Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Glossary
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Acknowledgements
When I started this novel four years ago, I had this notion to tell a nice little story set in the Karoo in the 18th century. I had no idea what I was in for. My thanks go first to two great brothers: Ghalick and Hymie, for all those special favours, and never saying no. Dan Sleigh, for giving me the names of Twa and Smoke in the Eyes. The people of Calvinia, especially Alta Coetzee who arranged for me to stay in the Karoo Boekehuis, and Danie Poggenpoel and his wife who told me many stories. The Richvale Writers’ Club in Toronto for being the first to encourage me to ‘tackle’ historical fiction and listening to the opening scenes. My daughter, Zaida, who was there the whole time behind me on the bed doing homework. And a special thanks to my South African publisher, Annari van der Merwe, who after a first reading, said, ‘this book is too eurocentric’ and forced me to look at it differently. This book could also not have been written without the wonderful stories and information contained in numerous books on animal behaviour and the history of the early Cape. I am especially indebted to the following works: Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1702, The First Fifty Years of Dutch Colonisation as seen by Callers, translated with notes by R. Raven-Hart, Vols I, II, A.A. Balkema, Cape Town, 1971; Journals of Jan van Riebeeck, 1651–1662, Vols I, II, III, edited by H.B. Thom, A.A. Balkema, Cape Town, Amsterdam, 1952; The Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbours, edited by Lee and DeVore, Harvard University Press, 1974.
I have decided to tell the story the way it is. It is a book of fiction, after all, and sometimes we go too far with all this de-labelling. In the words of the late Oupa Regopstaan who responded to a question of mine in 1994 on whether he liked being called San, ‘Wat is San? Ek is ‘n man van die bos.’
Rayda Jacobs
September, 1996
Chapter One
It was an intensely still night, the radiance of the moon spilling into the back of the lonely little house on the rise. Inside the house were four beds, and in one of them, a boy stirred in his sleep. Some noise had scratched into his dreams. He opened his eyes and listened. Had the servant entered the house? Sanna was practically his mother the way she fussed over him, part of the family. She was always stumbling into things, especially with the baby strapped to her back. Pa? Oupa Harman? He didn’t think so. It had sounded sudden and far away. Outside was mile upon mile of dry and broken land studded with kareebome, skaapbos and vygies, the house on the slope of the rant with its sheep kraal and huts breaking the monotony of the vast, featureless plain.
Then he heard it again, the growling of Ratel and Riempie, and sat up, looking at his brother asleep in the next bed. A sudden scream made him throw off the covers and run to his father’s bed. Willem Kloot already had the loaded musket in his hand.
‘Sounds like trouble out there.’
Roeloff ran out after his father without bothering to put on his veldskoene.
The soil was warm under his feet as he ran in the direction of the kraal, arriving to find a dead sheep with arrows in its back and Ratel and Riempie at the neck and arms of two Bushmen boys twisting about in the dust.
‘I’ll kill you!’ Willem pointed the gun down at their heads.
‘No, Pa!’
Willem turned at the voice of his son, a sprightly boy of twelve with blue eyes, and hair the colour of Karoo sand when the sun arched directly overhead.
‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Don’t shoot. Twa can talk to them.’
Willem kicked the intruders viciously in the ribs. They balled up like caterpillars, but made no sound of their pain.
Roeloff turned to run to the servants’ huts and saw the old Bushman, dressed in skins, come limping up.
‘Pa wants you, Twa. Come quickly!’
‘Ask where their camp is,’ Willem barked.
A proliferation of click sounds knocked at the roof of his mouth as Twa addressed the boy trapped under Willem Kloot’s boot.
The boy tucked his head between his knees and refused to speak.
Willem aimed the gun.
Twa kneeled down on his good leg and tried harder, waving his hands angrily in order to make them understand the seriousness of their crime.
‘They won’t talk,’ he said finally.
‘Tell them to stand.’
When they were up on their feet, Willem shot one of them point blank in the chest. The boy was lifted from his feet and fell back with a thud, blood snaking from the wound under his heart.
Roeloff looked at his father in horror.
‘Ask him if he wants the same.’
Twa addressed the other boy. With the gun pointed at his head, he spoke quickly. He didn’t know the gun needed reloading before the white man could shoot again.
‘A waterhole near the hanging rock, he says. Behind the Hantam.’
