To hell with Cronjé. Ingrid Winterbach
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wouldn’t be surprised,” Ben remarks quietly, excitedly, “if these people were descendants of the !Kora. They might even be Gonna Hottentots. Who could have known there were still some of them around here? I’d have thought they’d have been extinct for many years.”
Willem’s eyes keep shifting between the direction in which the man is pointing and the man himself.
A ringing silence surrounds them.
Slowly Willem shakes his head from side to side.
The leader gesticulates again. Then he draws his index finger across his throat in a cutting motion, and gestures again with his hand.
“Good grief,” Reitz exclaims. “Slit throats, Willem. Either ours or theirs.”
“Someone else’s,” Willem declares with conviction.
“These people don’t speak any language at all,” Reitz remarks. “Just a collection of gurgles and rattles.”
“Their language is a form of !Kora-Hottentot,” Ben explains, “all but extinct, I believe. No wonder we don’t understand a word of it.”
Ben is delighted, Willem deeply worried.
The men smell of meat. Their skins glisten as if they have rubbed themselves with animal fat. Reitz catches himself inhaling deeply, and realises how hungry he is.
From the layered depths of his clothing the leader produces a leather pouch.
He takes out a scrap of paper.
Squatting on his haunches, he slowly unfolds the paper: a map.
With an eloquent wave of the hand he summons Willem to approach.
Willem squats by his side.
The dog stands with ears pricked.
The others keep a respectful distance.
“Our fate is being sealed here, my friend,” Reitz speaks quietly, “and we aren’t even aware of it.”
“Astounding,” Ben remarks in awe. “Astounding that these people should be here.”
A low sound escapes from Reitz’s throat: a muffled exclamation or cry, for something has emerged from the folds in the clothing of the smallest and most likely the youngest of the three men – something live. The snout of a smallish animal. A meerkat, possibly. The man allows the small creature to crawl out and perch on his arm. Reitz tries to point it out to Ben surreptitiously.
The dog pricks up its ears more sharply.
Willem unfolds the map. “I can’t make much sense of this,” he says. He shows it to Ben and Reitz. It is indecipherable at first glance. Willem hands it back to the leader.
Keep the map, the man indicates.
Slowly Willem folds the map. Puts it into his jacket pocket.
The young man with the tame meerkat, who has kept his face averted the entire time, suddenly looks up archly. On the side of his face, halfway across the smooth cheek, Reitz sees for a moment the glint of a tuft of feathers. Deep purple and reddish green in the late afternoon glow.
They bid their farewells. Mount their horses. The men turn and trot off, fading swiftly into the distance.
“It can mean one of two things,” Willem says. “An ambush by the English or a deputation sent by General Bergh.”
“Willem,” Ben observes laconically, “for the sake of our peace of mind I propose we believe the latter. What interests me more is where these people have come from. I swear – I’d lay my head on a block. The clothes. The language. Everything points to it.”
In the late afternoon they once more seek shelter at the base of a low ridge, one of a few in the area. Though it can hardly be called a ridge – rather a cluster of loose boulders.
They make a fire. They study the map they have been given. It is thin and worn from repeated folding and unfolding. Some information has been pencilled in and is all but illegible. There is a word that appears to be Skeurberg and they distinguish a few other almost indiscernible landmarks: crosses, circles, arrows. They decide the map may mean anything, that they might as well accept it in good faith and see whether it becomes any clearer in time. But in truth they still have only Senekal’s map and Willem’s compass to rely on.
They realise that they have been moving too sharply northeast during the past two days.
“Inexplicable,” Willem muses. “Inexplicable where these people could have found this map.”
When they have crawled into their hollowed-out sleeping places, Reitz asks whether Ben also noticed the meerkat on the man’s arm.
That wasn’t a meerkat, Ben replies, it was a mongoose – a banded mongoose, to be precise.
They take it in turns to stay awake – someone has to be on guard at all times.
When it is Reitz’s turn, the moon is high and bright in the clear night sky. A jackal howls. The night veld seems limitless. The firmament is so lush and glorious, so boundless from one end to the other, that it appears as if the dome of the heavens has lifted. He sits beside the fire, trying to warm himself, his jacket and blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Reitz knows she is there. A presence: behind the rocks, behind the daily bustle, and at night behind the dreams and the night smells and the soft calls and scurrying of small animals. He thinks: They are separated by a membrane and she is pushing against it, pushing, trying to penetrate to where he is.
*
In the early morning they are stiff from the night’s sleep.
They huddle around the fire to dispel the morning chill. They cook some porridge, drink a mug of coffee. The farmer’s rations are being depleted.
“Consider this,” Ben says suddenly, staring into the fire. “Two and a half years ago we were called up in the name of the president. We joined our commandos because it was our patriotic duty.”
He remains silent for a while. Willem and Reitz look at him expectantly.
“At Boskop Frederik Botha was shot in the head,” Ben says. “Our fathers knew each other well. At Elandslaagte my cousin Johannes was struck in the side by shrapnel; he died three days later. At Nicholson’s Nek Frans Bothma and Kleinjan Beukes fell side by side. Wounded in the liver and the stomach respectively. I knew them both well. At Leerlaagte, Vleesfontein and Skulpkraal we lost two hundred men altogether – my brother-in-law Jurie Botes was one of them. In January this year Sakkie Ehlers and six others signed the oath. All seven were executed. Sakkie and I played together as children. At Paardeberg four thousand men surrendered and were captured. Prisoners of war. Sent away. At least three of those men were known to me. At Skeurbuikhoogte some of our best men were taken prisoner, and at Droogleegte,” he looks at where young Abraham is sitting. “What can one say?”
He is quiet for a while.
“I have no idea how matters stand with my two brothers. I haven’t heard from them in a long time.” Ben stares into the flames. “Yes,” he says softly, “so it goes.” He blinks without taking his eyes off the flames. “I knew right from the start,” he says, “that no good would come of this war.”
They are all quiet. What’s most important has remained unsaid, Reitz thinks. Ben makes no mention of the welfare of his wife and children; he does not know for certain where they are. Neither does Willem know whether his wife is still in town with her two married daughters and their children.
Willem’s hands dangle helplessly between his knees. His eyes are pale as pebbles in a stream.
“I still believe in the honour of our cause,” he says. He rises and walks over to where young Abraham sits bundled up against a rock. Scrawny and undernourished.
Reitz turns away from the fire. “Ben,” he says after a while, “one of those men yesterday. One of