Since it was something that happened only once a month, or if you were lucky twice, that the moon was completely round and so huge and so close to the earth as if you could touch it, and it made the world so bright as if it was daytime, the villagers felt it would be a crime to waste such a night. The girls were out in the village playground singing lipina-tsa-mokopu – the songs of the pumpkin – though it was out of season. It was all of five months before harvest time. Boys were sitting by the kraal pretending to be men, telling one another tall tales. Men were standing in groups under trees debating as to whether the diamond mine in Kimberley offered a better deal than the new gold mine in Johannesburg at the native recruiting office in Cutting Camp. Old men had invaded the silos for old dry corn and were roasting it on one side, and then battling to chew it before roasting the other side, as the women cooked food on outdoor hearths in three-legged cast-iron pots.
Malangana sat on the adobe stoep of his grass thatched hut and watched the moon and listened to the dogs and the wild animals that he presumed were jackals barking at it. He laughed as some silly mongrels jumped at it with their tongues hanging out, hoping to lick it. His body began to rattle with laughter. He knew what was happening. Even when he walked it happened and he had long accepted it as his lot. And when he coughed it was worse.
He had stopped walking unless it was absolutely essential. In his early years in Lesotho he used to walk for miles each day. He was the man who linked the amaMpondomise refugees in the different parts of Lesotho where they had settled. Even after they had spread over the years and established homes in different parts of southern Lesotho they knew that Malangana could be relied upon to keep the links strong.
He used to ride Gcazimbane or Xokindini and visit Mhlontlo at Phiring near Phamong in the district of Mohale’s Hoek where he was nursing his depression at the homestead the sons of Moshoeshoe had given him as a place of refuge. Or he would surreptitiously cross the Telle River at its most mountainous part to see his brother Feyiya who had established his homestead at eKra in an area that was no longer Lesotho but the Cape Colony. Indeed a number of the members of the House of Matiwane under the leadership of Cesane had recrossed the Telle River into the area of the Herschel District, part of the territory conquered from Lesotho and falling under the Cape Colony, and had established their homesteads on the mountains that used to be Qhobosheane-ea-Moorosi – the Fort of Moorosi – where their vanquished ally, King Moorosi, had defended his Baphuthi people against the Boers, the British and the Basotho.
This branch of the House of Matiwane under Cesane on the border of Lesotho became known as amaCesane oMda, which meant the ‘People of Cesane of the Border’ (referring to the border of Lesotho and the Cape Colony) and their village was called Qoboshane after the original fort.
It was only after ten years or so of exile that Feyiya and the others gathered the courage to cross the Telle River and settle at Qoboshane. They believed that after so many years the Cape Colony Government had forgotten all about them. In any event they were never wanted men as individuals as there was never a list compiled of participants in the rebellion. The wanted people were the leaders Mhlontlo and Mditshwa, who were known by name, not the general ama-Mpondomise men who fought in the war and could get lost in the crowd. In a war every man was a soldier and Government could not arrest the whole adult male population of amaMpondomise. However, for Malangana things were different. He was very close to Mhlontlo. Not only was he his horse’s groom, he was his interpreter and adviser. Even in the field of battle he fought next to him. He believed he was known to the white man. He would be a wanted man as an individual. He did not join those who settled at Qoboshane lest Government came knocking. He stayed with those who remained in Lesotho, and built himself a bachelor’s hut in the village of Qomoqomong. That was why his visits to his brother Feyiya at eKra were made only under the cover of darkness.
When the moon was full like this and the dogs were howling and everybody was full of the joys of life his body always reminded him of its complaints against the world. The more the girls sang and the children laughed the more the aches attacked his joints and his muscles and even his bones right to the marrow.
Over the years he had watched his once strong and muscular body shrivel and squirm. It was not the withering of age. In the early years of his exile in Lesotho he was quite active. So was Mhlontlo.
