They stand around me. Mealtime before the wagon. Baba touches my face.
Why did Father’s face droop like that? Is his face going to drop off, Aunt Maria?
Let be, child, says Maria. Come on, stop it.
Baba wipes the snot off his lip, sits down to one side.
Can you feel if I touch here? Maria asks. Lift up your arms, Buys.
I lift them above my head. I keep them there. The left arm floats down, even though it feels as if I’m keeping it up. Maria makes me sit up. A big plate of food in front of me.
Come, eat, you’re sick with sadness.
I’m hungry; the food drops into my lap. The left hand doesn’t want to function.
What are you saying? Speak properly.
She feeds me. Swallow, dammit, swallow. Around me the chattering of children. My understanding slips in and out.
Shh, now. Chew. There you go. Swallow.
She wipes my mouth. She pulls the bespattered kaross over my head. The left arm gets stuck in the hide. She jerks. It tears. She cries. She’s gone. The children prattle. She’s back, plonks down a mirror in front of me.
There, see. See what you look like now.
A face lies before me on the table. Dirty beard. Red and grey. The skin red and peeling. The left side sags down, the mouth gapes open to the left. The left eye half shut, the eye looks the other way. I smile. The mirror smiles on the right side, on the left everything droops undisturbed, a string of drool hovers in the beard.
They don’t leave me in peace. If I get up, there’s a child or a thing under my slack-side armpit to support me. Windvogel the younger gives me a baobab crutch. Beautifully carved and oiled, but goddammit! Are you wishing me dead now, bugger, I berate him. He understands not a word I say and hugs me and says it’s a pleasure. God damned in every blessed heaven! At mealtimes it’s a great entertainment for everybody to feed me. At night Maria lies curled up under my armpit – such a thing hasn’t happened in years and years. She snores. I sit more than I lie. The swallowing doesn’t work when I’m lying flat.
They wash me, even though I’m not dirty; they cart me around, even though I’m perfectly at home where I am. If I object, they pretend not to understand. If I hit out at them, they think I’m having a fit. Then the bunch of them really pity me.
Wake up one morning with the wagon shaking under me. I struggle upright and peer out of the tent flap. Maria is sitting on the wagon chest cursing the oxen on their way. She stops the wagon when she sees I’m trying to shift in beside her. When she’s satisfied that I’m securely settled, she cracks the whip again. A fly settles on my cheek. The wagon stops on a rise. You can see far in every direction. With the help of Jan, the wagon leader, she gets me off the wagon and sits me down on a flat rock.
I’ve been mucking along behind you for a lifetime, Buys. And you just can’t sit still and stay there. I get old and grey and all that I could hope for all these years was to sit with you. To sit and look at the world.
She settles herself next to me.
Now you will sit on your arse. So keep your trap shut for a change, then we look to see the end of the bloody road.
No end, I say.
What?
I practise the word with my tongue before I speak. I speak slowly, take my time with every sound until it’s lined up right to climb onto the breath from my lungs.
No end. Never ends. Always another.
Lordgod, Buys.
She slaps my shoulder. We sit peering into the distance: trees, bushes, anthills. The yellow grass.
You’d better not leave me with the children of your lost Caffre women. I’ve walked after you too far. So don’t go and commit some godimbecile stupidity now.
I say something. When it’s emerged from my lips, it’s incomprehensible to both of us.
We sit for a long time, now and again she starts saying something, then has second thoughts. Eventually:
But if you… Oh, Lord, when you decide you want to go and muck in somewhere again, for sweetheavensake just take this along.
A leather pouch has found its way into my lap. It looks vaguely familiar. I fiddle with the thong with my right hand, don’t manage to open it. She takes it from me and unlaces it. I peek into the pouch with my good eye. Kemp’s lead letters that I stole when he pushed off. Never had the heart to melt the stuff for munitions as I’d intended. Left it somewhere and forgot about it. For all these years she’s been keeping it.
And you’re going to need this as well, you old bandit.
From a fold of her dress she conjures up a powder horn, places it in my hand. It’s chock-full of gunpowder.
Thought I’d hide the last bit of powder until it became really necessary.
She is silent, then smiles:
Thought that way I’d at least be saving the lives of a few poor Caffres and elephants.
She starts laughing at herself, stops instantly and puts her hand on the horn that is still clutched in my hand. We sit peering ahead of us.
My speech is spoken, she says.
I don’t know what to say. We sit staring across the plains for a while. Then she gets up, dusts her backside.
Well, then, up you get. That crowd of Buyses must be dying of hunger by now.
The next day I indicate to the boys to stoke me a fire. I hold out the pouch of Kemp’s letters to Baba and make him understand that he has to start melting so long. I drag my good-for-nothing foot to the wagon.
Rummage in the chests looking for my bullet moulds. Back at the fire Baba is nowhere to be seen. He’s chucked the letters into a pot, stood the pot in the flames and cleared out. Goddammit, I should have thrashed the little shit more often when my hands still could. I make sure my lame leg is firmly planted, bend over the fire and get the pot out of there. The letters are starting to run. I put the pot down in the sand. Want to sit down, then my leg gives way. I knock over the pot into the fire. I strike the ground and kick and shout. The children turn up instantly, they spoon the bits of lead they can rescue out of the coals. The rest of Kemp’s letters will, like his sermons, become part of the ash and gravel and strike nobody. The lead pebbles will lie here till one day an ostrich pecks them up and shits them out again undigested somewhere else.
I sit down and start pouring the drops of lead into the mould. I think of Geertruy under the tree, of me practising letters with a quill. Zijn en hebben. Being and having. I am nothing. I have nothing. My heart is empty. I scratch under the loincloth, count my two balls. From them my uncountable seed that fell in places not all of which I know. Who comes after me will bear my mark and signs, a red beard somewhere, perhaps a voice that can incite people, one day a man who can shoot well. And that is all.
After an eternity I manage to cast four bullets. That will suffice. How far can the damned Portuguese be? I get all three my guns lifted, want to go and inspect them in peace somewhere, away from prying eyes. I don’t manage a good grip, drop them just as Johannes spots me.
Father must get in out of the sun. Come, let’s go and sit by the wagon.