Red Dog

by Willem Anker

  Maria cries when she hears the news. That night I lie up close to my wife. We tell each other stories about Bettie. We make sure that we remember each anecdote in the same way, so that our child can become a proper story.

  A day or so later Bettie and Jan’s wagon is loaded. Why do I think of that pestilential schoolmaster when I see the two children riding off? I wonder if Jan and my Bettie will find the peace they long for in the Colony. I wonder how that goddam master achieved his calm, how his equanimity can make him so strong. Strong enough to shut the door in the countenance of Coenraad de Buys. Have never come across the prick again, but I’m sure you’ll never find Markus Whatsisname chopping up an elephant all a-blubber. To the devil with him. Be damned and be gone, all schoolmasters! There goes my daughter, riding away from me for ever, back to the country of stoeps and old men. I kick the nearest stone and curse my toe that shoots a pain all the way to just this side of my damned knee.

  I’m on my way from the cattle when I hear Michiel shouting by the stream. The boys are playing at clay-stick. Two armies on opposite banks, smeared with the same clay clustered in lumps at the end of their sticks. My son jumps yelling from behind a bush and hits Segotshane – one of Makaba’s little bullocks – square in the chest.

  Buys, your clay is full of stones! the Caffre prince shouts in his language.

  Get gone, dog-dick! Michiel fires back in Dutch.

  He and Segotshane are nowadays off in the veldt all day and get back to the kraal in the evening with sly smiles and skinned knees and keel over on the nearest kaross. He presses a handful of stones into the ball of clay, and with a resounding Begone, you utter goddam villain! his willow cane shoots the clay bullet with enough force to draw Segotshane’s noble blood. The other little Caffres gather in no time. Stones and clay and spit spatter and scatter all over. I grab Michiel by the scruff of his neck and drag him to one side.

  You mother is going to wash that gob of yours with soap tonight.

  Yes, Father.

  What is your battle plan?

  Father?

  How are you going to bugger up the other side? I ask.

  We just pelt each other, Father.

  No, dammit, man. Come, get those blackies together so that I can tell you about battle tactics.

  Father?

  The science of strategy.

  Yes, Father.

  The little chaps stand listening, heads bent. They scrabble their sticks in the sand. I hear the mumbling. Michiel blushes, pretends the nearest tuft of grass is demanding his total attention. I instruct the children in strategy.

  You have to charge out from those and those bushes, I say. Do you see that bit of sandy soil where the stream is shallow? If you can occupy that terrain, you have a crossing to the other side, you can surround the attackers, trap them against their own screens.

  The little bantams stand counting their toes. The gang on the other side yell and jeer at us. One of the cheeky snot-nosed Heathens shouts something about my paunch. I grab Michiel’s stick from his hand, press a piece of clay around the point, and switch the little mocking monkey between the eyes.

  The meeting scatters, the war now once again at full pitch. My men find the crossing I told them about, but so do the enemy. The lines clash and mingle and soon it’s a free-for-all. Ten-year-old fists fly and the sticks are now just sticks. If there is any throwing, it’s with stones. My toe is playing up again today; the hands are also not that wonderful at aiming the stick. I alone have to play by the rules. I can damnwell not pummel and pepper the children as they’re doing to each other. To them I’m just as much a part of the battle and perhaps the only adversary – the white man, the fat man, the old man. I trip, the damp clay sags under me.

  The first one is on top of me and then the next. I’m lying under a heap of wriggling and squealing boy children who fell me like an exhausted elephant. They scramble over me, tug at my hair and beard and then tackle each other. My Midge is in between somewhere, now and again I spot a familiar arm or a pair of green eyes. My last linen shirt tears. Somewhere under the children I stop wriggling. I lie back in the river clay, close my eyes. Never have I heard Midge laugh like that. Never ever have I played like that with my own brood. It’s not too unpleasant.