For instance, he rode Xokindini and Mhlontlo rode Gcazimbane and they visited Basotho chiefs to lobby them to make common cause with amaMpondomise. He went as far as Matsieng to the headquarters of the Paramount Chief of Basutoland, as the king of the Basotho people was now officially called by the colonial Government. Mhlontlo had thought since Basotho had not been defeated in their Gun War and the British were forced to negotiate for peace, instead of their initial plan of forcing an unconditional surrender, he would find their King Letsie still holding sway as in the old days. He thought the Basotho would still be the formidable force he had heard about from his friend Moorosi, for they used to give the latter sleepless nights. He was disappointed to find that Letsie would not make common cause with amaMpondomise.
The Basotho were now a subdued people and had sworn loyalty to the Crown. Letsie was quite happy to give ’Mamalo, the praise-name that he gave Mhlontlo, succour at Phiring near Phamong where his brother was principal chief, as long as he did not start any trouble against the English within the borders of Lesotho. They were going to give him and his followers fields to farm, and they could even marry wives if they were so inclined, and pay taxes.
‘We know that the Red Coats are looking high and low for you,’ said Letsie. ‘They won’t touch you while you are here under our protection as long as you keep the peace.’
That was the beginning of Mhlontlo’s depression. He confined himself to Phiring, comforting himself with sorghum beer and local women. Occasionally he rode Gcazimbane to visit his kin in the various parts of the Quthing and Mohale’s Hoek District, or surreptitiously across the Telle River. But gradually these visits became fewer as his mood became darker.
Malangana, on the other hand, became very actively engaged in his new community. He learned from the sons of Moorosi how to make mokhele, the ostrich-feather gear for dressing shields that was fashionable with Basotho soldiers. They had learned the art of mokhele-making from their grandfather, the late Mokuoane, who was a famous hunter. The story was always told of how he befriended Barwa, as Basotho called the Bushmen, and bought ostrich feathers from them in exchange for dagga. He would then make mokhele, which were so highly prized those days that soldiers would pay for one with an ox. That’s how Mokuoane became rich with many cattle.
In Malangana’s day mokhele was no longer selling for an ox. But still he was accumulating a lot of wealth in the form of sheep and goats and actual pounds, shillings and pence. He rode Xokindini to many parts of southern Lesotho selling the headgear. Feyiya lent him his son Charles for a while to look after his sheep and goats. But all the time his kith and kin kept nagging him about getting married and having his own children. He was getting on in years, they said, for whom was he accumulating the wealth if he was not getting married and creating heirs?
Even the elder Ndukumfa lamented on his deathbed before he emitted his last breath, ‘Wena, Malangana, what do you think I am going to tell the ancestors when I meet them now that I am leaving without seeing what that penis of yours can do? Okanye awunayo?’ Or don’t you have it?
Everybody laughed. And Ndukumfa died. It was just like him, leaving everyone with a smile.
They did not know that it was not for lack of trying that Malangana was not yet married. In his travels he met many beautiful maidens. Who did not know the beauty of the Baphuthi maidens? Malangana was not blind to this beauty. His heart was not made of stone. The maidens were not blind to his eligibility. In many instances he thought he had fallen in love. But something somewhere would happen, always on his side, which brought the relationship to a halt.
It would start with a dream. Actually a nightmare. The familiar sound that told him immediately that he was at the confluence of Sulenkama and Gqukunqa. The supple-bodied woman swimming in the fresh water. The birds and the butterflies and little silver and golden fishes jumping out of the water. And there would be himself sitting naked on the bank with his feet playing in the water and smiling at his stiff manhood, its one-eye staring at him. There would be the sun, but there would be stars also. It would be neither day nor night. There would be the mountain with stars on top of it rising like a series of stairs waiting to be climbed. He would be impatient for the mountain would be beckoning. But the girl, oh the girl, would like to take her time in the water.
