by Willem Anker
The farmer said he wanted to talk by this tree on this day. He said we’d know which one. The big flowering camel thorn where it seems the river wants to bend but then doesn’t bend, some distance to the west of the wagon trail. He said the tree stood on its own. He said on 1 August it would be flowering golden as the sun. Arend and I are sitting under the spreading crown, in golden bloom as the farmer promised. It’s as if you can hear the branches above our heads branching out. To one side there are the ribs of an ox protruding from the sand. There’s a stone in my shoe.
You’re right. It’s too much for one man, says Arend.
He is silent. Then, suddenly cheerful:
Probably no point in giving up now. We should have done it years ago.
My feet are swollen. I can’t get the shoe off my foot.
Goddammit, stop your jabbering and help me with the damned thing.
We were men of renown, there in the beginning. Now it’s too late. They won’t even arrest us. They’ll shoot us and leave us lying in the veldt like those bones over there.
I tug at my shoe.
What are you doing?
I’m taking off my shoe. You’ve never experienced such a thing?
You should take off your shoes every day. How many times must I tell you? You won’t listen.
Help me.
Does it hurt? he asks snidely.
Does it hurt? The earless Caffre wants to know if it hurts.
Yes, nobody ever suffers except His Excellency Buys.
Does it hurt? I mock him.
Arend pushes two index fingers into his ear apertures.
The pinkfoot-Boer wants to know?
Every tug at the shoe sets off a sharp stab of pain at the back of my head. I manage to take off the damned shoe, look into it, turn it over, shake it, look on the ground to see if anything fell out; feel inside again.
Well? Arend asks.
Nothing.
He takes off his hat, rubs the sweat from his stubble-scalp. I scratch between my toes.
One of the thieves was saved. At least that’s half, the skull-head mumbles.
What?
Supposing we repented. Confessed.
Confessed what?
Never mind.
I smack the back of his head. Above us the bark of the young branches is smooth and reddish brown, but the trunk against our backs is deeply grooved and grey.
Dammit, Arend. What is it now?
Two thieves, crucified on either side of the Messiah. One …
The what?
The Messiah. Christ.
I’m leaving.
I get up. Arend sighs, twirls a twig after an ant lion in his tunnel. I flop down next to him again.
If you want to chatter about the Bible, then rather the Old Testament. The deserts, the wars and the women. The gangs with the countenances of lions.
You should become a psalmist.
You should bugger off.
I’m just thinking, he says. The apostles, all four of them were there by the cross. And only one reports a thief saved. Why believe him rather than the other three?
Who believes him?
Everybody. That’s the story.
People are baboons.
I get up, limp away from his chatter, gaze into the distance with my hand shielding my eyes, gaze in the other direction. Arend peeks into my shoe and drops it and spits. There is nothing here. Nobody is on his way. A giraffe sticks its neck over the horizon and then sinks down again into the other side of the world.
Well, should we get going? he asks.
Yes, I think so, let’s get going, I say.
We don’t move.
Two-inch thorns grow in pairs from the trunk and branches. At the base they clump together, thick and gnarled. The big Caffre walks to the ribs towering up out of the sand. He breaks off a rib, examines the dry marrow.
Where do all these corpses come from? he asks.
These skeletons.
You tell me.
That’s true, I tell him.
He walks to and fro and kicks the sand, tracing a spoor behind him with the rib.
We should have thought first. Thought what we were getting ourselves into. All the shooting and fleeing. All the dead.
At the very beginning. Then I thought, and weighed things up, yes.
Arend sits down. The afternoon sun bakes the flowers so that the sweetness cloys the air.
Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do with all the money? he asks.
What money?
The money we’re going to get in the Colony for all the ivory. How many tons haven’t we gathered, gathered and bartered for guns and gunpowder to shoot more elephants. What are you going to do when you’re a rich man?
Buy more guns.
No, Buys, I mean when we’ve done hunting and looting.
His eyes mist over with gazing into the mirage.
