Broken River Tent

by Mphuthumi Ntabeni

  ‘“Instead of nursing revenge, why don’t you use the white man’s law against them? Take your grievances to the white man’s courts to obtain justice for our people?”

  ‘“Hahaa! You make me laugh, Matshaya. The justice of white courts is just only to white people. I’ve learnt that the hard way. My father’s experience is warning incarnate for me. You had better come out of the sheep’s close, Matshaya, and tell us what it is that your friends want before the cows come home.”

  ‘“That you stop the cruel practice of witch-hunting. That you forget about engaging colonial forces in an all-out war, as is rumoured everywhere.” Matshaya found it difficult even to catch his breath as he said that.

  ‘“Rumour is the prevailing mood of unfaithful people, Matshaya. “I thought you knew that.”

  ‘“My friends want you to trust your commands to Somandla, the Almighty. After that you shall see all things shall work out for the best.”

  ‘“Personally, I’m rather sick and tired of what white people want. It usually has no benefit for me, even when it is not downright oppressive to us. You’ve always had too much trust in the mysterious and vague, Matshaya. A man must tether his horse before trusting it to the care of Somandla. Lest Somandla finds blame in his careless trust. If you understood the teachings of Ntsikana, as you claimed to follow him, you would have understood that. Perhaps we’d have had better things to say to each other today. As it is now, I see no way of convincing you out of your error. I’m sure the feeling is mutual. You’ve been reading too many fables from the book with the red mouth. Tell your friends I’ve bought the path I’m on with the tragedy that is my life. It shall end when that life ebbs away.” I stood to leave.

  ‘“All I’m saying, my chief, is that in evil times it is better to listen to the wind than to brave the storm.” He said those words with a resolution that reminded me of the Matshaya I knew. That Matshaya flashed before my eyes for a moment, and, for that brief moment, I was filled with tender affection for him. But the presence of white missionaries soon made itself felt and I lost the feeling.

  ‘“And what about trafficking with the devil, Matshaya? What does your wisdom say to that?”

  ‘“We cannot defeat an enemy we don’t know, my chief. It was you who taught me that.”

  ‘“I suppose asses fly also in your missions if you think you can traffic with the devil and not get singed.”

  ‘“We take the good with the bad, my chief.” ‘“You’ve always been a wise one, Matshaya. But I’m afraid we just don’t see by the same eye here. Perhaps the fault was yours. Perhaps you should have left me on the battlefield to die an ignominious death. You wouldn’t be faced with this problem now. But having survived that afternoon my blood will have to turn to ice before I allow white people to just waltz into our land and confiscate the inheritance of our children. That is my last word, my friend.”’

  ‘“Remember then, my chief, what you once told me. Violence is very attractive to an imprudent man, like false gold to a fool. Whereas to a wise person it is a last resort of desperation.”’

  ‘“Where have you been in the past few years, Matshaya? It was desperate times the moment the floating houses of white people landed on our shores. I remember many things well in my heart. The years before white people came death was just a visitor, not a master, in our villages. But times have changed. When the powers of governors grow congenitally deaf to those who don’t see with the same eye they reduce them to fatal desperation. If we can’t name our complaints in words, we would do so with the force of our spears, and the desperation of our vanishing days. What are we to do when wisdom is ineffective against greed, and blocked by endless profit making and the cruel vanity of white people? They’ve left us with only one option, to violate our own lives to pull down the pillars of their kingdom. We’re trying for the impossible, you say. Well, if we’ll not achieve it with our lives, we shall with our graves.

  ‘“You’re a self-regarding person, Matshaya. Your actions don’t impact much on the future of the tribe. I understand why it was easy for you to yield to the temptation of ease, and I don’t hold it against you. I don’t think you were after profit. I know you better than that. But I’m the chief. Many people depend on what I do. I cannot be eating pie dishes of clotted cream and drinking brandy while they die of starvation because the settlers have occupied their arable land. Run away from harsh destiny all you like, if that is what is in your heart, but do not expect me to follow you to feathered pillows when we are losing the heritage of our children. I know many evils await us, but we shall stand like men and fall like warriors. Not for our sake but for the sake of our children’s children; that when they look back on how the land of Phalo was sacked from us they’d at least say they had forefathers.