The next day he would know that there was a woman waiting for him hundreds of miles away in the land of amaMpondomise. He would break the heart of a Mophuthi maiden.
There was a time when the elders of the House of Matiwane thought they had arranged a good marriage for him with a daughter of Doda, one of Moorosi’s sons. Just when everyone thought he was going along with the idea that uduli – a marriage delegation – should be sent to Doda’s family, Malangana announced he had changed his mind. He said his conscience would not allow him to marry a Mophuthi maiden because Baphuthi people were related to ama Mpondomise. It would be incest.
‘We all know that Baphuthi under the leadership of Langa branched off from amaSwati people during the great migrations,’ said Malangana. ‘And amaSwati are the children of Dlamini who was the son of our own forebear Sibiside.’
The elders of the House of Matiwane looked at him, stunned for a while, and then broke out laughing.
‘If you don’t want to marry Doda’s daughter just say so, man; don’t make stupid excuses,’ said Mhlontlo. He was not amused that the rest of the elders had ridden all the way to Phiring, more than twenty miles for some of them, to settle Malangana’s issues and he was playing games with them.
Cesane took his blanket and his stick and made to go, but at the door he stopped and said, ‘It is true that Sibiside begot Njanya, Dlamini and Mkhize, and Dlamini founded the nation of amaSwati, while Njanya begot the twins Mpondo and Mpondomise who founded the nations of amaMpondo and amaMpondomise. But that was twenty generations ago. We marry amaMpondo women and it is not incest. You are just making an excuse, son of Matiwane.’
Cesane then shook his head and left. Since then Malangana’s kin stopped bothering him about marriage.
One day when Malangana returned to his hut from one of his business expeditions he found Gcazimbane grazing outside his house. He thought Mhlontlo had paid him a surprise visit, which really did surprise him because Mhlontlo never visited anyone. There was no Mhlontlo. Gcazimbane had come by himself all the way from Phiring, a distance of about twenty miles. He returned the horse two days later, against his better judgement. He could see that Gcazimbane was neglected. Mhlontlo was not feeding him well or grooming him or even riding him. The horse was running loose while Mhlontlo just sat there repeating to anyone who would care to listen over and over again that his quarrel was with Hamilton Hope and not with Government.
‘I am taking this horse with me,’ said Malangana. ‘You don’t deserve Gcazimbane. He looked after you in the war but you don’t look after him.’
‘Take him,’ said Mhlontlo. ‘But have you ever asked yourself why all those nations became loyal to Government and we stood all alone? Have you?’
Malangana was impatient with this talk and wanted to go back to Qomoqomong. He had to manage two horses for all that distance.
‘That’s all over and done with,’ he said.
‘We can understand about amaMfengu,’ said Mhlontlo urgently. ‘They were refugees. Everyone despised them. All the black nations looked down upon them. So they had to place their lot with the white man. They benefited from his crumbs and became amakhumsha from his education. Now they have inherited our land. I am told they are our masters even in the land of amaMpondomise. What about these other nations – the great and established kingdoms? Why did they become loyal to Government? Why did amaMpondo and abaThembu? How did the white man tame even the descendants of the great King Xhosa, the formidable amaGcaleka who are my in-laws and amaRharhabe?’
Malangana did not answer. Instead he went outside where Gcazimbane was already snickering at the door with his tail held high. ‘Mhlontlo forgets that we are also amaMfengu now because we are refugees,’ Malangana said to Gcazimbane as he saddled him. He mounted his favourite horse which now would be in his possession all the time, pulled Xokindini with his reins and rode back to Qomoqomong.
He gave Xokindini as a gift to young Charles who took the horse back with him to eKra when his father finally demanded he should return home to look after his own animals and start school like his uncle and namesake who went to Shawbury in the land of amaMpondomise.
‘Hela Malakane, Hela Malakane!’ the girls who were singing lipina-tsa-mokopu changed their tune when they passed Malangana’s house and saw him sitting on the stoep. They were now bored with the big round moon and were going to their various homes to perform whatever chores were still undone and then to sleep. But before that they were giving Malangana a taste of their mischief.
