‘Yes, he’s blood. And blood’s blood, even if it’s diluted. But, perhaps your father’s right. Listen, Roff, when I’m gone …’
‘Don’t talk like that, Oupa.’
‘There’s a wooden box with a green lid … the dockets of the first settlers. My great, great, great-grandmother, Anna Kloot, wrote it. A handful of papers in duiker hide. Also a leather necklace.’ He spoke slowly. ‘The first Kloots were vrijburghers. Their children grew up with the Hottentots.’
‘Koi-na.’
‘They came to bush and mountains and murderous winds. They are the ones who made it easy for us.’
‘Where will I find these dockets?’
‘Your father had them last. When you read them, read what isn’t there.’
‘What do you mean, Oupa?’
‘Anna Kloot was a smart woman. From across the sea. There’s a story she tells, and a story she doesn’t.’
‘Bad?’
‘In the eyes of some, not in mine. We all stand still when we pee.’
‘A Sonqua can pee while he’s running.’
‘Who says?’
‘Twa.’
‘You mustn’t believe everything he says. He thinks if you chew on a root, you’ll get better.’
‘I did, when I had pains in my stomach.’
‘Did you get better?’
‘No. He said in his hurry to get the root out of the ground, he forgot to put back a piece. You have to pay the land if you take from it. If you don’t, it doesn’t work.’
‘That’s what I mean. His head’s full of such nonsense. But he’s a good tracker. Did I tell you about the day I found him behind the Hantam?’
‘Not the whole story.’
The coughing started up again and Roeloff waited for his grandfather to get back his strength.
‘I thought it was an animal when I saw the bushes move. It wasn’t. It was Twa, crouched on all fours behind a doringboom, stalking an eland. We saw each other, and I fired at the same time as his arrow came flying through the air and into my saddlebag. I wasn’t injured, but he was. The shot knocked him over, into the bush. I got off my horse, and as I came forward, he ran off. I followed his spoor on horseback, and soon had him. What puzzled me was why he didn’t run when he first saw me. He must have seen me a long way off.’
‘Maybe he was afraid of losing the eland.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, there was something about him. I couldn’t leave him there or finish him off, so I brought him back to the camp. Your father was even younger than you are now, and we were camped a short ride away. I cleaned his wound and put on a poultice, and for three days he lay close to death with a dangerous fever. When he came out of it, he swore my magic was more powerful than his and that he’d been mistaken about us.’
‘He doesn’t think so any more. We are the robbers, and they the ones robbed.’
‘I know.’
‘They were here first, he says.’
‘True. But they’re not the only ones now.’
‘We’re the ones who don’t want to share. We want everything for ourselves.’
Harman Kloot looked at him a long time.
‘We live by the same laws of the veld, Roff. Bosjesman takes what he can from the land by his nature, we take by the smoke in our guns. Both of us have to live.’
The farmers in the interior had their own way of communicating. If Gerhardt Brink up on the kopje received tidings of death, he would span in old Maduna and clip-clop over to the dominee’s wife at Oorlogsrivier, who in turn would relay the news to the Vissers, Steenkamps, and Jouberts until it reached old Pietie Retief in the valley. When word came at breakfast that Oupa Harman had bowed to the Will of the Lord, the horses were harnessed and by noon the path leading up to Kloot’s Nek accommodated five extra wagons belonging to mourners bringing potatoes, pumpkin, biltong and beskuit. Laid out in a black suit stiff with age, attracting a dark knot of flies, Oupa Harman looked irritated at the idea of being on display, the little white flowers at the head of the coffin adding to the sickly sweet smell pressing in on them in the closeness.
Willem Kloot stood dry-eyed among the Jouberts and Retiefs and announced that the dominee was away in Roodezand and that the burial would take place immediately because of the heat. The mourners paid their respects, and the men carried the coffin silently down the hill to the family plot.
Hennerik and Twa lowered it into the grave with rieme, then went to stand with Sanna and the other workers and their children behind the mourners. Willem Kloot read a verse from the Bible, his coat tails lifting slightly in the breeze. He said a few words about the courage and determination and trekgees that had possessed his father and brought him to the Hantamberge forty years before, and how Kloot’s Nek would be silent without him. Then he closed the Bible and threw the first handful of sand on the coffin.
Roeloff stood with David and Diena and Soela and watched Twa and Hennerik go to work with their shovels.
‘You can move into Oupa’s room now,’ David whispered.
Roeloff gave him a cold look.
‘I mean it, before Pa marries.’
Roeloff took the spade from Twa.
‘Let Twa do it,’ Willem Kloot said.
