Very funny, clever boy. You saw me on your walkabout. Spying on the spy. Watching me watching you. Then you edged around the farm, coming from the backside, knowing I was here on the koppie and I could see you. So you know I am here and you think you can outwit me. Yes. But next time, when I appear, you won’t expect me. Next time you won’t see me coming. In Leeu Gamka I was hungry for revenge and couldn’t stop my rage. There I made mistakes. Now I will stalk you slowly, like you do the buck you love to eat. This time I will creep up close, with Jan’s sharp blade ready, and I will cut my prey’s throat when she least expects it. So long waiting and watching, my brother’s life on her whore-hands, my son raised like a rat.
When the farmer and his dogs have settled for the night I’ll short cut across the farm to the southern gate. Donkeys can’t run forever.
28 MUIS
The whistle of the sjambok on the donkeys’ backs is the song of the night. We run. On and on, until we see the opening through the mountains, and I pray this will be our escape. Miskiet will think we are too scared to go through the mountains. Meiringspoort is a tunnel to another world of big towns.
As the sky turns grey we walk into the Poort. The cliffs bend over us and block out the sky. We are in a twisting, turning tunnel now with rushing water under our feet. We could climb up its sides if we have to, but we won’t get very far.
De Rust is on the other side and then, Kapok says, it is a morning’s ride to Oudtshoorn. I have lived in the Great Karoo all my life but I have never been through Meiringspoort. You can see it, even from Leeu Gamka. When I first came to Leeu Gamka my eyes would follow the long black line of the Swartberg and then stop on the cut of God’s only way through the great mountains.
Kapok says the donkeys need to rest but, when we stop, it is already too late.
“Whoa, whoa,” his voice echoes from the tunnel’s walls and the animals slow their gallop. He steers the karretjie off the road, on to a stony riverbank with reeds a little way off.
“We can hide here,” he says. Then the karretjie falls forward as Pantoffel’s legs fold under her.
“Get up, you stupid donkey. Staan op!” I scream from my seat on the karretjie. “Do you want him to kill me?”
Sponsie sits with big eyes on the karretjie bench. Witpop and Fansie’s heads rise from the bak where they have been asleep.
Kapok jumps down and runs to Pantoffel, grabbing the harness on her head and trying to pull her back up, but she stays down.
“Nee, Pantoffel, op, op,” he shouts. “Kom! Op, op.” Fansie runs to help him and I see the boy bend to loosen the buckles keeping her in the karretjie.
Without the support of the harness and Rinnik, she lies flat on the riverbank, her sides heaving, her mouth and nose covered in foam, her hooves bleeding.
I am next to them now too, willing her up, but she stares at me, her empty animal eyes looking into mine. Then she closes them as if she is trying to shut me out.
“Please, Pantoffel, staan op,” I say. But she lies, panting like a sick dog.
Fansie leads Rinnik into the reeds. Her back is raw from the night of whipping.
“We have run them too hard,” Kapok says quietly. “Your fear has killed our donkeys.”
“Your stupid donkeys.” I lift my lip and spit the words at him. “Your stupid donkeys are useless.”
I walk away, into the reeds behind the children, looking for a place where I can sit in peace and not see Pantoffel. The fear and anger in me swell up and I vomit into the sand, my throat on fire.
A little cold hand rests on my neck and Witpop kneels next to me.
“The water is sweet, Mamma, wet your face. Drink.”
She leads me to a quiet place, out of sight of the road. I cup my hands in the water and take a few sips. I close my eyes and wet my face. Then without a word we both stand, our eyes searching for stokkies for a fire.
When I look up from the flames licking and chewing the wood, I see she and Fansie have the tin mug from the bag on the cart. They are pouring water over the cuts on Rinnik’s back. Pantoffel is still lying where she fell, panting, but her breaths are slowing.
“There is aloe here in Meiringspoort. We must rub that on the donkeys’ wounds,” Kapok says.
He is on his knees beside Pantoffel, rubbing her all over with handfuls of sand. Afterwards he washes her bleeding body with water and squeezes aloe on her cuts.
