As meek as he was with you, so volatile was he with the labourers. He would berate them for the slightest infraction. You’d always chosen to overlook those things, the sugar and the coffee disappearing from the house, the dogs’ bones vanishing from the meat cooler outside, but Jak took up arms against them. He lay in wait for the kids who stole pumpkins from the roof of the shed at night, and shot at them with the air gun. You knew about it because their mothers brought them to you mewling with the pellets that had become infected in their buttocks. You had to remove them with needles burnt clean and provide ointment and plasters until the wound had cleared up. They never said what had happened, and some of them didn’t even know, because Jak of course didn’t let himself be seen. When you dug out the pellet with the mother holding down the screaming child on the kitchen table, you said, don’t look, and spirited away the evidence between your breasts.
One evening you put the pellets in Jak’s plate. There were five of them.
Jake, these are children, you said, they can take as many pumpkins as they like, it’s not as if you eat them. And you don’t plant them either and you don’t water them and you don’t stack them on the roof, they’re my pumpkins with which I earn a little extra at the market to pay the servants, I might as well just regard it as part of their wages.
He said nothing, put the pellets in his shirt pocket.
The children grow up here on the farm, you said, when they’re grown men they’ll remember it, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
The creatures just breed here, Jak said, I’ve a good mind to fire the whole lot, they can’t do as they like on my yard, they’re just loafing about and getting up to mischief.
You can’t do as you like on the yard either, you said. They’re human beings, remember, not cattle.
You stopped talking when the food was brought in. You put your finger on your lips to warn Jak not to talk further.
But he’d already said it.
You get the creatures accustomed to everything, Milla, he said, you’re the one who creates expectations, not me. Remember, give them the little finger and they’ll take the whole hand, don’t come and complain to me one day if they come to confront you with all kinds of demands. Mark my words, the Romans knew it long before us, give a hotnot a hard master and he’ll long for a soft master, give him a soft master and he’ll start dreaming of being his own master. Is that what you want? And then where do you think we’ll bloody well end up in this country?
It was the old pattern. The political justification of downright meanness.
Shooting at children as if they were baboons, you said, has nothing to do with politics, Jak.
And you teaching them the alphabet as if they were parrots? What does that have to do with? And then you think you can contain it afterwards? You may think you know all about farming, Milla, but you mustn’t come and tell me about politics.
What could you do? You couldn’t even stop him ranting for all the world to hear.
Let them hear who have ears to hear, Milla, he said when you tried to silence him, I won’t be shunted around in my own home. Not by a long shot.
That last while before Jakkie’s birth you couldn’t inform yourself at first hand, your legs were swollen and you no longer went out into the yard so often. But you knew in a matter of minutes if anything happened.
Who came to tell you about the fighting? That Jak first shoved Koos Makkelwyn because he gave him lip?
Initially it wasn’t clear to you what had happened. And you could get nothing from Jak himself. Bedraggled, his riding clothes full of dust and horse manure and his riding-helmet dented, he arrived at home in the middle of the afternoon to take a bath and then he left again in the bakkie without a word.
Makkelwyn was a sturdy, neat man in his fifties whom Jak had hired specially to look after his stable horses. He was a farrier and breaker-in of wild horses and in the mornings arrived, quite the dandy, on a dapple-grey ambler from The Glen, where he was stable-master. His people, the McCalvins, had since time immemorial been the farriers in the region.
You had Dawid called in when Jak had left. So then he brought along his father.
You can still see them standing there in the kitchen, the old man in his seventies, and his son, both with the Okkenel crooked mouths and light-green eyes, and with their oily khaki hats in their hands. In Dawid’s other hand the gleaming riding crop, incongruous against the dirty pants, the scuffed shoes.
What happened in the stable, Dawid? Spit it out!
You were irritated. Why had the old man come along? When OuKarel put in an appearance in the kitchen, you knew from childhood, then there was trouble. You were tired. You weren’t in a mood for trouble.
Dawid looked at his father.
Talk, the old man said to him, I’m here as your witness.
Dawid looked you straight in the eye. You didn’t like it.
Mister Makkelwyn ticked off the baas. He rubbed against the leg of his pants with the crop.
Over what?
Because the baas rides the horses through the piss and then Mister Makkelwyn has to struggle with foundered horses for days.
And then?
Then the baas shoved him in the chest and told him to shut his bloody trap.
And then?
Then Mister Makkelwyn said he wouldn’t shut his trap and he wouldn’t be sworn at and shoved around by a pipsqueak who had no respect for a noble animal.
Dawid shifted his weight.
Carry on, OuKarel said.
Then the baas whipped him across the face with the crop and then Mister Makkelwyn grabbed the tip of the crop and then the baas pulled Mister Makkelwyn down on the ground and wanted to kick him and then Mister Makkelwyn grabbed the baas by the leg and then he fell and by this time they’re both flat on the ground rolling in the straw and horse-shit and the baas can’t get the better of Mister Makkelwyn, because Mister Makkelwyn holds him down so that he can’t do a thing.
And then?
And then the baas shouts at me and says why am I just standing there can’t I see the bloody Spout-mongrel has him by the throat I must help I must take the hay fork.
The Aga’s door slammed and the fire leapt out of the plate-holes as the evening meal was being warmed.
Dawid looked away.
Nooi, he said, I’m sorry. .
For what, Dawid?
Again Dawid looked at his father.
The old man was to the point, but you could see he had something else on his mind, there was an expression on his face as if he was rehearsing to look pathetic.
My hip is sore, my boy, have your say and have done, Karel said, the people want to cook their evening food here.
You saw how OuKarel was looking at the saucepans as the lids were lifted and the food was stirred with the pot-spoons. Meat with dumplings and sweet potatoes and fennel bulbs with white sauce it was. The beetroot salad was being grated together with onion. There was a bacon and spinach soup. A lot of food for three people. The old man’s eyes were starting to water from it all.
And then, Dawid?
Then I said, Baas, the way I see it the hay-fork is meant for shovelling hay and I’m not being paid to do the baas’s dirty work, I’m the foreman, and all I did then was to close the stable door so that nobody could see further what was happening in there because then they were rolling this way and that way there and Mister Makkelwyn pinned the baas’s arms down so that he couldn’t use his fists.
Two new loaves were being turned out of the tins, a pound of butter was being taken out. The sounds in the kitchen were loud in your ears.
And then?
So then I stood there because then I wanted to see that Mister Makkelwyn came out of it okay. But I needn’t have worried because the baas was completely winded by then and then Mister Makkelwyn got up and dusted his arse and put out his hand to help the baas up and then the baas slapped away the hand and then Mister Makkelwyn said well then the baas would have to manage on his own with his fancy horses and the baas must please take the money he still owes him to his brother’s house in Suurbraak this very evening he’ll spare him the embarrassment of arriving at The Glen to apologise to the stable-master, and it will be so much and so much and if the baas doesn’t do it he’ll go and charge him with assault even if it’s just for a case number in the book and even if it’s just to warn the sergeant about what’s happening here on Grootmoedersdrift.