On 14 June I address a meeting of militia officers, heemraden and Landdrost Gerotz. I say that I have travelled to the kraals of the Caffres and appeased the Caffres as far as possible. The meeting thanks me for my trouble and requests me please to continue these negotiations and nobody seems very interested in my methods. They are without munitions and nobody among them would venture in like that among the turbulent Caffres. Around the end of that year a Hottentot turns up at the drostdy who fled from me because I supposedly beat him. The Hottentot reports that I’m not appeasing the Caffres on the Colony side of the Fish, am rather inciting them against the Christians. I was with the Caffres to barter. All I know is that their beer and women were to my taste. How am I supposed to remember everything that I spouted there?
Shortly after Bresler cleared out, the rebels also leave Graaffe Rijnet. The ridged dogs see the settlement is emptying out and start trespassing across the town limits at nightfall in search of carrion and pet lambs. Campagne gets arrested and deported. Woyer in the meantime has gone to Batavia and apparently persuaded the governor-general there that the burghers in Graaffe Rijnet are in need of munitions. He travels back to the Cape with a shipload of supplies. In Delagoa Bay the focking English are lying in wait for his ship. No aid is forthcoming from overseas. The government embargos all supplies and munitions to Graaffe Rijnet. A small military force under Major King prepares to come and subjugate the district. Forty burghers, under whom Van Jaarsveld, no longer feel up to sustaining their own republic without supplies and without outside support. They write a letter to Macartney and request the return of Bresler and the Reverend Manger. The letter reaches the Cape shortly before King’s scheduled departure. Around me every last burgher subjects himself to the focking English. Amnesty is granted to all burghers except Woyer. Even old Martiens Prinsloo tells me that day:
It’s no use any more resisting like that.
It’s no use, no.
I hold my peace, look around me, my fingers snapping faster and faster.
So what are we to do now? I ask him.
Go home, Buys.
You go home.
We laugh. Somewhere a dog barks.
After two years of absence and silence I ride back to my wives and children where they are still staying with Jan One-hand. The saddle chafes through my ragged breeches. When I see the homestead, I dismount in the veldt. I look in the saddlebag for my rusty needle and I darn the breeches for what it’s worth. Maria says Elizabeth became a woman last month. I missed that as well. My son Coenraad Wilhelm is darker than Maria and six and almost as big as she. Johannes must be almost five and has ants in his pants. Maria doesn’t say much but shows me our new daughter, Maria Magdalena de Buys, fat and brown and yowling and born in my absence. Nombini has moved in with Windvogel. I see the one or the other peeking out of the hut, but neither of them risks coming out. I’ve been pondering it for two years. I’ve rehearsed it over and over. The story always ended in the same way. I roam around the farm for two days, then I can no longer put it off. I go and sit in the hut and wait for them to come home. Both of them swear in their own language when they see me. I invite them into their hut. They sit down.
Good day, Windvogel.
Master.
Stop your nonsense.
Coenraad.
A man gets lonely, I say. I know. And she’s a pretty bitch. I know.
Windvogel looks up. He almost ventures a smile, then looks down again.
We are friends, Windvogel.
We are, Coenraad. I’m sorry, Coenraad.
I also took her from another man. Where’s the child?
Must be playing.
Nombini doesn’t stir.
Bring the little mite. Let me see.
Nombini gets up and Windvogel and I sit gazing out in front of us and after a while she returns with the little half-Caffre.
Come here, little one.
We call him Windvogel, says Windvogel. Windvogel the younger.
I hold out my arms. The little boy comes to stand next to me. I touch his arms, feel his legs.
A strong little guy.
He’s going to be big, Coenraad. Big.
I slap the child playfully on the bum and he runs out and falls and runs on. Windvogel watches his child go. I look at my friend. He is proud. He smiles. Windvogel turns to me and something he sees wipes the smile off his face.
What’s the matter, Coenraad?
Run.
Windvogel’s eyes instantly brighten again.
You’ve got fat, old Coenraad, you’re not going to catch me again.
Run.
Windvogel nods conspiratorially and grins and jumps up and sprints out of the hut. Nombini watches him go, confused. I get up and stoop out of the hut and load my gun and watch my friend running over the plain. Windvogel turns round in running and laughs and checks whether I’m on his heels yet like so many years ago. Then he sees: This time I’m not running. His laugh is gone. He runs and he cries and he shouts No, no, Master, oh Lord Master, please Master! Swift as the wind, he lives up to his name, the name I gave him, the name he gave his son. Soon he is only a speck in the distance. I take aim and believe me I don’t want to shoot. Every muscle in my body screams at me not to shoot. I shoot. The speck drops.
The moon is shining in through the window. I’m lying on top of Nombini. While I’m ramping furiously over her, she utters little whimpers that convince no one. I’ve forgotten what she smells like. When I thought of her on the lonely nights of commandos and rebellions, I used to think that I remembered her smell, so different to that of any other woman. But now, here with my snout in her neck, my rod rammed into her, she smells like every other little Caffre girl I’ve lain with in the last few years. She doesn’t close her eyes and she doesn’t look away. Nobody has ever looked at me like that. I am absolutely alone.
Bresler is back in Graaffe Rijnet accompanied by John Barrow, secretary to Governor Macartney. Barrow is a man who burns the midnight oil penning observations on the country and its people in little notebooks that he’s never caught without. Yes, I, Omni-Buys, devour even the scribblings of this misbegotten misery. See what the blackguard writes about the English deserter who escaped from the Graaffe Rijnet prison: According to report climbed through the cell’s thatched roof. Was locked up for the dirty jokes he told in public. Well, then, you don’t say. Barrow proposes that a world power should take better care over the maintenance of its prison roofs.
In March 1797 Bresler summonses me to appear in the drostdy in a few weeks’ time. There are complaints that I kill Caffres, abduct their women and assault and detain Hottentots on my farm. I don’t show up. Together with one Delport and a counterfeiter I am declared an outlaw. A reward of one hundred rix-dollars is offered for me, living or otherwise.
While we’re sitting and smoking on One-hand’s stoep one afternoon, he says that Van Rensburg, who hates me with a hatred he normally reserves for Caffres, told Bresler – and Bresler told Macartney – that Chungwa is holding me prisoner. That I am passionately anticipating my hour of liberation in the cage in which I’m held. We have a good laugh. And when Jan then tells me of the rumours that I’m staying among the Caffres and am inciting them against Bresler and Barrow, that I’m going to come and invade Graaffe Rijnet with a horde of Heathens, we laugh once more. But watch closely, this time I’m laughing slightly too loudly. And my eyes are not laughing at all.