When I set foot here, I immediately went to greet big brother Johannes on his farm not far away. His wife wouldn’t allow me into the house. I went to look for my brother in his fields and we shook each other’s hand and after smoking a pipe we didn’t have much to say to each other. We promised each other that we would visit regularly and not become strangers to each other again and that I would come and show him my wives and children. I did not see my brother again.
With our first spring in the Couga I decided one morning that my wives should have a birthday. Not one of them knows on which day she was born. We don’t observe birthdays. Nor the children; we write the dates in the front of the Bible. We’d hardly been here a few months, everyone under one roof, in what is now my and Elizabeth’s house. They are sitting in the kitchen; Elizabeth fills the kettle with water. Maria doesn’t interrupt her story. I say that tomorrow is their birthday. I say we must have a great feast. I hug them where they remain sitting at the table. I say we must start preparing. I’ll provide the meat, they can start preparing the vegetables and the pudding so long. I send Coenraad Wilhelm and Philip out with a new gun. They are more or less twelve, are quite competent hunters already. I get the hell out of the madhouse, go and sit at my table, under my tree. I’m drawing up plans for the farming lands. I make sums for seed. The activity in the house is loud, but not a peep from the womenfolk. Normally all three of them talk at the same time. I’m pleased that they get on so well together.
The following noon the table groans under the weight of meats and potatoes and green stuff and sweet potatoes. I say let’s carry everything out to the outside table, it’s a beautiful day. I bring out the wine. I tell Bettie she must keep the children occupied, I’m making a feast for my wives. I fill their beakers with wine. I address them, how beautiful they are looking today, what good mothers they are, how much they mean to me. I make the jokes and we all laugh. We laugh when Nombini knocks back her wine before the toast has been proposed. We laugh when Maria takes umbrage and throws a handful of pumpkin at me when I say that it’s not cooked through. We laugh when later I miss my chair in sitting down. We laugh when Elizabeth gives everyone a present, me included. For me she’s wrapped two new flintstones in a cloth. We laugh when she says: for our husband and hunter. I suspect these are from the flintstones I acquired last month. I don’t remember very much more of the afternoon. I wake up with my head on my arms, at the head of an empty table. Somebody has placed a lantern next to me, cleared the table. My flintstones are wet with dew. I go and crawl in behind Maria, my arm like a tendril around her body. I press her to me, my head in the hollow where her shoulder turns into neck and her frizz is turning grey. She takes hold of my hand, removes it from her breast.
Many happy returns, my wife, I say against the lobe of her ear.
Dearlordgodinheaven, Buys, she says.
Eleven years later I’m sitting and counting my furniture. At the back of the Flatus Whatever there are blank pages on which I now make lists of what is on the wagon and what is still to come and what can remain. The book is also full of lists. The traveller lists the contents of his wagon chest, so many shirts, so many trousers, too few shoes. Bible, books with Latin titles. He keeps a scrupulous record of every animal that his party shoots. He distinguishes between those shot to be eaten and those killed to be painted and analysed and immortalised. He divides animals and plants into Latin classes. One of the lists has been scratched over, the page torn and over it all, in fresher ink, a messy scrawclass="underline" We fear not being able to say everything, therefore we make lists.
I gaze out over my farm. On the verso of the faded lists I write my own. This is what I’m taking with me:
3 wives,
a whole lot of children and their lice hopping from head to head,
4 Hottentots,
7 Hottentot youths,
6 Hottentot women,
7 Hottentot girls,
not a single slave,
2 heavily laden wagons,
1 ox-cart,
innumerable regrets,
2 horses,
24 trek oxen,
121 heads of cattle,
46 sheep,
108 goats and
all the brandy I can carry with me.
And this is what I’m going to set on fire:
4 muids of barley,
35 muids of tares,
4 000 vines,
1 leaguer of wine,
etcetera,
1 barn and
3 homes.
Hardly have I shed my shoes under my new bed or De Mist summons me to the Zondaghs’ farm, Avontuur. Apparently he wants, as Janssens promised, to see me to sound me out about the Caffres. I want to get the chit-chat behind me and on Old Year’s morning 1801 I am in the saddle long before daybreak. My horse is a no-good mare that I rode out of Caffraria. I named her Maynier. All the way over the mountains of the Couga I lash the hell out of her to see how soon I can ride the thing to death. By afternoon I leap off Maynier and land on Zondagh’s farm. I touch her up where it hurts; she kicks Zondagh’s slave who has come to cool her down.
There’s quite a to-do on Avontuur. Every blessed farmer in the area is standing around smoking in his Sunday best. Everyone has a petition under his arm or a complaint in his bosom that the Netherlander must be apprised of. I haven’t even greeted the owner of the farm, when I’ve acquired a tail. A cheeky little chap with frills up to the chin and a cow’s lick of a fringe introduces himself with fingers that crunch in my hand.
Doctor Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein, he says with a German accent.
Doctor Coenraad de Buys, I say.
The thin lips under the strong nose cleave open in a laugh.
I feel as if I know you already, Mijnheer Buys. You are a much talked-about man in the Colony. And now I must hear that you are also a doctor?
Nowadays you are all seeking my advice against the Caffre plague. A proper bloodletting is the best medicine.
The fellow smirks excessively and repeats my joke to the next farmer, who blows smoke into his face. I am told that Lichtenstein is the medical officer of the Colony and schoolmaster to the children of Governor Janssens.
Matthys Zondagh the younger is taller than his father, old Matthys, with whom my Uncle Jacob had such a shindy. He is friendly and asks after my family, of whom I probably know less than he. His wife, Adriana, comes bearing rusks. She’s a bit on the thin side, but there is still enough there to get a grip on. I am introduced to Commissioner-General Jacob Abraham de Mist and his half-grown daughter Augusta – little breasts with plump nipples rubbing against the thin cloth and making your mouth water, but otherwise pale, with transparent lips and a snub nose so high in the air that you can see all the way into her skull.
When the coffee has been imbibed, the host and the women are left behind in the sitting room. De Mist and a few of his right-hand men lead me to the dining room with the big chairs to talk. The commissioner-general’s eyes are deep-set, his mouth a scab under his nose, the lips cracked and bleeding behind the lumps of spit clustering in the corners of his mouth. His jacket takes issue with his paunch. From his farts I deduce that he is a vegetable muncher. He asks me about my days with Van der Kemp – apparently the two knew each other in the Netherlands when Kemp was a soldier. De Mist is so affable, it makes me puke. I want to bawl into his face, I am guilty! I am guilty, set me on fire and devour me. Skin me alive, oh Lord, but deliver me from these misconceived philanthropists. My hands wander over the armrest, my fingers start tracing the delicate wood carving. De Mist and company ask the strangest questions; at first I think they are playing the fool, until I see the expectant frowns when I hesitate to reply.