The Heart of Redness: A Novel (23 page)

Sometimes Heitsi would be with them, chasing locusts and fashioning inept flutes from grasses and reeds. He was growing up to be a handful, this Heitsi. At first he had enjoyed being with his parents all the time. But now he preferred to spend most of the day sprinkling sand on the heads of the Believers’ toddlers. If these were normal times, he would be chasing calves and lambs in the fields.

It was the middle of October. Blossoms scented the air.

Twin and Qukezwa sat and watched the sky. And watched the horizon. And watched the sand. He sat behind her, his arms covering her tightly. She sat ensconced between his sinewy thighs. She played the
umrhubhe, the musical instrument that sounded like the lonely voice of mountain spirits. She sang of the void that the demise of Gxagxa, Twin’s brown-and-white horse, had left in their lives. She cursed the lungsickness that had taken him away. She spat at those who had brought it into the land. When she closed her eyes she saw herself riding Gxagxa on the sands of the beach, completely naked. Gxagxa began in a canter. And then gathered speed in a fiendish gallop, raising clouds of dust. Again Twin’s thighs were around her. He was sitting behind her, while Heitsi was wrapped in her thighs at the front. Gxagxa continued his wicked gallop until they all disappeared in the clouds. Through the voice of the umrhubhe she saw the new people riding on the waves, racing back according to the prophecies, and led by none other than Gxagxa and the headless patriarch.

The song of the umrhubhe creates a world of dreams.

Twin and Qukezwa sat and watched the sky. Their eyes were now inured to the sharp rays. From a distance they could hear a cry that was carried by the wind from the village. The cry floated above the tidal moans. Above the song of the umrhubhe. She stopped playing and listened carefully.

“It sounds like a war cry,” said Qukezwa.

“It does sound like the village crier. But it cannot be war,” Twin assured her. “There cannot be a war at a sacred time like this.”

He was wrong. It was a war cry. It came from the homestead of Pama, Nxito’s believing son who now acted as chief of Qolorha in his exiled father’s place. Men were beginning to gather from all corners of the village. When Twin’s ears had confirmed that it was indeed a war cry he ran up from the river to Pama’s Great Place and joined the men who had already gathered.

“All men must take up arms!” shouted Pama, addressing the meeting. “We are being invaded. The Man Who Named Ten Rivers has done what he has been threatening to do all along. You all know about the letters he has been writing to our king, Sarhili, making what we thought were empty threats. The threats were not so empty after all. A ship full of his soldiers has been seen entering the mouth of the Kei River!”

The mouth of the Kei was only a few miles from the Gxarha mouth. In no time, armed amaXhosa soldiers were at the banks of the
river, watching the ship HMS
Geyser
sail slowly up one of the channels. More amaXhosa soldiers were arriving from other villages and chiefdoms.

Twin started a war song, and all the men joined in a fearsome unison.

The earth shook. And HMS
Geyser
stood still. The people in the ship lowered a boat to the river. But it overturned, and the men in it nearly drowned. One of the men refused to get back into the boat. He swam to the shore and ran away like a scared rabbit, to the guffaws of the amaXhosa soldiers. They did not chase him, though. They wanted him to reach East London safely, so that he could warn his masters that it was not the wisest of things to trifle with the amaXhosa people.

There were cheers among the villagers when HMS
Geyser
shamefacedly sailed back without attacking.

Twin started another song. The men joined in triumphal unison. Piercing ululation filled the air. Twin could hear a distinct howl. He knew at once that Qukezwa was among the ululants. She had never mastered the art of producing the sharp undulating wails that every umXhosa woman produced so well. He turned and looked among the women who were singing in the rear. Indeed there she was, with Heitsi at her back, singing in the peculiar manner of the Khoikhoi, now and then making her vain attempts at ululating.

“Why did you come?” asked Twin impatiently. “You are supposed to be looking after Heitsi at Mhlakaza’s, and not running around the war front.”

