Broken River Tent

by Mphuthumi Ntabeni

  “I think those are the Kroomie plains,” Phila said, admiring the view beyond the spur that cut their path.

  The sense of their flat space was overwhelming.

  The teenage boy, by now very close to Phila and Matswane, looked amused in front of his drovers. He was obviously not used to human company on these heights, not the swanky type at least. He carried veldkos and flowers of thirst – aloes – in his hand. His dog, a mongrel, sniffed Phila and then, satisfied, loped off. The boy raised the hand not carrying his stick in respectful salute before booming out a greeting.

  “Siayazibulisela ebahambini. Liyarhatyela nilumke!”

  Matswane, whose Xhosa was not good, looked repeatedly to Phila to translate. “He sends us well wishing and warns us not to linger too long because darkness falls quickly on these heights.”

  “He said all that in two sentences?” Matswane looked sceptical.

  “Well, Xhosa, especially the rural one, like all classical languages, communicates by proverbial brevity. I am translating his meaning, not interpreting his sentences. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do,” said Matswane. “Your tone also changes quite a lot when you’re translating Maqoma’s transcriptions, I’ve noticed. Do you realise that you’re doing it?”

  Phila laughed. “I didn’t realise. It must be because the Xhosa Maqoma speaks is tinged with ancient Xhosa; he uses language that is getting lost in the pidgin we speak now.”

  Phila stared at the boy sentimentally, watching his silhouette sail on into the eye of the fast-setting sun. Something about the boy pierced him with sharp longing.

  Dusk started invading the plains where the sun didn’t reach. Streams fell from high mountainous ledges. Long shadows spread across the yellowing fields. Phila, who knew he had an unhealthy taste for the moribund, wished they could linger but Matswane was worried, so they began their descent.

  At the bottom, where they were parked, while Matswane picked bramble and briar seeds from her clothes Phila dickered for a hot meal from a man who stopped his ox-drawn cart to offer a greeting. Initially, Phila just wanted to know if the gravel road went to the town of Alice on the other side. The man said it did, prompting Phila to enquire further if the road was navigable by a sedan in the dark. The man had other ideas. Why not spend the night with his family, have a hot meal, then leave the following day, he suggested. Phila saw no harm in accepting the kindness of the stranger, but it took some time to persuade Matswane.

  “The missus will be glad to have people to talk to for the night. It might relieve her moods, so you’d be doing me a great kindness. You see, she went to school, and you educated lot like to talk things over and over all the time. I am a simple man who knows only how to look after his fields and stock. This talking thing gets on my nerves most of the time. But I feel for her, having to cope with my silences. You’ll also be doing me a great honour. It’s been a while since we’ve heard news from outside this village.”

  It was settled. In no time they were following the ox-drawn cart driven by the middle-aged man with prune-plum skin, who had introduced himself as Zwelinzima. The span raised a puff of dust against the thinning sun. The rustic scene mesmerised Phila. The only thing missing was the pedlar’s song his father loved to sing as he drove the oxen home. It took him back to thinking about the origins of his people’s locomotive ways, since their descent from the Great Lakes region of the swift Neolithic transformation from hunting and gathering, to soil tilling and animal husbandry. If the Obobogo archaeology was anything to go by, his people were already farmers by the time they left Yaoundé in Cameroon.

  As they reached the first homestead a young boy, about six years old, cut a caper of delight in hearing his mother give voice in loud greetings to her husband. The boy came running, throwing himself into his father’s arms with the careless trust of a loved child. The woman, after giving a curious look to the visitors, continued taking washing off the fence. A girl, a little older than the boy, with a bundle of sticks on her head, nimbly climbed the fence over a stile at the back, where wind-stunted eucalyptus trees guarded the homestead in a stoop of no discernible symmetry. Two older boys crowded bleating sheep into a pen.

  Zwelinzima, who had a slight stoop and a hesitant gait, introduced them to his wife in a flattered voice.

  “All we wanted to know was where the road ended. Your husband kidnapped us,” Phila joked as he extended his hand for a greeting. Matswane, who wasn’t quite sure she had properly parked, bent down to pick more burrs from her clothes before jogging towards Zwelinzima, who waited to reassure her while Phila greeted his wife in the courtyard.

  “I’m used to it,” the woman smiled. “My husband has a habit of dragging strays to our house. It’s a habit he acquired while he was working as a guard for a government tourism department. I keep telling him one day people will find us murdered cold here with all the unknown visitors he brings inside our walls. Even white people from lands as far as Scotland he brings here sometimes.” She had a kind, welcoming smile. “Have you travelled far?”

  “Not too far by road,” Phila told her, “but the spirit has been sojourning. Siya mfenguza!” He felt comfortable with her, and was delighted for the opportunity to speak in authentic Xhosa idiom. “I see your village is amenable to accepting late-coming visitors.” He squinted towards the sun whose trail of fiery streaks was still strong. He cupped his hand over his eyes to properly see the boys bolting the kraal before continuing with his clan introductions.

  “Ndizalwa ngama Ndlovu, abeDluli. Ndiyi Ndlovu edl’ igoduka. Umfenguzo siyawazi.”

  “Awulahlekanga mntase, ndizalwa ngamaNdlovu nam. Ndedele kulomzi woXaba, onoMjoli.”

  Zwelinzima joined them, introducing Matswane before his wife had finished.

  “Ngu Nosuthu lona maNdlovu. Ndiyaqonda ukuba nazene nale ndoda yase maNdlonvini. Ndimxelele ethambekeni ukuba ndathatha intombi yakwa Ndlovu, udade wayo. Yilento ndiqonde abanakude balale endleleni sikhona.”

  They went on with getting to know each other in the happy coincidence of Zwelinzima’s wife sharing a clan name with Phila. The boys were asked to present themselves to the visitors after they had finished bolting the pens and kraals. Both were obsequious and respectful, extending both hands in proper Xhosa greeting. Their father continued addressing his wife.

  “Times are tough, maNdlovu, now. You think you’re accepting a visitor, instead you’re inviting death to your house, but something immediately felt familiar with these two for me. I was not surprised to learn he is your clan brother.” Then he turned to Matswane. “Nosuthu here claims she can hand the sickle and stay the saw. We shall see tomorrow when you hand her the blade.” They all laughed heartily. The women went inside with the excuse of preparing the meal for the evening. Zwelinzima invited Phila to the fire in the court.

  Phila remembered they had an unopened bottle of whisky in the car and he went to fetch it, presenting it to his host as Ihamb’ Idlani.

  “This is what we were eating on the road, noMjoli,” he said, handing it over. Zwelinzima was extremely pleased with the gesture. They kept quiet while he unsealed the bottle. The moment the click cracked they burst into enthusiasm because it signified that the bottle was not poisoned. Dimming his eyes, Zwelinzima took a swig after pouring a tot on the ground for the ancestors. He passed the bottle to Phila, who did the same. The two men could now talk freely.

  “You say you’re on the sniff of our forefather Jong’Umsobomvu, Ndlovu?” Zwelinzima sat stock-still, chewing a grass stem in bovine studiedness, clasping his chin to signify the seriousness with which he regarded the matter.

  “The chief feeds my spirit, Mjoli. As you know, we in the cities tend to enslave our reasoning to the desires of the flesh. At some stage this suffocates the spirit.”

  Zwelinzima pressed Phila to talk about the source of his disillusionment. Phila talked about loss of cultural inheritance, the hand-me-down generational trauma from events of history. When people don’t know what to do with their liv
es, he said, they move to the cities, but sometimes this is not enough to close the void, so they try to conquer the distance by travelling to other countries. “You take yourself with wherever you go. There lies the problem.”

  Zwelinzima gave an occasional nod as Phila talked. Perhaps he was wondering if these were just tipsy ramblings.

  They were busy interrogating this conundrum when a dog with distended teats came sniffing for something to eat. A moment later one of the boys appeared to inform their father that the bitch had whelped. Their talk was arrested by the news. Zwelinzima asked after the litter and gave orders about how its kennel should be cushioned from the cold and rain, before excusing himself to Phila so he could supervise the implementation of his instructions. Left on his own, Phila listened to the falling darkness. He thought he could hear the echo of a vanished river carving the valleys, leaving behind the sunken beds of caked earth he’d observed earlier. He realised this meant he was seeing and hearing through Maqoma’s eyes and ears.

