“We do not complain if this son of Ximiya cries for beautiful things,” says the grave one. “But he must not betray us by refusing to join us in our grief for the folly of belief that racked our country and is felt even today. He is a carrier of the scars. They will live on his body forever. He has no first son to carry them when he dies, but that is another matter. The ancestors will decide about that. Maybe the scars will be passed to another family of Unbelievers. But that is not what I am talking about now. I am saying that this son of Ximiya must grieve. This descendant of the headless one must lament.”
Various elders make their speeches in the same vein. Bhonco is shamefaced. The words of his peers reach deep inside him. His response is one long sharp wail. It is the howl of a mountain dog when the moon is full. Camagu suddenly feels a tinge of sadness.
In a slow rhythm the elders begin to dance. It is a painful dance. One can see the pain on their faces as they lift their limbs and stamp them on the ground. They are all wailing now, and mumbling things like people who talk in tongues. But they are not talking in tongues in the way that Christians do. They are going into a trance that takes them back to the past. To the world of the ancestors. Not the Otherworld where the ancestors live today. Not the world that lives parallel to our world. But to this world when it still belonged to them. When they were still people of flesh and blood like the people who walk the world today.
Like the abaThwa people — those who were disparagingly called the San by the Khoikhoi because to the Khoikhoi everyone who was a wanderer and didn’t have cattle was a San — the elders seem to induce death through their dance. When they are dead they visit the world of the ancestors. When the trance is over they rejoin the world of the living. Only the elders do not die to the Otherworld but to the world of the past.
Camagu is not only filled with deep sorrow, he is also filled with fear. He tries to steal away when the elders are dead in their trance. As he tiptoes past the pink rondavel he almost falls on NoPetticoat, who is busy washing a gigantic three-legged cast-iron pot.
“You don’t have to steal away like a thief in the night,” she says with a smile.
“I am scared. I have never seen anything like this before.”
“There is nothing to be afraid of. They are merely inducing sadness in their lives, so that they may have a greater appreciation of happiness.”
“I have never heard of this custom before among the amaXhosa.”
“It is not there. Even the Unbelievers of the days of Nongqawuse never had it. It was invented by the Unbelievers of today. When the sad times passed and the trials of the Middle Generations were over, it became necessary to create something that would make them appreciate this new happiness of the new age. What better way than to lament the folly of belief of the era of the child-prophetesses and the sufferings of the Middle Generations which were brought about by the same scourge of belief?”
Camagu no longer wants to steal away. He wants to stay and watch the whole ritual. NoPetticoat continues, “The revival of unbelief meant that Unbelievers must learn anew how to celebrate unbelief. Xoliswa’s father was one of those who were sent to the hinterland to borrow the dances and trances of the abaThwa that take one to the world of the ancestors.”
Under the umsintsi tree the elders present a wonderful spectacle of suffering. They are invoking grief by engaging in a memory ritual. In their trance they fleet back through the Middle Generations, and linger in the years when their forebears were hungry.
Hunger had seeped through the soil of the land of the amaXhosa. It also fouled the ill-gotten lands of the neighboring amaMfengu. Yet that part of kwaXhosa that had been conquered and settled by the children of Queen Victoria — they whose ears reflected the light of the sun — continued to eat.
The sons of the headless one were as diligent as their father used to be before he became stew in a British pot. The patriarch had taught them well about the art of working the soil and looking after animals. When the season was ripe, they cultivated the land. When it was time for hoeing, the women hoed the fields. The maize seemed to be promising. But before the corn was mature the disease attacked. Mercilessly. Once more the plants were left whimpering and blighted.
Lungsickness continued its rampage. It had arrived even at these new pastures. There was no escaping it. It picked and chose at random those cattle it was going to take with it.
At Twin’s homestead it displayed the height of arrogance by attacking his prize horse, Gxagxa. No one had heard of lungsickness attacking horses before. But now the beautiful brown-and-white horse was becoming a bag of bones in front of his eyes.
Twin did not sleep. He kept vigil at Gxagxa’s stable. Qukezwa brought him sour milk and umphokoqo porridge. But he could not eat. As long as Gxagxa could not eat he found it impossible to eat. Qukezwa tried a new strategy and brought him the fermented sorghum soft-porridge known as ingodi, and then the fermented maize soft-porridge called amarhewu. She knew that these were her husband’s favorite drinks, which he found refreshing even after the hardest day’s work. But Twin did not touch them. He just sat there and watched Gxagxa go through the stages that he knew so welclass="underline" constipation, then diarrhea, then weight loss. The poor horse spent days gasping for air, its tongue hanging out. Then it died.
Yet Twin continued his vigil. He was waning away. Qukezwa feared that he was going to follow Gxagxa to the Otherworld. She pleaded. She cajoled. She threatened. Twin continued his vigil over a hide that covered only a pile of bones. Even when the flies and the worms came, he sat motionless and watched them feast.
Qukezwa never really liked Twin-Twin, because he never really liked her. But after praying to the one who told his stories in heaven, she swallowed her pride and went to KwaFeni to appeal for Twin-Twin’s assistance. Twin-Twin put his kaross on his shoulder and rode to Ngcizele to see what was ailing his brother.
“It is dead, child of my mother! That horse is dead!” shouted Twin-Twin, greatly exercised by his brother’s weakness. Whoever heard of a grown umXhosa man being affected like this by the death of a mere animal. Yes, he himself had felt the pain when his favorite ox died. One or two drops of tears did find their way down his cheeks. But this? Ridiculous! It showed clearly that his brother was a milksop.
For the first time in almost two weeks Twin opened his lips. He uttered something about Heitsi Eibib.
“He was a prophet, the son of Tsiqwa who died for the Khoikhoi people,” Qukezwa explained to Twin-Twin.
“What has he got to do with us? This Heitsi Eibib is not one of us for my brother to be delirious about him. It is you, woman, who have put these strange ideas in his head. Now my brother dreams of foreign prophets that have nothing to do with the amaXhosa people. Is it your ubuthi — your witchcraft — that has made him become like this?”
“Would I have called you if I had made him be like this?”
Life seemed to return to Twin’s eyes. He smiled and looked at his brother.
“In the same way that Heitsi Eibib saved the Khoikhoi, we need a prophet who will save the amaXhosa,” he said.
“We have had our prophets. The prophets of the amaXhosa, not of the Khoikhoi or the abaThwa. We had Ntsikana and we had Nxele. What more do you want?” asked Twin-Twin. He was becoming impatient with this foolish talk.
“Perhaps there is something in this Nongqawuse thing,” said Twin. “Perhaps she is the new prophet that will save us.”
“She is just a foolish girl,” argued Twin-Twin.
“Let us give her a chance, child of my mother. There might be something in her prophecies about the Strangers. She says the Strangers told her that all the animals and crops that we have today are contaminated. And indeed we see them dying every day. Here I have lost Gxagxa. The same Gxagxa who led us to these new pastures. Gxagxa is gone because of the contamination that blankets the land. Even in the new pastures we cannot escape the contamination. Perhaps we shall escape it if we heed Nongqawuse’s words and kill all our animals.”