I sleep with Yese in her hut in the Great Place. Early the next morning I set out with the inquisitive to go and see Kemp preach. Kemp is overjoyed to see me there and I’m overjoyed to see the titties bounce while the preacher incites the Heathens to a song of praise of which they don’t understand a single word. After the singing and praying have subsided, Kemp tells me how Hobe again last night came visiting and was very forward and brought them milk and then didn’t want to clear out. He speaks judiciously, his voice precise, his sentences well constructed. He says that he sometimes wishes he could go into a swoon. He is sorry that he can’t just vanish at will. I can see him choosing each word meticulously. He says that he would like to give in to his weakness, that he no longer wants to resist the wounds that the world inflicts on him. He speaks of a different affirmation, to assume towards and against everything a denial of courage, a denial of morality. His voice trembles. What am I to do with such an outpouring other than to tell him that I’m convinced that he was sent by God and that his place is here – between Hobe’s thighs, I’m tempted to add. The next moment he’s talking about his next sermon. I interrupt him and place a hand on his shoulder. My family is far away, I say, but when I have them with me again, I’ll bring them along to his church under the tree. And as soon as I’ve fetched my family, I’ll build him a house. Kemp weeps and clasps me to his bosom, and believe me, he washes less frequently than I.
2
Edmonds is puking. The poor fellow doesn’t get off the slop bucket. Top and bottom outlets, and sweating something horrible. Kemp says that apart from the belly runs and vomiting the man’s head is also out of kilter. Believe me, in my time a Caffre kraal and a frontier farmer’s yard were not always the most hygienic places. A plot of ground can take only so much piss and shit and bones and rotten meat and then no more. Sensitive systems like that of Brother Edmonds don’t endure it for long. Even among the most uncouth Christians and the most robust Caffres spurt-shitting was never a rarity. Besides, the wretched Edmonds’ distressed stomach and soul are hardly accustomed to fermented milk, clotted Caffre porridge and half-raw meat, roasted on the coals skin and all.
In between Edmonds’ shitting and gnashing of teeth Kemp was stuck with Ngqika and me the previous night. At some distance from the tent, so as not to discomfit Edmonds with the smell of roasting meat, Kemp makes a fire. He’s a dab hand with his gridiron and in no time Ngqika starts licking his lips and asks to be given the gridiron. Jank’hanna the diplomat wipes the sweat from his brow with a dirty sleeve and says it’s the only roasting utensil he possesses, but the king must do as the king sees fit. Ngqika replies in equally formal parlance that he has no desire to deprive Jank’hanna of this precious item. The king and his retinue stuff themselves and thank their host and withdraw to their noble huts. I sleep with Kemp and Edmonds and nobody is surprised when a captain turns up before cock-crow to ask Kemp for the gridiron.
I pour myself some of Kemp’s hellishly strong coffee. I sit in front of the tent and bask myself into a reverie until all of a sudden a shadow falls upon me. My son the king of the Caffres and his mother the queen of carnal delight and cruelty are blocking my sun. Yese does not seem impressed, neither with the puking preacher nor with his barefoot-brother missionary and especially not with me. They are here to receive a few captains from some or other battlefield. Ngqika is losing his campaign, every few months some more of the smaller tribes don’t want to recognise his authority. Perhaps he’s thinking that he will impress his captains by granting them an audience here before the white sorcerers. The confabulations lose Jank’hanna a mirror and a knife to Siko, Ndlambe’s brother, and he also has to weigh in with the roasting, without his gridiron. If all missionaries could serve a roast feast like Kemp, all of Africa would be Christianised by the end of the year. If Ngqika could learn to roast meat like that, he’d rule over a pacific kingdom. Just see Yese’s lips shining with beef fat.
Ngqika is all charm and smiles. He teaches Jank’hanna another few Xhosa words. He mistranslates a few words and invents a few. His captains laugh at the missionary when he turns to the fire. I assist the man with the meat, but don’t assist him with his newfound vocabulary. The king asks Jank’hanna whether it’s God’s will that he doesn’t wear a hat. Jank’hanna nods and strokes the peeling brow. Yese utters not a word, eats more than any of the warriors. When she excuses herself, she mutters that this white man is no rainmaker. He’s just delirious with sunstroke. The look she gives me says I wouldn’t dare follow her.
When everybody starts getting drowsy under the trees, Jank’hanna seizes the opportunity to conduct a prayer meeting. The few Hottentots who trekked with him from the Cape sneak up and find seats with the Xhosa captains. He starts with a prayer. When he strikes up a psalm, it’s only a few Hottentots who dare sing along under the glares of the Caffres. A cabal of giggles and screams interrupts the awkward laudation. Hobe and her little friends have returned all singing with the calabashes of milk that Ngqika has requisitioned. The maidens dance through among us, their juddering buttocks and songs equally blasphemous. Jank’hanna’s head sinks lower, as if he’s talking to something under the ground. He prays furiously. He prays louder when Hobe rubs her shiny little tummy against his even shinier forehead. The captains laugh; he carries on praying till the storm subsides. Ngqika orders Hobe and her friends to be off. Even he has sympathy with this nut-case Kemp; my Heathen king and son restores the weird decorum of Christian praise. Do you see Jank’hanna wiping Hobe’s sweat from his forehead? Do you see a crooked finger hovering under his nose before he wipes the hand on his back pocket?
That night Kemp confesses his past. He tells me about a carousing career that would shame even the Bezuidenhouts. He tells about brothels and liquors with strange names. He says he was born in 1747, which would make him barely fifty, not the sixty that he looks. The grandson of a minister, son of a professor of theology and from an early age in the shade of a brother sixteen years his senior, also a theologian. Raised in what he calls the aristocratic bourgeoisie, in the princely republic of the Netherlands. In his youth was even a friend of that noble knob of Orange. Studied philosophy at Leiden, but also anatomy, geometry, chemistry, physics, surgery, obstetrics, botany, metaphysics and logic. He learnt sixteen languages, including Hebrew, Arabic and Sanskrit. In his student days he avoided the taverns, but had a string of relationships with girls and married women. Then something erupted in him. He ceased his studies at nineteen, joined the army as a cavalry officer. The women would not leave him alone. He was attractive in his uniform, he says. When he describes the uniform, his hollow chest expands.
You should have seen me, he says. The sky-blue cloak with the red collar, the gold waistcoat, the first-rate riding boots, the epaulettes, the high fur cap with the magnificent plume.
Yes, I say, so that all the world can see you approach and blast you to pieces from behind the bushes.
That is not how a gentleman wages war, Mijnheer Buys.
Perhaps not, Kemp. But that is how a gentleman cops it in the bush.
For a moment he seems lost in thought, then tells me how as a young soldier he almost drowned under a punt and again a few years later almost drowned in the Thames. He checks to make sure that I’m looking at him: