The Caffre captain in charge of the hunt doesn’t want to let slip such an opportunity. As soon as we get near their camp the Bushmen will show themselves to defend it and their arrows will be powerless against the tanned oxhide shields and the range of the rifles.
If you want to come closer to peer into the burning eyes of Bushmen hunters, you’ll be trampled. The deserters and warriors who are now slowly encircling the creatures on this green plain are driven by primordial and complicated stirrings at the back of their heads, and they crave, with a dreadful craving, blood. Believe me, my semblable: Complication and extermination both become more palatable at a distance.
The plan is simple. The party immediately deploys in a long line, the horsemen distributed among the warriors. We surround the ridge behind which the cluster of screens shelters. Without any signal everyone charges at the same time. The first Bushman arrow finds its mark; a Caffre screams next to me. The man is still standing upright, looks down at where the arrow has barely grazed him and knows he is dead on his feet. Faber shoots the Bushman through the chest. Then we’ve crested the ridge, the shields judder with arrows and ahead of us the camp. The women and children try to escape into the undergrowth, but they are surrounded already. They run and crawl and retreat to the shelters and screens. The men’s arrows shower down on us from behind and from the front, with little effect. We murder them one by one with lead bullets and assegais. The circle around the shelters contracts, the cloud of dust thickens. My eyes burn. A young Bushman bumps against me. I get a fright; he gets a fright. He wants to step back, I kick him in the chest. He falls, I step on him, bend down and slit open his throat.
Silence falls. I can see through the dust. The Bushman males are all lying dead around the huts. Those who ran away will keep running. I see something red in the bushes. Are my dogs waiting to scavenge? Among the corpses the hunting party walk looking for fresh sweat. A corpse does not sweat. Here and there an assegai or a hunting knife is pressed into a chest or a throat to make sure that what looks dead remains dead. I wipe my knife clean and replace it in its sheath. Apart from the warrior who was hit by the arrow earlier, nobody else of the hunting party has been injured. He stands staggering in the centre of the camp, his eyes already empty; everybody ignores him. A few women and children, here and there an older Bushman, peek out of the huts and then wish they hadn’t.
Now the slaughter commences. Do you see how the women and the elderly are tortured and maimed and murdered? I told you to stand clear. Do you see now? How breasts are sliced off? How genitals are crushed? How sucklings are torn away from their mothers and thrown in a heap among the huts? How straw from the huts is thrown on top of the wriggling and wailing heap and how it’s set alight and how the colour and smell of the smoke is like nothing that you or I have seen or smelt and how the slaughter carries on and how my comrades join in, in a trance of unbridled bloodlust? How Steenberg plucks off a child’s arm, how a Caffre carries on wielding a knobkerrie at a heap of flesh that has long since ceased being human; how the butchers look around panting, their hands on their knees, and how the killing then is replaced by something far more calculating? Do you see?
The survivors are herded into a huddle, too tired and dazed for further resistance. One by one they are plucked out of the huddle, thrown down, pinned down and the soles of their feet sliced off. It takes longer than one might think; there is more scream left in these people than you can imagine. Then they are left there with the corpses and the burning heap of babies, not capable of walking any further, of hunting, capable only of sitting there and dying of hunger.
I suppose I should have warned you: If you want to see me, you must be prepared to see too much. I know what you want to read. I know what to whisper to you, what excites you, because that is what makes my breeches bulge. We’re not that different. In fact, we become more and more alike. But beware, there’ll come a point on this road we’re so companionably walking together when it will be too late to turn around.
Not that I want to scare you off. Come, see, believe me, the worst is over. We travel back to our king. Some of the Caffres and Faber and Krieger and Bezuidenhout have strung ears and noses around their necks as mementoes. Behind us the first vultures descend on the Bushman camp. At the Great Place we are given a heroes’ welcome and as if at a wedding buck are roasted and great fires are made and as always the young Caffre maidens dancing in the light. We old rebels sit huddled together and drink too fast and laugh too loudly.
I inspan my oxen and saddle my horse and go to fetch my family. The Caffre dogs bark themselves into a frenzy when the pack of feral dogs take up position at the edge of the trees with lolling tongues, ready to follow me. I promise once again to build Kemp a house as soon as I’m back. Kemp immediately drops to those well-worn knees of his to thank God and his heavenly host for my help in guiding him through the perils of the land to this place of rest. He prays that one day there will be a church here that will blazon forth the Gospel to the far ends of Africa. He prays for altars and sacrifices and the light of civilisation and flames reaching up to heaven. He prays that God will have dominion over Africa. I want to tell him Just go and have a look around the corner, there is already a large enough altar of smouldering babies stinking to high heaven. I want to tell him My dogs and I, we have dominion here. But I keep my trap shut and go forth.
3
On 14 December 1799 I’m back with Ngqika. Maria drives the one wagon, I the other. Nombini rides on Glider. My children walk or sit on oxen. The wagons judder under the weight of the ivory and hides and the few sawn-off elephant’s feet like tree trunks of skin and bone and ripe meat. I’m almost forty and to date I’ve lost three teeth, but my smile reveals no gaps.
And goddammit! I’ve hardly lifted my rump off the wagon, when I have to hear that none other than the motherfocking Maynier wants to see me at the Great Place. Go fock your fundament, shitstripper! I thrash the Caffre bringing me the news with my quirt and bellow at the bastard to get out of my sight. I shout that Maynier can lick my wagon-worn butt. The colonial cunt of a cur, nowadays Commissioner Maynier, is now apparently residing at the Great Place as the envoy of Dundas.
The house is still standing, but Maria and Nombini and the children take a while to feel at home again. While they were away with the Tambookies, I cleared away everything of theirs and piled it up in corners. They weren’t here. They wander around the house and yard in a daze, searching for their stuff, fingering the furniture and walls, so that they can permeate the place again and make it their own. By evening the children are hard at play again and the women ganging up against me. Elizabeth has in the meantime started calling herself Bettie. Her hair has been cut short, it flares up on her head like a burning bush. She is prettier than ever. She is not meant for Ngqika; when she marries she’ll be the one and only wife of the lucky chap who makes it past me.
On the sixteenth Bezuidenhout and Botha and their families come to greet us. We are sitting under the tree in front of my house when Edmonds and my friend Kemp come walking up. They have been to the Great Place to talk to Ngqika and the typhus-hound Maynier. I clasp Kemp to my chest. Bezuidenhout spits in his coffee and empties the mug next to him. The Man of God tells me how he’s teaching Christian and Caffre kids to read and write, how he’s planting vegetables where his house will arise. He tells me about Edmonds who wants to clear out; the man has been standing apart all the time anxiously regarding all the yelling bare-bummed kids. I can see Kemp wants to talk out of earshot of others. We go and inspect his vegetable garden.