by Willem Anker
That far they trekked and no further, because the rivers were in flood and the land was awash with blood and corpses and crows. All the way from here to the Drakensberg, says Arend, one continuous and continuing war between everybody and everybody. Arend says he was sad: if the wind blew in the right direction, he could smell the gunpowder in Delagoa Bay. A few days far and impossibly far.
I listen and look at my son, emaciated after the journey. I look at my bare paws and the little heap of cloth lying before us in the red sand. We’ll perish here. Our clothes will wear through until we walk about naked like the Caffres, and when the last gunpowder has been shot out, we’ll be hunted like the beasts of the veldt, just another little straggle of pale Bushmen who beg and steal until we starve or get mown down or get sold to a Christian farmer. Arend gets up and shakes the sand from his breeches and says he’s going to bathe. As he walks away he takes off his shirt and Burger’s old lashes still criss-cross his back like faded writing. I get up.
Let him be, Father, says Coenraad Wilhelm.
I catch Arend up from behind and grab him by the neck and throw him to the ground. He is up immediately and fells me with a blow. One of my Hottentots appears from nowhere and pushes his musket into the runaway slave’s mouth. I struggle to my feet and spit out a tooth. A few of my Bastaards and Hottentots come running and I say Tie him to that pole. Arend utters no word, doesn’t protest. I lash his back to pieces, old scars gash open again. I lambast him for a rotten slave and robber and ask him where he’s hiding my Portuguese gunpowder. I carry on whipping until the whip feels like lead and then I start whipping with my left hand until everything in me cramps. Arend is quiet and when I look around Coenraad Wilhelm is gone. I tell my men to untie him and walk off.
Late that afternoon Arend comes to find me. He says his belongings are packed. He’s leaving now. I ask him where to. He says his cattle and ivory are waiting for him at Thabeng. I needn’t worry, by the time I get back home, he’ll have left, back to the Hart. His composure is terrifying. His shirt is weighed down where the blood seeps through on his back, but he’s walking up straight.
Back to the Hart? The commandos will get you. Have you taken leave of your senses quite apart from your goddam ears?
Those Christian bastards are after the price on your head, Boer, I’m just another disfigured runaway slave, says the Caffre as he walks off: We all look the same.
Arend is gone and him, too, I’ll never see again. Find him in your pages and you’ll read how he went and settled himself next to the Hart with his ivory and his cattle, how Campbell summoned him in 1820 to be his guide again, this time in fact to Karechuenya. How he fled before the Mantatees and afterwards pursued that lot again along with the missionary Moffat. In 1823 he was present at the great battle of Dithakong. Then he robbed the missionaries of Kuruman of their tobacco and vegetables. In 1828 he and his three children moved there. Arend looted and raged along with me against the Colony, but yet wanted to be accepted by the Cape civilisation. He used to say that he was thinking of his children. His offspring I never laid eyes on. Did he hide them from his fellow reavers? He said his children shouldn’t grow up in the wilderness and get lost as he did. That, and, in spite of the robbing and boozing, he never turned his back on his Lord. After all, you keep your eye on someone who carries lightning bolts in his hand, he said once. His soul was always the Lord’s, but his body still belonged to that scoundrel Burger. Through the mediation of the traveller George Thompson, Arend could manumit himself for a thousand five hundred rix-dollars. Arend built Moffat a house and church at Kuruman. He’d always wanted to be a builder, and single-handed church-building makes up for a whole lot of guilt. He and his children were baptised on 1 May 1829. On that day he was confirmed as Moffat’s first convert, and henceforth he would be known not as Arend, but Aaron Joseph. In 1849 he delivers a parcel from Moffat to Doctor focking Livingstone-I-presume at Kolobeng. He told his children how he and Livingstone had debated, discussed the right kind of thatch and the sturdiest rafters. That the man had no clue what he was talking about. Aaron was seen in 1850 in the interior and people apparently hunted with him along the Botletle River in 1851. And then he wanders away from under our reading eyes, might it have pleased his Lord, on a destined day to find rest, aged and contented, his children with him, in any place with mountains and vineyards and shade.
