DIE BURGER

Part One · Chapter 1 · October 1899

He looked at her face. She had her chin up. Her grey-green eyes were wide and fixed on his and shining wet but had not spilled. Her mouth was set.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out that he was willing to say.

He nodded once.

She nodded back.

He turned to Ou Blikkie.

He gathered the reins, set his foot in the stirrup and swung up. He sat in the saddle and made his back straight and let out one long breath through his teeth, and then took up the reins again.

South.

He did not look back.

Behind him on the wet earth of the yard his daughter stood watching him go, her hands open at her sides, and the catch in her breathing carried after him.

He rode through the gate.

Hanna stood in the kitchen with Willem's cup still in her hand.

The coffee on the table had gone cold in the pouring.

She took the cup to the basin and set it down. Then she stood with both hands on the edge of the table and looked at the door through which he had gone.

The fire shifted in the stove.

Outside, the yard had gone quiet.

Hanna picked up the cloth and wiped the table where no coffee had spilled.

Part Three · Chapter 13 · Spion Kop, January 1900

Down on the lower slope the Carolina men had begun to move.

Willem watched through the field glass.

They came up out of the dead ground south of the kop in two ragged lines, perhaps ninety yards apart. The British forward trench had begun to fire on them — single shots, the lead line taking the first rounds.

"Skiet."

The line of Wakkerstroom rifles opened on the British forward trench.

Willem had told them to fire single rounds, marked. They did. Pietie's selected ammunition, Schalk's cleaned Mauser, Andries Steyn's old eyes. The British forward trench had perhaps thirty men in it. Willem saw helmets duck and stay ducked. He saw a man stand up to throw something — perhaps a signal-flag, perhaps a haversack — and saw the man go down before the throw finished.

Below, the Carolina men climbed under the covering fire. The British forward trench could not keep its head up. A Carolina man went down anyway at the front of the right-hand line — somebody in the trench had risked a Mauser round to fire. He fell forward and lay still. Another took the place where he had been. They came on.

At one hundred and fifty yards from the British forward trench the Carolina line went to ground. They began to fire. The British forward trench fired back, briefly, then ducked again as Willem's rifles found them.

"Hou," Willem said. Hold.

His line stopped firing. The Carolina men were close enough now that an overshoot would carry into them. The Boer artillery on Tabanyama was still working the false summit beyond the forward trench — the Krupp rounds going over the British heads into the open ground behind, where no Carolina man was yet — but Willem's rifle line was finished for the moment.

A round came in short. Not by a hundred yards — by thirty. It burst on the slope below Willem's rocks. Stone and earth came up and rained down on his line. One fragment took a small piece out of the brim of Floors Marais's hat. Another struck the stock of Schalk's rifle and bounced. Nobody was hit. The observers along the forward edge began shouting corrections back across the saddle to Tabanyama. The next round went long, into the open ground beyond the false summit. The one after that found the trench again.

The Carolina men got up off the ground and came on.

Part Two · Chapter 9 · Geloftedag, 16 December 1899

Koos wrote in his notebook in the room behind the stable that night, the lamp low, his Sunday coat hung on the peg behind the door.

I sat in the Viljoen kitchen this morning for the first part of the day.

Hanna asked me on Friday. She did not say why. She did not need to.

I sat in Willem's chair. The placement was deliberate. They did not place me outside the family. This choice had its own difficulty. Hanna chose it anyway.

Hanna read Genesis seventeen. Then Exodus one. Then Psalm thirty-three. The blessed nation whose God is the LORD.

Then she paused before the pamphlet.

I stood up. I said this part was for the family. I thanked her for asking me. I left.

I sat outside the kitchen door a while. I could hear Hanna begin the Vow in Afrikaans. I did not stay to hear the rest.

I walked to the eastern boundary and crossed it. Petrus nodded when he saw me coming. His wife brought me maas. We spoke about a calf that had been sick and was now well.

My grandfather was at the Ncome. He was nineteen years old. He was in the third rank. He did not come back across the river.

My mother told me this when I was a boy. She told it without bitterness. She said: the river took our men. The river had taken others before. The Boers thanked their God. The Zulu thanked ours. The dead were the dead.

Hanna wanted me at the table. She did not ask me to stay through the Vow. Both things are true.

The Dlamini fire burns the same as on any other evening. The Viljoen kitchen is quiet. Tomorrow there will be work.

I keep my own witness. This notebook is for that.