  Makaba says Stockenström and Campbell are poking about, sniffing the air for any smelly rumours about him blowing about. I am paramount chief here, he says and spreads his arms and sticks out his belly: They are welcome to pay me obeisance, but they dare not send me messages as to how I should lead my people. We dispatch two messengers, one of his men and one of mine. They tell Campbell Makaba invited me to stay with him in exchange for two or three herds of cattle, but when I turned up here, he gave me only thirty head of cattle. So I was supposedly highly upset and did not want to accept the measly number of cows. Makaba sends me two oxen to slaughter. According to the customs of the Ngwaketse these sacrificial animals say that I am his prisoner. Every time I want to escape from his trap, two more slaughter oxen arrive, saying Not so fast. Campbell swallows the story like Stellenbosch sweetmeats. So that when the messengers invite him cordially to visit Makaba, he stays well away, scared that he also will be detained here against his divinely established will.

  Behold, I neither slumber nor sleep. There are noises in the night. If I as much as put my nose out of the tent, I always and everywhere carry at least three guns with me. I have taught Elizabeth to load them. If the attack comes, I need only fire while she reloads. For what it’s worth: This anxiety and sleeplessness story is all true and real and I make sure that the men convey it as it is to Campbell. Instead of the message conjuring me up in his mind’s eye as an unpredictable and terrifying bogeyman, it moves the bloody dodderer to pity me. Apparently he enquires with great concern about the extent of my fear and misery. When they tell me this, I feel as if every vein in my body is going to explode. I am not miserable! I want to shout at the shit-slobbering minister across the vastness. I am not afeard: I am able-bodied!

  Apparently Stockenström also spoke of wanting to set eyes on me. There was even talk of a pardon if I could provide him with useful information regarding the interior. A pardon for a road map, provided that recent malfeasances have not proved me unworthy of his mercy. Begone, viperous wretch! The bugger never got hold of me. So sorry to disappoint him.

  I’m living quite comfortably with Makaba. With all our looting I’m building up a respectable herd again, but my army is dwindling. The pox-afflicted cowards desert me, at first one by one, then in droves. I’m under the thumb of Makaba with little more power than one of his captains. My men want to get rich. They want to trade ivory with lazy frontier farmers, not blast away their precious gunpowder for a Caffre chief’s empire. Anyway. You take what you can, while you can.

  See: This is October 1820 and I’m on the back of my last horse, a large stallion of burnished copper. Along with Diutlwileng’s Hurutshe my people and I rustle the cattle of the Ngwaketse and I shoot out my most precious gunpowder on the cattle-herds and warriors of my recent ally, my comrade, the dreaded Makaba.

  Another friend betrayed, another wagon laden and away we go, back to Lehurutshe, and here I want to stay. We lay out farmlands, we extract water, we sow what there is to sow. The horses have all died by now.

  One morning, hardly a month after we’ve finished sowing, two of my dogs lie impaled in my kraal. The Hurutshe Caffres who greet me amiably during the day steal my cattle the moment the sun sets. The dogs fend off the thieves with their lives night after night. Soon I’ve had enough of this. One fine night I have the dogs tied up. Doors and Doris are on guard in the kraal. I give them one of my last powder horns. Doors is ten and Doris has just turned seven. It’s not long before they spot some bodies in the bushes. Two Caffres climb into the kraal. Doors knows pretty well by now how to wield a gun and he rounds up the two chancers. The others disappear into the night. We unleash the dogs and they charge after the others. I push one of the Caffres up against the branches of the kraal. I
ask why they want to take my cattle. He says the command comes from the captain. He’s heard that I want to trek to the Bakwena. I curse the Caffre onto his knees and Doris is at hand promptly to keep him there. Doors keeps the other one quiet with a gun to his head.

  Doris, today is your day, my son, I say.

  Father.

  Shoot the bastard.

  I keep my gun trained on the kneeling Caffre while my son gets the better of his shakes. Doris rests his gun securely against the Caffre’s forehead.

  Shoot, child, don’t think.

  Father.

  The Caffre is crying and Doris is crying and Doors also starts sobbing and I ask the Caffre if he’s telling the truth and he says yes.

  Shoot, I say.

  Doris gapes at me open-mouthed; I shove him.

  Goddam, child, have you no ears?

  The gun kicks in my son’s hands and the top of the Caffre’s head splatters against the kraal wall. Doris’ face is spattered with blood. I chase the other Caffre back to the captain with the message:

  On this day I’m trekking, you god-cursed villain. If you’re planning to do anything to me, you’d better come now.