  ‘“We’re not fools, Matshaya. We know in our hearts our ways can no longer reign supreme in this land of Togu. We preserve, not because of fatal obduracy, but so that we may defy the cruel fate, with our deaths if need be. So that our children, and their children’s children, may stand up tall until the land of Phalo is returned to its rightful owners. If defeated, we shall live in our children’s hearts as ghosts or myths until the land is returned to its owners. In them we shall live until, in the chaos of history, they trace our steps and hear our voices. Then at that time, even this day shall not be insignificant, and those who shall have perished shall not have done so in vain.”’

  ‘Matshaya insisted on imploring me to change my mind with moistened eyes. “My chief, the Lord Jesus Christ is beating the wings of His angels over your head. Harden not your heart and accept His salvation for He holds all things in His hand. If only in humility you would humble yourself, He will heal our land …”

  ‘His words filled me with anger. “I see that you’ve now learnt the gloomy talk and bandy arguments of priests, Matshaya. You’ve acquired the habit of answering simple questions with complicated, long jabbering answers. I doubt if there’ll ever be any going back for you. But please, spare me the tiara pomp. I have enough problems as it is. For what it’s worth, I hope all the patina of religion you’ve acquired does you good somewhere, and affords you some solace for deserting your people. But do not expect me to be moved by all that trumpery. You’re walking over the graves of our forefathers. Were it not for the respect I used to have for you we would not even be talking still. I grew tired a long time ago of listening to the false import of Christian words. Those hypocrites who speciously take counsel with the supreme God do not hesitate to foster the devil in our midst by cruel greed. They never match their actions to their words.

  ‘I’m weary of their vulgar talk about events they say are to overtake us after death, only because we don’t lie, kill and squander in the name of their God. Christians are their own best argument against their religion. I’ve grown a serious aversion to them. And you – do you honestly think alleviating yourself from your responsibilities is going to afford you salvation?

  ‘“You have your journey, I have mine, Matshaya. Mine is bound to the wheel of my people’s destiny. Everyone must find his own salvation. I’m determined to be whatever becomes of man. If that’s an insult to your religion, so be it. You’ve always been a little rushed, careless to detail, and not very concerned with probability. Hence I was not surprised when you took on this venture. Though I must admit I thought it would have cloyed even you by now. I suppose I was wrong, or perhaps I underestimated the depths of your conversion. But please do not preach to me. I wear my memory as armour against inordinate influences. I fear Qamata, and try to honour my responsibilities towards his ordinances. That is all the religion I need in my life, and luckily I don’t need to be English to accomplish that.”

  ‘By then my heart was in my mouth. As I spoke, Matshaya constantly looked at me with pleading eyes. That day we both realised the gulf between us was no longer bridgeable. I thought of the song we used to sing when we were growing up, herding cattle in the fields:

  There lies too much friction between us no
w,

  The shadowy mountains, the hissing grass,

  Please, friend,

  Accompany me a while in tow,

  For I’m afraid of snakes

  That distend in the grass.

  ‘His missionary friends watched me with long assessing stares. As soon as I was done talking they started addressing Matshaya. Whatever they were whispering it took too long, which irritated me further. I got fed up and interrupted them. “If your friends have something to say, let them address it to me, Matshaya.”

  ‘Matshaya eased the situation by saying, “They were interested in our earlier talk so I was trying to retell what we were saying to them.”

  ‘“And what do they say about it?” I asked, not yet fully placated.

  ‘“That you’re a wise man in whom there are more things to admire than to scorn. But they feel you need some religious instruction. They say you have keen intelligence and sharp wit that can be better used for the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, instead of drowning them in liquor. But ignorance still dims your eyes and, like Saul, you’re still kicking against the goad.”

