Dammee, Buys! Careful! As it is, I’ve got too few esses. You’re going to break the things.
Sorry, Bible-writer.
Kemp is on the floor gathering the letters and carefully packing them back into the crate, kind by kind.
Just let me be, he says. I’ll pack the stuff.
What must I do?
Well, after this we have to ink the text.
He looks up:
I don’t have ink. I write with roots. We must get ink. Thick ink, not watery root juice.
We’ll make a plan, I say. You just pack your letters.
While Kemp starts setting down a verse of text letter by letter in the casket I stand around touching and rubbing the frame. I tell him about the book I picked up in the road, the maps and lists.
Yes, Buys. Lists are the opposite of description. The less you can get your mind around something, the longer your list grows.
I strain at the screw. It resists. I tell him about the sketches of the impossible animals in the book. I go to fetch oil. When I come back, I see Kemp’s bedroom: hardly more than ten by ten feet, reed ceiling, clay, no floor, a cot, a desk with his papers neatly piled, a chair, a trunk and, in the opposite corner next to the window aperture, the three-by-five-foot printing press extending all the way to the roof and outside the night barking and yowling.
I press against the pole keeping the top level, making sure it’s stable. Kemp carefully slides the text onto the frame and locks it in place. I regard the framed text. Most of the words are spelt out with individual letters, but some, such as mouth, have been cast as whole words on their own plates. The whole phrase sweet as honey has also been cast as one plate. I wiggle at the sweet-as-honey.
This honey is so sweet that the letters are sticking together.
It’s a stereotype. The French talk of a cliché. Some words and phrases that are used regularly are cast as units. You don’t have to set the whole thing every time. Sweet as honey occurs often in the Bible.
There must be many such blocks if you want to print the Bible, I say. The same things over and over. And God. I suppose there’s a block for God as well.
Kemp starts laughing, where he’s standing on unstable feet, hanging by an arm from the big scaffolding around the Biblical text.
Yes, Buys; God is a cliché.
He looks past me.
In Europe he’s a cliché. But in this land… Here there aren’t even loose letters for him, never mind a word. Here where they worship anything and everything, our Lord is an aberration.
You’ll see yet, I say. The further you travel from the Colony, the more the words dry up. And the words for the things you can’t touch are the first to go.
Kemp takes a deep breath and shouts:
Source! Way! Rock! Lion! Light bearer! Lamb! Door! Hope! Virtue! Word! Wisdom! Prophet! Sacrificial victim! Scion! Shepherd! Mountain! Dove! Flame! Giant! Bridegroom! Patience! Worm!
Kemp! What the devil are you doing?
Those are the words for God in the Bible, Buys. There are more, so many more! Vine! Ram! Sun! Bread! Flame! Lover! Dew! Saviour! Avenger!
Stop it, dammit! I shout and walk out.
Creator! Majesty! Love! Abyss!
Through the window I see Kemp hollering his last holler. Then he goes to sit down on his cot and gazes out of the window into the black night.
At the outdoor cooking fire I scrabble the thickest bones from the untouched pot. By the little fire in the front room I churn loose the marrow with my knife and suck it up and spit it out into a tin plate. I shout at the missionary in the other room:
Come here Kemp! Here is the fat. We’ll make you some ink. Bushman ink.
As Windvogel taught me, I almost say, but I’m not that drunk. I hear nothing, go to check where Kemp is. Find him on the bed, still staring out of the window. When I touch his shoulder, I can feel he’s shivering.
Come and sit here by the fire in the next room, your machine is taking over here.
Of course, Mijnheer Buys. I’m forgetting my manners.
Kemp gets up and sits down again immediately.
It’s just a dizzy spell. They come and go.
You’re just boozed up, man. Come.
Of course.
I rootle a few live coals out of the fire with my hands, throw them into a bowl, place the bowl on the ground and crush the coals with my shoe.
Black. For your ink.
I lift the bowl onto the table and open my breeches.
What are you doing?
I’m pissing. We need piss.
Why?
The charcoal must dissolve. I’m not going to walk to the river for water.
I stand over the basin, swingle in hand. Kemp watches me. A thin stream trickles into the bowl and dribbles and dries up. I have a problem when people watch me.
I had a piss a while ago, there’s nothing left, I say. Come and do your bit here.
Kemp looks at me. Starts saying something, stops and opens his own breeches and steps up. Now I’m watching him. He pisses till the charcoal is covered.
That’s enough, oh mighty one.
Kemp blushes, but doesn’t stop.
Kemp! Stop it now.
He jerks his pizzle away from the bowl, piss splashes all over the table. He doesn’t stop, a pool foams up next to the table. My eyes are shut with laughter and I scramble to get out of the way of the stream under the table. Kemp shakes himself off excessively.
Shaking more than twice is nice.
He blushes even darker and closes his breeches. Then he laughs as well.
I take a swig of brandy and slide the calabash towards Kemp. He swallows. I cover the top of the basin with a flat hand and upend the basin and make the warm piss run through my fingers until a black mush remains. I pour it onto a plate and hold it over the fire so that the porridge starts to dry. Kemp watches me, starts singing a German hymn. I also hold the plate with the marrow fat over the flames. When both plates are too hot to hold, I empty them into the bowl and start mixing. I spit into the mixture until my tongue sticks to the sides of my mouth.
Spit, friend, my mouth is barren.
Kemp giggles.
Why ever not?
He comes to stand next to me, still muttering away at the hymn. He watches me, how I stand stooped over the bowl, summoning up slime from far down my gullet with choking sounds, until I’m empty. Only then does the man deign to contribute some preacher spit. I make him spit until it’s enough. Then I make him spit some more. I carry on mixing the lot.
Almost done. Now all we need is blood.
Kemp is clutching the table top with white knuckles, it looks as if his forehead is dragging him forward.
I am in my cups, Mijnheer. It’s been years since I’ve been drunk.
I hold out the brandy to Kemp.
Quite, you’re drunk already. What’s the point of stopping now?
For a few moments Kemp regards the calabash suspended in front of him and then accepts it.
Have you ever before mixed this Bushman paint, Mijnheer Buys?
I pretend not to hear him.
I would take it amiss if you made me spit and make water as a joke.