then you had to get out of Eden?
Yes, Master. And then the flood came, don’t you know. And everybody drowns and we sail that ark.
Gert is silent for a minute, lost in thought.
I still remember that pigeon.
I start spluttering. Windvogel erupts in a fit of laughter implausibly violent in a body as thin as his.
What’s Master laughing for, and you, you good-for-nothing Bushman?
It’s quite a story, Gert. Master Master taught you well, I placate him.
Master thinks it’s all just stories. What does Master believe?
The Caffres say that smear of stars is the hair bristling on the back of a fierce dog, I say.
Does Master believe it?
That as well, yes. Come on, you must get some sleep, we’re moving on tomorrow.
The two men walk off, jostling each other, to where they made their bed under the wagon. I remain sitting. Later I add more wood to the fire and watch the dry wood surrendering to the reborn flames.
The next morning the men start loading the wagons. I walk off into the veldt. In the distance I see a dog-like creature darting from a bush. It could be a wild dog, or a jackal caught short by the sun. The animal is far away, all I can see is the red-brown stain skimming over the level ground. The creature is on its way somewhere, or simply gone. I watch the animal becoming a piece of running grassland, how it disappears into the grass and then leaps out from the brushwood again. As if it’s playing. As if there’s enough velocity to allow for play as well. As if velocity is itself a game not needing anything else.
I walk on, the wagons get smaller and disappear.
I clamber on top of a large anthill. I look around me. It is grassland as far as I can see, in front of me as far as the Graaffe Rijnet mountains; behind and next to me the flatness stretches as far as the eye seeks a point to focus on and finds nothing. The horizon is not a point, it’s where everything perishes. I look around me:
Red dog!
Then as loudly as I can:
Red dog!
I look all around me.
Later I climb down and walk back to the camp. Windvogel sees me and comes running to meet me.
Buys, where have you been? he shouts.
He comes to stand in front of me, out of breath, hands on the knees.
We’ve done packing. The men are waiting just for you.
You must stop calling me Buys when the others can hear. They think you’re trying for white.
Yes, Master, he says mock-deferentially.
Bugger off, man. Tell that lot to have done and start moving on. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.
As you say, Master.
I’ll thrash the hell out of you, you cheeky Bushman, I shout and take off and chase my only friend on earth through the scrub back to the wagons.
In the camp I think my thoughts and the lot leave me alone. I saddle Horse, roll up a hide blanket behind the saddle, fill my powder horn, throw a few lead pellets into my jacket pocket and take my rifle. I also take one of the Hottentots’ rifles and a Caffre’s short assegai. I push the extra rifle and assegai into the rolled-up kaross. Windvogel fusses around me again.
Do you need a hand?
You stay with them, see that the lot keep to the road.
What are you going to do?
Make trouble.
I ride back to Graaffe Rijnet. The people out and about talk about the Bushmen who are attacking families at Bruyntjeshoogte and the commandos that are useless and aren’t shooting enough of the creatures. People talk about the rain that no longer listens to prayers. People tell how a crow pecked out the eyes of a baby the previous week. The veldt is empty and dry and soft flesh is scarce.
When the moon is drifting discarded in the sky like a dented tin plate, I lie in wait at the kraal for the men and their dogs and the doomed zoo on the wagon. It is weekend, there are more people here tonight. The wagon with the cages comes trundling along. Tonight’s dogs are standing in wait already. The young bull terrier is back, its wounds not yet healed. Its comrades for the evening a greyhound and a mongrel, a solid chunky animal without a tail and the eyes of a true believer. There are four cages on the wagon. They lift one of the cages down and open it for a large hyena with an outsized muzzle over its snout. The hyena is calm, used to people. It’s also been here before.
The men howl at the moon like ruttish backyard curs. The wind is keen and bleak; the only cloud in the sky is covering the moon’s shame. The two Caffres drag the hyena on its chain over the low stone wall, the hind legs dig in on this side until the neck can take no more and the animal stumbles over into the pit. The Caffre removing the muzzle gets nipped and the men roar with laughter.
Outside the kraal the dogs are barking more loudly. The hyena shrinks back into itself and tugs at the chain. A drunk stumbles over the wall and staggers and kicks at the hyena and turns around to the onlookers with his hands in the air and laughs. Behind him the animal leaps forward until it’s checked by the chain, just short of the drunken sot’s mug. The man gets a fright and his friends laugh at him and gob. I walk up to the wagon. With the short assegai I aim lightning-fast jabs at the soft pelts in the three cages until all sound ceases. I drop the wet assegai and walk in among the crowd with the two rifles over my shoulders and nobody looks at me and to everybody I’m just another face with something in the eyes and a clenched mouth that has something to bite back.
The hyena trots along the circle circumscribed by the length of the chain, then hunkers down next to the iron pipe. It looks at the people, then at the dogs and then at the fires. It lies down. It gets up when the dogs scramble over the wall after their handlers. The chains are slipped off; they make for the hyena. The hyena barks and howls from the depth of its throat. They snap and bark and embrace each other on their hind legs with the front paws around each other’s necks. The open mouths seek each other out like those of hungry lovers. The greyhound grabs hold of the hyena by the snout. The hyena shrugs itself free and bites the dog across the back with the mongrel also already upon him from behind. He shakes the mongrel off and bites. The bull terrier is keeping to the sidelines, still sated with last night’s blood. The hyena pins the greyhound to the ground and bites at the throat and misses and bites again and adjusts its grip and bites deeper.
Somebody asks me about the hyena in the middle.
It’s not my hyena.
The man looks confused, asks me how much I’ve got on the hyena. I say I did not bet anything.
On whose side are you? the man asks.
A windbag with a sack for a shirt scolds and hisses and apes the fight in a farcical mime. When