  ‘“What they say does not come as a surprise to me. We’re now stretching this pettiness too far, Matshaya. Tell them their Lord will have my attention if he gives us back the land Her Majesty’s government has stolen from us. I thank you to be on my way.”

  ‘With that I extinguished my pipe, took my isikhakha, threw it on my shoulders and was on my way. Anger added speed to my stride as the rest of my men faltered behind.

  ‘“By the way, Matshaya,” I called from my horse, “tell your friends that I’ve nothing to do with the war plans going around. It’s not a shoe of my stitching.”’

  Even the Cur Will Turn

  PHILA SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE BED scrutinising his anxiety. Hands cupped on his chin, he wondered about the prospects of meeting Matswane’s fiancé. She had told, warned, him earlier that he had got suspicious when she didn’t answer his calls, and so he was flying in to East London that day and coming to King William’s Town. She had felt trapped and told him everything. Now he wanted to meet Phila.

  “Me?” Phila asked, a little shocked. “Why me?”

  “Because I told him about us,” Mat said nonchalantly, as if it was normal.

  Phila wasn’t really surprised; somehow, he felt, this had been her master plan all along.

  The whirlwind was in the thorn trees now.

  Forty minutes to seven, next to the alarm clock, his hotel bedside telephone rang. It was Matswane.

  “Siva is on his way to your room and, oh! he’s breathing flames!”

  For a minute Phila couldn’t figure out who Mat was talking about and she had already dropped the phone on the other side. He sat trying to husband thoughts to get himself out of the situation. Instinctively, though, he knew this was not going to be a situation he could bail himself out of by using Socratic dialogues.

  The knock at the door was less fierce than Phila expected. He opened the door and proceeded to take a seat on the desk without even looking the man in the eye. Now that he was standing in the middle of the room, himself not exactly sure what to do next, Siva looked gigantic and smelled of too much cologne.

  “I guess you’re Phila,” he said, looking around the room as if expecting to find another person. Phila nodded. “How long has this been going on?” The next thing, before Phila could answer, the giant was charging him like a bull. He punched Phila heavily on the jaw. For a while Phila could see nothing but a flash of light. More shocking to him was the strange release from the trapped feeling the punch gave him. The punch felt like an electric shock. Like an auotopsied lab rat, he wished for more.

  Although he grew up in a township, where fights were as common as the rising sun, this was only Phila’s second fight ever. The first one had been in junior secondary school. He remembered how he had thrown himself at the bully that afternoon, how he had fought like a cornered cur, maniacal and unbridled, throwing everything he had. The surprise of such a violent reaction had thrown the enemy off and it was the same now. It took a while for Phila to realise he had the heel of his hand pressed against the giant’s jaw.

  At that moment Matswane entered the room. She looked shocked to see her fiancé lying unconscious on the floor. “Is he dead?” she asked with an accusing face. “Did you have to kill him?”

  Phila went to the bathroom and came back with a jar full of cold water. He threw it in Siva’s face. It did the trick. “He hit his head against the wall,” he said.

  Smelling the direction the wind was blowing, he proceeded to pack his bags. Matswane sat on the carpet, looking dazed, leaning against the bed. She cradled her fiancé’s head in her lap, wiping his face with a wet towel.

  Downstairs Phila paid his hotel bill and left town.

  He drove to East London, experiencing alternating spasms of self-pity and bitterness. His mind, in irritation, wondered about amaNdlambe, whose houses dappled the hills and valleys along the road between King William’s Town and East London. This was the road that had given the trapped Smith breathing room.

