Yellowwood, assegai wood, ironwood, candlewood, stinkwood, stink cat, wildcat, rooikat, rooibekkie, red rhebok, red bishop, red hare, red alder, white alder, white-eye, white stinkwood, white sugarbush, krantz sugarbush, broad-leaved sugarbush, ganna bush, bramble bush, yellow bush, taaibos, slangbos, salvia, sour grass, sweet water, water mongoose, rock pigeon, rock martin, house martin, hippopotamus, porcupine, pincushion, piet-my-vrou, chat, dassie, the distant snow, spring hare, spekboom, keurboom, waboom, wagtail, wild wormwood, wild olive, wild hemp, guinea fowl, genet, the gentle rain, turtledove, loerie, barn owl, butcherbird, sugarbird, spotted mousebird, pied starling, pied crow, black-backed jackal, maned jackal, ring-necked raven, ratel, these accursed people, baboon, bee-eater, honeyguide, heather, broom, breadfruit, bulrush, buchu, blue goshawk, blue wildebeest, here and there a bluebuck, grey-winged francolin, grey rhebok, steenbok, bokmakierie, kiewiet, kokkewiet, klipspringer, duiker, lammervanger, pig’s ear, monkey apple, mountain cypress, mountain reed, mountains, valleys, milkweed, mint, mitre aloe, bitter aloe, things that from afar look like flies, elephant, Cape lion, Cape pheasant, fish eagle, bateleur eagle, tea tree, leopard, sandstone, stoep-sitting, soil, stones and stones, my uncle Jacob, my brother, my bed, my table, my farm, Philip, my dear dead son Philip, zebra.
Oh the abysm of lists, of a life abandoned.
In what I take to be Zondagh’s bedroom, I am standing at the window gazing over the yard. Festivities have flared up. Flames from the muzzles of guns light up the farm at short intervals. The farmers started the shooting, but De Mist’s dragoons are quick to join in with their guns. The new year is upon us. Answering shots are heard from neighbouring farms. He is handy with his mouth. His hand is around my shaft with the knob on the inside of his cheek and then again all the way back to his tonsils. In between he keeps mumbling and I understand not a single word and press his head against me to silence him. I start throbbing; he tries to pull away; I spurt, filling his gob. He chokes.
Now let me hear what you’ve been so busy scribbling about me.
Lichtenstein translates his German into Dutch for me. I make suggestions: It’s not necessary to mention how fat Yese is. Does he have no manners? She’s a queen. Cross out. My rheumatism is nobody’s business. Cross out. He reads some more. More is crossed out. Another few suggestions. He adds and crosses out. When I’m satisfied, he has to read the German as well. I like the sounds: the hard edges and sharp contours tempered by the soft burr. There is a splodge of my seed on his frills. He doesn’t know about it.
You don’t have to believe me, but this is how I helped write the paragraph that would be quoted and translated countless times; the most complete extant description of my appearance:
Die Vorstellungen, die uns das sonst oft vergrössernde Gerücht von diesem seltsamen Menschen im Voraus gegeben, wurden bei seinem Eintritt vollkommen gerechtfertigt. Seine ungeheure Grösse (er misst fast sieben Fuss), der kräftige, schön proportioniert Bau seiner Glieder, die ruhige Haltung seines Körpers, der zuversichtliche Blick, die hohe Stirn, seine ganze Miene und eine gewisse Würde in seinen Bewegungen machten einen höchst angenehmen Gesamteindruck. So mag man sich die Heroen der Vorwelt denken, das lebendige Bild eines Hercules, ein Schrecken den Feinden, das Vertrauen der Seinigen. Was wir nach den Beschreibungen nicht in ihm zu finden erwartet, war eine gewisse Bescheidenheit und Zurückhaltung in seinen Reden, eine Milde und Freundlichkeit in Blick und Miene, die durchaus nicht ahnen liessen, dass der Mann so viele Jahre unter rohen Wilden gelebt, und die mehr noch, als seine Reden, das üble Vorurtheil, das wir gegen ihn mitgebracht hatten, hinwegnahmen. Er gab bereitwillig Auskunft über die Gegenstände, wegen welcher er befragt ward, vermied jedoch sorgfältig, über sich selbst und seine Verhältnisse zu den Kaffern zu sprechen. Dieses schlaue Ausweichen, oft begleitet von einem schalkhaften Lächeln, in welchem der ganze Ausdruck des innern Bewusstseins seiner Kraft lag, und in welchem deutlich zu lesen war, dass nicht die Furcht seine Zurückhaltung verursache, sondern als verschmähe ers, die leere Neugierde der Frager auf Kosten der Wahrheit oder seines persönlichen Rufs zu befriedigen, machte uns den Menschen noch interessanter und steigerte unsere Theilnahme vielleicht zu einem höhern Grad, als es die Erzählung seiner Schicksale gethan haben würde.
You can say that again.
When I went outside, I saw that the New Year’s festivities, which had started quite demurely, had in the natural course of things got out of hand. This suits me well; I am absorbed unseen into the pell-mell. I drink with the farmers and try to corner an all too nimble little slave girl against the stable wall. She’s quite game, but then plays hard to get. I let her get away; my Sturm und Drang is by now bobbing in the belly of the German.
Elizabeth stands behind me, rubs my shoulders, peeks at what I’m reading in the Flatus Vocis. She bends over me, her stomach pressing against the back of my head. She pages back until she reaches the sketches of the unicorn. She says, Hey, it’s an eland with a single horn. I say No, that’s not what he wanted to draw. She asks what kind of a creature it is. I tell her about unicorns, the fables that travellers come to find here. And how, when they search hard enough, they find the lie that they yearn for.
Why don’t they draw our place the way it looks?
Oh, my wife’s mouth. See the corners curling up when she talks, the lips thrusting out slightly when she listens.
What will they do if one day they come across their stories in the veldt? she asks.
She doesn’t wait for an answer, runs into the house. I hear a banging and plaster falling and then she’s back with the rhebok horns that were still hanging in the passage this morning. She breaks the horns from the plank on which they’re mounted, brandishes one straight horn in front of her.
Come, Coenraad, let’s give them a unicorn.
We go and dig up the white foal that died last week. The grave isn’t deep, the soil is still loose. After a foot or so our spade strikes the carcase. It smells of putrefaction, the worms are already hard at work. We pull the foal’s neck out of the ground. Elizabeth sits down cross-legged at the side of the grave. She holds the head between her legs while I nail the rhebok horn between the foal’s wild and liquefying eyes. The younger offspring leave their packing and come and stand around us and prattle. Elizabeth says the diggers will see the nails. I send Piet to go and find a broken harness. He returns with a bridle in a cotted mass, the bit rusted to bits, the leather cracked and torn. We bridle the unicorn foal, push the bit into its mouth. We harness the fable and cover it up to be dug up and written up by travellers who dare to follow in our footsteps. I hug my wife next to the freshly despoiled grave. We laugh at our mischief. I hold her until she wriggles free to go and pack the last stuff. In the lap of her dress the stains that leaked out of the foal, like the dry blood of pomegranates.
When the sun stops climbing and slowly starts sinking back to earth, my offspring become more and more excited about the move. Maria and Nombini grumble between themselves and avoid me as far as possible. The wagons are just about fully laden. The wagon tilts are tentered. Near Elizabeth’s house a duck is paddling another in a puddle. The one on top dunks the other one under the water and the fornication doesn’t stop even when the bottom one has drowned. I summon two of the labourers and tell them to round up the trek oxen so long. There’s no end to the duck. I sit down and watch the shebang.