I can see it, he murmurs. I’m going to buy a farm. In the Cape or Tulbagh or Stellenbosch, any place with mountains and vineyards and shade. A new hat with a red hatband stuck with ostrich feathers. A suit of clothes that glitters when the sun catches it. First of all I’m going to build a pantry and stuff it full of kudu loins and legs of mutton and sweet potatoes and pumpkin; tobacco and biltong in the rafters. Then a wine cellar under the house to keep the wine cool. A dam full of brandy. Then a stoep on which I can sit and smoke and talk. Then a bedroom large enough for three white maidens and me in the middle.
His gaze sharpens into focus again.
And you, Buys? How big a bed are you going to build? What are you going to buy first of all?
Buy more guns. Buy more horses. More gunpowder. More lead. More flints. More guns.
But what are you going to do with it all?
Loot more cattle, shoot more elephants.
I stuff a plug of tobacco into my cheek and start chewing vigorously.
You’re a difficult person to get along with, Coenraad.
So let’s go our separate ways, I say.
You’re always saying that, but you come and sit by my fire every night.
The conversation evaporates like our sweat in the sand. Each one sits thinking of the last man he shot, the last wound he stepped on. A breeze I don’t feel on my body stirs the feathery leaves around us. I lick my finger and stick it in the air. The tree feathers are still immediately.
Voices of the dead, I say.
I remember the stories of my childhood. On these plains you have to keep talking if you don’t want to think.
They rustle like wings, he says immediately, almost as relieved as I to escape his memories.
Like leaves, I say.
Like sand, he says.
Like leaves, I say.
For just a moment the draught moves through the branches again, but now also over my face. Then it’s gone. We remain silent together and separately.
They’re all talking at the same time, Arend resumes after a few moments.
Each to himself, I say.
They whisper.
They rustle, I say.
They murmur.
They rustle, I say.
Silence.
What are they saying?
They are talking about their lives, I say.
To have lived was not enough for them.
They must talk about it, I say.
To be dead is not enough for them.
It’s not enough, I say.
Silence.
They rustle like feathers, he says.
Like leaves.
Like ash.
Like leaves, I say.
Long silence.
Say something, will you.
I’m trying, I say.
Long silence.
Specks appear on the horizon and we load our guns and dig ourselves in and wait for what we hope is the farmer. The specks grow into people. It’s not the farmer. It’s four runaway slaves who almost trip right over us. They’ve escaped from their owners and ended up on the same wago
n trail as Landdrost Stockenström – Andries, the son of Anders – and his retinue. Who are on their way here. We thank the slaves for the forewarning and offer them horses and a safe escape and get out of there. My swollen feet cramp in the stirrups and my fingers cramp around the reins and God damn the farmer who was late.
A few Bastaards turn up at our camp on the Harts River and say they’re also fleeing before Stockenström. I say Find yourselves a place to lie down. Their bed rolls remain tightly coiled behind their saddles and the horses are not unsaddled and they’re a bit too interested in everything around them and the following morning they’re nowhere to be seen. I pack my stuff and trek north to a Barolong kraal at Khunwana.
In every flower there is a bee with feet full of pollen and a sting. The air is filled with the bleating of lambs and young goats. The calves suckle their mothers dry. The last shred of moon burns through the tent. The shadows play on Elizabeth’s skin like seven veils. She sits on the edge of the mattress, combs her hair with her left hand while her right hand is handling me somewhat reluctantly so that I should leave her alone till this afternoon. She is close to a hundred strokes with both hands when there is a yelling outside. She’s a dear good wife and tries to bring things to a head quickly, but oh well, it’s a struggle nowadays. With breeches tenting out and rapidly subsiding, I go and see what’s the matter.
A Bushman woman is howling like a hyena on heat. I have to shake her by the shoulders a few times before I’m told that she went to fetch water when the dogs started barking. She saw the men and the horses and the guns by the watering hole. I grab my gun and lace up my breeches properly and bawl Arend awake. We leap onto two of the horses that are nowadays kept saddled in rotation.