“I have killed my donkeys, I have killed my donkeys,” he mumbles.
I turn back to the fire where the coffee-pot boils.
Pantoffel has dropped by the road. Before the night is over we need to hide her and the karretjie. Kapok, Fansie and Witpop pull the karretjie into the water, pushing it up a far bank behind the reeds. It isn’t a good hiding place but it can’t be easily seen. Rinnik has lain down to sleep. Pantoffel hasn’t moved.
“If Miskiet comes, he will see her,” Kapok says. “We need to hide her away.”
We cover her with reeds, so if someone passes they won’t see it is a donkey, just a strange pile, like rubbish from the river.
If Miskiet finds us in Meiringspoort then, I know, it will be over. Here we can’t hide our spoor. But if we can get through to Oudtshoorn, we will be safe. We must get to Home Affairs and get our papers. Then he will be afraid to kill me.
Before the sun rises we eat crabs that Fansie caught and which I drop into boiling water. I kill the fire and we go into the reeds to sleep. We will wait out the day and, when night comes, lead Rinnik into De Rust and try and sell her. The karretjie and Pantoffel will have to stay hidden until we can get back to them.
For a while we sleep. Kapok keeping watch, then me and then Fansie.
In the afternoon Fansie wakes us. “Look,” he says.
Pantoffel has shrugged off her blanket of reeds and is up, making her way to us and Rinnik. She limps, but Kapok and Fansie meet her and lead her to the water where she walks in to drink.
We are rested and ready to move by dark. We hitch the donkeys again and I walk with the children, leading them out of the Poort. There has been no sign of Miskiet and although no one had spoken of him during the day, we know he is off our trail. We are going to Oudtshoorn now and it will be easier to hide where there are more people.
Jan’s face is in my mind now. His eyes that looked into mine and then at Miskiet before he fell into the dust with his brother’s knife in his guts.
When I look at myself, my hard hands, torn and dirty clothes and starved stick legs, I can’t understand Miskiet. Why does he want a useless, invisible woman? There are lots of fat and healthy town girls who will lie with him. Maybe he can’t stand to think that I saw what he did. That every day it is in my head, same as it is in his. Maybe he wants to stop me from seeing. Or maybe all he wants is to teach me a lesson for not wanting him. He just wants to see me die.
29 WITPOP
This thing was lying in the road when we stopped, when Pantoffel fell, shining, even though the sun wasn’t properly up. So I picked it up and let it slip in my sleeve before the others could see. I know it’s a piece of mirror from a car and, if Fansie sees it, he will take it away from me and keep it. But it’s mine. I found it so it’s mine. Lucky for me he is helping Pappie try to make Pantoffel stand up. For once his jackal eyes aren’t on me and he didn’t jump on me when he saw me bend down and pick up my thing in the road. Its cold, sharp edge rubs my skin when we push the karretjie through the water and up the other bank. When I take Sponsie from Mamma I hold her with my other arm, careful, so it doesn’t cut her. We look for stokkies, we pour water on Rinnik’s cuts, we rub Pantoffel’s legs, we drink coffee, we sit by the fire and my thing stays in my sleeve.
At last they sleep and Fansie climbs the bank on the other side of the road. I stand and watch him. He climbs higher and higher to a boesman cave. When he reaches the cave he disappears inside. I turn and walk along the river then slip behind reeds that hide me from the road. On the bank I sit flat and let the glass slip down my sleeve and on to the sand. Th
ey have mirrors in the toilets at the petrol station in Prince Albert. I looked in one there before the petrol-jokkie chased me outside again.
“Out, get out, we don’t want you shitting all over our clean toilets.”
Really, I wasn’t going to mess – I just wanted to see my face. Now I have my own mirror and I hold it up to my eyes. It’s only a small piece so I can’t see my whole face. One black eye. Nose. Mouth full of sores. I look at them closely – some are bleeding with yellow crusts. If I hold my arms out straight then I can see my hair standing straight up. I bring it down and look at my feet, my toes touch the thing and I wiggle them. For a long time I look at my face again, blinking my eyes and feeling the hairs of my eyebrows.
