Cape of Storms Page 9

  “There’s nothing to stay for here. Come.”

  “Just let me be!” Such anger in her, it scared me.

  “Why won’t you tell me what is troubling you?”

  “There is nothing to say. Don’t you understand?”

  Through her words I saw the emptiness behind them. I wanted to take her in my arms again, but she wouldn’t. I turned around and went home alone. The child had to be looked after. Only once did I look back: she was still standing there, motionless, her face to the sea. Far on the horizon the small ships lay, rocking gently on the easy swell.

  I know now I should have turned back. Just to be with her. We could dispense with words. Perhaps, if I had gone back, in some mysterious way, who knows, something would have been communicated to her, from my body to hers, blood to blood and bone. And then she would have known. I would have known. But I was offended by her aloofness. I thought: If she refuses to speak, then I’ll wait until she decides to say something. I won’t force her.

  Which is why I still don’t know. That is all I know. That I do not know.

  And I thought I knew her.

  Inside me: an abyss of fear and pain, incurable pain. Because there is nothing so terrifying as to lose the one you love without knowing where to look for guilt or reasons. Even without being able to say: Remember me, remember me, remember me.

  23

  Offering another view of the woman’s departure

  “Let her be,” said the old man K’guda who had taken Khamab’s place as our medicine man. “She’s back where she belongs. We don’t want to see those troubles starting all over again. It’s good riddance.”

  24

  In which the story of the betrayal of Adamastor by Thetis is told once again, but really for the first time

  “She did not go willingly, T’kama,” one of the old women told me, in great confidence, while I was trying to feed the child milk from a calabash. “The others were too scared to tell you. They still feel uneasy about your white woman with the smooth hair. But I shall tell you everything. She tried to run away with us, but she stumbled and fell, and the strangers caught her. I could see her kicking and struggling, and we could hear her screaming for a long time still, but they took her away.”

  In a profound way it made me feel relieved. The anguish that had settled in my stomach like a lump of cold porridge that would not digest began to dissolve. Only afterward did the questions return: Suppose, the old woman had lied just to comfort me? How can one ever be sure about lying or telling the truth? Still, I believed her. I wanted to believe her. Her words had made sense. One doesn’t just take a woman and go off with her as I had done: there are ways of acting that must be respected. Parents and elders to be consulted and appeased. A bride price to be paid. That was the way it had always been. That was the way I would have acted had the k’onkwa allowed me to obey our customs right from the beginning: but then the war erupted, the torob that destroyed it all. Now, at last, it seemed the time was ripe for me to make amends. I would go to the Beard Men and talk with them: this time, at least, it would be possible to talk, as through the woman I had learned some of their language. At least we would be able to understand each other.

  I put the child to sleep and went to old K’guda to discuss what was to be done. He was reluctant at first, as you will know from the previous chapter, but in the end he agreed. As long as the negotiations were peaceful, he was prepared to support me.

  In the dark predawn I set out toward the beach, accompanied by K’guda and three of the others—I did not want too many with me, lest the Beard Men misunderstand our intentions—taking with us two cattle and five sheep. On the ships everything was still quiet, nothing moved. We took up position where we would be clearly visible, squatting down patiently to wait. And at high day they acted as we had hoped they would: from the distant ships rowing boats were let down and began to move in our direction, the oars moving impressively in unison.

  The strangers were cautious, however. They were holding their guns in readiness. But we waited without flinching, our hands held out toward them so they could see we were unarmed; and at length, moving slowly, step by step across the naked beach, they came right up to us and started making elaborate gestures toward the sea.

  “There is no need for signs,” I told them in the words the woman had taught me. “I can speak your language.”

  Immediately there was a change of attitude. And for the first time K’guda and the others with me began to relax.

  “We brought you these oxen and sheep as tawete.”

  Without more ado some of the Beard Men hurried back to their boat and returned with armfuls of copper and beads and other precious things. And rolls of tobacco. And a small keg of brandy. This time I was careful not to offend them by refusing anything.

