My Xhosas: tall, naked, red cloaks floating free; the assegais shinier than bayonets. They walk ceremoniously, sombrely. A different discipline, dictating that you skewer your foe face-to-face, not mow him down at a distance.
Ngqika rides at the head, his advisers walk behind him, and behind them my Yese in a white robe. She has descended from the cart for the arrival and walks out in front of the horses. She’s sweating. I can see her nipples shining through the cloth. She licks the moisture from her lips.
To one side a little chap sits sketching the whole story. Perhaps you know the painting, may even know the painter’s name was Paravicini. Well, it was hot that day and nobody stood still and he wasn’t looking everywhere equally attentively. The occasion was, for instance, not at all such a dour affair as his sketch suggests. As soon as the two groups sniffed each other’s horse shit, the officers immediately greeted the young king, and jokes were soon exchanged. We streamed into the camp like a lot of rowdy sons whose mother has summoned them in to supper.
In the camp the king dismounts, swallows his smile and is conducted to the governor’s tent. When he meets the Dutchman, my son extends his hand and with great dignity shakes the hand of the governor, as I taught him. The governor and his officers can’t keep their eyes off the Caffre king. My king enjoys the attention. You have to laugh, reading how that lot describes Ngqika. As if they’re singing songs of praise with both his balls in their cheeks.
The king, Yese and two of his wives are ushered into the tent. The Dutch find it hot. The side flaps of the tent are thrown open. Promptly the tent is mobbed by the officers and Christians gawping at the proceedings. They stay away from the far end of the tent where Ngqika is standing, because behind him, beyond the boundary of the tent poles, stand his advisers and captains and behind them, in a semicircle, sit his hundred and fifty warriors in their blood-red mantles with assegais at their feet. One of the officers strums a mandolin and another sings a folk song. The king talks to the Dutchmen. Everybody laughs and nods and carries on shaking hands.
The king and his family and I are invited for supper at the governor’s table. I am proud of my son. He doesn’t know the food and he doesn’t know the knives and forks, but he learns fast. The women struggle. Ngqika likes the strange rich meat sauces and he appreciates the wine. With every new dish set before him he sends a portion over his shoulder to the taster. When he is satisfied that it’s not poisoned, he makes a great to-do about the culinary skill. The governor thinks he likes the food so much that he wants to share it with his people. We don’t disabuse him with the truth.
Janssens says the trek to the Kat River was arduous. The road was bad or non-existent, the streams many and not easy to traverse. But game was plentiful. He boasts about the thousands of pounds of meat they shot in those five days of travelling. Ever since the first stone was cast, man has learnt to kill at a distance. I’m starting to wonder whether the new musket bullets don’t increase the distance unduly. When you can no longer see a creature’s eyes when you shoot it, you start weighing meat by the pound.
A day’s journey away from the Kat River Janssens’ party came across a few farmers from Bruyntjeshoogte. They were in pursuit of the Caffres who had stolen their cattle. They’d caught up with the thieves and retrieved their cattle and shot two of the Caffres. Janssens tells the story hesitantly, anxious that this incident could further sour public relations. Ngqika shakes his head and smiles broadly, his gob stuffed with beef. No, he says, he can find no fault with the actions of the farmers.
The thieves got what they deserved, says the king in Xhosa.
Welcome to the other side of your border, General, I interpret.
Ngqika’s wives pour themselves more wine and clink glasses until the red juice makes the starched table cloth look like a battlefield. Janssens raises a hand for more napkins. He wants to know from me whether all the colonists, that is to say Dutch Christians, are as terrifying as the crowd that travelled with him. He tells me that when they were outspanning at the Sundays River, one of the Christians was sleeping on a wagon. A freshly slaughtered sheep was suspended from the wagon to bleed dry. The carcase attracts a hyena that starts eating the sheep from below. The farmer stealthily takes his gun and pushes the muzzle down the carcase into the hyena’s mouth and blasts away the creature’s head. I want to say that the Christians hereabouts are mostly about ten feet tall and spit fire and can get women with child at a distance, but the governor is droning on excitedly. He tells of the forests through which the road winds at times. The troops of monkeys yelling at them when they pass under the trees. The colonists then nimbly scramble into the trees, as if they themselves had long tails and four hands. They grab hold of the monkeys and break their necks and roast them. Some of them are cute enough to be kept as pets, until they steal food and are then also roasted.
I prefer dogs to animals with thumbs, I say.
Janssens stops chewing, regards me quizzically.
Most colonists of my acquaintance aren’t really great tree-climbers, I say.
While paging through the traveller’s insane book, I stroke the dog at my feet. I have two dogs about the place, big black creatures with long tails and even longer legs. The price tame animals pay for lounging about the house with full bellies is that their owners baptise them with unpalatable names. Unless you deserve your anonymity, you are expected to leap up and wag your tail whenever you hear your name. Until they prove the contrary to me, I call the yard dogs Janssens and De Mist, after the two functionaries who barked so loudly but could get nothing bitten.
I still sometimes see the pack of stray dogs when I’m in the veldt, and at night their eyes gleam on the edge of the clean-swept yard. Yes, they’re still around, with the bodies of the young ones more and more favouring hyenas. But they keep far away from civilisation, as if they are scared of contamination. When Janssens and De Mist smell them, the tails are between the legs and they come and lie whining by my feet. Hear my song: Dogs are the descendants of the first wolves who could tolerate humans for long enough to be fed by them.
After rattling on in every detail and with the necessary Latin nomenclature about the build of the wildebeest’s penis and thereupon the structure of the Hottentot women’s nether lips, the traveller also tells about his pet monkey. The dumb creature scoffed all the insects the traveller had collected, including the pins he’d stuck them down with. The traveller laments the loss of the many hours he spent taming and training the monkey, as well as the wasted hours spent ordering and classifying nature.
I abandon the plaint of the failed scientist to lend a hand where my youngest sons are struggling to lift the large cooking pot onto the wagon.
Ngqika’s wives are sozzled after the second glass of wine and laugh raucously. At their feet lie the shards of their glasses. At the Great Place they are queens, but here you see them for the spoilt little tipsy girls they are. Janssens gets up before the dessert and excuses himself. I hear him muttering outside about the damned stink. He is back soon with a handkerchief soaked with sweet perfume that for the rest of the evening never hovers very far from his face.