At the watering hole the gang are sitting on their haunches drinking with their horses. Quenching their thirst before coming to kill me. We tether our horses to a blackthorn and walk through the undergrowth and out into the open and I have to clear my throat before they look up. I recognise the droll little cocksucker who jumps up and points his gun at me and says I must give myself up. I inform him that there are already two guns trained on him. Cornelis Kok gulps and looks at his pals and sees their empty hands and their pale visages.
You came looting cattle with me, Kok. You got rich yourself. So why so full of virtue now?
These are other times, Buys.
I’d forgotten how shrill the little guy’s voice is.
It’s two goddam months later, you dog’s dick! I shout at him. Idid you people no harm!
There’s no longer room for you here, he shouts back. Your time is past. We’re taking you to Stockenström. With you in the Castle’s pit, we can carry on with our lives, be safe from your kind.
If you shoot me in the back, Bastaard, you’ll be safe in neither heaven nor hell nor any damned mission station.
Arend and I turn around and walk back to our horses. Three of the newly converted geldings fire at us and miss by a mile and I tell Arend Just keep walking and a fourth shot splinters a branch in front of us. Arend swings around and shoots a Bushman hanger-on in the shoulder. The commando behind us falls silent. We charge back to the camp as if death itself is biting our butts because it is.
There’s no time to flee. Everyone who can get hold of a gun ensconces himself around the camp. The women and children cower behind tents and wagons and rocks and screens and bushes and anthills. An hour or so later I see Kok’s pudgy-cheeked countenance peering out of the undergrowth. I take aim at my leisure, can’t wait to pull the trigger. Arend puts his hand on the barrel, shoves the gun down to the ground firmly. Kok beckons another Griqua catechumen closer. They whisper and I see what Arend means. They are scared. There are twenty, perhaps thirty of them, and we are an army, an army of whites and Caffres and Bastaards and Hottentots and Bushmen, pissed off and armed.
We’re coming back, Buys!
The squeaky little tremolo calls in the wilderness as Kok and the other Stockenström acolytes trickle away. Weeks later I receive the glad tidings that my corpse is once again worth a thousand rix-dollars to the Colony.
Stockenström’s little commando didn’t get very far, but there will be others. My life beside the Hart is over. With the price on my head I no longer dare venture onto any wagon trail. Nobody dare sell me gunpowder any more. Once again as free as the birds of the heavens, as free as my friend Arend, the pared-down slave. I spread my outlawed wings and by October I’m fleeing before rumours of a second commando seeking my blood and bounty, but it never turns up. When summer and the cicadas descend upon us searing and shrill, I’m building a house at Thabeng. The kraal is perched on the hills, surrounded with springs and hartebeest, abundant as the grazing. When in later years the Christians come to mine gold in the area, they’ll name their town, as is the custom, for what they can see: Hartebeesfontein, the fountain of the hartebeest.
The people come and complain to me about red hyenas with ridged backs that are biting their calves.
What are you coming to me for? I snarl at them. Do I have dominion over the hyenas of the wild?
Sefunelo’s wobbling double chin could make one wonder if his mother was a turkey and he was hatched from an egg, but alas not. The double chin is his own achievement, his reward for his percipience and prosperity. He allows me to shelter with his Rolong-Seleka on one condition: My magnificent herds remain mine as long as I and my horde remain at Thabeng. Should I leave him, my cattle remain behind in his kraals. To show that I’m settling here, I build a house of stone. By ‘I’ I mean to say Arend. I lend a hand, but Arend says which stone goes where. See, the first white man’s home in the trans-Vaal. While we’re building, I tell myself that I don’t miss the Couga. The women create a vegetable garden, big enough to feed the Buys nation and quite a few Seleka. Sefunelo eats my mealies and inspects my house and calls me his friend. If from time to time I go off to linger or loot among the Hurutshe and the Ngwaketse and all that is a Kwena kraal, he is the one who sees me off, my concubines grumbling and grousing in the background. And my wives don’t turn up either. Lord alone knows what’s going on in Nombini’s head; Maria eternally scolding around the house like the general she is. She says she has a household to husband against famine and failure and has no time for my games. Elizabeth stays with me in our stone house.
