Back on the Colony side of the Fish Maynier attempts to cleanse the Zuurveld anew of Caffres. Those who flee across the Fish run up against Ndlambe and he also slaughters among them. He murders Chaka and he captures Langa. Ndlambe offers Langa to Maynier as prisoner. The corseted clerk is disgusted at the suggestion that he accept a human being as a gift and reddens and declines the gesture emphatically. Ndlambe shrugs and Langa, the revered old chief with the sore back who still dreams every night of the soft belly of Nombini which he’ll never touch again, soon dies ignominiously in a cage.
The commando can by no means drive all of the Caffres out of the Zuurveld. The burghers have horses and guns, but the Caffres have the undergrowth and the kloofs. In November Maynier disbands the commando and negotiates peace with the Heathen captains. The Christians are unhappy with the conditions of peace, but our complaints fall on the Cape wigs that keep ears warm and deaf. Before the Swellendam farmers are back on their farms, the Caffres are fleeing before Ndlambe and the farmers are back again on this side of the border plundering and pillaging and they have less food than ever and there is now no place on this earth that they can call home or hearth. We few farmers staying behind in the Zuurveld shoot at them all over again with the few lead pellets the authorities grudgingly grant us, angrier than ever because we’ve still not been compensated for our stolen cattle and burnt-out farms. Chungwa succeeds his father Chaka as chief of the Gqunukhwebe and Ngqeno succeeds his father Langa as chief of the Mbalu and both carry on fighting for survival. My band and I carry on whingeing that the Company must dispatch more commandos to go and claim back Christian cattle. As is our wont we threaten to take the law into our own hands, but Maynier is the supplier of lead and powder. And without the ammunition to back them up our threats are as hollow as our gun barrels.
In February 1794 Maynier packs his trunks of newfangled outfits and absconds for the Cape.
5
My dear Maria & Nombini
Geertruy taught me to write. She said the & – what’s the thing called? – is another way of writing ‘and’. When I see your two names next to each other like that, the ‘and’ drives the two of you further apart & places you behind each other. The & equalises the one to the left of it and the one to the right of it. The impossible gap between the two & the tying-up of the one to the other.
Sometimes at night I look at the maps in the book that we picked up next to the road. Do you remember our first trek, Maria? The dotted lines of the madman’s routes run like the trails of snails, like those gnarled roots of ginger – twisting & knotting they wind their way from fast to slow over mountain & through valley & everywhere is road. Last night my finger tracked a dotted line & lo: a perfect &.
Today I’m puzzling about the difference between the and-and-and of how we move & the is-is-is that everybody wants of us. Everywhere I go they ask my name, they ask: Who are you? You two are an &, & I too am an &. It’s a picture of how we live. Where does life lead you except to this place & this place & this place, this brush of the pen, the movement turning upon itself?
I don’t know what I want to say. I want to be there with you & I want to be here. This letter is going nowhere.
I miss you both & the children.
I am your husband & father.
& looking at it now, even my signed name looks like an &.
I put down the quill, smudge the wet ink with my hand, crumple up the letter and walk out into the searing dryness of the Graaffe Rijnet night.
Note welclass="underline" The Colony is in hock to a bankrupt and completely corrupt company. The dissolute Company is skulking between the dykes of a country that has long since lost its supremacy at sea and has been waging war against France with Britain since 1793. Or so we hear; all news is half a year old here. It is uncertain who is ruling us. Believe me, in this year 1795 prophets of doom and men of business and deserters are standing on the Cape shore peering at the horizon. They can only guess whose flag will be fluttering from the ship’s mast that will be the next to appear above the sea line.
After a year and a half’s absence I ride back to my wives and children where they are still living with Jan One-hand’s people. One-hand Botha lives on Rautenbach’s frontier farm and my Maria and Nombini and their children live with Botha. Squatting with squatters. I ride up to the yard, then I rein in the horse and Glider lifts his hooves all the way up to his chin, the neck arched. In front of the stoep I yank the horse up onto his hind legs, the front hooves frozen in mid-air. A light flick on the flank and Glider neighs majestically, descends to all four feet and tripples up and down in front of the house as if the earth were made of glass. Elizabeth comes running out. She has grown tall, must be about ten by now. Her hair redder than ever, loose about her shoulders. She looks me in the eye, stops, turns on her heel, walks into the house and closes the door. I unsaddle. Nobody comes out. I walk Glider to cool him down. Nobody comes out. I tether the horse to a bray pole next to the house. Jan One-hand comes out.
I sit and talk to One-hand and he gesticulates wildly at the distance with his stump and splutters when he talks. We exchange news and drink brandy. Nombini comes out onto the stoep with coffee and plonks the mugs down and doesn’t look at me and goes in again. Inside by the hearth I can hear Maria gabbling with One-hand’s wife, Martie. They vie to outdo each other in haranguing Nombini. Windvogel comes to greet me with his head on his chest and his foot scuffling the soil. He mumbles a few commonplaces and saunters off.
One-hand sounds off all sputtering and stuttering about the revolution of the French. He recites what he’s heard from the thin man with the heavy accent, one Jan Pieter Woyer, the new doctor in the district, and his shadow, the school teacher Campagne, who’s been peddling this new religion for months. One-hand attends all that is a meeting where Woyer or Campagne preach Equality and Fraternity, the Temple of Reason and suchlike dreck. I leave the coffee, sip at the jug full of spirits and gaze over the farm. Coenraad Wilhelm is four and Johannes is two and the brothers are playing in the sand in front of the stoep. I look and look and see nothing of myself in them. One-hand is blathering on about Jacobins and kings and guillotines and wonders whether he can build one himself for Maynier’s misbegotten head. I get to my feet when I hear Maynier’s name. In a few days I have to be in Graaffe Rijnet again. The much-esteemed landdrost has summonsed me on the allegation of a Hotnot that I supposedly hit him. Now the mongrel mutt is apparently living in the same house with the losel of a landdrost and scoffs his food and must probably service his wife as well because the Lord knows Maynier couldn’t do it. And I, Coenraad de Buys himself, must one of these days brave wind and weather to go and lend ear to the fatted Hotnot’s grievances. I smile at One-hand: