To hell with Cronjé. Ingrid Winterbach
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Ingrid Winterbach
To hell with Cronjé
Translated by Elsa Silke
in collaboration with the author
Human & Rousseau
For Villiers and Doret Terblanche
Chapter 1
When they arrive at the farm the sun is setting.
At first glance the place seems deserted but the dogs are barking and presently the farmer comes out to greet them. He invites them into the house, once they have seen to their horses.
He insists that they share his meal. They ask if they might wash before supper. In their present condition they are unfit to sit at a decent table.
In the kitchen the farmer blows on the fire vigorously, fanning the flames with care.
His wife died three months ago, he tells them. He’ll show them the grave the next morning – if they care to see it.
They eat meat and coarse white bread with jam. They eat hungrily, hardly able to get enough of the food. After supper the farmer carefully measures out some brandy with their coffee. A sense of well-being spreads through their veins.
The house is not big but the precise way in which each object is arranged suggests the hand of a woman.
Reitz notices how meticulously the farmer wipes all objects and surfaces after use. With a kind of lingering yearning, as if the replacing of each object summons a particular memory.
“My wife was a fastidious person,” he remarks later that evening. It is not clear whether this is intended as an apology or an explanation.
He pours more coffee, more careful measures of brandy.
Later still he asks if he might tell them of a dream he had the night before. Willem nods on behalf of the rest of them.
He dreamed, the farmer says, of the trickster woman – he’s always thought of the trickster as a man, but in his dream it was a woman. A small crowd had gathered at the town church. He recognised no one. Then he saw a woman he knew. She had red hair, her face was powdered white and she wore a little feathered hat.
He can’t even begin, the farmer says, to describe how becoming that little hat was. Soft as the wings of a bateleur, with a flash of blue-green light.
In due course he and the woman moved away from the others, to a room where there was a bed. When the time came to lie together and he held out his arms to her, a strange man was suddenly in her place and he heard her laughing on the stoep outside. It was then that he realised she was the trickster.
Ben nods attentively.
Reitz glances over his shoulder at the shadows beyond.
“Have any of you ever met the old prankster?” the farmer asks. “In any of his or her guises?”
No one answers at first. Ben seems to be giving the question the most serious consideration.
Young Abraham has been remarkably calm all evening. He sits motionless and silent, not uttering any of his usual incoherent phrases.
When they are ready to turn in – they plan to set off early the next morning – the farmer offers to give up his bed, but Willem won’t hear of it. It has been so long since they slept in a bed anyway, he says.
They sleep in the spare room, on feather mattresses, under clean blankets and jackal skin karosses.
Unable to sleep, Reitz gets up during the night and steps outside. The house lies in a hollow between the mountains. In the moonlight the silent farmyard seems utterly desolate. Reitz feels a chill, and a premonition of woe such as he has seldom felt of late. It may be because of the silence. Or perhaps the orderliness of the yard, or the symmetry of the flowerbeds in front of the house.
The next morning Reitz notices anew how carefully the farmer performs each little task; with small, tidy, controlled movements. The neatness of the house also strikes Reitz again. As if a woman has very recently taken pity on it – before she left. A woman whose half-faded fragrance still clings to each object.
When they take their leave, the farmer remarks that he truly hopes to see that little feathered hat again in his lifetime. “It was indeed remarkable,” he says.
Chapter 2
They leave the farmer’s land early in the morning, travelling up the steep mountainside, leaving behind them the hollow where the farmhouse lies among the foothills. After a while they reach a narrow pass where they are able to cross the mountain. The narrow track is flanked on either side by a sheer cliff. Thick sedimentary layers of mudstone and sandstone are clearly visible, Reitz notices, with dolerite sills. A mountain range of the Karoo system, with the rock formations strikingly different from the dramatic undulations of the Cape fold mountains. The horses’ hooves echo noisily on the loose stones and from the narrow ledges birds fly up in alarm. In the caves there will be wild honey, baboons, leopards crouching and hiding. A chill runs down their spines even though it is broad daylight. Above them the sky is a thin strip of resonating blue.
Once they have passed through the mountain, a wide expanse opens at their feet. They follow a northeasterly course along the dry bed of a river. Whenever they stop to dismount and rest, Reitz’s practised eye scans the riverbank for evidence of fossils. They continue in this way for at least half a day.
At noon, their shadows hard upon their heels, they come across three black men on horseback. The men are wearing hats and blankets. One is clad in the threadbare tunic of a Khaki uniform. Another wears a feather in his hat.
“A motley crew,” Ben mutters.
The two groups come to a halt, facing each other.
“What do you want?” Willem demands. “I trust you’re not helping the Khakis.”
The men confer in Xhosa. The leader raises his hand in what appears to be a peace sign.
He and Willem bow to each other formally.
The group passes them without further greeting.
“Tonight they’ll be joining General Pettingale,” Ben says.
“At least they’re unarmed,” Willem says, “and rightly so.”
They meet no one else for the rest of the day. They travel through a landscape of low hills, tall grass and thorn trees. The flat, unbroken landscape gradually opens up even more. After a while they leave the Koueberg behind.
In the late afternoon they cross a fairly broad stream – possibly a tributary of the Seekoei River, they surmise, though they cannot be sure. They keep going in a northeasterly direction, heading towards the Orange River.
“O bring me back to the old Transvaal,” Ben sings softly.
“We’re still some distance away, Ben,” says Reitz, “thanks to Senekal’s tactical skills.”
“The hero of Skeurbuikhoogte,” Ben says.
“Of Allesverloren and Droogleegte,” Reitz says.
They find shelter on the slope of a rocky ridge strewn with large, loose boulders, where there is a shallow cave. They light a fire. They eat the food the farmer packed for them.
Young Abraham is incoherent again.
“Bandy botherings,” he says.
“What’s the matter, Abraham?” Willem inquires, distractedly.
“Crimmenings! Futterings! Foots!” says Abraham, his eyes rolling slightly.
“Bad night ahead,” Ben says to Reitz. “Abraham is distraught.”
It is mid-February, the worst heat of summer starting to subside.
“It gets very cold in these parts at night,” Ben says.
“There