  The other boy, cocky, with obstreperous eyes, took the opportunity to get familiar with Phila. It turned out that the dust commotion earlier on the hills had been from a ferret bolting after a rabbit. The dogs and the boys, said the boy, robbed the animal of its catch and they were then cooking it. Would Phila like a taste once the stew was ready? Phila said he would, which pleased the boy. He told Phila he was very interested in city life and asked him lots of questions, saying he was planning to go work on the mines for lobola when his time came to take a wife. Phila knew the boy would be the bell-wether of the family. Somehow this realisation made him feel sympathy for him.

  Zwelinzima came back and broke up the boy’s animated talk. “Uxolo, Mdluli. Lamakhwenkwe akufuneki uyekele kuwo qha lonke ixesha, ayonakalisa,” he resumed, taking his seat and opening the bottle for another swig before passing it to Phila. “Ndifuna ukuva lendawo yokuba Ijingqi liyavela lithethe nawe, Ndlovu.”

  “It’s complicated, Xaba. I get lengulo.” Phila felt grateful he could express himself in Xhosa, because the meaning of ingulo, ‘sickness’, in Xhosa was not only a physiological phenomenon, but indicated someone who was also psychic, and as such it was regarded as an honour rather than shame. “The doctors suspect some kind of dissociative disorder. I sometimes feel a profound dissociation, emotionally and existentially, sometimes even physically. Like I will look at my own limb and not be able to associate it to myself. Try as I might, sometimes I just can’t convince my mind, or feel in my senses, that my arm, or leg, is mine, because they don’t feel part of my inner image. As such I am not able to move them for the duration of that phenomenon.”

  “Ingxaki nikhawuleza nizikhumshe ezi zinto, Ndlovu. Ingathi intsonkothile lena yakho. Kodwa andiqali kuyive. Iqhelekile kubantu abamhlophe, ababizwa ngaba phantsi. Uthi akokuthwasa Mdluli oku kwankho? Kodwa ke mna andinalwazi lwazo ezinto. Into endinga kuxelela ngayo yimvelaphi yethu apha kule ngingqi.”

  “Ndingayivuyela noMjoli lonto. Ndifuna ukuva kakhulu ngala mfazwe ye Waterkloof.”

  “Make siqale silinde amakhosikazi asondle mfondi.”

  Zwelinzima, who was a little tipsy, explained how he had seen and heard of Phila’s sickness, and how in days gone by it was treated by consulting igqirha, the only person permitted to indicate if Phila was being called by the ‘shadows’. They agreed to talk about the Waterkloof Battle after supper. After that he lurched to his feet and went stumbling off to check the progress of the kitchen matters. Phila sat hugging his knees, pondering the string of failures that had led him to that moment. The alcohol burning his blood brought with it the heaviness of sleep. He’d always found it difficult to understand writers like Baudelaire and Hemingway, for whom alcohol was a mnemonic device.

  ‘Because it was a period when war succeeded war, we put sentries on every mountain corner to watch for colonial attacks.’ The voice of Maqoma in his head filled the void. ‘Standing on that rocky escarpment, looking down beyond the blankness, one could see everything on the wagon paths. We even built stone forts on remote hilltops. The British forces had no option but to launch their attack from there. When they came, it was first with two expeditions, under Henry and Colonel Fordyce; these were predominantly made up of Highlander and Mfengu units. They brought the first fog of war with about two thousand men. Their objective was clear to me. They wanted to break our stronghold at Intab’Enzima.’

  Zwelinzima was back. “Where was I, by the way, Ndlovu?”

  Taking advantage of his host’s tipsiness, Phila decided to direct things to the head. “You were about to tell me about the Battle of Waterkloof,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve told that story a million times in my day. It was in the spring of 1851, 7 September to be exact, Henry Somerset and Fordyce came to flush out Jong’Umsobomvu and his army here, in the mountains you see before you. The Xhosas had been there since harvest time the previous April, so they were running out of supplies, having used most of them during the winter, which was particularly cold that year.” He took out his pipe, stood up to grab a burning stick from the fire, and began the process of lighting it. “The British ascended through Woodcutter’s Path, the only way to take anyway if you had cavalry dragoons. That day the British forces couldn’t reach the Waterkloof summit. Because they met up with Xhosas, who blocked their narrow way. Henry was panic-stricken. He convinced Fordyce that they should retreat. The Xhosas blocked all their paths except one, which, as they discovered halfway, although it had looked safer initially, had a very dangerous declivity. From deep within they discovered the path to be a dead end into an impassable cliff with white waters about thirty metres down below. They had to turn back – they were about three hundred and fifty men, half of whom were on horses. The Mfengu regiment at their rear, not sure what was happening with the dragoons in front, were too afraid to turn towards the Xhosa warriors, who were pursuing them with maddening sounds of booming gongs, bringing terrible dread. Even the trees started shaking with the reverberations.

