Broken River Tent Read online

  ‘I get the picture.’ Phila could see Maqoma was in a reminiscing, rambling frame of mind.

  ‘As if that was not enough. We had to pass dense woods of miombo trees, yellowwoods, dense with erythrina – which we loved for the bee hives. Wonderful thing to hear the voice of a honey-bird leading you to the hive. We were fearful around the spekboom, the favourite of elephants, the most dangerous animal in the wild if you come too close to its young. We chopped sneeze-wood, because it is stronger – we also made solid rafters for our houses with it – to put its trunk across raging rivers. In open plains we had to rely on the long qungu to hide our movements.’

  ‘It is called tambookie grass now. I guess after the Thembus?’

  ‘Mfxim! In any case, we hid in the grass from the curious wagons of white people. Without warrior strength and tenacity we would not have survived. There was still sap in these old bones then.’

  ‘Who were the dudes you went with?’

  ‘What are dudes?’

  ‘Guys you hung with.’

  ‘Nobody got hung on our journeys.’

  ‘I mean, who were the friends you went with?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I remember Thongwane, a man of incorruptible ways and clarity of mind. Once he was nearly killed by a wounded buffalo. He made the cardinal error of hunting with only one spear because he trusted his steady hand too much. We saw the buffalo herd in the morning and decided to screen it, going before them to hide in a valley we were certain they’d pass. Thongwane decided to make things more interesting by hiding in a low hog-back hill very close to where they were grazing. He was the first to release his assegai. Unfortunately, we were too far away to assist him. His first throw was not fatal, and the beast charged towards him, kicking divots and felling trees. Luckily we had men who were not only nimble but quick with assegai hands, warriors who could throw the quiver of an assegai at full speed. The beast stood no chance, but it was strong; at some stage, although it was trailing three assegais, it managed to lacerate Thongwane’s leg before fatally falling down. It fell right at his feet, upon which Thongwane took out his panga, slit its throat and wrenched out its liver so as to eat it still hot.’

  ‘He must have been shit scared!’

  ‘I put that question to Thongwane later on, when we were flaying the skin and cutting gigots into thin strips to roast over the fire. “I’m afraid to feel my pants for fear I shall discover my disgrace, my chief,” he answered as he emerged from dressing his wound to join us at the fire. The humour was ripe around the fire concerning that topic.

  ‘“Nothing wrong with fear, Thongwane,” said I. “The poison is giving in to it. We’re all ageing with the moon.” Then I took the chance to gently reproach him and re-inculcate our motto. “In our youth your careless mistake would have earned you an immediate dismissal from the Jingqi clan. But that wound looks galling; you’d better find yourself some medicinal roots. Do you still dispute Diba’s belief that the hornbill we saw was a sign of bad luck? Ask Diba to brush your wounds with the feathers of the blue-flowered plumbago to reduce the pain.”

  ‘We ate our food next to a detumescent river whose banks exuded dank, sickly rottenness all through the night as we slept under the black sky, harassed by windblast and driving rain, and serenaded by hyenas, who stole our provisions after they had surprised us to flight with their sniffing curiosity and barking threats. Sometimes we were stunted by the boldness of lions, waking to find them standing right in our midst despite our smouldering fires.

  ‘I remember that particular night as if it was yesterday. The moon peeled out a slash on the broken, ashy clouds, drenching the fields with tinted silver. Thongwane’s groans kept us up all night. We lost him, not from those wounds, but in the Battle of Amalinde, near the hills of Ngwarhu.

  ‘Awu madoda! When they fail to come back they’re lost. Call the memories of those who die with the chief. Things that despatch the arrow with dust or dripping blood. Unozulu! The sharp end of the stick. Disperse earth, you conceal!’

  Maqoma fell silent after that, looking tired from the weight of ages.

  Phila woke up feeling tired. Not only had Maqoma sapped his physical energy, but his muscles felt dull from the surgery. The medication still in his system also made him lethargic. Silence dripped from the eaves to the ceiling of his heart. A nurse came in and put his medicine next to his untouched supper tray, giving him an uncomprehending look before proceeding to check his drip.

