I am familiar with him, yes.
I had to show the Reverend Campbell around those years when he came to tour all his mission stations.
Sounds as if Burger left you to follow your own head.
A man hits harder when a possession starts leading his own life. If you want to start behaving like a free human being, your boss must make you less than human.
Then he takes up the knife.
Then he skins you.
Two days later we plunder the Barolong and shoot three and wound one and take all their cattle. We trek east for a while and go and barter some of the cattle with the Briquas of Dithakong for knives and tobacco and beads. Beyond the Gariep beads are money. Danster looks all too fetching in his Sunday best with the dried blood on the collar. I use the opportunity to warn the Dithakong people against the focking missionaries, the agents of the government, the robbers of spirits and customs. The brother of the Briqua chief, Mothibi, is all ears for my heretical tirade. We ride past the ruins on the kopjes and enquire from the people and nobody knows who used to live here. Now I read as Omni-Buys that it was their own ancestors who split and carted and stacked those rocks. But how, after a few generations, is anybody to recognise himself?
The return journey is slow with all the cattle that have to be driven. One night the Bushmen try to get to the herds. We catch a few of the creatures to go and sell in the Cape. Arend says nothing and stands watching the business. When he walks over to where they are sitting roped together, nobody breathes a word. When he cuts their throats one by one, one and all are silent.
Back next to the Harts River the cattle are divided up. The Hartenaars claim their due. Shortly afterwards they crawl back to Griquatown tail between the legs. Quite a few of the Hartenaar gang come and join me. Most of them Bastaards, but also a few Koranas and even Bushmen – Bushmen prepared to trade their own people. Anderson receives the prodigal sons and blesses them and what do I know. Peek into the old books and smirk with me at the way the authorities take Anderson to task for our little outing to the Barolong: These atrocious murders had been anticipated from collecting so many indolent and ill-disposed people together where there was no sort of social compact to restrain them.
The Briquas must have taken my heresy to heart, because when the missionary Evans turns up among the Dithakong with his red neck and glad tidings, the captains kick his arse. Mothibi’s brother was apparently on his way to my camp with this welcome news when Bushman arrows turned him into a watering can.
In the mission letters I am of course the one to blame for all these events – I, a Colonist long known for his rebellious Disposition and bad habits, who has for many years been a very Distinguished Character among the Disaffected on the frontiers. Well I never. Such flattering words should surely be embroidered and displayed in the hallway.
Danster treks on to loot as no man has ever looted. Alliances with people like him never last long. He dances through the world to his own tune. While you’re dancing along, you share the force of the whirlwind, and then the dance is over. He bids farewell with an exuberant string of blessings and filth. The last you see is his gang like a dust storm on the horizon. With him gone, the days drag more slowly; even my gun’s firing under my ear sounds distant. Most of the Hartenaars desert me to return to their vegetable patches. They are brought to their knees by guilt and pray voraciously. The looted cattle are returned to the Barolong. Their worthless souls, those they return to focking Anderson.
3
The Hartenaars who wanted to clear out have cleared out. I am told that Danster is keeping up the good work under the mission stations with his guns. I and my boys feed our horses and oil our guns and then it’s back to Dithakong. We hunt elephants in the territory of Mothibi’s Briquas. Coenraad Wilhelm and Johannes shoot a fair number. Windvogel the younger and Piet are also dab hands at hunting, but it’s son-in-law Jan who surprises everybody with his shooting skill. Ever since we trekked across the border he’s been all too eager to learn to hunt properly. He asked questions ad nauseam, but he took the advice to heart. He remains the calmest of men, but the moment his cheek feels the butt of a gun his eyes harden and he ordains what will live and what will die in the world in front of his barrel. Every day in the bush he picks up a shiny stone or mottled leaf. Back in the camp he gives Bettie a treasure for every day he’s been gone.
We trek for three weeks to Thabeng in pursuit of the depleted herds and Elizabeth gives birth to a son and the Lord knows I’ve run out of names for my offspring and we baptise him Baba. At Thabeng, along with Sefunelo’s Rolong-Seleka, we pile our wagons high with tusks. I mediate a short-lived alliance between Mothibi and the Seleka for an expedition against the Bakwena. I, my guns, my horses, my sons, Arend and a few of the most battle-ready men in my retinue join up with Mothibi’s three regiments.
We wake up in the veldt where the spring of 1817 bleeds over everything like a ruptured artery. We trek into the triangle of mountains between Paardeplaats, Hartebeesfontein and Schoonspruit. The bush is too quiet.
The attack starts from on high. Assegais drop from nowhere into soft rumps. Man in front of me is too slow. Arrows. Blood in my face. Arrow in my shoulder. In front of me he disappears under a rock; his legs jerk as if he’s dancing. Now the rocks rain down. The Bakwena are sitting high up and behind the rocks and they roll the gigantic boulders down on us. We retreat, flee. They pursue us. In front of me warriors are tripping over corpses. My people and I get away. The Seleka soon vanish into the mountains. The Briquas don’t know the mountain defiles and kloofs and are decimated. The Bakwena trap them in a steep ravine and carry out a major massacre.
On the return Mothibi first calls in at Thabeng to plunder the Seleka as a token of his disgust at the defeat. Sefunelo’s Seleka wreak havoc under the Briquas. I had told Sefunelo of Mothibi’s plans. Mothibi slinks back to Dithakong and undergoes an excessive conversion.
Sometimes you cling to memories, but to no avail. They crumble like sandstone if you touch them, then just the dust in your hand. Sometimes Omni-I reads a scene in a book and it feels as if I remember it from my own, erstwhile life. As if other people’s lives capture something of my life, moments of which I can recall – the content of a conversation, the fly on the brim of my hat, but not the words.
I remember that Arend and I had been waiting under a tree on the banks of the Gariep since sunrise that morning. See, the river stretches out in front of us for ever and always. See, we’re waiting for a farmer from the Colony. He wants to have a talk. He has guns and I have ivory. Even though it’s open and empty as far as you can see, there are many eyes on the river. With us are six extra horses with saddlebags for the flints and gunpowder that he’s offered as appetiser. Here you don’t want to get caught with a clumsy wagon. I’ve stood the elephant tusk we lugged along against a tree.
The farmer said he wanted to talk by this tree on this day. He said we’d know which one. The big flowering camel thorn where it seems the river wants to bend but then doesn’t bend, some distance to the west of the wagon trail. He said the tree stood on its own. He said on 1 August it would be flowering golden as the sun. Arend and I are sitting under the spreading crown, in golden bloom as the farmer promised. It’s as if you can hear the branches above our heads branching out. To one side there are the ribs of an ox protruding from the sand. There’s a stone in my shoe.