Willem Anker - Red Dog - A Frontier Novel

Let the dog be, Buys. What’s he done to you?

It’s no dog.

He’s the best sheepdog we have.

That’s because it’s more sheep than dog.

Ore is a good dog.

A dog with a name is no goddam dog any more.

Saterdag shakes his head and walks behind me. We start herding the sheep.

What’s eating you?

We can’t sit around on our butts all day.

Like every year, the Senekals attend the cattle auctions. Apart from Communion it’s the biggest agglomeration of the year: three days of chitter-chatter with everybody from all over, three days of grubbing and boozing and swopping and cheating and here and there a smidgeon of adultery. I’m foreman and have to go along to see to the cattle. David Dumbwit and I steer clear of each other, speak only when necessary. His blatherskite buddies are there; I have my affairs to see to. It’s good to get out among other people, people you don’t feel you want to murder.

At the auction grounds there’s a fellow in the saddle fresh from France who does things with a horse I’ve never seen before. Look, it seems as if the horse isn’t even conscious of the rider, so liquid its movements and so subtle the rider’s commands. Man and horse merge into one new and strange animal. The hoofs are lifted high, are put down firmly, as if the horse wanted to expend all its power and passion in the lightest footfall, as if its whole being depended on each step, as if all movement were display and all movement were totally subjected to an invisible force that brooked no blemish. The rider is without past or future. He is sheer arms and legs, stirrups and saddle and reins, everything attuned to the tiniest tremor in the horse’s body.

Just see how cockily he stands there, the young Buys, the stuff-strutter with the feather in his hat and his hand in his side. Just see them standing there talking to each other, the horseman in French and broken High Dutch and Buys in the ever-mutating Dutch of the Cape Christians. See how hand gestures take over when words fall short. How young Buys interrogates him until the man manages, after a few unsuccessful attempts, to excuse himself.

The first morning back on the farm I saddle Sweat-stain Senekal’s horse. One of the farm women goes and tells the boss, who bears down upon me all shouting and swearing. Who the devil do I think I am to mount his horse? I bring the horse to a standstill, then take it through a few of the dance steps that the Frenchman showed me. David Dogshit falls silent. He stands for a while watching me. Before walking away, he mutters that I may borrow his horse once I’ve completed my day’s tasks.

Every late afternoon I’m in the saddle and the moon is high before I walk the horse to cool it down. I’m informed that Soup-socks Senekal tells the whole world except me how surprised he is that he and this strange pipsqueak share an interest in horses. I can see how it pisses him off when the horse is more responsive to this uncouth hooligan than to him. I make sure that he’s present when with great fanfare I rechristen the horse as Horse. I make sure that he sees I’m watching when the beast no longer responds when he calls it by its old name. After a few weeks he’s inclined to forbid me once again to get near to Horse, but Geertruy says his word is his bond. I’ve practised and perfected a smile that I keep at hand just for moments like these, a smile specially crafted for my beloved godfather.

During that year and the following you can come and look for me among the huts of the farm folk. On such a summer’s evening I’m sixteen and loitering among the fires. Children hang about me and I lift them up on my shoulders. They crow with pleasure and their parents call them in. I walk past the hut where I know she lives, a few times, and ask nobody about her and she doesn’t appear. I go and sit with a group of young Hottentots and we talk about the cow and her udder that started festering that afternoon. One of the Hottentots has a birthmark on his face and vomits on the fire and the others laugh and I see her nowhere.

On a later, cooler evening you can find me next to a fire drinking beer with two old cattle-herds who talk of drought. Now and again they peek at me. I sit and drink what they have and promise to give them back the next morning what I’ve drunk and they laugh because they must and say I’m welcome and I don’t ask them about her and much later I get up and walk to another fire.

In winter the wood is wet and the fires smoke and the old men are older and when they see me they slip into the nearest hut with their calabashes. I fight when I’m drunk and sometimes I pretend to be drunk so that I can lash out more savagely and on none of these evenings does she appear and on every one of these evenings I look up too quickly when her name is mentioned. Piccanins who should be in bed by now taunt me with her name when they see me approach. The young Hottentots laugh but not out loud. Early one morning the karrie makes me vomit and I take a young half-caste girl to my hut. I lie with a woman for the first time. I remember what she smelt like and how bony she was and that she didn’t want it and how quickly it was done. In the following weeks I jump two more and sit around with Saterdag who never talks about her.

Towards the end of winter the fires are small and the people keep indoors. I still now and again sneak up to where I can see the shadows of her and her family moving around in their hut, but I don’t come out of the bushes. One night the sky is open and the stars shower down all around me when I get up from the fire where a few souls have elected to brave the cold. It’s freezing out here, but my jackal hole is too stuffy. The men around the fire all have their reasons not to be with their wives in their huts. They sit still, the only dance being the shadows in the smoky flames. I walk into the veldt with a calabash. There’s someone walking behind me. I stop a few times, listen. The footsteps are light, but not accustomed to prowling in the dark. The figure stands still as soon as I sit down. The dark outline stands watching me for a while and then walks back in the direction of the fire. I drain the calabash. Snivel-snot Senekal’s brandy scorches my throat. I go home. As I walk I look behind me to see whether I don’t recognise one of the shadows. In front of my hut she’s waiting for me.

My father is scared of you.

Whatever for?

He sees you walking up and down in front of our hut. He says you’re wearing a trench with your feet between your place and ours.

I walk in many places.

So I hear, yes. But nowadays you only walk in one path. Father says he’s going to beat me to death if he catches me with you. He says you can’t look after a woman. He says you can’t look after yourself.

I look after myself. I built this house.

My father says this thing is no house, he says ostriches build better nests.

So let your father come and build me a house.

If you tell him to, he’ll have to do it.

What are you doing here?

Why don’t you talk to me at the Master’s house?

I talk.

You never talk.

What do you want to talk about?

We sit out the night in my ostrich nest and she tells me about her life and her parents and her little sister who died the previous year and her father who paces muttering up and down in the hut and hits them if the pacing doesn’t help and the children of Geertruy whom she looks after and knows better than I do and I tell her nothing but I listen to everything she says and I don’t forget any of it. It is morning by the time she starts talking more slowly. The most important things that had to be said have been said. She allows me to touch her. The dress she starts taking off was my mother’s and was Geertruy’s. We kiss until she has to go and skim the milk for goddam David’s goddam butter. My prick isn’t having any. When she’s gone, I work up a hard-on by hand and harrow a plot of ground where I’m lying and wipe myself on the kaross. I walk past the dairy and see her there, fishing out the spoon that has fallen into the vat. Her arms are dripping cream. I turn away, walk in the direction of the veldt, stand still and turn around again and check behind me again. See, she’s coming towards me.