  We haven’t yet done inspanning, when we see them seething down the hills like ants. We fasten the last yokes securely while the Caffres surround us. The oxen mill around between the wagons and the Buys clan. There’s no space to move or think. The Caffres move in upon us, the noose starts tightening. I ask through my interpreter what they want. They remain silent and come closer. I ask them who they think bears the guilt for the blood that flowed last night. They remain silent. The interpreter, a nervous creature with a big mouth and little limp arms, flings his assegai into the ruck. He hasn’t properly recovered his footing after the throw when he has a Hurutshe assegai in his shoulder. I drag him into the wagon and pluck out the thing and tell the daughters to minister to him with Elizabeth’s concoctions. I take up all three of my guns and climb out of the wagon and walk in among them and start firing and around me I think I hear other shots ringing out and when I come to my senses, ten Caffres are lying dead and the others are in full flight and I chuck away the empty powder horn and we finish the inspanning and I crack the whip.

  The following evening we arrive at Kolobeng and the Bakwena of paramount chief Motswasele. Only some ten Hartenaar Bastaards and runaway slaves are still trekking with me. The rest of the company is connected to me by bonds of bastardised Buys blood.

  The kraal is just about deserted. An old man says the people are out trapping game. My sons and I walk into the veldt to introduce ourselves. Just outside the kraal we find the Caffres walking in a huge circle as far as the eye can see. The Caffres furthest from the kraal come closer and closer. The animals tire themselves out running hither and thither. Even the women and children walk up to the exhausted animals and beat them to death.

  A few days after we encamped at Kolobeng, Vyfdraai peeks into my wagon tent. I ask him where he’s come from, how he knew to find us here. He says he’s going to unroll his sleeping mat under the wagon if it pleases me. With him you don’t ask questions.

  We eat the Bakwena’s melon and millet. My red dogs laugh like hyenas in the night. One or two come to scavenge food when the camp is dozing in the afternoon. We sleep behind the six-foot stone walls of the Bakwena. I remember stories that these stone workers are the descendants of the people who built the palaces of Solomon’s concubine, the Queen of Sheba. The queen of Africa who spread her legs for the king of Israel; the wise king who carted off her treasures in royal caravans so that his buttocks could recline on ivory and his lips could sip the table wine from golden goblets. Of gold and ivory and Biblical riches not much remains, but their melons are sweet as honey. And they don’t mess with my goddam cattle.

  Today, I tell my people, we’re hunting for a new pair of breeches for me.

  Last week I was watching a clump of grass quivering by my feet and then being sucked into the ground. Vyfdraai is in attendance, ancient and sturdy as a baobab. He says it’s a mole rat. I say I don’t know such creatures. He jabs his assegai into the ground, a foot or so from where the grass disappeared into the earth. He digs around the planted assegai until he’s opened up the tunnel. I come closer. The tunnel is not deep, four or five inches, but wide, more than twenty-five inches in diameter, if I had to guess. Vyfdraai says he has seen tunnels more than half a mile long. At the tip of the assegai sprawls the thing. More rat than mole, if you were to ask me. Almost eight inches long, short sturdy legs, a tiny tail of not more than an inch. Vyfdraai yanks the mole rat off the blade and places it in my palm. About ten ounces. The fur is thick and short and soft. Almost as black as the tunnel. On the back of the head is a snow-white spot, hence the Dutch name of bles mol, bald mole, I guess. A repulsive little monster, but its fur is softer than any hide I’ve ever handled. As with other moles, this rattish beast has no ears. Little blue eyes peer unseeing from under heavy eyelids. Vyfdraai sticks his finger into the mouth and shows me the big incisors with which the mole rat tunnels. Behind the teeth are flaps of flesh like lips. My informant tells me it’s so that the soil shouldn’t spill down its gullet when it’s tunnelling.

  That night I lie awake dreaming up a pair of breeches of soft black fur with white spots. I can feel in advance how it drapes my legs, how gently the saddle bumps my furred backside. When I get Vyfdraai on his own again, I ask him how one could get hold of a whole lot of the mole rats. He says they live in colonies, he says easily forty to a nest. He says the nest isn’t just there for the taking, it’s eight feet underground. You have to catch them when they’re active, when they’re tunnelling after the rains.