  After we had all smoked and drunk together and shaken hands and sworn friendship I cautiously broached the reason for our coming. I was in debt to them, I said. What on earth could I be owing them? they asked. A bride price, I said. For the woman I had taken from their predecessors and whose price I was eager to pay according to our custom and undoubtedly theirs.

  All at once they closed up in suspicion, one could see it in their eyes.

  After a silence, the one who spoke for them said: “It is a matter we must first discuss among ourselves.”

  “By all means. Talk it over and decide on your price. I shall pay what you ask.”

  They returned to the boats, where they remained for a very long time. We could see them waving their arms and talking earnestly. At last they came back with an answer. Five head of cattle and twenty sheep.

  But when we arrived late that afternoon to deliver the bride price there was no sign of the woman among them.

  “We shall bring her in the morning,” the Beard Men promised. “She needs a full night’s sleep so that she can be properly prepared.”

  I could not shut an eye all night. But when the boats came out to the beach the following morning there still was no sign of Khois.

  “We have discussed it with our leader,” their spokesman explained—they seemed nervous, clutching the guns as he spoke, which made me suspicious—“and he says the price we fixed on his behalf was too low.”

  “Then tell us what more you want.”

  “What are you prepared to pay for the woman?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Bring us ten more oxen and twenty sheep this afternoon.”

  But when we came back there was still no sign of the woman.

  “What is the matter now?” I asked, watching them drive the lowing, bleating flock into the boats; rocking wildly, those flimsy shells appeared too small for all of them.

  “Come to the beach tonight and you will have her. There must be no one else with you. We shall bring you the woman. But you must wait patiently until the full moon has fully risen.” He pointed to the sky overhead.

  What else could I have done? I ordered my people to keep away from the beach and in my absence to follow our ancient custom of paying homage to T’kaam; nothing should be neglected, and if all went well there would be even greater cause for celebration before the Moon was down.

  I went down to the white beach, all alone, and waited in the shadows of the bushes until the Moon was high before I walked out on the cool fine sand. The dark sea was moving and tossing in the night, the breaking waves flecked with white as if broken shards of the Moon were shining from right inside them. I looked around. There was no sign of life. I felt my insides contract with anxiety. But I admonished myself: perhaps it was still too early. All I could do, had to do, was wait. She would be coming soon. Hadn’t we agreed on that? Hadn’t they promised? We understood each other; we were friends.

  After a very long time, when the Moon began to slant, and as I began to walk along the beach, I suddenly noticed the dark figure between me and the dazzling path of the Mo
on on the water. Motionless, tall, pale, with long hair: the woman. For a moment I was petrified. She was standing so still I was sure it must be a ghost, one of the Shadow People, a moon mirage. But then, beside myself, my voice broke from my throat and I started running toward her. It was the woman. It had to be. Who else could it be?

  “Khois! Khois! Khois!”

  At full speed I ran into the heavy figurehead. For that was what it was. The figurehead from their main ship, which they had planted in the sand for me. Half dazed, I fell down in the shallow foam. And suddenly there were voices around me, and a horde of men came running from behind the rocks, where they had hidden, grabbing me, pulling me this way and that, kicking and beating me, until at last they began to drag me across the dark sand and up the high hill to Heitsi-Eibib’s cairn, where they tied me to something, while I saw my own voice fluttering from my mouth like a wounded owl.

  It was a great boulder to which they had lashed me with their seaman’s ropes, my arms and legs stretched out, the knots so tight I could not move, no matter how fiercely I pulled and struggled. And then they fell on me, attacking every exposed and vulnerable part of my body—what had been mine from the beginning and what old Khamab had added to me.

  “That will teach you to consort with our white women!”

  It was a long, turbulent time before they left. The beach became deadly quiet, deserted as it must have been in the beginning of time. There was only me.

  Through the blood I saw the sun come up, a great eye slaughtered on the horizon. In the farthest distance—but perhaps it was my imagination—the great seabirds were sailing off proudly and beautifully to wherever they had come from.

  There was a terrible urge in me to shout: “Khois!” But my voice was like a fistful of old feathers thrust into my throat.

