The baboon utters a hoarse bark, fights furiously until it sees the dogs are drawing strength from its fury. It goes onto its hind legs, extends its arms to the younger of the terriers and screams. The dog charges at the baboon, leaps aside and feints and leaps again. The dog’s fur is marked with the scars of previous bouts. He won each encounter because see, he’s alive. The dogs shiver and yelp, but keep a wary eye on the length of the chain, stay out of reach of the baboon. See the dogs dancing around the baboon. One goes straight for the baboon, then jumps back from the fangs. If they can’t get hold of the baboon, they snarl and snap at each other.
The baboon has been fighting in the veldt from infancy, because see, he too is still alive. When a dog comes close, he jumps up in the air, but the curs are clever enough not to be trapped under him. Sometimes a sudden cuff with the arms, or a more surprising grab with the back legs. The ape tightens its circle, the chain slack enough for a leap. The dogs know these monkey tricks. See, they’re tiring him out.
In the kraal there are no orderly formations; the fatal circle becomes a universe where soil and skin and straw and teeth and hair and blood blend into new terrifying creatures that suck everything around them into a sinkhole. Surprise attacks, then moments that expand into ghastly silences before the teeth find one another once more. The baboon rips open the mastiff’s throat, chucks it aside with a human hand, the graceful animal instantly a limp heap of skin and meat.
The terriers charge when the baboon tries to climb up the pole. The biggest dog gets hold of the ape’s hind quarters and rips him open from below. The baboon’s hands let go and the other dog is on top of him and digs into the innards and tugs at the guts. The ape is hanging between the throttling chain and the dogs that each has hold of a length of gut. The gaze and the screams of the baboon, like those of somebody on a rack, floundering between forces tearing him apart from three directions, are unbearably human.
A man vomits and his friends laugh and gob. Somebody bumps into me and I look around into the beggar’s face and he looks away.
The baboon grabs the nearest dog and brings the animal’s face up to its own. Do they know how much they look like each other? With the ravishing jaws that decorate many a farmhouse, it tears off the face of the fighting dog, who until recently resembled the proto-wolf from which all dogs are descended.
I rub my thumbs and index fingers together until I can feel a static crackling. The remaining dog keeps tugging at the guts. The baboon curls up against the carcase next to him and there is a tremor in one hand and something like a yawn and I see something in his eyes and then he is dead.
Money is exchanged; the panting young terrier’s tongue is hanging out. He tries to shake off the blood. He stamps his paws. His ears are drawn back. His eyes dart to those of his owner and then to the baboon. His owner puts on the chain and takes him home. The two Caffres throw the dead animals over the wall and bury them. I stand watching until the kraal is deserted. Young men my own age try offering me spirits, try telling me about the most accommodating girl in Graaffe Rijnet, try talking about anything else.
I ride back to our camp and find Windvogel and Gert Coetzee the half-caste Hottentot by the last embers of the campfire. They don’t talk, each thinking his own things.
A star shoots across the length of the Milky Way. I see the wonderment of the two men.
God has chucked out his old milk again, I say. It’s beneath him to drink clabbered milk. He only scoffs sacrificial lamb.
Master mustn’t blaspheme like that, says Gert.
Some or other preacher put all sorts of things into the Hottentot’s head. Gert has never been able to tell me who the man was, one of the wandering prophets criss-crossing De Lange Cloof in donkey carts hoping to come across lost souls. According to Gert the man’s name is Master and when I ask Master who, then the reply is Master Master, Master.
That’s the backbone of the night, up there, says Windvogel. It keeps the sky up in the sky.
That’s no bone, it’s the Lord bringing light to our dark land.
Oh, bugger off, Gert!
You don’t know the Lord, Vogel. I shall smite thee by God! Ishall devour thee by God!
How do you know the Lord, Gert? I ask.
Master told me about him. We were all in the garden together, don’t you know, and then we had to get out and then everything got buggered up.
And when were you in that garden, Gert?
No, Master, don’t you know, it was before Jan Rietbok came to plant vegetables here.
And then you had to get out of Eden?
Yes, Master. And then the flood came, don’t you know. And everybody drowns and we sail that ark.
Gert is silent for a minute, lost in thought.
I still remember that pigeon.
I start spluttering. Windvogel erupts in a fit of laughter implausibly violent in a body as thin as his.
What’s Master laughing for, and you, you good-for-nothing Bushman?
It’s quite a story, Gert. Master Master taught you well, I placate him.
Master thinks it’s all just stories. What does Master believe?
The Caffres say that smear of stars is the hair bristling on the back of a fierce dog, I say.
Does Master believe it?
That as well, yes. Come on, you must get some sleep, we’re moving on tomorrow.
The two men walk off, jostling each other, to where they made their bed under the wagon. I remain sitting. Later I add more wood to the fire and watch the dry wood surrendering to the reborn flames.
The next morning the men start loading the wagons. I walk off into the veldt. In the distance I see a dog-like creature darting from a bush. It could be a wild dog, or a jackal caught short by the sun. The animal is far away, all I can see is the red-brown stain skimming over the level ground. The creature is on its way somewhere, or simply gone. I watch the animal becoming a piece of running grassland, how it disappears into the grass and then leaps out from the brushwood again. As if it’s playing. As if there’s enough velocity to allow for play as well. As if velocity is itself a game not needing anything else.
I walk on, the wagons get smaller and disappear.
I clamber on top of a large anthill. I look around me. It is grassland as far as I can see, in front of me as far as the Graaffe Rijnet mountains; behind and next to me the flatness stretches as far as the eye seeks a point to focus on and finds nothing. The horizon is not a point, it’s where everything perishes. I look around me:
Red dog!
Then as loudly as I can:
Red dog!
I look all around me.
Later I climb down and walk back to the camp. Windvogel sees me and comes running to meet me.
Buys, where have you been? he shouts.
He comes to stand in front of me, out of breath, hands on the knees.
We’ve done packing. The men are waiting just for you.
You must stop calling me Buys when the others can hear. They think you’re trying for white.