Bezuidenhout recounts that when he was patrolling the surroundings last night, he encountered two lions and shot and killed one and the other one fled and he reloaded and pursued the lion and shot and killed her as well.
A week later Maria arrives at the wagon all aflutter, fidgets here there and everywhere and wails away at one of Kemp’s hymns. I sit with my back against the wheel chawing a plug of tobacco. In the wagon tilt above me she drops a saucepan and giggles to herself. I spit out the tobacco juice slowly. The bitter black syrup hangs suspended between my lower lip and the grass at my feet before it falls. I get up and peer into the wagon tilt.
What is it, woman?
I’m going to be baptised. I’m going to Jesus and my children are going to Jesus.
You’re going nowhere.
He’s going to baptise me in the river and the river is going to wash away my sins.
We’ll see about that.
I walk to Kemp’s tent where the old man is at his eternal scribbling.
You want to baptise my wife and this is the first I hear of it?
Mijnheer Buys, good to see you. I was just –
You don’t do a thing with my wife and children without reckoning with me first.
But Buys, I assumed you’d be in favour of their souls being with you in the house of the Lord –
And then you want to go and wash them in the river. I’m the only one who washes my wife. If you want a woman, just say the word. But you leave Maria alone. As it is, you’re talking to her more than is acceptable. You put all sorts of things into her head and then I’m stuck with it.
Kemp gets to his feet.
Buys, I have no designs on your or any other Christian’s wife. Yes, I baptise by partial immersion. For me it designates being buried along with our Lord Christ in death and being resurrected along with him. I believe with all my heart that this accords with the Word. Was our Lord himself not baptised in a stream by the Baptist? If you have problems with my liturgy, you must say so.
I hold my peace. Kemp sits down again, starts writing and after a few seconds looks up again to see if I’m still there.
If you want to baptise my wife, then you do it as is proper, I say.
Kemp smiles:
So let’s hear it.
I sit down across from Kemp at the table. On the folding riempie stool on which I take a seat I’m just as high as Kemp on his wooden chair. I lean forward and grip the table on both sides. With every sentence I lift the table and on every full stop I put it down again hard.
Right. You sprinkle her, just a few drops as is proper. No drowning or burying or whatever.
The table slams down. Kemp sits back a whit, tries to hide his smirk.
If that is your wish, any time, Mijnheer Buys.
You baptise her on a Sunday.
Something in the table creaks.
I understand.
Right.
I let go of the table, sit up straight. Then grab the table again and lift it.
You baptise her after a church service.
The table hits the ground. A few papers float to the ground.
A good idea, Buys, then there will also be more witnesses before the Lord.
This time the table goes up and down before I speak.
And when you baptise, you say only the things that are said in the Dutch churches. No focking English church is going to take her soul.
Focking?
That’s English.
Kemp looks away, but I can see he’s laughing.
I am acquainted with the term.
The table slams down again.
Do you understand?
That is in order, Coenraad.
I lean further forward, another hand’s breadth and we’ll damnwell be kissing.
And apart from the little ones, you’ll baptise Bettie as well.
Kemp moves his chair back.
Coenraad, Elizabeth knows by now what she wants and doesn’t want. If she does not convert of her own accord, I cannot baptise her.
I want to lean back, remember too late that there’s nothing behind me, opt to fold my arms instead. I smile.
Brother Kemp. If you want to baptise Maria, then you’ll baptise Nombini’s children as well. She does not care a fig or a fart for your God and my God and I have no problem with that. You should know by now, you can’t convert a Caffre. Her children are not mine. You can see that for yourself. But I am their father and I will see them baptised.
Kemp jumps up and I follow suit. We stand facing each other, our heads brush against the tent roof.
What do you want of me, Buys? You know I can’t do it. You know I can’t baptise children of Heathen parents. If your concubine does not convert of her own accord, I can’t baptise her children.
Is that how you feel?
I’m only doing my terrestrial duty, Buys. I cannot save those who are beyond salvation.
I put on my hat. Take that. I put out my hand.
Well, so be it, Kemp. Then we understand each other. You’re not baptising a soul in my house. You can catechise till Maria can write better psalms than David. But you keep your sprinklings or your rivers or your goddam waterfalls for yourself and your tame Hotnots.
Kemp tries to escape the hand that insists on shaking his. When I walk out:
And please do stop encouraging the poor woman to sing. If it gives me so much pain, just think what it must do to the great and pure ears of our Lord.
Still no final destination has been resolved upon. The little band of refugees start irritating one another; something is coming apart at the seams. At the beginning of March the Bushmen’s dogs roam the camp at night. In the mountains we see thirteen and sometimes fourteen fires burning. Life drags on. By the middle of the month the Christians are starting to squabble among themselves about where to next. Back to the Colony? Further eastward? North, over the Great River? Each has persuaded himself of his own scheme. I listen to my fellow outlaws talking. I see the English deserters watching us and wondering if they joined the right gang. I see the Hottentots starting to lift up their eyes unto the hills. From whence will cometh help for them, away from these errant Christians? Perhaps back to the wilderness from which they were tamed, perhaps back to the Bushmen and back to hunting and gathering and sleeping in caves. I see Bezuidenhout walking up and down in the camp as if there were fences and at night I hear the redbeard battering his wife.
On the 19th we come across a few runaway soldiers. The deserters share their wine from the Colony with us. The swilling ends in a boozing, blaspheming, blathering and buggering. The German flattens Bentley in the yellow grass and gets his breeches down before the Englishman can make his escape and seek refuge with the praying Kemp in his tent. In the early hours I fall into Nombini’s tent and mount her but get nothing done and only wake up the following afternoon.
Late one clear and warm evening at the end of March Faber and I are sitting around the fire mounting guard. I trawl in the pot for a bone that hasn’t been picked clean.
What is your plan, Buys? Do you want to head back to the Colony?
A man can use the Colony. They pay well for tusks and hides. But to go and establish myself there again? I don’t know.