  ‘You’re a suspect in their eyes,’ Maqoma said when she had left the room.

  ‘What else is new?’

  ‘You’re a strange young man.’

  ‘Stranger than a ghost from the nineteenth century?’

  ‘I guess every lot has its crumpled rose leaf.’ Maqoma moved across to the window. ‘This place, Korsten, is just as busy as it always was,’ he said. ‘A place of commerce, where selling and buying was the order of the day. The chief occupation of people here was to chase after wealth and women. It seems nothing has changed.’

  ‘There are wealthier places of commerce now, called malls, some even just up the hill there, where a “cleaner” kind of trading takes place. But when you take away the pretensions it’s all the same thing really, so I get your point.’

  ‘One was always able to find all kinds of interchange in the markets here: bakers with blacksmiths, with bricklayers and carpenters, with dressmakers. There was always a lot going on in the town. Military levees, balls, supper parties and horse-racing, everything sparkling with gaiety. Our people, those who were not in tronks, were employed in everything, from being gardeners to grooms, to errand-boys and even cooks.’

  ‘As I said, nothing much has changed. It was never meant to change anyway, it just grew bigger in scale.’

  ‘At night, however, this place was another story. Corrugated sheds used as trollop houses, where men who wanted to drown their sorrows were greeted by minxes in fripperies offering sexual ministrations. In those houses bearded men tippled, gambled and fought, and settled their disputes over wenches with fisticuffs, sometimes even with knives and guns.’

  ‘We still have houses for that sort of rainbow decadence,’ said Phila. ‘You still can buy yourself fleeting moments of sensual pleasure on every street corner also.’

  ‘I took fascinated delight when I went to a tavern earlier, while you were snoring. The noise, dirt, grease, mess, slop, drunken confusion and disorder – it is all the same. Only the smells from drinks are different. It fascinates me. In your taverns things are a little hidden from the eye, but it is still easy to be punched, jammed and elbowed, I noticed. I was accustomed to rough food and plain living but these places took that to another level. Men playing cards, drinking all the time, not going to till their fields. Having had a feel of the myriad fleas and bloodthirsty bedbugs in their rooms, I was not surprised they were not keen to go to sleep. Sleeping in the wild is precarious, with scorpions active, and lizards and snakes rustling close by, but the vampire fleas in those damn taverns made it hell to sleep. Damn places – you picked up all sorts of diseases.’

  Phila chuckled. ‘We call them different names – backpackers, hostels, even still taverns – these days, but in essence they’re the same thing. Probably the hygiene has improved in most though.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Looks like you sowed your oats in your time?’

  ‘Oh ja! I scattered my salt, with indecent women, jugglers’ boxes, sodden skirts, tavern taproom, painted and decorated to excess. At times of non-activity lust took an upper hand in my life. Initially I was disgusted, and concentrated only on quenching my thirst. But after a few cups with these ladies I conceived an ungovernable passion for them.’

  ‘I’ve never had the ability to take comfort in the oblivion of a stranger’s body, especially the one who has no power to choose her circumstances.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t exactly philosophising. I was just having a good time. I met a KhoiKhoi woman of loose morals here. Later on I was amazed by the ease with which she penetrated my emot
ions, so I married her.’

  ‘Didn’t you feel diminished, though, when you paid for her bed?’

  ‘No! Okay, sometimes, wavering between gratitude and disgust perhaps. Remember, I’ve never made myself hostage to Christian morals with hypocrisy turning up on every bush, falsely following the dictates of its book with the red mouth.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a Christian thing. It’s just natural for love to be exclusive. We call it human.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen your human thing; it doesn’t look very different from the Christian one from where I’m standing …’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. It’s Christianity without God. We killed God in our hearts because we could no longer stand His demands. We want to make our own laws, live according to our desires, without God poking an eye in everything we do. We could no longer stomach all that Victorian rubbish they tortured you by.’

  ‘And whites tolerate that?’

  ‘Actually the idea of killing God in our hearts is theirs also. If you care to know, it is black people now who are more religious, reminding everyone about God; to an extent that some of our black priests travel over oceans to re-evangelise countries of white people there.’

  ‘Have they managed to steal any of the white people’s land while giving them religion?’

