Does it look as if I plant anything?
He looks around him and sees the arid bushes and the aloes and low kopjes and the cattle way over there and the few Hottentot huts hardly distinguishable from the veldt or from my hovel. I splutter at his confusion.
You can harvest just what you like, my dear fellow.
The preacher starts orating about how the Lord nourishes each one of his creatures and how for weeks he’s been preparing meals from the Garden of God. I have an elephant rifle in my hand and I march towards the man. He grabs the whip from a Hottentot and lashes out clumsily at the oxen.
I am going, good Sir! I am on my way, the narrow way, as indicated by you! he shouts at me.
I take aim and riddle the back of the wagon with the gravel with which I’ve loaded the gun. The oxen trudge on. While reloading, I bethink myself, put the gun down, run after the wagon, jump on. In a great voice I start preaching at the dumbfounded missionary and his Hottentots. I proclaim long stretches of fever dreams from Revelations that Geertruy taught me to recite. I shout:
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast! And it said, Come and see! And I looked! and behold! A pale horse! And his name that sat on him was Death! And Hell followed with him! And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth! To kill with sword! And with hunger! And with death! And with the beasts of the earth!
I carry on harrowing the little congregation hearkening to me gobsmacked. I caution them against the forest paths leading off the strait and narrow, the black women lurking in pools in this country ready to leap upon you and the cannibals and the extirpation of the Christian by the Heathen and monsters and the beasts straight from the clefts of Hell. I castigate them in advance about the dagga and the liquor that will rot their souls and the buttocks of the women and the breasts upon which they will perish. The leader of the bedraggled little team forgets about the oxen and the ramshackle outfit limps to a halt in the middle of the road where my voice starts resounding among the kopjes. I spread my arms and square my chest and once again resort to High Dutch:
And the kings of the earth! And the great men! And the rich men! And the chief captains! And the mighty men! And every bondsman and every free man! Hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains! And said to the mountains and rocks: Fall on us! And hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!
I fall silent. Only the cicadas and the last sentence respond in the kopjes. Then the last blast of the trump:
For the great day of his wrath is come! And who shall be able to stand?
The four men look at one another. The wagon groans into motion. I sit down flat on my arse in the wagon and laugh. The Hottentots look at me. The top hat and tails realises the peroration is over and starts mumbling to himself about blasphemy and the dissolution of the soul. I remain sitting, snorting, drunk all over again, on my way along with them in the wrong direction deeper into the wilderness, until they’ve rounded the bend at the drift. Then I jump down and go and pick up the gun and fire a last shot low over their heads and trot home. Geertruy was right: The right words and a loud voice are stronger than a whole team of oxen and pack more of a punch than an elephant gun. Maria comes walking towards me. I can barely hear what she’s shouting, but I can guess that she’s not happy with my way of receiving the men of God. I rush at her, push my head between her legs, lift her backwards over my shoulders and run straight to the conjugal bed.
If your name appears on the official list for commando service, you have to attend the annual military manoeuvres at the nearest landdrost’s offices. The business drags on for a whole week. For someone from De Lange Cloof like myself that means being away from home for more than a fortnight; to Swellendam and back is more than a week on horseback. If you have a decent horse. You have to ride your own horse half to death on the way there and take your own gun and go and blast away your own lead at a bunch of targets and consort companionably with the burghers of the district and try not to beat anybody up. Only illness or incapacity serves as an excuse – sad souls like Jacob Senekal whose poor old eyes could never see all the way to the targets.
I’m very happy sitting on De Brakkerivier. Nobody bothers me, I bother nobody and around me everything perishes and flourishes. Days dawdle like seasons. I don’t wander far from the house. Every thorn tree looks like the next one. I do, though, find it impossible to pass an anthill without churning it up with a stick.
I have no desire to ride to Swellendam to establish who’s got the prize pizzle or who can shoot straightest. Brandy is scarce and I prefer to have mine on my own. I have no desire to horsewhip old Horse, unshod and cantankerous, all the way to Swellendam. Maria’s hardly washed the blood from the new baby and I have to be on my way again. The gun I leave with Maria; if they want me to shoot, they can lend me a Company musket and melt the candlesticks on their groaning drostdy tables to provide me with bullets. I slip a dagger into my belt in case somebody decides to stalk me at night. Horse is old and crotchety but he can outrun any creature, Bushman or lion. The Buys men turn up regularly for these manoeuvres, perhaps I’ll bump into one or more of my brothers there. But I’m not going to go looking for them.
When I ride into the straggle of buildings they call Swellendam, there’s a brawl in front of the taphouse. The two farmers have both had their fill of fighting, both of them are on their knees in the street. They trade blows with long and heavy arms. Not a single blow misses its target, they’re both too tired to duck. A few churls of the civilian militia loiter around till both of them are flat on their backs and then drag them off to the cells. I go and report for the manoeuvres. The clerk charged with filling in forms realises I have no weapons with me apart from the rusty dagger. I’m fined twelve rix-dollars and this far and no further will they push me. I get onto my elderly horse and ride out of the miserable little whitewashed outpost. Only after my mortal demise and my rebirth as Omni-Buys will I read in the moth-eaten minutes what I missed. For instance that Petrus Ferreira of De Lange Cloof that year at the manoeuvres won a brand-new tobacco casket as second prize in target shooting. May the plague rot his bones.
Back among the grey bushes of De Brakkerivier I tell Maria to bundle up and tie together our domestic effects once more. I go to fetch Windvogel from under a willing and able young woman and tell him to inspan our oxen. The Hottentots see that I’m preparing to clear out. They also start gathering their few belongings. Most of them will wander further to neighbouring farms for work, but a few young ones without ties of women or children opt to take their chances with us. I fling a torch on the roof and watch the reed house go up in flames. Elizabeth dances around the house and is transfigured to a shimmer in the flames. Maria settles the baby securely in the wagon. She takes up position on the wagon chest and cracks the whip. In the year 1785 I leave behind everything I know and trek to the eastern frontier.
2
We trek through the interior, track the well-worn routes of earlier migrations to the far ends of the Colony. Sometimes the grooves of wagon tracks are clearly visible, sometimes they disappear for days on end and we simply drift from one fountain, spruit or watering hole to the next. We stop as seldom as possible, only when the wagon breaks down or I spot an eland and gallop into the drifting mist on Horse and don’t return without a carcase. Most days drag by monotonously, others begin on a barney and end in bedlam. The baby, still nameless, bobs along on the voyage, wrapped in a kaross, lulled by the creaking and groaning of the wagon never to recall any of it, and laughs and sleeps and cries and for the rest lies there gazing at the wagon tilt that is the limit of her world.
Maria sits on the wagon chest, cracks the whip over the bone-weary beasts and curses them by name as soon as they flag. The Hottentots drive the little herd of cattle, Windvogel for the most part on the back of the ox he got from me as payment the previous year. I sit with Elizabeth in front of me on the horse. She doesn’t sit in the saddle, she finds it