“We had to come, Father of Heitsi,” said Qukezwa sweetly. “We cannot let you fight a war alone.”

“I am not fighting a war alone! I am with the other soldiers.”

“Women must do their bit as well. That is why I rallied them from the village to come and ululate their men to victory.”

“Oh, Qukezwa,” pleaded Twin, “you shouldn’t have come. Men don’t understand our relationship. They will say I am under the isikhakha skirts of my wife.”

The victory over The Man Who Named Ten Rivers’ ship started a new frenzy of cattle-killing. It was a sure sign that the new people were powerful, and were about to show themselves according to the
prophecies of Nongqawuse. The faith of those people who were beginning to waver was reinforced. A number of Unbelievers became Believers. Even those Believers who had long finished destroying their cattle, and were beginning to get hungry, gained more courage. Although Twin and Qukezwa had long finished destroying their cattle, they could not be counted among those who were hungry or lacked courage. They spent almost all their time at Mhlakaza’s, where they had all their meals. Some believing families who still had cattle and grain were taking them to Mhlakaza’s for the daily feasts.

This new frenzy was discouraging to Chief Nxito and his counsellors. They accused The Man Who Named Ten Rivers of bad faith.

“He pretends to be talking with us in order to resolve these matters peacefully,” said the aging chief, “yet he secretly sends his ship to attack our people. Now look what has happened! His ship was defeated and now the people are killing more of their cattle.”

“I have always warned that you cannot trust any of these people,” said Twin-Twin. “Their word is like a rock that has been made slippery by the urine of rock-rabbits. You cannot cling to it.”

Twin-Twin was so angry at the treachery of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers that his scars of history were itching. He had to scratch them constantly. They reminded him that prophets could not be relied upon to make sound judgments. He therefore became more steadfast in his unbelief. But some Unbelievers became Believers when they heard about the defeated ship.

Major John Gawler, the no-nonsense magistrate, heard about the rumblings of the people he considered allies, and sent John Dalton to talk to them.

“Sir George Grey had no intentions of attacking the amaXhosa,” explained Dalton. “He merely wanted to scare the Believers with HMS
Geyser
. The ship was on its regular route from Natal to the Cape Colony. Sir George decided that it should make a call at the Kei mouth to demonstrate the British naval power.”

No one believed Dalton.

When he had left, Twin-Twin said, “They would make excuses for their spectacular defeat at the hands of the Believers, wouldn’t they?”

What worried Twin-Twin most was that as a result of this so-called demonstration of the queen’s sea power the Believers were becoming even more arrogant. They were once again going around attacking Unbelievers. And The Man Who Named Ten Rivers was refusing to give the victims of these attacks any assistance. When his representatives in the region, people like Gawler and other magistrates, sent urgent messages that the Unbelievers should be assisted, he responded that the British government could not send parties throughout what he called Kaffirland to defend each person who might be attacked.

“In any case,” he added, “if we were to do that, we would be playing right into the hands of Kreli and Moshesh, who are plotting a war against the colony. That would give these diabolical chiefs an excuse to attack.”

The only thing that could be done was to ask the unbelieving chiefs to give refuge to the seeing Unbelievers and to ensure that they were not harmed. There was nothing else that could be done, unless the problems spread to the lands that were set apart for white occupation.

This attitude reinforced Twin-Twin’s view that The Man Who Named Ten Rivers had planned the whole cattle-killing movement. And that he had cleverly invented these prophecies and used Nongqawuse, Mhlakaza, and Nombanda to propagate them among the amaXhosa people. He wanted the amaXhosa to destroy themselves with their own hands, saving the colonial government from dirtying its hands with endless wars. This view was gaining currency among those Unbelievers who were not Christians.

“The Strangers that Nongqawuse saw,” explained Twin-Twin, “were The Man Who Named Ten Rivers himself, maybe with Gawler and Dalton.”