One afternoon two days after Arend’s departure I walk to the nearest stone wall and hammer my head against the stones until it’s bleeding profusely and then keep on hammering and they say I shouted but of that I don’t know anything.
4
Rumours of my death are plentiful and some nights I start believing them. Every night when I wake up to piss, my limbs cramp, my toe throbs. But the breath of life persists, albeit gasping.
That damned Sara, old Kemp’s favourite convert from our days with Ngqika, apparently nowadays goes around every mission station telling how I wandered among the tribes murdering and came to grief. And read for yourself: When Anderson heard another rumour, that I and my people had been murdered in the Zoutpansberg, he believed it with all that was left of his heart and soul, and wrote about it to everybody who might be interested.
If I’m not dead, I’m a chief. I wake up at Karechuenya, but the world says I’m dead. See, I’m sitting on my backside on the dusty assembly place of the Hurutshe sharing my beloved sweet potatoes. But the world says I’m living with the Bapedi of Blouberg where I’m pals with their chief Sekwati and they call me Kadisha and I rule as supreme chief with bow and arrow. Am I misremembering? Was I there for a while, on the track of dwindling elephant herds or the even more elusive Portuguese? Who knows; how can you keep track if even your name slips out from under you?
What the buggers do get right is that my gunpowder is running out fast and that I, yes I, Coenraad de Buys, descendant of the Huguenots, big-game hunter and revolutionary, of late, would you believe it, in an idle hour practise the tensing of a bow and the flight of an arrow. What they also get right is that my name drifts ever further from me, that the rumours of the death of what is called Buys are perhaps not so far-fetched. When last did anybody call me De Buys, when last Coenraad, and forget about Coen. Among the Pedi I am apparently Kadisha. Also here in Karechuenya Buys is a thing of the past; here, too, I have been dubbed a new name: Moro – my greeting to one and all when I brew my coffee in the morning. Morning I say; Moro they say. And go ahead, laugh when you read that moro later, after my actual departing of this life, becomes these people’s word for coffee beans. A greeting, an echo, a goddam dish of watery coffee.
One of the Hurutshe women is pregnant with yet another little Buys slip of the prick. I have to tread carefully around the toes of all the chiefs. When they request me and my guns, my horses and men, I do not refuse. Diutlwileng and his warriors lead us to the Tholwane River and Lotlhakane where the Malete live. Diutlwileng says they are a thorn in his flesh, this bunch of refractory tributaries. We shoot them and stab them and burn down their settlement. Some say the Malete were hereafter placed under Senosi’s forceful control and everything was in order again. Others say the Hurutshe couldn’t scatter them. I wouldn’t know. I saw people bleeding and huts burning. My gunpowder had run out. I left the place. I didn’t start this quarrel and didn’t see the end of it either. Merely went and shot out my last munitions on a bunch of strangers. All that I gained from the palaver was another name. Later I would pretend that I didn’t care a fig or a fart when I heard that the Malete called me Diphafa. A rich name, this one: it can apparently refer either to the feathers in my hat, or it can mean Great Vats of Beer. I imagine that the sound of a blow against a beer vat sounds like the crack of my rifle or my roaring when I chase up my men. Or, let’s be honest: perhaps the slim young warriors had laid eyes on my majestic beer belly.
In October, when spring is blooming and pollinating into summer, I miss my wives and trek back to Thabeng. Arriving there, I find that Maria and Nombini have moved in with Elizabeth. When I
come riding up, the three are sitting next to each other on the stoep, each with a pipe in the mouth. They blow rings and mutter and no one gets up when I unsaddle. After a week or three I can no longer endure being in that little house with the three witches. One at a time they are lovely, but together they turn into a three-headed dragon. I whisper into Elizabeth’s ear and the following morning she and I and her children are on a wagon and gone. We trek south and arrive at Matloangtloang, the kraal of Moletsane and his Bataung next to the Sand River. Moletsane is ill and summons me immediately. I give him one of Elizabeth’s cures. Thanks be to God he recovers; out of gratitude he tries to keep us there. I’m no physician and from that place, too, we move, some distance to the north and west to Lehurutshe, where we are safe and welcome with the Hurutshe. I don’t lay eyes on a single elephant. Without tusks there’s no gunpowder. In due course we trek back to Sefunelo and Maria and Nombini and the children, all the children, blessed as I damnwell am.
