Go and look by all means, the tracks have been covered up. These petitions, original or otherwise, went missing even at the time in the self-perpetuating and proliferating labyrinth of colonial red tape. The letters may have got lost, but the all-seeing VOC finds out that they are forged and they vomit accusations and judgements all over me and my good name. Any orator will tell you that the truth is the best sparring partner. At the next meeting I get to my feet and smile my smile and address the Christian soldiers.
I stand before the men, solitary amongst the accusing eyes in the front room of a crushed farmer. They look up at me, even the ones standing. I’m the tallest, the biggest man here. I open my trap and believe me, neither my wife nor my friend nor my child, neither my labourer nor my horse, has ever heard me talk like that. My voice is a honeyed bass, not the normal growl. I am voluble and fluent. My voice adapts its pace to the secret rhythms that inflame and enchant people, that persuade them that what they are hearing are lucid and logical arguments, especially where the head and the tail are wrenched as far as possible apart in my serpentine sentences, so that they convince themselves that somewhere some sense must be lurking and that in my euphonious outpouring I’m connecting up things that they have never before considered in conjunction, possibly because I end each sentence on a platitude, but one hailing from a totally different sphere to the rest of the sentence, a tail to the sentence like that of a scorpion with a sudden sharp sting at the end, the right words in the right places when they most want to hear them and then a sudden about-turn that leaves them gaping and that then inspires me all the more to new heights and clichés and makes me rampage on at ever-increasing volume while my eyes never release theirs, eyes that gullibly and hazily plead for more, eyes that cannot let me go but don’t see me at all, an audience at my feet gobbling up their own shit – which I merely dish up to them in appetising form – for sweetmeats, and never for a moment wonder about the smile that at times, during pauses in the ever-waxing sentences, fleetingly and involuntarily plays around the corners of my mouth and vanishes, and I can see that not one amongst them considers that one can smile and smile, and be a goddam villain.
I persuade the burghers that I, before the only and most supreme God, was assured that what I wrote was the truth that indeed has already taken root in the heart of everyone there present. I signed their names in the firm conviction that, had time permitted, and had I had the privilege of their presence, they would have dipped the quill and would have inked in their names themselves under my words, which if the truth be known were also their words.
The burghers gape at me. I feel bigger than my seven feet, I am kindled by my own voice. My words trickle over them like gum from a thorn tree and render the world viscous and glossy until they’re persuaded that the forgery was a forgery in form but not in spirit. Later I am informed that my audience told the pen-lickers that even though their names were forged they wholeheartedly agree with the contents and that they would at any time upon request come and furnish their names under any such document. I excuse myself as soon as I can and go and pull my pizzle under a tree.
The VOC is a company on the verge of bankruptcy with a kicked-open anthill for headquarters, and the charge of forgery, as well as the complaints contained in the offending document, leads, as in the case of my overdue rental and tax, absolutely nowhere.
In September 1789, without cancelling the lease on Brandwacht, I register in my name also the quitrent farm De Driefonteinen on the Bushman’s River, and six months later also Boschfontein, near the Sundays River Mouth.
Brandwacht has for a long time been trampled by Caffres who come here to hunt and to graze their fat cattle. In 1790 I get a licence to hunt elephants and I pack my stuff to leave. I’ll take my family to Boschfontein, where the grazing is still good and the Caffres are not so much of a nuisance. Then I’ll venture into the bundu on the track of elephants. We are busy throwing the last of the furniture onto the wagon when a cocky little man in a preposterous hat and a ruffled shirt comes riding up. With him are a few Hottentots clutching their flintlocks and their reins. This little whippersnapper introduces himself as Captain Ruiter.
I’ve heard of this gentleman. The half-Hottentot-half-Bushman deserter servant who went and squatted on the Fish River with a gang of thugs from both the races boiling in his blood. Ruiter’s gang of freebooters plundered the Caffres, until the yellow-arsed gang deserted and left him there to make peace. Not too long or he’s Chaka’s pet poodle. Now Ruiter and his Gonna Hottentots have also, like the Caffres, come and wormed themselves in among the Christians.
Captain Ruiter with a great show of formality requests permission to stay on on my property. I’ve had it with this botheration.
You stay here, what’s it to me, I say. I’m clearing out in any case, this land has been trampled to dust.
Later I will hear what a terrible nuisance the Gonnas were, how the Caffres and the commandos both apparently came to look for Ruiter on my land, and then I will laugh.
I walk into the empty house; outside, the pregnant Maria cracks the whip and the wagon jolts into life. I stand in the centre of the front room, look up at the rafters, the swallow’s nest empty and crumbling, tap my foot on the anthill floor. I built this house and lived here for almost five years and it was home and now it’s an empty shell of reeds and stone and brittle and cracked clay. I kick a chunk of slate until it gives way and a section of the wall caves in. I tap the floor again lightly, then walk out fast. I think of the earth under the house, the immeasurably heavy weight just under the thin layer of loose anthill soil. I feel something pre-human and stupendous. I ride after the wagon.
On Boschfontein there is a homestead already, a largish house that doesn’t need much work. The previous farmer left not long ago. Probably back to De Lange Cloof because the Heathens were beginning to graze too close by. Windvogel and I fix the roof and stamp the floor solid and at night I dream of dark waters under the house, stagnant black water without ripples, the smooth surface that is not disturbed, the measureless depth without end.
Houses on the frontier plain are not rooted in cellars or foundations, these huts of Christian and Heathen alike barely graze the dust, do not penetrate the earth. The hut is deposited on the soil like a nest in the veldt.
I don’t stay on Boschfontein for long. I see to it that my people are settled, and then I go to see what the sea looks like. I’ve never seen the sea. In De Lange Cloof people sometimes ventured over the treacherous rock faces of Duivelskop to go and fish, but the Buyses and the soft-bellied Senekals never developed a taste for shell snails or fish scales. For my people it was always the bush that beckoned. I stand on a dune and gaze over the water. Thought the sea would be bigger. The water is saltier than I thought. The Hottentots are minding the cattle, Maria is minding the house, I gaze into the distance.
Maria says she’s tired of forever cleaning up after everybody. She scolds me vigorously when one morning I wrap all the food in the house in a cloth and throw it onto the wagon and try to kiss her and walk away to where my human herd is waiting for me. She looks them up and down: my shadow Windvogel, Coenraad Bezuidenhout, his windbag brother Hannes and Van Rooijen who’s forever whingeing.
We venture into the kloofs to go and goad elephants. If an elephant is angry enough, you feel pins and needles all over your body and the hair on your neck stands up straight and your whole skin comes alive. Then you shoot. At home you stare into corners. Curl yourself up like an animal in its hole.