  “Then Maqoma emerged from deep in the woods, riding his grey-white horse, dressed in European clothing, giving instructions to his warriors. For a moment the British soldiers, who were fatigued from the difficult earlier climb, were mesmerised by the sight; they were not sure if they were seeing a ghost. When directed, and showing impressive co-ordination, Maqoma’s warriors charged, throwing assegais that whistled and quivered as they flew. The British realised this was no apparition. The soldiers started firing their muskets, but in the confusion they killed more of their Mfengu and KhoiKhoi allies than the enemy, who were just perfectly out of musket range. The assegais, which seemed as if they were being thrown by trees, found their targets on horses and British soldiers. When the British finally gained the slope and were able to retreat onto a safer path they found their way blocked with trees, which the Xhosas had deliberately felled. They had no option but to charge and to fight the Xhosas in close combat with their awkward bayonets and swords. Most perished by being pulled into the bushes by their belts and being pushed to the edge of the precipice. Others fought on, with assegais in their backs, shoulders, legs and stomachs. By the time they managed to clear a path for retreat the British left behind about fourteen dead white soldiers, and Mfengu and Khoi. Jong’Umsobomvu also lost nine of his men.

  “Not that Fordyce, new to Xhosas and young and ambitious to win Governor Smith’s approval, took a lesson from it. Henry, who knew Maqoma well, was more circumspect and he begged Fordyce never to repeat such folly. His words fell on deaf ears.” Zwelinzima fell silent for a moment before asking, “Do you think they’re deliberately starving us, Ndlovu? Have we done something wrong?”

  “I think they’re lost in their own conversation also.”

  “Pass the crock, mfondini, let’s consult the ancestors.” With that they took another swig each from the bottle. “Shall we stretch our legs and clear our heads a little? It is getting too hot in here.”

  They walked towards the pen and kraal. Behind them was a cabbage garden Phila had not noticed before
. The clouds, white as washed fleece, floated like some form of a spaceship on top of the mountains, giving the night a white tinge, as if the area was under floodlights. Zwelinzima opened the makeshift wooden pole and barbed-wire gate. Then he began weeding in between the cabbage rows. Phila had no option but to join in. It was one of the things that reminded him of his father in Zwelinzima, this inability to sit at leisure without starting some form of manual work.

  “The neighbours will accuse us of witchcraft if they see us working in the garden at this hour,” said Zwelinzima, at which they both chuckled.

  “A month later,” he went on, “the British attempted to flush Maqoma off the Waterkloof again.

  “This time they met up with iimbila zivela kusela …”

  At that moment Zwelinzima’s wife shouted that dinner was ready. Phila wanted to ask about the roots of the proverb Zwelinzima had just uttered, why meeting rock rabbits on their way from drinking water was associated with trouble, but he decided it was neither the time nor place. Instead he stopped to strike a match, light a cigarette and stave off the dizziness from not being used to manual labour. He was excited to meet someone who, like him now, looked at things through the historical lens. As he stood, inhaling deeply and watching his smoke curl into the sky, Maqoma took up the story from where Zwelinzima had left off, unable to rein in his horse.

  ‘We prepared a welcoming assembly for them. Having cleared all our villages, sending women and children far away, some even across iNciba, only the brave and strong remained behind to plant the fields and supply us with food reserves. But I saw something never heard of before. The British resorted to dirty tricks. They were burning our fields – I mean, who does such a thing?’

  ‘It’s called “scorched earth policy”,’ said Phila. ‘Cruelly effective.’

  ‘Not only that, but they killed women and children when they encountered them –’

  ‘– collateral damage,’ Phila interjected, feeling sharper than he thought he ought to be with so much whisky in his head.’