My house in Thabeng is solid and secure and Elizabeth keeps it clean and neat. The vegetable garden cultivated by the women of the Buys nation is lush and fertile. But here I can stay only because and while I have guns. Every gun is worth a hundred warriors, as I persuade every chieftain. But without gunpowder a gun is just a blunt stick.
My Caffres and my Bushmen manage with their assegais and arrows and knobkerries. But my sons and Bastaards and deserters and Hottentots want powder for their guns. The Buys nation is nothing in this country without shooting materials. Every morning my sons and I teach ourselves to shoot with a bow and arrow. We improve, but a blind Bushman is still a better shot than we. Sefunelo must notice that the air is clear of powder fumes these days; he looks the other way when I approach. I get the cattle-herds to count my cattle every night. I could get a wagon going to the frontier farmers to beg gunpowder, but every Christian is nowadays wary of being seen with me. And life here also goes on. There is guarding to be done. There is hunting to be done. There is eating to be done.
One of the Scottish deserters, an uncouth fellow with the name of Buchanan, is on guard duty with me one evening. We sit by the fire and peer into the bushes for hyenas or Heathens. The Scotsman’s nose grows in all directions, apparently broke it every weekend in the pubs of Edinburgh.
Fuckin cold out tonight.
We sit. He pours the last powder from his horn and loads his gun.
Shit. I’m out. Fuck. Ye have some powder to spare?
No, I say. Nothing left to spare. But some left to shoot.
I pass him my powder horn.
We should make our own bloody powder.
Something scurries in the undergrowth.
An shoot the shit out of this fuckin country. Make a pile, a fuckin mountain of powder. We just leave it here with a few flints and bugger off, an the fuckin savages can blow each other up. We come back an take what’s fuckin left. Shit.
He spits. I let go of the thong I’ve been whittling.
Buchuman, I ask, where find you the recipe for powder?
Five pounds nitre, one part charcoal. Two fuckin thirds of a part brimstone.
Brimstone? From the Bible?
From fuckin volcanoes.
No volcanoes in this land.
Hot springs too. Same fuckin thing. Wherever the fuckin earth tears an boils an retches.
And where come you on this wisdom?
Our captain was a cunt about the military science shit. Had to learn everything by bloody heart. Had to be able to build a fuckin cannon from scratch. In the field. An with field he meant the fuckin jungle.
You can powder make? I ask.
Buys, I can fuckin powder make. Much as yer bloody black heart craves.
When, at the dawning of the day, we start enquiring, Sefunelo’s people talk of the waters that steam and heal, less than a week away on horseback. I saddle up after lunch with my sons Piet and Dirk, the four Hartenaars who still have strong horses, Buchanan and his friend Lusk, the other Scottish deserter. We get going, as they indicate, north and east. We ride the horses for all they’re worth and don’t sleep. On the fifth day we see a cloud of steam rising up from the earth in a boiling morass covered with bulrushes. The mountains are beautiful here, big and blue and all over. We hack away the bulrushes and find the source. The veldt is teeming with animals. It’s as if the elephants know we’re running out of powder. They taunt us, bathe right in front of our noses. The Scotsmen scratch with their knives at every stone in sight and curse and don’t find any sulphur.
The Ndebele Caffres who live here speak a language I don’t altogether master. The one walking in front explains that the place’s name is something like Boiling-Boiling or The Pot that Boils. They invite us to their kraal for the night. They are friendly and share their beer, a beer such as I’ve never drunk. Before bedtime fists are flying. At first we fight with each other and the people laugh. Then Lusk ups and punches a Caffre in the face and everything grows quiet. The Caffre gets up and dusts himself and everything grows more quiet. He must be some captain or other, and pride now badly hurt. In our hurry we forgot to bring along an interpreter on this journey. The conversation that ensues is short and nonsensical and we clear out.
