Maria’s house is smaller than the other and her children now tally eight, not counting Bettie, who lives on her own, or Philip, who is dead, or the other boys who are doing their own thing. Her house is disrupted with periodic bouts of tidiness and uproar. It’s the children’s sleeping quarters, their playground. She can manoeuvre the exuberant chaos in a certain direction, but the whirlwind itself she does not try to stem. The children clutter and litter until one day she bawls them out and lets fly under them with those paddle-hands of hers. Then the little rascals start sweeping and cleaning while she sits outside smoking and blowing smoke rings with conviction. After that it’s a palaver trying to find anything in the house. The little darlings pack everything away, but not where it was before. They wipe up where they’ve spilt, but with hands and cloths that are dirtier than the spill. Behind me against the wall there is a muddy streak where a little hand tried to rub out a drawing. Most of the more important furniture has been carted out to the wagons. I take it that the furniture and toys still standing around here are destined for the flames.
In a corner looms the throne the children built me. The chair is decorated with pieces of copper wrapped around the backrest with thongs. Behind the backrest ostrich feathers radiate like a black-and-white halo. I drag the throne to the centre of the room, so that I can see outside but also take in the house around me. Janssens is furiously digging up something outside, he yelps excitedly with his snout full of sand.
Where I open the Flatus Vocis the traveller is whingeing about the sleeping arrangements of slaves. He says the slaves at the Cape are short and weak because the creatures mate like animals in the slave quarters, where men and women lie together. Their reprehensible masters allow them to perish in the mire of Heathendom, he says. For strong offspring a European should have a hand in the breeding, says our researcher. Not that a hand has ever impregnated anybody, Mijnheer, I want to add. Then I realise where I’m sitting. On the throne of the King of the Bastards, which my own offspring made for me as a gift, egged on by the gallows humour of their mother, my first love. A European hand! He can go to hell! Not one of my children is as strong as those of Ngqika, Mijnheer the crazy rover.
On the next page our expert on the nations of the earth opines on the subject of the Hottentots. By nature, he says, they are not too far from white. But as soon as a child is born, they rub the baby with oil and place it in the sun and repeat that every day so the little one can bake brown all over. The sun has baked my tribe of half-castes as well; those born whitish are now also brown – the whiteness visible only in the places that the bathwater alone sees. And the bath does not see them very often.
According to the traveller, the Hottentots break the baby’s nose so that it should lie flat against the face. Oh, for God’s sake! As he grows older, the Hottentot allegedly carries on anointing himself with oils and fats until eventually he is pitch black. This, apparently, they do to make themselves stronger. Hence, according to him, the Caffres and their strength. Wonder what would happen to the numbskull if he should ever ask Ngqika whether he is also a sun-baked Hotnot?
I plonk the book down on my throne. Food for the flames. Janssens notices me and stops the digging. He comes to fetch me to inspect his excavation. I stroke my immense dog while he’s digging. A dizzy spell makes me sit down. Janssens licks my face. The ploughing paws suddenly deafening, as if they’re harrowing at the back of my head, there where things should have remained buried.
If it hadn’t been for Kemp and his new pal Read’s damned philanthropy, I might have ended my days in the Couga. If only I hadn’t written him that letter. No, not even you will believe that. I’d have trekked my trek sooner or later anyway. In any case. The two missionaries squat in that shithole Bethelsdorp and invite all that is Hottentot or Caffre to come and moan about the hidings the farmers administer them. They believe every word and write it all down and post it to England. Cradock is instructed by the focking British Minister of Colonies to investigate all fifty charges by the missionaries against the farmers. De Swarte Ommegang – The Black Circuit, our name for that circuitous court – gets going in 1812 and meanders about between Graaffe Rijnet, George and Uitenhage. Preachers have always thought that if you confess hard enough, it will set you free. Farmers slap and thrash their workers. It’s always been like that. It will damnwell always be like that. The strong ones trample the small ones, the small ones get stronger with being trampled, until they can trample themselves.
Initially I’m aggrieved when I hear about the Ommegang, until I’m told that there’s also a whole list of charges against Long Piet and Mad Martha. I am summonsed to go and testify in George about the stories that I peddled to Kemp. Many thanks, Kemp, for this last gift. Oh, Martha, I thought, now it’s my turn to trample.
The summons was still lying right there on the table where I read and left it, when I got news of Kemp’s death. In December 1811, so the people say, the old man gave up the ghost in the Cape.
Lord knows, Kemp, I bade you farewell ten years ago at Schapenkraal. What mourning was to be done, I mourned then and had done with mourning. We had our own lives to live. I came to squat here. Now I am told that in your sixtieth year you acquired a lovely little slave girl, fourteen years old, and set her free, her mother and brothers as well. Married the overjoyed maiden. They say she was rounding out with your fourth child when she bent over your deathbed to make sure that the blanket was covering your long body properly. Dear old Kemp, I was witness to how the crafty woman-flesh of these parts, dark and tender, led you into temptation until seventy times seven every day. Yea, verily, for once and for always and damn me, at last, you permitted yourself to yield. And what a yielding it was! I don’t mourn you, Jank’hanna, I rejoice with you. My friend who is dead for ever.
The evening before I’m due to set off for court, Maria and Elizabeth and I are sitting at the kitchen table. They want to know where I’m heading. Coenraad Buys setting foot off his farm is a great event these days. I tell them about Mad Martha and the tales doing the rounds. How she bullies and beats her labourers to death. Maria snorts:
But, Buys, you’re a fine one to talk.
Nombini is standing in the doorway. I notice her only when she turns on her heel and walks out.
Maria, that mad piece of shamelessness must not get away with such cruelty.
You yourself have been to court because you maltreat your workers.
I was not found guilty.
Only because you and your pals chased off the landdrost.
I want to start protesting, then Elizabeth gets up.
I’m going to bed, Coenraad. You must travel well tomorrow.
Sit for a while longer, wife, I say.
The Coenraad I married wasn’t scared of his neighbour’s wife.