In the Tswapong hills I wanted to die. Here at the edge of the camp, where the bushes close in, my second death then, the demise of my name, of Coenraad de Buys. Adieu, Mijnheer de Buys. Till we meet again, Khula, Kadisha, Moro, Diphafa. Het ga je goed, Kgowe. Farewell, Coen. All that still lives is my raddled body; all that can still die is my woundedness.
7
See, here we stand. I, the Omni-Buys who has bewhispered you to here, and you, my reader. Further we cannot go. Here we have to take our leave of the man-beast Buys. He is no longer I; he is apocryphal. See, he gazes at the slumbering wagon and tents. The stars are on fire, the moon is meagre, the sun already inexorable on the horizon. He limps on, turns around again. Maria has not emerged from the wagon yet. She is still lying with her face to the side of the tent, her eyes open. You try to catch up with him. My hand to your chest stays you for ever. We see him walk away against the half-light of early morning.
The dogs smelled the weakened creature from far away. The soil has been baked hard, he leaves no tracks. They follow his familiar stench until they see him, this thing with the dragging gait. They see him stumble along the grain of the earth, his left arm swinging to its own measure, the left leg sinew to sinew alongside. His paws are bleeding. Before they trot off to where they can smell the quaggas, the pack greet him as they have done for generations. After a moon’s milky filling and draining they come across him again. He shuffles along bent almost at right angles, the gun in his claw all that keeps him upright. He mutters to himself, does not hear his knife falling behind him and staying there. He stops only when he sees the red dog. He does not move while the dog comes to sniff at him. When the pack see him again half a moon later, he’s prowling on all four paws, the gun and powder horn dangling under his belly. His fur is hanging loose, his knuckles bleed. He scans the world of brushwood and distant cawings. The dogs fell a waterbuck and devour it and forget about the crawling loner. At daybreak they sniff out the bush pigs and guinea fowl. They find him prodding and devouring the insides of a frog. He peels pieces of bark from dead trees, stuffs the teeming crawling creatures into his mouth. His claws find roots in the sand. He digs and pulls and gnaws. He hunkers with a root in the cheek, peers lazy eyed at the bushes and does not see the dogs. His nostrils dilate. The red dog breaks through the branches; the creature’s head turns at an angle. For a moment they regard each other, then they both growl. The pack recalls the red dog. The man-beast has not moved yet; he keeps on gazing. The moon is full again and still in the sky with the morning sun when he comes upon the dogs at the watering hole. Their heads are buried in an eland. The red dog looks up, its hyena-like snout red and dripping. His head drops back into the carcase. With a last shot fired into the air, the monster scatters the dogs. They peer out of the undergrowth at how he descends upon the eland, how he tugs furiously at a hind leg trying to tear it off. He falls forward, head first into the guts. A gnawing and growling sounds from the belly of the eland. When he catches his breath his head is wet, a strip of flesh dangles from his jaws. A dog snaps a branch. He turns his head, he sniffs, his jaws let go of the chewed flesh. He looks up; they are everywhere. They tear away his hides, tear out his hair, tear off his skin; drive their claws into him. Their canines hook onto joints; the bones break. They tear open the body. The red dog grabs a chunk of meat, devours it to one side with his cubs. The dogs devour him; then they devour the rest of the eland. Later they lie in the damp sand next to the watering hole, their tongues smacking. A bitch kecks, vomits out a morsel of bone, gobbles it up again immediately. The cubs snap at each other. When the sand is baked hot, the pack trot into the veldt in search of the slender strips of shade of a thorn tree. At dusk they will trek on.
See, there he vanishes into the bush now. Did you see? Because that was the last sighting of Coenraad de Buys. But to be dead is not enough. Like molten letters I linger in the gravel without eroding. I am the thistle. The piss in the stone of the Union Buildings. Like a pack of dogs I renew myself constantly. You’ll never be shot of me.
Addendum
The way you imagined this exceptional man on the basis of often exaggerated accounts turns out, upon meeting him, to be entirely justified. His uncommon height (nearly seven feet), his shapely limbs, his excellent carriage and the confident look of his eye, his high forehead, his whole mien, and a certain dignity in his movements, made a most pleasing impression. So one might want to imagine the heroes of antiquity, a living image of Hercules, a terror to his enemies and a pillar of strength to his friends. What the descriptions had not led us to expect was a certain modesty and reticence in his conversation, a mildness and kindness in his looks and mien, which could not in the least have led you to suspect that the man had for so many years lived among untutored savages, and which, still more than his words, contributed to remove the prejudice we had conceived against him. He willingly gave information concerning the subjects upon which he was questioned, but carefully avoided elaborating upon himself and his relations with the Caffres. This sly reticence was often accompanied with a sort of wry smile, that spoke of the inward consciousness of his own powers, and in which was plainly to be read that his forbearance was not the result of fear; it was rather as if he scorned to satisfy the vapid curiosity of his questioners at the expense of truth, or of his own personal reputation. This rendered him all the more interesting to us, and probably excited our sympathy much more than the relation of his story would have done.
Original German quoted from: Lichtenstein, Hinrich. 1967 (1811). Reisen im südlichen Afrika in den Jahren 1803, 1804, 1805 und 1806. Volume 1. Stuttgart: Brockhaus/Antiquarium. 344–345.
Acknowledgements
On the tracks of the historical Buys I consulted, among others, works by the following authors: John Campbell, Max du Preez, Richard Elphick, IH Enklaar, OJO Ferreira, Herman Giliomee, Peter Kallaway, Martin Legassick, MH Lichtenstein, Andrew Manson, Roelf Marx, Noël Mostert, Neil Parsons, Nigel Penn, Gustav Preller, AE Schoeman, JT van der Kemp, PJ van der Merwe and HG Wagner.
As far as other quotations, references and rewritings are concerned: Omni-Buys saw it all, read every word. He eats as he reads. As he plunders mission stations and cattle kraals, so he plunders the texts of others far and wide in order to tell his own tale. Should you then in his retelling stumble across the remains of other authors, notably Samuel Beckett and Cormac McCarthy, regard it as the homage of a scoundrel.
About the Book
Summary
The only revolution here is that between dust and fire, the only equality the levelling of the land by the elements, the only fraternity a function of a common enemy or a shared disgrace. The only liberty the one that comes from surrendering to your fate.
Coenraad de Buys was the most dangerous man around in the Cape of the late seventeen hundreds.