On evenings like last night – when she knows I’m too drunk to get anything done, other than crawling in behind her buttocks and to start snoring with kneading hands around her breasts – she still allows me to lie with her.
When we wake up, Danster and some of his pals have settled in before a fresh fire, getting water on the boil. With these reprobates by our side the wilderness will stand aside for us as we trek past. No animal or Bushman will henceforth venture near us. Danster jumps up when he sees me. He is certainly not much younger than I, but he’s slept off last night’s brandy like a young man. I pick up my hat from where it’s lying next to the wagon, dip it into a basin of water, and pull it down over my eyes as far as possible. From beneath the small and merciful lean-to above my eyes I see that Danster is this morning wearing the Sunday suit of a missionary, complete with the tight-fitting little hat the men of God love so much. Underneath the jacket the red-smeared chest peeks out. For a moment the spectre of a sunburnt Kemp standing before me. I wonder how many outfits the fellow has. The black trousers tucked into the top boots.
Buys, get your people into the wagons, then the Reverend Danster will go show you where the elephants graze.
We skim ahead across the Transorangia, along what the people here call the New Gariep. Danster is a miraculous guide. I know these hereabouts merely as stories and rumours, a wild and wide world beyond the laws of the Colony, but still under the eyes of the missionaries, ever wakeful and lidless. I have some idea of where Klaarwater lies. Somewhere to the north-west of Klaarwater lie the home farms of the Afrikaner robber clan. South-west of Klaarwater lies the new mission station for the Bushmen, Tooverberg. Further to the north, I am told, dwell the docile Bechuanas with their hordes of cattle, waiting to be overrun. Danster has criss-crossed this area, he knows which wagon trails are dead ends, which watering holes have been poisoned and where the Bushmen and leopards lurk. What’s more, I can talk to him for hours without dozing off in the saddle. Opperman and De Kooker can only drivel on about stolen sheep and their difficult wives.
To relieve the tedium of the journey, Danster and his crowd and I sometimes go and harass the London focking Missionary Society where they’re trying to convert the Bushmen at Tooverberg. On our first plundering raid we charge into the settlement and scatter the people. I scratch around in the missionary’s hut and appropriate a beautiful herneuter knife that the fellow has hardly used. The knife cuts a deep notch in the leather when I test it against the sheath. Something catches my eye. Through the window I see somebody standing in the doorway of the little school building. None other than goddam Master Markus. How in the devil’s name did he end up here? Is the slab of misery following me? He is standing motionless in the off-kilter doorframe, looking at the pillage raging around him. His shirt tucked in, without a wrinkle or a sweat stain. I lift my gun, keep his mug in my sights and walk up to him until the barrel is resting against his head.
What are you doing here, Schoolmaster? I ask.
I am teaching school, Mijnheer.
You don’t recognise me.
You seem familiar to me.
I am Coenraad de Buys.
How do you do.
Do you in all truth want to tell me that you’ve never heard of Coenraad de Buys?
I have heard of you, Mijnheer. I am Markus Goossens.
I prod him in the face with the barrel.
Stand aside, Schoolmaster.
This is my school, Mijnheer. Here you don’t enter.
The fellow remains standing and I remain standing. The gun is getting heavy.
Excuse me, Mijnheer, he says. I have work to do.
He turns on his heel and shuts the door in my face. I stare at the closed door. The gun wavers in my hand. Behind me a converted Bushman yells in the Dutch the schoolmaster has fed him. I turn around to the screams of pain; the plundering sucks me in and I forget about the shut school door until we ride off with the looted cattle. Then I never forget it again.
In the course of the next week we go and filch a few sheep every day and round up the little shepherds. Danster, who takes care to wear his Sunday best on such days, delivers eloquent sermons, so flagrantly blasphemous that I scan the blue heavens in terror. Danster converts quite a few Bushmen and they join our flock of sinners.
(One morning De Kooker is nowhere to be found, but his wagons are bedded down in the sand and his family are making their morning coffee. His wife says he says he’s coming back.
He said the children and I should trek with you so long, Mijnheer Buys. He didn’t say when, but he left a pocket of ammunition for the Caffre Danster as down payment to lead him back to us, as soon as he wants to come back.
This fellow we won’t see again, I think and look at his wife and she looks away.)
On my outings with Danster I also smear myself with clay and wear a handkerchief over my nose and beard, so that at a quick glance no bugger is going to see a Christian. North-east of Klaarwater, near Campbell, I unload my people and go looting with Danster.
The pious converted don’t have a chance. The survivors can only forgive us, because the ways of the Lord are not for us to know and whatever. Danster takes his leave and moves north to go and strip the Hardcastle mission bare. With him as guide my knowledge of these plains, my herds and particularly my army – my nation – have increased considerably. The names Buys and Danster lure all that is robber and deserter. As long as he and I don’t molest Christians or put our paws into the hallowed Colony, the Colony’s little sweaty hands are tied. My red dogs come to scavenge as soon as the battlefields fall silent. The vultures have to wait for the remains of the remains.
The first days of 1815 we spend trekking towards a fertile tract of land at the convergence of the Harts and Vaal Rivers. Rumours from the Colony reach my campfire. Danster and I are said to be gallivanting with the looting and heresy beyond the Gariep. Somewhere a little bird must have chirped. I don’t lie awake at night wondering why Opperman, his bedraggled little wife and snot-nosed kids chose to excuse and absent themselves in a hurry just now – that very same little goddam bird must have informed him that otherwise I would have sped him on his way with a horsewhip under his traitor’s arse.
At a remove I hear also that the landdrost of Uitenhage, one Cuyler, is warning his counterpart in Graaffe Rijnet, nowadays a Fischer, against me. I am apparently a ‘dangerous character’. Cuyler is said to have suggested that they should go and take tea with the Bezuidenhouts – at present burghers of the Baviaans River, I am told – to fish for information regarding yours truly’s address. With this calibre of clerk the whole world goes to pot! I’d give anything to see the Bezuidenhouts bringing out their best cups for the focking misters.
I am a rich man, but my toe torments me most nights and my hands swell and cramp. If the pain keeps me awake at night, I prick up my ears at the rustle of every bush outside and expect the end. Janssens, my dog, succumbs to the damned ticks. A fortnight later old De Mist stalks stiff-legged into the veldt and does not return. At least Danster and his rapacious Caffres are back soon and there is merrymaking again around the fires in the evening. If you’re living with Danster, you dance till you fall, drink till you drop and sleep till you get up. I don’t really dance. We plunder and smuggle. We get richer and fatter. I know who my friends are on this earth: they are the enemies of everyone else.
They say you know a man when you’ve walked a few miles in his shoes. Bullshit. You know a man when you’ve ridden a few miles on his horse. In his saddle, in February, on the banks of the Harts River. In his moleskin breeches.