‘Tie him up. Tomorrow he goes to Joubert. Joubert will know how to tame him. And bury that bosjesman before he attracts other animals.’
‘You killed him, Pa.’
Willem looked at his son.
‘He’s a thief. That’ll teach them to come here and steal. Now go back inside.’
David had heard the shot and was up when Roeloff returned.
‘Pa killed a bosjesman.’
‘What were they doing on our land?’
‘Looking for food.’
‘Stealing, you mean. The kommando should get the lot of them. Last month they raided Maatie Muller’s kraal and killed six sheep. Just killed them and left them there.’
‘Pa’s getting dangerous. He’s changed since Oom Jan came. Oom Jan should have stayed in Roodezand. If it was so green and wet where he was, why’d he come north? Pa wouldn’t have done it if Ma were alive. And I heard Oom Jan talk about the kommando the other day. He wants Pa to join up. Pa’s thinking on it.’
‘The kommando protects us. The Hottentots come at us from one end, the bosjesman from another. At least a Hottentot respects cattle and sheep. He’s not going to kill out of revenge. A Hottentot with two sheep will make six, you get some clever Hottentots. A bosjesman will kill both and shove it all down his gut in a day.’
‘That’s not true. He only kills what he can eat, he respects animals, Twa said. He says all this land belonged to his people.’
‘Belonged?’ David laughed in the dark. ‘They’re thieves and savages, all of them. How could anything have belonged to them? What have they done with the land?’
‘There were many animals before we came. We scared them off.’
‘Scared them off?’
‘Yes. With our guns. Our loud noises. We have disturbed the harmony of the veld. Even the bees, he says, are making their homes far away.’
‘You spend too much time listening to that jong. What does he know, an old bosjesman like him? Now, stop all this nonsense and go to bed.’
Roeloff listened to his brother’s even breathing, haunted by the face of the dead boy, the cold-hearted calm of his father. What was it about his brother that sometimes made Roeloff dislike him? He liked all the people on the farm, he almost loved Twa. Twa was a friend, a teller of stories, a provider of food. Left for dead by the kommando who’d wiped out his camp decades before, Twa, the ‘thin man’, was picked up by Roeloff’s grandfather, Oupa Harman, behind the Hantamberge, the two almost killing each other in the process. Twa became Oupa Harman’s voorloper and tracker in 1765, and later, Willem’s. Twa had never done a day’s work in his life, David always said, and sometimes the sheep got taken out and the manure transported to where Willem Kloot wanted it, and sometimes Twa just squatted on his heels like an old king at his small fire, fixing the tension on his bow, saying he’d worked the previous day and was tired. When he got like that nothing budged him, and Sanna, the Koi-na servant, refused him food from the three-legged pot. But Twa had a different understanding of work. To him, hunting was work, and hard work at that, not looking after sheep who knew what they had to do anyway. What did he know about sheep? Some Sonqua had sheep, but his tribe had never looked after them. That was white men’s work. White men had the magic of their fire sticks if they wanted to hunt large animals. The Sonqua relied on instinct and a big heart and the poison on the tip of his arrow. Roeloff agreed. Twa was a wonder to him, more intriguing than the travelling German teaching the unlettered farmers and children how to read and multiply. Twa’s stories were full of animal people, trickster gods, and ancestors advising on everything from the burrowing habits of the porcupine to when to expect rain. So far the rain god had miscalculated and they were barely surviving on the brackish dribble in the well, but Twa waved this off with the explanation that that god had many areas to cover and wasn’t always nearby.
Roeloff’s grandfather, too, could tell a tale, especially about the trekboer and the original settlers at the Cape, but Oupa Harman’s stories, true and courageous as they were, didn’t touch Twa’s for magic and lifting you out of the sameness of the Karoo. It wasn’t only their fantastical nature, it was how Twa told them: laughing, gesticulating, retelling the same story many times, embellishing greatly on the original. A story could have several endings, depending on the point he wanted to convey, but however it turned out, the little yellow-skinned hunter always emerged the victor.