  ‘White people are too clever to fall for the trick they duped us with.’

  ‘I’ll be damned! I thought white people said there was no meaning in life without God?’

  ‘Perhaps there isn’t. But we are too busy entertaining ourselves to bother with those things now.’

  ‘The last time I came here was not of my own will. My brothers had begun a war against the colonial government I had no appetite for. I told Calderwood, the British official responsible for our area, I was not part of the war. To be sure I was telling the truth they asked me to move away from our land and be accommodated here at British government expense. They found a house for me and my wives to stay, right here in Korsten. That was when I really grew to know the taverns of this place, and the lifestyle that came with it. I spent most of my time with my KhoiKhoi woman, so as to get news of the war quickly. Her bed was my solace, even though I could never get used to the smell of another’s man’s energy on her.’

  ‘How did you two come to an understanding?’

  ‘She told me if I turned my back on my chieftainship, to make a house with her, she’d make herself into a respectable woman. She wanted me to turn my back on all that had defined my life, for a cosy little room with her somewhere in an anonymous corner here. Though tempted, I knew what she was asking was beyond me. This was how she put it in trying to dissuade me: “I shall not forever be satisfied with being caressed by bloodstained hands, Maqoma. I do not understand your insane stubbornness. You shall never prevail over white people. It is not wise to be courageous against fate. I don’t value your glory if it must be purchased by your death. Nothing good will ever come out of this obsession of yours.”’

  ‘And what happened to the two of you?’

  ‘The tenderness on her face at first caught me by surprise. But I regained my mind and hated her for the truth she exposed in my life. She had no proper understanding of what she was asking. How could I allow the blood of all those men who had died under my leadership to have been spilt in vain? To avoid resenting her I tried to make her change the topic, and quietly I sang our tribal song in my heart: Sponono ndiyeke ndi sebenzele isizwe. When the Smith incident happened she understood the impossibility of what she was asking. There was my virility also, I suppose. But something told me she’d passed that stage of being impressed by a little tingle in her body. In my alcoholic hazes, to my eternal shame, I promised her more than I could give her. It is not hard to promise people who’re useful to you. In my own heart I always knew I’d never acquiesce to the obliteration, or allow my people to be subsumed by the expansions of a mad empire, so long as I lived. So her plans had no room in my life.’

  ‘Tell me about the Smith incident. Are you referring to Harry Smith, who was once a Governor of the Cape Colony?’

  ‘I shall tell you in due time. But yes, it is Harry I am talking about, very pompous and full of himself. He eventually made himself into my arch enemy among the British officials. He challenged me in such a way that I could not back down with my honour intact after he, literally, placed the heel of his boot on my protracted neck. We had had our scuffles when he was a mere commander of their soldiers during the previous wars, before he left for another land, called India, in what we thought was disgrace. I even managed to bury the hatchet of his killing and decapitating Hintsa, our paramount, something for which we (wrongly, as it happened) believed the British had demoted Smith. But no, when the British changed their queen the new king favoured Smith. He made him into a chief of the whole colony, what they called a governor. He came back triumphant and more boastful. Mine was the first name on his knee, because it had been losing against me that had caused his demotion and departure to India. The humiliation he meted on me, in front of my wives, children and the rest of the people, demanded I act on my honour or fall on my blade. I chose the former. You’ll be surprised how many wars of the nations could have been avoided if only the rulers had better personalities. Smith had a low-born, vulgar personality that could have done better with good breeding.’

  ‘Waterkloof was inspired by this incident?’

  ‘Indeed! I was also making inroads with the KhoiKhoi and Mfengus, people without whom I knew we could never defeat the British, or so long as they fought with them. They called that war the first clash of the races in our land. The truth of the matter is that it wasn’t. Yes, we managed to convince some of the KhoiKhoi, led by Matroos, and later on Botha, to join our cause in a rebellion (it became known as the Kat River Rebellion), but the majority still fought with the British. That became poignantly clear to me at Waterkloof when we stood killing each other, I mean black people – Khoi, Mfengu and Xhosas – while the white people would sometimes not even bother to move away from their fires, instead standing aside to cheer their vassals on as they attacked.’

