The old woman throws a few sweet potatoes into a pot and there is a scraping of porridge for everybody. She sits watching us eat. Her hands in her lap have a light tremor and her lips smack along with ours, as if she can taste what we’re tasting. When we’ve done, she scrapes the leftovers into a dish for herself and doesn’t look up until she’s licked her dry-twig fingers clean.
The oldster’s name is Jannas van Riebeeck. He asks me why I’m laughing. I walk to the river with Jannas and his boy-child. The moon floats on the water like a blown-up carcase. Jannas wets a bit of soft clay soil on the bank and kneads it till it’s tacky. He breaks a stick in two and gives his son one half. They sit opposite each other and push the sticks into the ground. They drill towards each other until a narrow tunnel connects them. He lies down with his ear on the hole and his son blows into the other hole. Jannas feels the air in his ear and nods: the tunnel is open. He pours a bit of water down the tunnel. He presses a plug of dagga into the hole and lights it. His son is on his stomach, his mouth on the other hole; he smokes the herb through the earth artery. The lad smokes till he’s had enough, then he offers me the earth pipe. The smoke hits hard when it shoots up from the earth to the back of the lungs. I cough, spit the sand out of my cheeks. The hole is plugged again until all three of us are silly and satisfied.
Back in the camp Jannas is heavy hearted. Apparently Anderson has been instructed to round up all deserters – criminals, slaves, Hottentots or Bastaards – who have escaped to the Gariep and to post them back to the Colony. The wretched man couldn’t arrest a church choir. In addition he has to send twenty young men from Griquatown for military service in the Zwartveld. If the people refuse to give up their sons, they may no longer trade legally with the Colony.
You see what my lad looks like. He can plough a bit, but he’s too crooked for a gun.
I thought the little woman was asleep, but her kaross comes to life and sobs.
They also no longer want us to plant dagga and tobacco, Jannas continues. There are vegetables only in the garden of the Lord. But our Lord doesn’t have to hawk for a living. Not with all those pearls in his crown.
The scorpion that’s come to warm itself at the fire is claiming my attention. I block his route with a twig and start a duel.
I’m a hawker, says Jannas. My leaves are my livelihood. I don’t know about slaughtering and milking, but I know everything about everything that you can stuff into a pipe. My trees are my flock and I’m their shepherd. If the law says a man can no longer be what he is, then it’s time to clear out. If the law says you must sacrifice your crook-backed son, then it’s time to clear out. So then I took my garden and I cleared out.
The young hunchback is poking about in the pots for another scraping to eat. Words fail me. The old man carries on talking. I let him be. The scorpion’s sting darts out and retracts. Its tail casts big shadows in the branches. The world shifts and shudders in the flickerings of the flames, without outline. The scorpion ducks and attacks. Tomorrow, in the pale light of day, everything will seem merely what it is. But see, now, the fulgurous shadows of the flames. See, the little red scorpion. See how nimble, and then he’s gone. Just see the moon. See.
2
The three-wheeled wagon causes trouble all the way until at sunset we reach the outspan of the Griqua deserters. The wagons and tents are empty. Around a great fire the people are sitting and standing while a Bastaard in a Sunday suit is addressing them. It seems as if we’ve arrived at a church service, a church service with remarkably many guns. Jannas and I walk up while his people unload their stuff with his family.
The Sunday suit is full of fervour, a slick-tongued minister who preaches the perdition of religion; the church one in which the congregation damns itself to hell.
Brethren! We shall wait until our nation has congregated here by the Hart. We shall wait until the Hartenaars are a mighty nation! We shall wait for the time to be ripe and we shall march upon Klaarwater and we shall descend like a plague and we shall grab the gunpowder from the grasp of the missionary and we shall shoot Anderson in the head and we shall shoot that self-appointed Griqua Kok in the kneecaps!
The people applaud him. He holds up his hands.
Brethren! Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.
A new Moses who smashes the stone tablets of the law to shards and comes from Sinai with a musket in his hand as a message to his people.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his missionary, and the daughter against her slave driver. He that loveth missionary or government over his freedom is not worthy of his freedom! And he that taketh not his gun, and followeth after me, is not worthy of the name Bastaard. He that findeth his life with Anderson and Campbell shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for the sake of freedom shall find it!
The people yell their accord and fire shots into the air and give vent to strange hymns.
To hell with the laws, to hell with the missionaries and to hell with their religion. And I said unto the missionary: You can tie me up and make me abide, but you cannot make me work. Before they came among us we looked well after ourselves and after they have left, we shall once again look after ourselves. And brethren, I say unto you today: We have no need of those crows and their god! My soul is hell-bent! To burn! To burn, brethren and sisters!
He concludes his sermon by holding a Bible aloft. He drops it at his feet and sets it alight.
I look for my travelling companion, but Jannas has left to join his people. His wife and his children and his garden stir him more than speeches. But I am a man of the word. My skin prickles; my hands cramp into claws. My breeches tent out. I like these people and their rage and the little Bastaard maiden who is fluttering her eyes over there.
I wake up on top of her, hitch up my breeches and make myself scarce. I get something they call coffee by a fire. I listen and look. The preacher walks past and I follow him to the back of a wagon, where a conclave of greybeards are conferring. Guns, polished bright and never been used, displayed against the wagon. The fug from their pipe smoke is as thick as their conspiracy. I listen, I look; then I let fly.
I hear myself talk. I feel my legs straightening themselves beneath me, I see myself standing and orating in Graaffe Rijnet, by now all of two decades in the past. I tell them they are a free people. They are not the scullions of any focking Englishman’s laws.
Campbell disowned you to the government, I thunder. It is he who wants to collect your sons for the government. Your sons are not taxes. They are not rents. Think well, men. Your sons are not white. They will never be treated like the Christian children. The focking Britons are not looking for soldiers. They want to feed your sons to the cannons. They bring learning and customs like false gifts, like blankets full of pox. They teach you to write so you can fill in birth registers. So that the sons of bitches can see how many sons your wives bear. They say they are proclaiming the Word of God, but brethren, beware of the focking Englishman’s inscriptions. They are not inscribing you in the Book of Life. They are penning you down in the Books of the Cape.
I ask for a sip of water, wait for the old men to calm down. Then in my tempter’s purr:
English, focking English, is not a language. A man can talk in a language. Focking English can only be obeyed. It’s a language for making sums. Your names are the numbers. If you must starve in the wilderness, why not on your own terms?