  When I saw the thunderstorm starting to gather this morning, I knew my breeches were lying in wait for me buried deep, there where the grass disappears into the earth.

  Today, I tell my people, we’re hunting for a new pair of breeches for me.

  The rain sets in, great drops thud on the sand like fists. Every man and his mate find a stick or spade or axe handle or any blunt object that can hit hard, and follow me to the moles. I spread a tarpaulin in the rain and make a fire under it for the firebrands later. See, we’re a bunch of twenty or so armed men and women standing and staring at the ground.

  The tunnelling starts. Molehills spring up, grasses and flowers sink away. There’s no end to the rain. I curse, but Vyfdraai says it’s a good thing, these rains. He burrows open a molehill. The waters of the heavens quickly flood the tunnels, the deluge drives the first mole rat to the surface. Vyfdraai clobbers it with his knobkerrie. We follow his example. Dig open the heaps, let in the flood, wallop a fleeing mole or two. Vyfdraai tosses the mole rat at my feet.

  We must find the queen, he says.

  Queen?

  Vyfdraai says in the depths of the mole rat nest there are only one male and one female who mate, the others are celibate workers. If the queen falls, then the whole colony scatters.

  What is a home without a mother? I ask.

  He says when the whole lot disperse like that over the open ground, then every eagle and jackal in existence appears, and most of the little beasts are devoured. As soon as the queen cops it, they’re all buggered. It’s not for nothing they live underground. Above ground the creatures have never had a chance. I think of my jackal’s lair in Shit-skull Senekal’s yard. I smell once more the snugness, being cherished in the belly of the earth.

  Vyfdraai and I kick open mole hills, jab sticks into the ground to find the tunnels and follow the tunnels to where they converge in one spot. I hand out firebrands and on all sides my people start smoking out and finishing off the vermin. We dig down to the shallowest tunnel and ram in the firebrands. I daydream about the smoke surging through the tunnels, ever deeper, into the store rooms, over the little ones lying asleep, all the way into the throne room. The mole rats swarm out, hordes of the creatures.

  There’s the bitch! Vyfdraai shouts.

  He scurries after a little fat one, clearly pregnant and clumsier th
an her slaves. Never thought such an old goat could still streak. He slips in the mud, gets hold of her and flattens her with his knobkerrie. It’s a massacre. Around me the yells and blows as we all exuberantly squash the forty or fifty, the goddam army, of mole rats.

  With our bloodthirst quenched, we start gathering and skinning the moles. The skins are thrown on one heap, the carcases on another – a heap of crumpled fingers of giants, with teeth. When the sun starts setting, we make a mole rat casserole. The meat is fairly edible. You have to cook it for a long time and add some of Elizabeth’s leaves.

  My wives and daughters bray the skins and prepare them, and it’s not a week or see, my new mole-rat-skin breeches. I put them on and strut around in them and wait for their reactions. Nombini and Elizabeth don’t say much. Toktokkie and Aletta think it’s lovely. Maria laughs herself off her feet and has to sit down.

  My good Lord, Buys. You’re getting to be more of a clown by the day. Look at your tomato nose and the spotted breeches. Ai, my husband.

  She gets up and hugs me and kisses my cheek and walks off grinning. I stand a polished dish against a wagon wheel and inspect myself from my belt down to my feet. To the devil with you all.

  Here I stay and from morning to evening my sons and I practise until we’ve mastered the bow and arrow. I cut arrows until I have two quivers full, grease a few bowstrings well with fat. My moleskin breeches are already balding on my backside from all the sitting around, but they still keep the contents inside and warm. The rest of my wardrobe is karosses and thongs and raw hides. Buys, the Esau of Africa, attired in the skins of many creatures.

  My hands cramp me awake. I tie up a few karosses in a bundle, take two bows, the two quivers of arrows, the extra strings and tie the whole lot to a pack ox. I hug Maria and Elizabeth and a few of my children and kiss one or two here and there. Elizabeth gives me a tied-up parcel with biltong and herbs for the rheumatism. Maria sighs and mumbles something and Nombini is nowhere to be seen.