hands in her lap have a light tremor and her lips smack along with ours, as if she can taste what we’re tasting. When we’ve done, she scrapes the leftovers into a dish for herself and doesn’t look up until she’s licked her dry-twig fingers clean.
The oldster’s name is Jannas van Riebeeck. He asks me why I’m laughing. I walk to the river with Jannas and his boy-child. The moon floats on the water like a blown-up carcase. Jannas wets a bit of soft clay soil on the bank and kneads it till it’s tacky. He breaks a stick in two and gives his son one half. They sit opposite each other and push the sticks into the ground. They drill towards each other until a narrow tunnel connects them. He lies down with his ear on the hole and his son blows into the other hole. Jannas feels the air in his ear and nods: the tunnel is open. He pours a bit of water down the tunnel. He presses a plug of dagga into the hole and lights it. His son is on his stomach, his mouth on the other hole; he smokes the herb through the earth artery. The lad smokes till he’s had enough, then he offers me the earth pipe. The smoke hits hard when it shoots up from the earth to the back of the lungs. I cough, spit the sand out of my cheeks. The hole is plugged again until all three of us are silly and satisfied.
Back in the camp Jannas is heavy hearted. Apparently Anderson has been instructed to round up all deserters – criminals, slaves, Hottentots or Bastaards – who have escaped to the Gariep and to post them back to the Colony. The wretched man couldn’t arrest a church choir. In addition he has to send twenty young men from Griquatown for military service in the Zwartveld. If the people refuse to give up their sons, they may no longer trade legally with the Colony.
You see what my lad looks like. He can plough a bit, but he’s too crooked for a gun.
I thought the little woman was asleep, but her kaross comes to life and sobs.
They also no longer want us to plant dagga and tobacco, Jannas continues. There are vegetables only in the garden of the Lord. But our Lord doesn’t have to hawk for a living. Not with all those pearls in his crown.
The scorpion that’s come to warm itself at the fire is claiming my attention. I block his route with a twig and start a duel.
I’m a hawker, says Jannas. My leaves are my livelihood. I don’t know about slaughtering and milking, but I know everything about everything that you can stuff into a pipe. My trees are my flock and I’m their shepherd. If the law says a man can no longer be what he is, then it’s time to clear out. If the law says you must sacrifice your crook-backed son, then it’s time to clear out. So then I took my garden and I cleared out.
The young hunchback is poking about in the pots for another scraping to eat. Words fail me. The old man carries on talking. I let him be. The scorpion’s sting darts out and retracts. Its tail casts big shadows in the branches. The world shifts and shudders in the flickerings of the flames, without outline. The scorpion ducks and attacks. Tomorrow, in the pale light of day, everything will seem merely what it is. But see, now, the fulgurous shadows of the flames. See, the little red scorpion. See how nimble, and then he’s gone. Just see the moon. See.
2
The three-wheeled wagon causes trouble all the way until at sunset we reach the outspan of the Griqua deserters. The wagons and tents are empty. Around a great fire the people are sitting and standing while a Bastaard in a Sunday suit is addressing them. It seems as if we’ve arrived at a church service, a church service with remarkably many guns. Jannas and I walk up while his people unload their stuff with his family.
The Sunday suit is full of fervour, a slick-tongued minister who preaches the perdition of religion; the church one in which the congregation damns itself to hell.
Brethren! We shall wait until our nation has congregated here by the Hart. We shall wait until the Hartenaars are a mighty nation! We shall wait for the time to be ripe and we shall march upon Klaarwater and we shall descend like a plague and we shall grab the gunpowder from the grasp of the missionary and we shall shoot Anderson in the head and we shall shoot that self-appointed Griqua Kok in the kneecaps!
The people applaud him. He holds up his hands.
Brethren! Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.