Those Unbelievers who were Christians, such as Ned and Mjuza, did not agree with this view. They echoed The Man Who Named Ten Rivers’ view that Nongqawuse’s visions were nothing more than a plot by Sarhili and his friend, Moshoeshoe of the Basotho nation, to starve the amaXhosa into rebellion against the British Empire.

The Believers couldn’t be bothered with these debates. They had debates of their own. A new prophetess had arisen at the banks of the Mpongo River. She was Nonkosi; the eleven-year-old daughter of a well-known traditional doctor called Kulwana.

Nonkosi’s visions began early in January. She saw Strangers who were similar to those seen by the great prophetesses of the Gxarha River. They first emerged to her when she was playing near a pool in the Mpongo River. They showed her a great number of cattle in the water and the new people that would rise if the amaXhosa destroyed all their cattle. They told her of various peoples who were going to be destroyed for not believing, and these included the Basotho, the amaMfengu, and of course the English, who would run to Kingwilliamstown and be destroyed there.

The strange thing about the daughter of Kulwana was that she did not look confused and unkempt in the manner of great prophets. She was not waifish and malnourished. She was zestful and liked to spend the whole day playing children’s games instead of sitting with the gray-beards teaching them about the happy times that were coming with the new people from the world of the ancestors. But when she was called to order, her message was clear and resounding. It came out of her little mouth in musical peals. It made grown men cry with joy.

Although Nonkosi’s message was similar to Nongqawuse’s, she gained a new following. Among the young Believers it became fashionable to identify oneself as Nonkosi’s follower rather than Nongqawuse’s. Whereas Nongqawuse urged her followers to wear ornaments and makeup, Nonkosi’s teachings were that ornaments should be disposed of. She further gave instructions that fires for cooking or for any other purpose should be made only of sneezewood, instead of the more popular mimosa.

Kulwana became his daughter’s staunchest supporter. He told her followers that he too had heard the cattle lowing and bellowing from the pool.

It seemed that there was competition between the two prophets. In
reality the competition was between their followers. The prophets spoke with one voice and did not see each other as rivals. All they wanted was to save the amaXhosa nation.

Twin and Qukezwa were curious about the new prophet. They undertook a two-day journey to visit her at the Mpongo River banks. It was an arduous trip, for Heitsi slowed them down considerably. But they did not regret it one bit. They were energized by Nonkosi, and were filled with new hope. She led them, together with hundreds of other followers, to a pond near the river, and there they saw newly circumcised abakhwetha initiates dancing on the surface of the water. They joined in the song and danced, albeit on solid ground. They saw the horns of cattle emerging from the water, then sinking again, and heard the lowing of cows and the bellowing of bulls. In the evenings they participated in the
ukurhuda
rituals where the wonderful prophetess administered sacred enemas and emetics to her followers. They vomited and their stomachs ran all night long.

Like all of Nonkosi’s followers, Twin and Qukezwa shaved off their eyebrows in order to distinguish themselves from Unbelievers.

Although two denominations of Believers had emerged, Twin and Qukezwa decided that they would follow both prophets. When they returned to the Gxarha they introduced the fashion of shaving off the eyebrows. The Believers there happily adopted it, even though it was Nonkosi’s invention.

Using the herbs they had brought with them from the Mpongo River, Qukezwa and Twin frequently indulged themselves with revelries of vomiting and purging.

The problems of redness!

Camagu is facing the irritation of Xoliswa Ximiya. And this threatens to put a damper on his housewarming party. She does not seem to care at all that she is a guest in his house. Guests, like hosts, are generally expected to be gracious. That is why the other guests—the elite of Qolorha-by-Sea such as John Dalton, the teachers of the various schools in the area, and Vathiswa, the receptionist at the Blue Flamingo
Hotel—are fidgeting on their seats. Some of them may agree with Xoliswa Ximiya’s point of view, but they do not think that it is right to attack a man at his own housewarming party. And Camagu seems determined to stand his ground.