Well there you go. You build your guillotine so long, I’m going to fire up the fellows in town a bit and see what happens. Perhaps we can also chop off a few heads. The devil take equality and fraternity. But liberty sounds like a good idea.
Later that afternoon I go and track down Windvogel. We talk and yet don’t talk. What can I tell my friend about what I’ve been up to, and what can Windvogel tell me that will keep my attention? In due course we grease the silence with his brewed beer. We go and round up two wild asses and see who can race furthest on the creatures before coming a cropper. Soon we’re both lying in the grass and laughing like a lifetime ago. When the beer evaporates, Windvogel goes all surly again and disappears from the yard.
The house falls quiet and the crickets take over. Maria wants to know what I’m doing here.
I missed you. I’m coming to see how my most beloved wife is and my most beloved children.
And the Caffre woman? Is she your second most beloved wife? Or your other most beloved wife?
She does not wait for me to reply.
And now you want to take off again.
It’s not that I don’t want to stay, Maria. The landdrost is summonsing me because I chastise my labourers.
Now why would you call here only now if you know you must push off again tomorrow? Where have you been?
I suppose I can stay another day or two.
Where have you been, Buys? Your children are growing up and they think One-hand is their father.
You leave that man alone.
Jissis, Buys, I swear…
Nombini comes to stand in the door. She has grown older. Only now do I see how her dress strains across her stomach.
Are you pregnant? I ask.
She nods. I leap at her and hit her and she cries. Maria jumps on my back and hits me and screams. I throw her off and calm down.
Buys! Shut your women up! One-hand shouts from the bedroom.
Where were you, Buys? Maria asks as she leaves.
I lie on the little cot in the front room until everyone is asleep. Then I go and crawl into bed with Maria where she’s lying next to Nombini in the back room. She lets me have my way, lies with her arms close to her body. Nombini is awake and turns to face the wall and doesn’t even pretend to be asleep. I spurt into Maria and get up and go and lie in the front room again. I lie on my back and by my sides my fingers clench and curl. Before sunrise I quietly go and wake Elizabeth. I want to lift her onto Glider, but she takes my hands off her and jumps onto the horse herself. We ride a while and go and sit on an anthill and watch the sun rising. I’m not allowed to hold her, but she tells me how Martie is teaching her to read. She tells me what she’s learning from the Hottentot children. She doesn’t tell me stories, she names the things she’s learnt. She counts aloud as far as she can. Four hundred and eighty-two. I say That’s far enough. When I drop her at the house, One-hand has left for the veldt and the women are bustling about in the yard outside. I hurriedly eat the leftovers from a bowl by the hearth. Elizabeth asks if she should call her mother to come and say good bye. I ask her how she knows I’m on my way. She goes out by the door and outside the sun catches her hair and for a moment I want to take her with me and never return. She walks up to Maria at the far end of the yard. Maria holds her close. They look in my direction, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. I tie my belongings to the back of the saddle and snitch a few bullets. Nombini comes strolling into the house and when she catches sight of me she instantly turns on her heel and struts out. I leave One-hand a pile of money on the table and ride to Graaffe Rijnet. Hardly passed the farm’s beacon stone when the barking besets me.
Just outside Graaffe Rijnet, across the river, fifty-odd farmers gather who want to get back their land and their cattle and want to get rid of Maynier. Somebody asks if we shouldn’t fetch Master Goossens. Hear what he has to say. Why? I ask. What’s a damned schoolteacher got to teach us about politics and revolutions and warfare?
Mister Markus doesn’t get as worked up about the authorities as we do. He sometimes says things we don’t think of, says the windbag.
Prinsloo snorts and says:
The fellow thinks he’s better than us. He thinks he’s too high and mighty to get angry.
He gets to his feet to make space for the outrage coursing through his whole body:
Last time when we granted him a turn to speak, what did the little cock of the walk say? Don’t you remember? He said – and here Prinsloo pitches his voice high like a woman’s: We must be sick, brothers, and yet joyful, in need and yet blessed, dying and yet contented, in exile and yet at home, cast down in disgrace and yet cheerful of spirit.
Prinsloo’s voice descends to its normal pitch:
I say that miserable moper must bugger off!
I wonder what that pious pedant-prick would have come to preach at us today. But I’m glad he’s not here. I don’t know the fellow from Adam, but the mere fact that he’s in the offing makes me jittery. People who keep their calm in the midst of this godalmighty jiggery-pokery and injustice, they wind me up even further than I am anyway.
On 4 February we sign an accord, the Te Samenstemming, a memorandum of the rebels’ grievances against Maynier. I utter the right words in the right ears and for the rest I remain silent and smile. My eyes swivel and my fingers tingle against one another. The Triegard brothers and Van Jaarsveld, whose hair is sprouting more luxuriantly and glossily than ever, bear the document to the drostdy. They say they are speaking on behalf of De Volkstem, the voice of the nation, and demand a meeting with every single soul who’s employed in the service of the authorities. For two days we wait for a reply. The doors and windows of the drostdy remain sealed. It seems to me that everybody here, including the landdrost himself, has lost sight of the fact that quite a few of us are actually here to be arraigned for our methods of disciplining our staff. I’m not going to refresh their memories. The heat is pressing, the people sighing, the cattle dying. Everybody stinks. Martiens Prinsloo and I and a few other farmers with ants in our pants ride up and down along the hills outside the town. To and fro, two days in a row, swearing and cursing all the way. When at last at the appointed time we gather in front of the drostdy, the doors remain shut. Forty or so of us, with our forty horses and our forty guns. A few rebels take up position on the stoep and read out the Te Samenstemming as if it were a proclamation by a new landdrost. Maynier comes charging out and asks them what they think they’re doing. Immediately he is surrounded by a group of men in a strangulating circle. When the circle opens up, he walks out, pale but flushed, and takes refuge from them on the edge of the stoep and mutters something like And with that I resign. He goes inside again. Hannes Bezuidenhout charges after him and drags him out by his fancy collar. Hannes manhandles Maynier over to the men stationed on the stoep. A few Christians wander around the drostdy to the slave quarters behind the building. Believe me, in no time all hell is let loose: Nowadays, apparently, the Hottentots who wanted to testify against us live in those selfsame slave quarters. Maynier remains standing in a daze looking at the men in front of him. We shout and scream at him and Hannes chivvies the landdrost out in front of him as if dishing him up for the ravenous rebels. Nobody hears the cloth of his jacket and shirt tearing. The men return from the slave quarters with a dozen Hottentots at gunpoint. Hannes lets go of Maynier when he recognises one of the Hottentots.