“I am Witpop.”
“This is Witpop.” I see my lips make the words.
This is Witpop who is going to Oudtshoorn with her mamma and pappie and Fansie and Sponsie for identities. When we have identities we can get pay. Maybe then I should wait with the school shoes and rather get Vaseline for the sores on my mouth.
I lie down on the sandbank and let my hand play in the water.
The oom is chasing us because he is angry with Mamma about something that happened long ago.
We have to run to Oudtshoorn for identities or else he might catch us first. Mamma says that without identities we can be killed and nobody would look for us or miss us. Really, s’true. We have to exist for them to look for us and with no identities we don’t exist.
We are running to Oudtshoorn and I am a stinking karretjiemeid. I stand up and pull my jersey and shirt over my head and throw them in the water, then I scrub them with sand. When I have them as clean as I can get them I lay them on a rock in the sun and start with my pants. I don’t have underpants so it’s just my long pants. Everything must go in the sun. At last I walk into the water. It’s so cold the air comes out of me with a noise even though I am trying to be quiet. At the deepest part the water comes to the top of my legs so I go down and let it cover my shoulders. It’s cold and I suck deep for air. I can see crabs playing wegkruipertjie under the rocks. There is a little red bird sitting on the reeds watching me. For a few moments I stay like that, then I go under. The cold is making my head sore. Under again and I pick up lumps of sand and start working it over my body. First my head and neck. Then more sand for under my arms. I rub my whole body, even my privates, with sand. It’s not too bad and I become a fish. My skin is singing and I feel happy.
When I walk out I pretend I am a snake and I lie on the rock next to my clothes and let myself dry. It’s so cold my teeth rattle in my mouth. My clothes are wet when I put them on again but I am clean all over. When we get to Oudtshoorn the children can tell me I am a karretjiemeid but I will not be a stinking one. I wrap my special thing in an old chip packet that I find near the road and put it in the wet pocket of my pants.
When I get back to the uitspan I see Pantoffel is standing up.
Fansie is back and he looks at me but says nothing. Pappie is so happy and Mamma is smiling. They don’t notice I am wet and they don’t notice I don’t stink anymore.
30 KAPOK
What I want is a gun. It must be a small black gun, not one of those big long brown shotguns like the Boere use to kill rooikat. This gun must be easy to hide and it must have bullets inside. Ja, if I can get a gun I will feel much better. A knife is useful, but a person has to be very close for it to be any good. With a gun I can sit on the koppie and shoot. A gun will make us feel very safe.
For sure what I need is this small black gun. When we turn down a quiet road, when we sit around the fire, the shadow of this monster is there. Now each of us has an afraid look in our eyes as we wait for him to come. I know he is stalking us and we jump like bokkies at every rustle in the grass. Yes, I must get a gun because he won’t expect me to have a gun.
Muis knew it would be like this even after all these years. “Anywhere, but not Leeu Gamka,” she said. “It is a place with ghosts.”
No Muis, not ghosts, it was the blerrie devil who waited for you. I didn’t understand your fear. It was really the blerrie devil that kept you away all the time.
If I had a gun I could surprise him when he comes. I could take aim and pull the trigger and watch him fall, the same way a rooikat drops when a Boer shoots it with his big brown gun. Then I would leave him for the baboons and the jackals. Many years later someone might find a rib or his skull but by then it would be too late. No one would say, “But those karretjie people were in Meiringspoort that day, we must find them and ask them about this skull.” We will move on, in our way, because we are invisible. No one would know it was Kapok with the donkey karretjie who pulled the trigger of a small black gun and killed the devil.
Miskiet wants to kill and that means when he comes no one will know he is here. We are running deeper into the crack in the mountains to hide from him. I didn’t know which way to go. This way to Willowmore, that way to Prince Albert … so I went straight. To blerrie Oudtshoorn. That is where she wants to go and, for once in her life, she is not moaning.