  During the 1851 war Maqoma and Sandile, together with the Kat River valley Khoi rebels, who were led by Hermanus Matroos, had closed all roads into other colonial towns like Grahamstown and Cape Town. So the colonials had no ways of replenishing King William’s Town and the surrounding forts with supplies and ammunition. But the neutrality of amaNdlambe meant this stretch of road from the port of East London to King William’s Town was opened to them. As if to rub salt in the wound, Siyolo, one of the Ndlambe chiefs, decided to join the war a little too late, after the troops of KhoiKhoi mercenaries from Cape Town had passed through to King William’s Town and Fort Beaufort to rescue the situation for the colonial government. Meantime, when approached to be similar mercenaries, the Zulus declined the offer, asking: why should we help the British fight amaXhosa who are deamanding their land back, when we also should be doing the same thing here?

  Phila switched his thinking to the city he was going back to – anything to avoid confronting the mess he had created through Matswane – the first city he had known in his life. East London had a mixture of English smugness and German functionality about it (it and Stutterheim were founded by a group of German missionaries): old buildings and stringent quality. Everything about the place pointed towards England: Oxford Street, Trafalgar House, East London. Every time he was there Phila felt the need to deconstruct the colonial psyche.

  When he arrived thirty minutes later he was welcomed by the golden lights of the industrial zone, which introduced a festival mood on the scars of the terrain. The city was truly a borderland town between isolation and nomadism, thought Phila.

  After checking into his usual self-catering guest house, he went straight to his room, where he lay on his bed, prey to sapping feelings, trying to accommodate himself to his circumstances. The error had been in allowing Matswane to enter his space. It wouldn’t happen again, he told himself. He decided to take a shower. With hot water falling on his neck he chose to end the struggle against the noose; with a soothing Suzanne from Leonard Cohen in the background he accepted the situation and his error. That which we cannot reform we need to accept, the advice of the stoic came to him. By the time he got out of the shower he almost felt his own self, passive and distant to things.

  He opened the fridge, seeking something to eat. There was pastry in the freezer, ice-cream – blueberry cheesecake – and frozen chicken livers, a litre of milk that had gone off, a dish of jam and a jug of water. He opened the cupboards: uncooked rice, samp, pasta, Kellogg’s and several tins, among which was a tin of beef meatballs, which he took out. Basically the groceries he had left behind when he was last there. He had told the Afrikaner woman who owned the place, Mrs Boyle, that he’d probably be back within a week, and she had been true to her promise of keeping his stuff, “If I don’t become too busy.” He needed to buy more groceries. He also found a packet of sour cream and chive potato chips and a packet of peanut M&Ms, bot
h of which he took through to the lounge. Booty in hand, he turned on the TV as he sat on the couch. His cell phone kept ringing but he ignored it. After channel hopping he settled on a National Geographic documentary about meerkats. The curiosity of the buggers, their teamwork and smart ways of outmanoeuvring enemies fascinated him.

  He was watching desert elephants when the door buzzer sounded. Certain it was someone buzzing in error, he ignored it. He hadn’t told anyone where he was staying. After several buzzes he decided to check it out. It irritated him with pleasure to hear Matswane’s voice on the intercom. He buzzed her in and unlocked the door latch, then panicked slightly when he realised she might still be with her fiancé.

  “I’m glad to see you’re eating healthy.” Matswane tried to be flippant despite the situation, her eyes taking in the empty chip and sweet packets. After registering with some relief that she was alone, it occurred to Phila that what he was doing was not very macho – binge junk-eating away a heartache. Cracking a bottle of hard alcohol might have made a stronger, more macho statement, but he had a motto of not touching alcohol when he had emotional problems.

  “I took the liberty of inviting Mr Jack to be our counsellor.” Matswane raised the bottle of Jack Daniels she was holding by the neck.

  “I’ve only water to offer,” Phila said, feigning an apology and going to the kitchen to fetch glasses. He had a taste of bitterness and panic, bile and iron, in his mouth.

  “Oh, I think you’ve plenty to offer!” The noisy programme on TV overcompensated for the silence between them. “I’ve just dropped Siva at the airport. Then I remembered the B&B you said you always stay at when you’re here and thought it worth a try. The receptionist knows me as your wife now.” Matswane laughed softly.