A new Moses who smashes the stone tablets of the law to shards and comes from Sinai with a musket in his hand as a message to his people.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his missionary, and the daughter against her slave driver. He that loveth missionary or government over his freedom is not worthy of his freedom! And he that taketh not his gun, and followeth after me, is not worthy of the name Bastaard. He that findeth his life with Anderson and Campbell shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for the sake of freedom shall find it!
The people yell their accord and fire shots into the air and give vent to strange hymns.
To hell with the laws, to hell with the missionaries and to hell with their religion. And I said unto the missionary: You can tie me up and make me abide, but you cannot make me work. Before they came among us we looked well after ourselves and after they have left, we shall once again look after ourselves. And brethren, I say unto you today: We have no need of those crows and their god! My soul is hell-bent! To burn! To burn, brethren and sisters!
He concludes his sermon by holding a Bible aloft. He drops it at his feet and sets it alight.
I look for my travelling companion, but Jannas has left to join his people. His wife and his children and his garden stir him more than speeches. But I am a man of the word. My skin prickles; my hands cramp into claws. My breeches tent out. I like these people and their rage and the little Bastaard maiden who is fluttering her eyes over there.
I wake up on top of her, hitch up my breeches and make myself scarce. I get something they call coffee by a fire. I listen and look. The preacher walks past and I follow him to the back of a wagon, where a conclave of greybeards are conferring. Guns, polished bright and never been used, displayed against the wagon. The fug from their pipe smoke is as thick as their conspiracy. I listen, I look; then I let fly.
I hear myself talk. I feel my legs straightening themselves beneath me, I see myself standing and orating in Graaffe Rijnet, by now all of two decades in the past. I tell them they are a free people. They are not the scullions of any focking Englishman’s laws.
Campbell disowned you to the government, I thunder. It is he who wants to collect your sons for the government. Your sons are not taxes. They are not rents. Think well, men. Your sons are not white. They will never be treated like the Christian children. The focking Britons are not looking for soldiers. They want to feed your sons to the cannons. They bring learning and cu
stoms like false gifts, like blankets full of pox. They teach you to write so you can fill in birth registers. So that the sons of bitches can see how many sons your wives bear. They say they are proclaiming the Word of God, but brethren, beware of the focking Englishman’s inscriptions. They are not inscribing you in the Book of Life. They are penning you down in the Books of the Cape.
I ask for a sip of water, wait for the old men to calm down. Then in my tempter’s purr:
English, focking English, is not a language. A man can talk in a language. Focking English can only be obeyed. It’s a language for making sums. Your names are the numbers. If you must starve in the wilderness, why not on your own terms?
I tell them they are a nation in their own right, strong enough to defend themselves. If they want to barter, I say, they must come to me, I shall be their missionary. I’ll mediate for them with the frontier farmers for their cattle and dagga and rounded-up Bushmen. I say I’ll see to it that they’re paid in gunpowder and bullets:
We shall go forth from this place like locusts, brethren, we’ll pillage and take what we can, while we can for as long as we can. Until our names are breathed around every fire. Until the fat of the land is oozing from our lips.
The old men listen and smoke and nod. I ride out of their camp with a full belly, an emptied ball-bag and a brand-new gun. I feel twenty years younger. Revolutions are more fun than ox-roasting.
An aside: My gracious accomplice, this land is one of robbers and raiders. When I’d hardly moved into the Couga, Coenraad Bezuidenhout and Cobus Vry had already understood that the northern border yields more profit than the eternal squabbling at the Fish. Nowadays there’s a soldier skulking in every aardvark lair next to the river. If you want to hunt elephants, they wrote to me, you must betake yourself to the Bastaards. I heard of missionaries who traded so many tusks that they could leave the lost souls to find their own salvation, and retire in comfort and ease in the Cape. On my Couga farm I started gazing into the distance. Bezuidenhout and Vry went to stir up trouble near Ongeluksfontein, and absconded with as many cattle, sheep and Bushman children as they could herd. Some say that they also helped to spread the first smallpox epidemic in that area. Those two were never exactly partial to bathing.