They had learnt each other’s language, much to the consternation of his brother who couldn’t understand Roeloff’s association with the bosjesman, and Twa could now speak Dutch, and he, !Khomani. Twa looked after him. When the two of them were out in the veld with the sheep, Twa would never let him go hungry. ‘Hey, Kudu,’ he would call to him. ‘You hungry?’ And he would get out his bow and arrow or set a trap. Before the sun dipped in the sky, they would be sitting at Twa’s small fire, watching the meat sizzle on the coals. He didn’t always want to know what Twa brought down with his arrow—Twa knew he ate kolganse, kraanvoëls, and ostrich—and had even tried tortoise, which he liked, and porcupine, which he didn’t. His father’s musket worked much faster than the tiny arrow, and they had blesbok any number of times, but it was more satisfying eating with Twa who could spend days tracking an animal and hunting it down. Roeloff didn’t have this closeness with his brother. His brother was his brother and that was it. David had no time for him.
His thoughts returned to the scene at the kraal, the fear of the two boys, one killed in front of the other. Were they brothers? Where had they come from? Was the rest of the camp nearby? What gnawed at him was the tremor of excitement he’d felt in his father when the boy was lifted off his feet.
The night passed with agonising slowness and he lay there disheartened, watching the shadows dance and disappear on the walls, the light sifting slowly into the room.
He got up at cock crow and found Sanna in the circular skerm outside putting the bread pans into the clay oven, her two-year-old son, Kleintje, strapped to her back with a blanket tied in a knot under her huge breasts. He could tell by the way her bottom lip jutted out that morning that the news had spread among the Koi-na. Sanna would have something to say to him later on when they were alone. He seemed to have become the recipient for the grumbles and groans of the Koi-na who funnelled all their grievances through Sanna. The yard was coming to life with people going about their jobs; the day started with the strong smell of coffee already brewing. In the open doorway his grandfather stood looking out at the activity, lighting his pipe.
‘You are up early this morning, Oupa.’
‘I am always up at this time. Listen, son, your father be with the devil this morning. There’ll be war if he finds no milk in the beaker. We can’t wait for Twa to bless us with his presence.’
‘I’ll get some.’
‘Be quick about it, Roff. Your father’s out there inspecting the kraal. He’ll come in any time now to eat.’
Roeloff stopped by Twa’s hut to shake him awake, then headed for the kraal where he milked one of the goats. He had lots of questions for Twa, but saved them for later. His father and David were in the kitchen when he returned.
‘Where’s Twa?’ Willem Kloot asked, holding his coffee, shoving a piece of bread into his mouth. It looked like he and David were going somewhere.
‘His leg’s hurting him this morning,’ Roeloff lied. ‘He’s getting up.’
‘That bosjesman’s lazy,’ David said curtly. ‘And always Roeloff’s making excuses for him. Twa doesn’t have enough to do, that’s his problem.’
Roeloff looked at his brother taking the powder horn from the wall, the two guns. David, older by three years, had that week had his first taste of the apricot brandy his grandfather brewed, after the Sunday service his father held in the yard for the Koi-na, and thought he now had as much right as older people to criticise. He was strong-shouldered and thick-necked, with every look and mannerism of his father, down to tightening his jaw and grinding his teeth when he wanted to make a point. When he was nasty like this and spoke badly of Twa, Roeloff couldn’t stand him. He knew David did it to stir up his father. And his father needed little incitement in the state he was in. His father had a big voice and Roeloff had heard him yelling at Hennerik and the others all the way from the barn. Yelling at the workers made all the Koi-na shiver, and after the killing of the intruder, knowing the mood of the grootbaas, they would cower all day in their huts.
‘He’s not lazy,’ Roeloff countered, keeping the anger out of his voice.
David smiled.
‘See what I mean? You’re doing it again. When are you going to learn, Roff, they’re just Hottentots?’
‘Twa’s Sonqua. And it’s not Hottentot, it’s Koi-na.’
Willem Kloot looked from one son to the other, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His look said that he didn’t have time for their nonsense that morning. He picked up his gun and turned to Oupa Harman, who’d sat quietly smoking his pipe.
‘We’re going to Jan.’
‘What for?’
‘To take care of things.’
