For the last few days I’ve kept Kemp away from the house. God’s gardener is busy trying to harvest Caffre souls all day, but just in case he should have an idle hour or so, I devise a plan. I offer the Bengali who prays to the setting sun and Mohammed every evening – called Damin, I’ve since found out – a few plugs of tobacco to keep Kemp occupied. The next day Damin is sitting piously muttering during the prayer meeting. As soon as Thomas the deserter and the four Hottentots lift their hind ends under the tree and Kemp remains sitting on his own and gazing as if the branches were talking to him, the Bengali comes asking Kemp to teach him to read and write. Kemp asks if he wants to learn Dutch or the Caffre language. Damin says any language that will bring him closer to the word of the Lord. Kemp enrols him in the Dutch class. When Kemp is not occupied with prayer meetings and sermons and classes, I keep him away from the house under construction by telling him to sand down the door which I could at least hammer together myself.
Kemp sees his house for the first time on 3 February when towards dusk I come to drag him away from the jubilating flock. I help him pile his meagre possessions on the cart and strike the tent. We walk next to the oxen up the slope to his new terrestrial home. The place is standing, but I’m not happy.
I’m sorry, Kemp.
You built me a house, why should you be sorry?
You know a builder by his chimney. And that thing isn’t going to draw. You’re going to smoke yourself out of there.
As long as I have a roof over my head and a place to rest my weary body.
These thugs are more used to breaking down.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Kemp laughs and says:
My dear Buys, the Lord sent you to me.
The house’s wattle-and-daub roof appears over the ridge.
We are none of us sent, I say. We come across each other, walk together for a while, then continue on our own and separate ways.
At the house the other Christian builders are awaiting us, with the few prudently preserved calabashes of brandy. A pot is simmering on the fire. One or two of them shake Kemp’s hand. I propose a long-winded toast to the house. Kemp is obliged to take a small sip of brandy on himself and his house. The missionary thanks me by name as well as the other outlaw farmers with an even more verbose speech containing no fewer than four Latin quotations of which nobody understands a whit. We’re boozing outside and the brandy disappears fast, the pot soon forgotten. When I look for Kemp, he’s nowhere to be found. I find him in the back room measuring the doorjamb with a leather thong.
What are you doing, Jank’hanna? We’re celebrating for you.
It’ll fit, he says absent-mindedly.
He looks around, as if he’s searching for something.
Will you help, Buys?
Of course. With what?
I want to move in tonight already. At least my bed and… there are a few things that I want to bring in out of the elements.
We’ll do that. I’ll just get shot of the gang out there.
I go out and separate a few brawlers and tell them to go and raise hell somewhere else. I grab half a calabash of brandy from Faber, who staggers mutteringly into me in pursuit of his pals.
Kemp and I start unloading the wagon. We hear the hyenas laugh.
There are more and more of the creatures hereabouts, he says. They’re here every night, ever closer; in the last few weeks they’ve been pissing on the tent flaps.
The scavengers are breeding furiously since the lions have all been wiped out, I say. This land is a torn-open cadaver.
We carry in the cot, the small wooden table, the even smaller desk, the two chairs, the trunk with clothes and books. In the back of the wagon is a large crate and three smaller crates, meticulously wrapped in thick cloths.
Where do these go? I ask.
In the back room.
You must help me, it’s damn heavy.
The large crate, taller than me and heavier than the two of us together, doesn’t budge. I go and fetch three Hottentots. With some effort we manage to drag the crate into the back room.
What kind of thing is in here?
A printing press.
So show us.
It’s late, Buys. Some other day.
The excitement has drained from his visage. He once again looks as if gravity is dragging him down to somewhere under the deepest depth.
Then just a last sip?
Just one, you hear.
Just one.
An hour later we are drunk. We are sitting in his house, on the ground by a small fire. Kemp tells me about a remarkable whore in Amsterdam who could do handstands. My eyes remain fixed on the door opening into the back room.
She could, just like that, with her blonde hair brushing the floor, walk towards you where you’re sitting on the bed and then embrace you with her legs around your neck. Oh, my dear Buys, where were you then?
Show me that press.
It’s almost light. I’m preaching tomorrow.
Their souls aren’t going anywhere. Show.
I help him to his feet and drag him along behind me. I open the crate and start chucking beams and screws and bolts onto the floor.
De Buys! That’s a delicate machine!
It’s just wood and iron, not the tender flesh of a headstand whore.
But Buys, it could be, you can tell anything with this thing. The whole Bible.
You don’t say.
I’m befuddled. This is a task for another day.
Why so? Come. Seems to me this beam has to stand upright, and this lies across it.
Get away, let go. Let me.
You can make a whole Bible with this thing?
As many Bibles as you could want, Buys.
And stories of the flesh? I can read, Kemp, but I’ve never come across anything like that to read. Do people write such things?
There’s a man in France, they locked him up on account of his stories; there were too many naked women being whipped in his books. Last I heard, he was in the Bastille.
And you can make any story you like on this thing?
Any story. But I must have the text to hand to pack the right letters into the press. I don’t have that marquis’ books. I can’t think up his stories, and so help me God, I don’t want to either. That life is over. These days I read only the Bible.
So let’s make a Bible. I want a Bible for Maria. Then I can give it to her as a present tomorrow when she wakes up.
Tomorrow?
That’s right. What’s your problem?
You don’t understand, Buys. Oh, dammee, let me show you. Pass that pole here.
Kemp trips over the empty floor in front of him.
I hold the upright poles so that Kemp can bolt together the structure. When the contraption looks like a gallows, Kemp slides a large screw into the top end and next to the flat plane a cast-iron lever with a wooden haft.
Are we making wine now or books?
Exactly. They say the first printing press was nothing more than an abused wine press.
From one of the smaller crates Kemp takes out a metal plate that looks like a frame.
This is what we pack the letters in. One by one, but wrong way round, as in a mirror. The English call it the casket.
Where are the letters?
Over there, in the crate.
I upend the crate and blocks of wooden and lead letters spill all over the floor.