In the course of the next few weeks I get to know the mighty city of Karechuenya very well. I go to explore the northern district of chief Diutlwileng. This district is divided into two neighbourhoods with a narrow clearing between the two. The northern section is slightly smaller, but more densely populated. Diutlwileng’s dwelling is surrounded with other largish huts, the kgoro, where the chiefs reside and near to them the other nobility. A large cattle kraal, the lesaka, easily two hundred and fifty by a hundred and fifty feet, occupies the centre of the settlement. In the evenings they drive some five hundred cattle into this stone kraal next to the kgotla. The construction here is not of the same quality. A different kind of stone here, but it also seems to be newer, as if Senosi’s dwelling had been built by an earlier breed of people who had a better understanding of the secrets of stone.
If you’ve seen one kraal you’ve seen them all. Even stone walls are not a rare sight. It’s the sheer size of this place that amazes me. I wander around for days with a dropped jaw and a toe protesting against the long-distance walks. I’ve never been to the Cape; the largest town I know is Swellendam. How so many people can live together in a single heap and not tear each other to pieces passes my humble understanding. See, from the kloof I gaze up at the hills at night and at their fires like stars.
I go and bother the smiths and their forges. The cone-shaped forges encircle the neck of the hill like a string of beads. The clay ovens are more than six feet high, twelve feet or more wide. The tunnel on the surface that runs into a fire and then shoots up into the chimney. The blowpipes on the sides to keep the flames alive. Over the fire an earthenware bowl has been fastened, filled with iron ore, charcoal and quartz sand. I squat next to the smith and light my pipe and scratch myself and regard this lot until the iron appears from the crucible of the earth oven, gets thrown into a bowl of water, and sinks. Grains of cold purity.
The next day I’m back and the day after that. I watch the man melting and beating and shaping copper and iron. I barter beads and ivory for copper earrings and necklaces for my wives who are far away. One morning the man turns up at my tent where I’m sitting grinding coffee. Morning, I say. Moro, he says. He takes out something wrapped in hide out of his bag and puts it down in front of me and steps back and waits. I abandon the coffee and pick up the bundle, open it. I pick up the long cleaver with the wooden haft, cleave the air a few times, thank the man, who laughs broadly and walks off.
Go hunting, walk to the camp, go chatter with the elders, walk back to the camp, walk, walk, walk. Walk past the lion house: the pit dug deeper than a white man’s grave, the wall, higher than a white giant like me, stacked around the pit, the observation tower on wooden stilts behind the pit. The warrior with his assegais and his chameleon eyes guarding over the caterwauling kids in the pit. The women leave their little ones in the lion house when they go to the lands. Here the warrior guards them against the lions and leopards and golden eagles. See, the sweet thorn, see, another camel thorn. I sit down and take off my shoes and there’s nothing there to salvage. I fling them into the tree and the thorns grab the laces and there they dance to their own tune free of the weight of my damned feet.
Amazement also has its limits. Even immensity gets boring in the long run. My chronic ailments do though allow me to mount a horse often enough and to go and shoot a few beasts. The elephants develop a taste for lead and make for my guns like moths to a candle. It is truly a land of milk and honey and copper and meat and even vegetables if it must. I am quite happy here and the young girls quite accommodating. But my gunpowder is running out, my rifle oil has run out and my only shirt is a discarded leopard skin with holes for the arms and a thong around the paunch. I sit next to my wagon and pick the peeled skin from my toe. What was it that that pen-pusher wrote about me? A very distinguished Character among the Disaffected on the frontiers. Focking English. Disaffected. I know affected. My heart is not stone, after all. But disaffected. If something no longer affects you, I assume. But more than that? Dissatisfied? Dissatisfied because it no longer affects you? Focking English. Focking disaffected. I look up at the hill and its majestic city. Focking disaffected. The stone kraals and my cattle. The open-hearted people who walk past and wave. Focking disaffected. The necklaces, the panga, the pile of ivory here next to me. The fly on my breeches. Focking disaffected. My blue swollen toe and its peelings. Focking disaffected.
Arend and Coenraad Wilhelm find me still encamped at Karechuenya. On this winter’s day I’m sitting on the kgotla with a few Hurutshes making hunting plans. I’ve wrapped a large kaross around myself. The wind blows through the holes in my leopard skin. Arend picks up a pack of linen from the wagon and tosses it at my feet.
There, we almost got killed for that. Cut yourself a cute goddam gown.
Arend has a different story every day, but today he seems serious and his black eyes don’t let go of mine. He sits down and makes Coenraad Wilhelm sit down. While Arend is telling about their journey, Coenraad Wilhelm chews vigorously at a blade of grass and nods and grunts affirmatively and looks at the ground. Arend tells that way beyond the Vaal they came across a lot of Bokwena who live to the east of the Kwena-Modisane. The people were welcoming when they heard that Arend and Coenraad Wilhelm are also on friendly footing with the Hurutshe. Their elders fed them bowls of milk and told them all about a community of Macuas, white people, on the coast, just a bit further away, about two days’ journey. They drew their own maps in the sand, pebbles and twigs were mountains and rivers and kraals. They said that the whitish people live on the far side of a wide water that they cross on floats. Arend believes that they were talking of Delagoa Bay which lies on the other side of the big Matola River. He says the Bakwena sold them the linen.
That far they trekked and no further, because the rivers were in flood and the land was awash with blood and corpses and crows. All the way from here to the Drakensberg, says Arend, one continuous and continuing war between everybody and everybody. Arend says he was sad: if the wind blew in the right direction, he could smell the gunpowder in Delagoa Bay. A few days far and impossibly far.
I listen and look at my son, emaciated after the journey. I look at my bare paws and the little heap of cloth lying before us in the red sand. We’ll perish here. Our clothes will wear through until we walk about naked like the Caffres, and when the last gunpowder has been shot out, we’ll be hunted like the beasts of the veldt, just another little straggle of pale Bushmen who beg and steal until we starve or get mown down or get sold to a Christian farmer. Arend gets up and shakes the sand from his breeches and says he’s going to bathe. As he walks away he takes off his shirt and Burger’s old lashes still criss-cross his back like faded writing. I get up.
Let him be, Father, says Coenraad Wilhelm.
I catch Arend up from behind and grab him by the neck and throw him to the ground. He is up immediately and fells me with a blow. One of my Hottentots appears from nowhere and pushes his musket into the runaway slave’s mouth. I struggle to my feet and spit out a tooth. A few of my Bastaards and Hottentots come running and I say Tie him to that pole. Arend utters no word, doesn’t protest. I lash his back to pieces, old scars gash open again. I lambast him for a rotten slave and robber and ask him where he’s hiding my Portuguese gunpowder. I carry on whipping until the whip feels like lead and then I start whipping with my left hand until everything in me cramps. Arend is quiet and when I look around Coenraad Wilhelm is gone. I tell my men to untie him and walk off.