One last story I want to share with you, so that I can exorcise the accursed book once and for all, is the one where our Flatus friend recounts his experiments with a leguan. He tells how he caught a medium-sized leguan, about two feet long of body and three of tail, along with her two young at Agter-Bruyntjeshoogte. He grabs the leguan behind the neck so she can’t bite. It’s a tussle to keep control of the animal. He wants to kill the specimen as soon as possible without mutilating the body. He takes a darning needle and stabs the thing repeatedly in the heart and the head. The leguan waddles off. The scientist’s Christian host undertakes to polish off the animal. He grabs hold of her and squeezes her hard by the chest a few times, ties her legs together and hangs her by her neck. Two days later the leguan is gone from the gallows, but lingers about the farmyard, apparently exhausted after her tribulations. The traveller and the farmer now devise another plan. The traveller has a cask full of brandy in which he keeps other specimens like snakes and smaller creatures. They catch the leguan again, once again tie up her legs, so that she doesn’t lacerate the other specimens with her sharp claws, and dump her into the brandy. The Mijnheer Vocis tells how he holds her under with both hands, how she struggles in the brandy and doesn’t suffocate in the spirits as he’d expected. How she after a quarter of an hour is still showing signs of life, still refuses to be analysed, and then gives up the ghost. You must descend to hell, Christina and Martha and all your kind! Unless you drown me in brandy, I, Coenraad de Buys, Khula the Great, shall also not perish.
Toktokkie takes a torch from me and walks up to the only home she’s ever known.
6
Fire can never be wrong. The flames sing as they devour. Two houses on fire, with us in the centre of the yard, between the two altars that are also sacrifices, to nothing and nobody; my children’s eyes sparkling. Each one of the fires an animal that consumes everything that was once born; the fires grow until everything has been devoured and then start consuming themselves. It shines like a paradise, it burns like hell. It is plenty and pain. It is a feast and an apocalypse. The fire lives fully in sparks and sudden flickerings. It is weightless and the arch-enemy of gravity. See! See the houses burn! If we must vanish, let us vanish completely! Let us destroy our life here with a fire without measure or equal! That obliterates all tracks! That annuls citizenship! That wipes land tenure off the face of the earth! That extinguishes surety to the end of goddam oblivion!
The Couga existence finds its consummation in this moment when the roof timbers come crashing down. In the fierceness of the destruction I see the one and overriding proof that I have indeed been here, did indeed try to live like other people. At this moment when the roof collapses on the floor and the flames leap up from the ground to far above the walls, I relive every day of eleven years.
Maria’s house is burning. Elizabeth’s house is burning. Nombini said her house would not burn, the veldt had to claim it. I went to help her remove the window frames and doors so that everything that walks and crawls and flies can nest there when we’re gone. Bettie persuaded Jan to come along, but when he heard of the house-burning he said we’d at last taken total leave of our senses. He is standing here next to me with my flame-headed daughter in his arms. I can see in his eyes reflecting the heat that he now understands.
After the Swarte Ommegang, the Circuit Court, the last of my friends turned their backs on me. Mad Martha had two milk tarts delivered. I fed the things to the suckling pig. I was sure the tarts were poisoned. The pig rooted around in it with its snout and snorted and planted a huge turd in it. Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
In August the Cape is surrendered to the English. Every time the mob up there start shooting at one another, our Colony is passed around like an orphan between guardians who can’t bring this unruly child to heel. Under the focking English I shall not abide. Among these Christians I shall not abide.
It’s simple: If you have to leave, you have to leave. There are fewer choices in life than you think. To be honest, if you’re not welcome in your neighbourhood, you can forget about feeling at home. For eleven years I tried. Fifty is behind me; if I’m not a citizen by this time, I’m not suddenly at eighty going to be greeted with open arms and unpoisoned tarts.
It’s grown late, but even the little ones are still awake with excitement. In front of us the houses are still smouldering. I’ve made a fire; the women are preparing the last meat that must be eaten before we leave tomorrow. In the light of the fires the aloes against the incline come to life. They are standing sentry or surrounding us for the onslaught, who can tell. In front of me De Mist is lying asleep, almost in the embers. Stray sparks scintillate in his coat. The strong spirits in my belly still my insides. The boys around me all hunker around the fire, elbows on knees, heads in hand. Nobody taught them to sit like this, that is how children have sat by fires from always and into all eternity. I smoke my pipe. Ruminating by a fire you find that the frailest twig reddening and furling up recalls the volcanoes and pyres of old. The blade of straw blowing away on the wind shows us the way to our destiny.
Toktokkie comes to sit next to me with her straw doll and the Flatus Vocis.
Father left this in the house. I rescued it from the fire.
Thank you, Tokkie, but I gave the book to the fire. It’s yours if you want it.
Thank you, Father.
She grabs me around the neck, lets go quickly to get to the book. She tears out pages and folds animals that she arranges around the fire. One by one they catch fire, the elephant, the buck, the duck, the horse, the lion, the little men. A folded-up page falls from the back of the book. She folds it into a flower and hands it to me. I put it to one side and discuss arrangements for tomorrow morning with Hannes and Dirk and Windvogel. Toktokkie is back with a pin and fixes the folded flower to my chest. She comes to sit on my lap and soon gets lost in dreams that make her little feet kick out. I sit with my children around and on top of me; my wives are lying in a bundle on the other side of the fire. Far away I can hear the red dogs calling. It is peaceful around the fire with my sleeping people. Peaceful at last, now that I know it’s all coming to an end. I sit drowsily watching the wind blowing the soot from my houses into the veldt.
Like friends, the game has also got scarcer by the day. In September of this foul year of our Lord 1814 the hunting laws have become so strict that you must go and kowtow to the landdrost for every damned rabbit you want to shoot.
Authorities draw lines on maps, because authorities need farmers, not hunters. As soon as you own land, you surrender several years of your life. There is too much at risk. You have too much to lose. You invest too much in the land. Over the seasons you tame her, you harrow her into fertility. You have too much to kill for, too much to die for. Hunters live longer than farmers.
I take my sons along when I have the chance to go hunting. You learn to know nature through hunting. You can walk around and collect and take notes, but you don’t learn as much as when you walk the veldt with a gun. The source of knowledge is desire, and hunting is an overpowering passion. If you want to get to know a klipspringer, you must taste it. You become as one with every potato and sweet potato you eat. Even God had to be made flesh the better to be able to taste. And the better to be able to hunt. God is constantly hunting us. He is the great collector. We hunt as we are hunted.