  ‘At least you won that war?’

  ‘At what price though? At what terrible price?’

  The Gadfly

  AFTER HIS RELEASE FROM HOSPITAL, Phila went back to Redhouse. It felt confrontational, somehow suicidal. Danger fertilised his imagination.

  Maqoma came with a tremor, disturbing the birds.

  ‘I see you’re learning tricks of ostentation,’ Phila said drily.

  ‘I thought it might impress you. I love river banks. It is where I got bitten by the gadfly. Did I ever tell you about Katye?’

  ‘I’m sure you are going to tell me again. I’ve never understood this Xhosa saying of calling falling in love being bitten by the gadfly.’

  ‘If you’d ever been in love, you’d understand the itch and the nuisance. I’ve noticed that you hardly see any dragonflies beside the rivers these days.’

  ‘I know!’ Phila enthusiastically answered because this was something that had been a worrying notice to him also. ‘When I was growing up rivers were full of dragonflies. Now you’re lucky if you see the damselfly. I think it’s because the rivers are polluted and dying.’

  ‘Strange. In any case. I met Katye when my face was starting to line. Hers was fresh, hardly touched by time. She was slim as an arrow. When I first saw her a tingling feeling set fire to my nerves.’

  ‘Aha!’ Phila snorted a laugh.

  ‘You should have seen her inviting nakedness lying supine under the drooping willow; listening to the gentle wind shake the trees. Her shrunken nipples, raisin-like and sharp as moles, sent me to ecstasy.’

  ‘I thought Xhosa elders didn’t talk to the young people about these things?’

  ‘Tired from working in the fields the whole morning, we went to the riverside around noon to recover our strength. The dragonflies were tunnelling rhododendrons and hovering above the fluffy sponges of algae that carpeted the river surface. The wea
verbirds, hanging on the fronds, cooed the drowning drone of the river. The summer air was fragrant with the scent of cerise and bellflowers.’

  ‘Things women make us feel.’

  ‘The girls had been swimming in the meandering Ngcwenxa, the river that traversed our village, shaded most of the time by rushes and grassy banks. It must have been in the middle of spring because we were on our second phase of cutting open the fields with ox-drawn ploughs to prevent the hardening of the ground during the summer dryness. We usually repeated the process again after the first rains, before planting. This was necessary since we used plough-shares that were not fitted with shoulders like the ones white people introduced. As soon as the soil was ready it received seed. The casting was done by hand in those days, and seeds subsequently covered by sods drawn by wooden hand-rakes. Sometimes we attached a tailboard on the ox-pulled plough to draw the seeds, but this required a craftsman’s skill.’

  ‘I buy my food at the supermarket.’

  ‘That there is where part of your problems lie. Late summer the ground between the rows of sprouting corn was hoed and weeded by the women.’

  ‘Poor things. It could not have been an easy thing to be a woman during your era.’

  ‘What do you mean? They had everything easy. For one thing women were not expected to be carrion for vultures when wars came, and wars were numerous. In any case, harvest followed in autumn. The ears were cut off near the top of the stalk by means of a hand-sickle. We had no threshing sledges or rotary-sickles and such things that came with white people. Some cornfields were left to dry on stalk, to be harvested dry and stored in granaries. During winter those were what were pummelled for samp and beans. The best village sight is to watch your children bring lowing cattle from the mountains; to watch the cavorting of calves when they hear the bellowing of heifers. That, my son, is life. It’s testimony that you’re alive. The smell of corn, sorghum, barley, pumpkins and lucerne – to supplement the feed of our cattle – in our granaries. We didn’t plant much else. We grazed our cattle on stubbles of harvested fields during winter, and rough herbage that grew spontaneously in fallows. But continuous cropping with the same crops and the absence of a balanced rotational system gradually caused a loss of productivity. We solved that by often changing grazing and ploughing land – something that became impossible with the arrival of the white people with their greed of land occupation. With white people’s arrival, meadows for pasturing became very scarce. We planted fertilising crops, like beans, to restore the productivity of the soil. You knew when the caterpillar treads were back, then that land was ready to yield a bumper harvest again.’