Whenever somebody started digging a hole in front of his house, all that was dog kept its distance. Because a dead dog isn’t always to be found, says my uncle. Then you start looking out for the neighbour’s dog that yaps non-stop.
For two years and seven months he and Van Staden were detained and then released without a trial or a blush or a by-your-leave. He was exempted from quitrent on his farm for the period, but when he returned to De Lange Cloof he was ruined. Aunt Catharina had had to manage the farms and the Hottentots on her own and on top of it had had to go to the Cape herself to nurse him. Ever since, any field cornet or heemraad or landdrost or clergyman or goddam pen-pusher has had to cajole or threaten with the Cape artillery before my uncle would allow him anywhere near his house.
When I rode away that evening, with him standing on his stoep shouting drunken benedictions after me, I knew I had no need to see him again. We had talked our talk; we could now muck on each to his own little pile of stones.
You can go and check in the books and you’ll see that the old devil became a member of a church for the first time in 1815, more than a year after our visit, after I’d left all Cape borders well behind me. Had his courage forsaken him at the last at the prospect of braving the Lord on his own and without the benefit of clergy? He could actually have postponed the churchgoing for a while longer; tares tarry on. He survived his wife; goddammit, the old scoundrel survived me. He only went to the tall trees in 1826, at eighty-nine, in all probability wielding a dropper.
With all the commotion around the house the birds have cleared out. Apart from the voices and the bang and clatter you hear only the cicadas. If you listen well, you can follow their tune. They don’t sound just one note. But that you only hear after many hours of sitting and listening. They say you lose the seed of freedom when you can no longer be bored. If freedom is to be measured by boredom, I’m the freest man in the Couga.
They say that at Tierkloof there’s a mummy nestled in a cave. They say it was a Hottentot king. His biltong-body is covered with honeybush and waxberry. They say he has beads made of seashells around his head. Two funerary stones with ochre paintings by his corpse. The old ruler is dead and desiccated, but apparently as whole as the day he submitted his spirit to his strange god. That is what the Couga does to a man. It wraps you up and dries you out and embalms you here for ever in your cave, on your farm, in your body.
For eleven years I whistled the same tune when going to the cows in the morning for the milking; for eleven years another tune when walking back from the fields. Eleven years the same weaverbirds in the tree above my head, the same noises of the night. Eleven years I studied the routines of the veldt and animals and people around me and in the end got ensnared in them. To be embalmed in this way is not always unpleasant. My house was not only what happened between its walls. It was also the sounds of the outside: the tunes of the region, the shouting at each other and laughter and sometimes the singing of my wives and children; my out-of-tune whistling in the veldt. A man can feel at home in refrains.
Listen, the wondrous tinkling of Elizabeth’s dinner bell as she carries the crate full of household goods past me. Imagine, my wife and I and our two lads, Gabriël and Michiel, assume our normal seats around the table in the dark, cool dining room. I say the prayer I recited every day, at lunch and dinner. Gawie teases his brother Midge and we tuck in. Chine, pumpkin and samp, steeped in the gravy that I sound her out about every time and that she smiles chastely about every time and says a woman does not deliver up her secrets. A man can come to love refrains.
The porcupine quill in Aletta’s hair catches the sun as she takes down the last of the laundry from the line. I remember a day, two years or so ago, when I, Coenraad Buys, went and committed myself to a refrain that I was all too fond of, the meals that three times a day descend from nowhere upon my table. The sitting down to the tables laden with pots of meat, the leading in prayer and the licking clean of the dishes, especially the lying down after the meal, every melody of this I know well. But the false notes in a kitchen are an obscure business.
My children left for the veldt in the early morning to trap something meaty. They return with four porcupines and a hare. Porcupines don’t dig holes, they dig pits. To get the thing out of there is always a pother if you can’t smoke it out. Jan’s arms are red when he dumps the creatures on the kitchen table. A porcupine can’t walk past a bush without gobbling a mouthful; stay away from its belly, it’s too bitter to eat. If you have stomach trouble, then you dry that belly, grind it up and infuse it over boiling water like herbs.
Believe me, never offer to help a woman in the kitchen. She’ll first of all make you stand around like a fool and yell at you, and when you no longer know where to stand or what to say, then she’ll put you to work.
Close your trap, dammit, it’s fly season. And pass me that knife, says Maria.
She allows nobody else to take a knife to her meat. She grabs the knife from my belt and cuts out the arseholes. She believes a porcupine arsehole shouldn’t come anywhere near a flame, it spoils the flavour. On commando we were never so fussy. We ate everything, arsehole and all, but nobody was ever lauded for culinary skills. She hangs the carcases over the flames. She stuffs the knife into my hand.
Come on, Buys, if you want to be useful, deal with those quills.
I wait until the quills are on fire and then scrape them off. She pretends to be chopping vegetables, but when I look around, I catch her, hand on the hip, supervising me. The last quill is done. I pass her the meat.
Pick up the quills, the whole ones can go to the daughters for the hair.
I bend down and start picking up the quills.
Come on, like that you’ll be here all day tottering like a heron.
She shoves me out of the way and is down on her knees and scrapes together all the quills and passes them to me.
The broken ones can be chucked out, the whole ones to your daughters. Get on with it, then!
I clear out and first stand outside swearing and chuck the broken ones down next to the house and give the rest to Aletta.
Buys! I’m waiting for you!
She’s standing in the doorway with a bucket.
Go and bring the water to the boil.
She disappears into the house again; I stoke the outside fire. When I go back in with the boiling water, the meat is lying in a bowl, steeping in vinegar. The backs of the porcupines have been flayed open. She calls this the mealies – with the quills removed, the flesh looks just like a dark-coloured mealie. She pours the boiling water over the mealies and scrubs them white. She stuffs the porcupine mealies into my hand.
Go hang them against the breeze, she says. And don’t let them get bruised.
I go hang the lumps of meat like laundry and get myself out of there.
By four o’clock I hear her approach from a distance. The backs can be taken down. I bring in the meat and have to chop beans and peel potatoes while Maria is preparing the pot. She throws in the porcupine ribs and tails. The mealies are the best meat. Those she will fry with the hare when the pot meat is almost done. I throw the vegetables into another pot.
That’s not nearly enough, Buys. How many mouths do you count?