We wake up in the veldt with Kortman the Hartenaar shouting that the Caffres are upon us. The leading Caffres are on horseback. Our own horses are exhausted and won’t last long ahead of them. We race a mile or four and then I gesture my men up a steep kopje. The hill lies stretched out in the veldt like a dozing lion. We scramble up the hindquarters, between the shoulders and then a steeper incline, through the lush mane of bush up to the sturdy crown.
The Caffres on horseback congregate at the foot of the kopje and wait for the others to catch up. When the entire kraal’s men have surrounded the kopje, they start slowly crawling up. Buchanan says Fuck the fuckin savages and lets fly. Piet and Dirk also fire and somebody hits a Caffre and he staggers and falls over backwards and rolls and disappears. The Caffres retreat and remain sitting at the foot of the hill. When night descends on us, they light fires around the kopje, with our single fire on the peak. We sit and laugh about the mess. Even though we don’t have enough gunpowder to shoot them away, their immense respect for the wonder-thunder of our fire-shooters keeps them at bay. We laugh and we smoke and we go to bed. The next morning the Caffres are still sitting there. We wander around. A bit further down the ruins of a former city, the red stone walls flattened by the baboons. Iron furnaces. Earthenware shards. Buchanan kicks over the last unbroken grain bin. By afternoon we realise that our water is not going to last long. Evidently the Caffres know this already. On a barren hill so close to the sun it won’t be long before we perish of thirst. All they need do is wait for their parching revenge.
By the second day we are no longer laughing. The Caffres are going nowhere. We are not sure how many of them there are. Most of them are sheltering on the lee side of the hill. Between the nine of us there are five leather water bags, not one of them full.
I ration the water. The bags don’t move out of my sight. In the mornings, afternoons, evenings and at bedtime I distribute small drinks of water to man and horse. On day four we are still besieged. The Caffres are still quite comfortably settled. Now and again they snarl some snide piece of shit at us in their incomprehensible language. I instruct the men no longer to irrigate the bushes on the hill; henceforth everybody has to piss in the empty water bags. When the bags are full, every single one of us empties his bladder into bowls or any hollow object that we’ve carted along. No drop of piss is wasted.
On the seventh day we rest like our Father, too tired and dehydrated to stand up straight, sunburnt and worn out. The last drop of water was drunk a day ago and of rain there is no sign. Lusk takes a sip of piss and spits it out and wipes his tongue clean with the flat of his hand.
Dead at fuckin thirty, Buchanan grumbles. Ye must be fucking kiddin. Since the day I crawled out of my ma’s pestiferous cunt an killed the bitch I haven’t done nothing worth a long warm shit. Nothing.
I stand on a rock face. I look down on the larger part of the besiegers. As if all of creation combines for this single moment, the eighth day breaks all at once. Believe me, a single beam strikes the rock face – this exact rock face – and bathes me in fire. I fill my lungs with air and thunder a roar down upon them. When I have the attention of one and of all, I address them from there in a hotchpotch of Caffre languages. I hope they will understand a word here and there. I shout that I dispose over magic powers. They mock me. I pour a bag full of piss out in an arc in front of me down the depths. They are silent. I shout that I’m making water up here. I shower down another bag of piss. I bellow and bluster that, should they be of the opinion that we beleaguered are running out of water, they can spare themselves the trouble of guarding the hill. We have so much water that we could quench their thirst as well. I toss two more knapsacks down the slopes so that the piss splashes on the rocks down there like fountains, sparkling in the sun – as the people of that area will tell you to this day. The Caffres are silent. Then they run.
I hear you protest, reader: It was Gabriël who poured the last water or bags of piss down the hill. It was my children who were trapped there and it was their clever ploy. It was twenty years after my death. That is why Buyskop, Buys’ Hill, is called that today, not because of me, but the next generation of Buyses. But hear this: Listen to the talk of the people living there today next to the hot springs. Listen to who they say stood on that rock face that day. The hell with the history books. In local lore it was I, Coenraad, who stood there that day thundering at the Caffres, a smelly water sack in my cramping hand.