The sky is pressing down when in 1792 after an exchange of cattle I ride home with the cattle and the woman I took from Langa. I am thirty-one and have three farms, a wife and four children, a whole bunch of Hottentots working for me, a multitude of cattle and now also a Caffre princess, barely sixteen with a skin stretched tight and glossy like stinkwood. She says her name is Nombini. She sits up proudly on the wagon as if she’s laced and corseted. Her two offspring can’t let go of the big nipples. The pack of ridged dogs run up and down next to the wagon. They chase one another, snap at each other in play, and drive the oxen mad. In the clouds the first thunder is crackling. When we crest the ridge and see my farm on the plain, the Sundays River shines like a Milky Way and my house with the candlelight in the window and the fires of the Hottentots working on my farm and the fires of the Caffres who graze their cattle on my farm are scattered like smouldering stars in the dark grass. When we get closer and ride in among the fires, the constellation disintegrates into mere points of disconnected light.
There’s no end to the rain. The thatched roof at first keeps out the water and then no longer. Whoever used to live in the house before knew how to build a decent chimney. Maria is sitting with the new-born Johannes at her breast, Elizabeth with little Philip and Coenraad Wilhelm on her lap in her usual place next to the fire. Coenraad Wilhelm is sucking at her thumb. Then also Nombini and her children.
I chase the chickens up into the rafters and scrabble a place open for myself between the cat and the other cat and the pig that nobody can keep out of the house any more. Maria and Elizabeth are scared of the thunder. Elizabeth is sobbing. Maria busies herself placing the few basins under the leaks, so that her hands shouldn’t tremble. Nombini and her brood are dead quiet, look around them at the mealies and the biltong and tobacco and pots and pans hanging from the purlins. The animals make only the most essential movements, so as not to lose warmth. Nombini gets up and looks at me and Maria and picks up a porcelain bowl from the table and sits down again and holds the bowl in both hands and rotates it slowly between her fingertips. Maria lets go of the basin and grabs the bowl from Nombini’s hands and puts it back on the table. Nombini comes to sit with me where I’m trying to file down an ingrown toenail with a wood file. The children look at one another and look at the adults and are quiet and then they all start howling in unison. Maria trips over the cat. The cat yowls and the children get a fright and break the rhythm of their crying and then carry on howling.
Goddammit, Buys, there isn’t room for everybody here.
I press Nombini to me and say something in her ear and she goes to sit with her children. Maria cooks meat, throws sweet potatoes into the pot. The few tin plates I haven’t yet melted down to harden my bullets are set out on the table. My wife and children and I seat ourselves. My new wife and her children go to sit in the corner. I tell them to come and take a seat. We eat. Nombini licks her fingers clean and her mouth is anointed with fat. Maria watches me watching this stranger wrapped in her kaross, the long legs. I speak to her in Xhosa and she doesn’t say much. I speak to my children in Dutch and now and again I peep at Maria.
I take the Bible from the shelf.
Come let us worship.
I undo the copper clasp and open the great book, dust puffs up into the air. Some pages are missing. Things get left behind if you carry on moving. I read solemnly. I watch Maria closely, knowing how with each holy word I try to soothe and placate her, and seeing how the damn words don’t achieve a thing.
Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah, I read out.
Nombini’s fingers once again grope for the cold porcelain. She takes a red bead from the folds in her kaross, drops it into the bowl and watches the bead spinning around on the base. Is she wondering who is rubbing the hurt out of Langa’s back tonight? She turns the bowl round and round, looks at the fine blue patterns in the porcelain without beginning or end. I understand only too well, with the coming of evening people feel sorry for themselves, but she’s got to stop this bullshit. I see that little lower lip tremble. Should I feel sorry for her? The Caffre woman has never in her life seen a plate of food such as the one she’s just devoured. Poor thing, does she see in her Heathenish mind’s eye the Christians cantering into her kraal on their great horses, the hooves kicking dust into the calabashes of water that she and the other young women fetched from the river?
And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah.
The girl is strong, her lip is no longer trembling. Still, while I read, I wonder about my new wife’s faraway eyes. Whose little bead is she rattling like that in the bowl? I know what you’re thinking: She’s scared, she’s a child and she’s far from home. Rubbish! You haven’t spent days on end with her on a wagon. You don’t know what’s swirling around in that pretty little head. I read, but all I see is how she rubs old Langa’s shoulders, how his back relaxes under her hands, how she lies listening to him snore. All the nights she spends lying against that skin that death has already started picking from the bones. Does she see stars when he spurts in her? Was she proud of her husband when he came forth from his hut and stood up straight and took off his kaross and pushed out his old chest and walked towards us, the Christians?
And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.
The little red bead keeps spinning in the empty bowl, deafeningly, I can’t hear myself read.
And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abidah, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.
Maria shifts around on her chair and sighs exaggeratedly.
Was Nombini worried when the Christians and Langa and his captains congregated in a close circle, the talking growing softer, more urgent? Did she see how I towered over them all, my beard, my mane? I remember she screamed when one of the Caffres staggered back. He was big, that Caffre, one of Langa’s strongest captains. Had he talked to her and gone for long walks with her before Langa took her to wife? Do you think she did things with him as well? How far can a little Caffre girl go with a man if she still wants to marry intact? Was his rod in her mouth? Did she allow him access to her hindquarters? His brow was bleeding. Had she seen what happened, heard the blow? I know she saw when I strode towards him, stood astride him, pulled him up and threw him to the ground. The other Caffres stood still. I let the Caffre go, spat on him and entered the circle again. I’m not proud of it, but what does she know of bartering cattle and taking back stolen cattle? You have to make yourself felt in the first minutes. What does she know? I said something to Langa and shoved him. Where was she then? Did she see and what does she see in the little red bead that is rotating ever more furiously in the bowl?