Now high mountains bend over, almost touching heads, as they watch us. This is not a good place to get caught. Only front or back. The sky has become small and the veld is gone. Our sky has always been big, our mountains, these mountains, were far away. Every road we went down, every turn, we knew where we were because the mountains showed us the way. Now, we are inside them and we are lost. I have heard that on the other side is De Rust and then Oudtshoorn. Places I have never been. Places my grandfather and then my father talked about by the fire of our uitspan. All my life I have heard of these places but I have never seen them.
It is in De Rust where I must get a gun. There will always be someone in the lokasie who wants to buy two donkeys and a karretjie and there will always be someone who will want to sell a gun.
That is what I will do.
Fear has stolen Muis away. She does not talk but holds Sponsie close to her, as if that will protect them both from the monster who is chasing us. This life, this living in langkampe between fences at the side of roads, is not for a little child. You know, we buried one, not long ago, before Sponsie was born. Now when I see the hunger on Sponsie’s face my fear of Miskiet becomes small, it is Starvation that makes me afraid. I don’t want to bury a child again. When a child is hungry, longtime hungry, its crying is not the angry screaming of a little one demanding to be fed. It is a strange cry, “hhaa hhaa”, on and on for days. Then one day it just stops and that is when you can know it has given up. Then it looks at you with eyes that know Mamma and Pappie cannot make the pain go away. The little one who died, died from a fever, but in my heart I know it was Starvation that took her. When I laid her in the grave that the boy dug, her body was so light, just a few bones covered in rags.
When I found work and Muis started eating properly again it was kaboom! A blerrie baby coming again.
She didn’t want Sponsie.
“How am I going to feed this child when you want to move up and down the langkampe?” she shouted at me.
But what do you do when you get these tiny girl bundles? Mine are always girls. Witpop, Meitjie and Sponsie. There have been no boys.
Fansie is my child because I took him for my own. He is my watchdog, creeping around our camp, sniffing the air, looking for signs of something wrong. He is very good at tracking and I don’t think Miskiet will get close to us very easily with him here. Fansie will sniff his soap on the night air the moment he is near. The boy is strong, watching out for his old father with his bad leg, and his mother who is losing her mind, and two useless sisters. What will he do when Miskiet comes? He is tall and his chest is getting wider as he grows into a man, but he is so thin he could never fight a man who has eaten bread and meat every day for many years. It’s just the look in his black eyes that makes me feel safe. That klonkie has the eyes of a clever young jackal. Jan’s child.
Stupid little Witpop, gaaning aan about lappies and school shoes and pink roll-on. She lives in her world
but now she is the only one there. Once she made us laugh with her dream of clothes and shiny shoes but those days are forgotten and now she rubs her hands and walks with her eyes down. I look at her and see a tiny child whose body is trying to become a woman but there is not enough flesh on her body for her to grow. Sores are klomped around her mouth and her knees stick out of her torn blue pants. When I look at her I know I must sell the karretjie and get a farm job where a farmer’s wife can give her clothes and teach her letters and numbers.
But now, we are the sport of the blerrie devil.
Tonight we will carry on to De Rust and I will get a gun. When he comes I will shoot him. I will be ready.
The good news is that Pantoffel is up. Only Sponsie will ride so we can spare the donkeys. Muis has rubbed more aloe on the donkeys’ cuts. With them looking so bad we won’t get much. I am skaam for the whip marks on their backs. I am going to sell my donkeys. Yes, yes I must. The langkampe have so little for them to eat.
I am tired of donkeys. I am tired of their worms and their feet and their sores and their hunger. I am tired of the sjambok and of them falling down. Tomorrow, when they are sold, we can walk to blerrie Oudtshoorn and find that place that will give us identities.
31 FANSIE
This gun is small and heavy. They let me hold it in my hands and I turn it over and over, feeling its smooth cold surface. My fingers touch the tip and I wonder how many bullets have come screaming out of its little mouth. I hand it back to the shack-man and he takes it like someone who knows about guns, spinning it on a finger before wrapping it in a dirty white lappie and tucking it in his broek. The hok where we are sitting, the shack-man on a stool, Pappie on a red crate and me on a paint tin, is dark and smoky and my eyes are itching. I want Pappie to be finished with this gun buying so we can go outside.
My Children Have Faces Page 9