  A black shadow came swooping down from high above. A vulture. Then another, and several more. Among the rocks, among the tall stones scattered from Heitsi-Eibib’s cairn, they perched, stretching their bare necks to peer at me. Eat my heart, I thought, tear out my liver, devour my intestines. You won’t ever kill me dead. Tomorrow when you come back I shall be here again. You will have to start anew on me. And every new day when the sun comes up. I shall never die. Not for you.

  Khois, Khois, Khois.

  My eyes were breaking. Earth, rock, trees, strange flowers, birds, animals, everything passed through my eyes. Journeys, panoramas, visions, mirages, desert, a subterranean river breaking through the surface. Years, ages, centuries, ancestors, descendants, bones, so many bones. The sheer whiteness of white.

  Khois, Khois, Khois.

  All I had ever had ran from my empty hands. All of it. Except this: somewhere in the land, I knew, somewhere, behind the thickets of euphorbia and burning aloes and undergrowth, was the child. He would live on. They could not kill me.

  How dangerous it is to love.

  And then I died, the first of my many deaths, as far as I can remember.

  Glossary

  (Unless otherwise indicated, these terms are all of Khoi origin.)

  abba: to carry piggyback

  abba skin: skin in which baby is strapped to mother’s back

  ati: reed pipes

  baru: small milky bulb

  bokmakierie (Afrikaans): onomatopoeic bird name

  buchu: fragrant herb with medicinal properties

  chu’que: leader

  dagga: indigenous hashish

  dassie (Afrikaans): rock rabbit

  duiker (Afrikaans): small antelope

  gaib: magic medicine

  Gaunab: the Evil One, who lives in the Black Sky

  ghai skin: loincloth worn by men

  gurah: string instrument

  hadeda: a kind of ibis, regarded as a harbinger of death

  hamerkop: hammerhead, a bird with visionary powers

  “Hebba ha”: “Come back”

  Heitsi-Eibib: great hunter ancestor, believed to have died and revived many times

  igqira (Xhosa): medicine man, witch doctor

  kambro: wild bulb resembling a sweet potato

  kanni: wild bulb

  k’arakup: chameleon, a messenger from heaven

  karba: earthenware vessel for storing liquids

  Karoo: “Dry Place,” the arid inland plains of the Cape

  kaross: long garment made of skins sewn together

  khoib: man

  Khoikhoin: “people of people,” designating the nomads known to colonists by the derogatory name of “Hottentots”

  khois: woman

  k’hrab: testicle

  khuseti: the Pleiades

  kierie: stick

  kiewiet (Afrikaans): onomatopoeic bird name

  kloof (Afrikaans): ravine

  kombro: edible root

  k’onkwa: Beard Men

  koo bird: golden eagle

  kraal: enclosure for sheep or cattle (corral)

  kwekwa: (to have) sexual intercourse

  lobola (Xhosa): bride price

  meerkat (Afrikaans): ground squirrel

  “Mutsi atse”: “I see you”

  night walkers: evil spirits, succubi and incubi

  njaba: wild bulb, resembling a truffle

  piet-my-vrou (Afrikaans): onomatopoeic bird name

  riem (Afrikaans): leather thong

  San: nomadic hunter people, otherwise known by the derogatory name of “Bushmen”

  sarês: an evil spirit in the form of a whirlwind

  sibi: rain

  Sobo khoin: People of the Shadows, spirits of the dead

  Sonkwas: robbers, derogatory name for the San

  tawete: gift offered as official greeting

  t’gai aob: medicine man

  t’gau: vagina

  t’gauab: praying mantis, regarded as a sacred insect

  thas jackal: an evil spirit in the form of a jackal

  tinktinkie (Afrikaans): a small wrenlike bird

  T’kaam: Moon

  T’kama: Big Bird, Ostrich

  t’koi-t’koi: a kind of drum

  t’nau: taboo, unclean

  torob: war

  tsamma: wild melon

  Tsaob: The Smoldering Embers, the Milky Way

  Tsui-Goab: God, the source of good, who lives in the Red Dawn

  vlei (Afrikaans): marsh