I keep trekking. You leave marks behind you, stains of experiences that stick to you again every time you walk past them. Every time, in those eastern frontier years, that I rode past old Langa’s kraal, I was struck with blindness and my mind’s eye did the seeing: that day I went to fetch Nombini. The way she looked at me while her people were being manhandled and murdered in front of her, how I lost her before I could steal her. That kopje in Bechuanaland – this I’ve never told anybody – where I shot off the Caffre’s nose, and how he laughed as he fell. And the deadly Yese – this I’ve babbled about ad nauseam – how I lay on the plaited rug and stared at the reed roof of her hut and thought of the men before me who had lain with her on that exact patch of compacted soil. Things too good and too terrible to be reminded of: the blue dread of the mountains, the terror of the plains; the wind through the golden veldt, as if rippling muscles were playing under the earth’s grass hide. The little bit of fur and the wound in the cleft of every woman. Eland. Lions. My red dogs. Quill and ink. Elizabeth’s mouth. The fat around my children that I scrub off and the navel cord that I fold double and knot and cut with a whetted knife. Baobabs. Glider. Arend. Danster. Gun and powder. Bezuidenhout. Kemp’s ruined feet. Maria. Windvogel. Those little blue flowers. Elizabeth in our stone house. You keep trekking, pursued by your life.
The day has been long and tonight this old body is nothing but aches and pains. I lie watching Elizabeth slowly peeling off her layers of dresses. My wife, this lady of the wilderness. She still dresses up every day, in dresses that refuse to get threadbare like Maria’s.
All three my wives cost me dearly. For Maria I gave up my white family. For Nombini I gave up Maria. After that thunderstorm where
Nombini sat playing with the porcelain dish, Maria was never again really my wife. And Nombini never grew closer to me than that night. She remains the stolen one, the prisoner of war; the one who turns over tortoises, who plaits birdcages. For Elizabeth I had to give up my children – with the four that she and I were to line up I was at home more often, sometimes played along, plucked a decent clay-stick, even plaited a straw doll or two. The children by other women were left behind. I was never there; I was a prick and a progenitor, never a father. My fire-haired Bettie who is now a woman herself. What will become of her in this bedlam? For Elizabeth I’ll renounce everything; she is my mate. And have I mentioned her mouth? To the devil with the past and to hell with the future: see, my wife is unlacing her bodice.
We laugh too much to get much kissing done. I chase her around the two small rooms; she flutters away ahead of me. I can hardly get hold of the hem of her dress. In the front room the brood are lying in a heap pretending to be asleep. In the bedroom I press her against the wall. Her face in my hands. I can but look at this person. She polishes my flabby and hairy belly as if it’s the most precious copper. My prick shrinks into itself, my toe starts throbbing. She kisses my bald patches. I let go of her.
Come on, my old ox. Come and lie by me. Just hold me.
Our legs twine together. I press her to me until her eyes say it’s hurting. I rub across her dear wrinkled buttocks, the skin hanging loose around her chin. I ask how one person can be so soft.
It’s you who knead me, Mijnheer.
She touches my crotch; still nothing. We kiss. She licks over my closed eyes. She sings softly while like a female baboon she forages in my chest hair for fleas. I scratch her back while she’s telling how she tied Baba and Jan to each other with a thong today when they hit each other. After the two of them had to put up with each other all afternoon with three legs and no arms they are once again great friends. Besides, they learnt about slipknots, she says. She plaits my beard with the selfsame thong in three thick strands, with soup bones at the lower end:
Now the ancestors will quail before your countenance, my wild white warrior.