It was the habit of the village children to make fun of the twisted man. It got worse when they discovered he neighed like a horse when he got agitated.
‘Malakane nnka Malakane, Malakane khali khali Malakane!’ At this the girls lifted their thethana grass and beaded skirts and exposed their bare bottoms. Malakane was the Sesotho corruption of his name, and they were inviting him to take what his heart desired.
He just sat there with a distant look in his eyes. He had mastered the art of ignoring all those who teased and insulted him. They moved on with disappointed giggles because they couldn’t provoke one of his famous neighs. He was proud that he had not neighed. He had no control over the neighs. They just came unexpectedly.
Just as he thought he had got away with it one long and melancholic neigh came as if from the hollow of his body. The girls who were now few in number, for most of them had gradually branched off to their homes, heard it, stood and listened, and then clapped their hands and cheered.
Malangana sighed and cursed his lot.
His lot had started gradually with a sore heart and the longing for Mthwakazi. The mokhele also became less fashionable as fewer military people were buying them. In any event he had become less enthusiastic about travelling long distances. His wealth in the form of animals was gradually becoming depleted, though he continued to hoard hundreds of pound notes since his needs were few.
Gcazimbane was ageing as the years went by. It was in their fifteenth or sixteenth year in Lesotho – he couldn’t remember – when he woke up one morning, went to the stable and found Gcazimbane dead.
He wailed as if a human being had passed on. The horse had changed drastically since participating in the War of Hope from the carefree spirit that used to enjoy playing hide-and-seek with his groom to a brooding beast that carried out orders without joy, and that even once allowed itself to be abducted by amaBhaca enemies. But Malangana remembered only the wonderful times. Why, he was with Gcazimbane when he first spoke with Mthwakazi and argued about the sun. Gcazimbane was even present when he and Mthwakazi did adult things by the river. More than any human being, Gcazimbane was the keeper of his deepest secret.
At this thought he wailed once more.
People came to console him for they thought he had lost a relative. When they found that it was only a horse they offered to get rid of the carcass for him. He was grateful for he did not know who was going to assist him in burying Gcazimbane with all his kin so far away at Qoboshane or on the mountains of Mants’onyane, for they had even spread that far away herding their sheep and goats.
The next day he was grateful for the kindness of the neighbours as they brought him meat. Some of it was cooked tripe and it was very good to eat with sorghum bread. There were chunks of raw meat that he roasted on the open fire. Neighbours became generous like that when they had slaughtered an ox or when one of their animals was dead, so he did not ask questions. When he still had lots of goats and one was injured he would take it out of its misery. He would share most of the meat with the neighbours or else it would rot. There would have been no point in hoarding meat for oneself. Two weeks later another neighbour had brought him sun-dried meat known as lihoapa. This was particularly good and he kept some for when he would go to visit Mhlontlo.
It happened one day that in casual conversation a neighbour mentioned that Gcazimbane was not only a beautiful horse but he was very delicious despite his age. Delicious? Did these people eat his horse? He remembered vaguely that Basotho people used to be teased as horse-eaters but he had thought it was only a joke. He screamed to the heavens when he learned that not only did his neighbour eat his horse but he himself partook in gormandising chunks of prime portions of the beast.
He imagined the horse living in his stomach, gnawing his intestines. He tried to vomit it out. He felt it kicking in him. He thought he somehow needed to exorcise the cannibal in him but he did not know how. He came to believe that Gcazimbane was really living inside him. That’s when he started to neigh like a horse, uncontrollably, at any moment.
Everyone had gone but Malangana sat on the stoep and watched the moon. He would sit until it set. No one could believe this was the same Malangana who had the sheep and the goats and who used to ride fat horses selling mokhele ostrich feathers and fraternising with princes and being the envy of everyone. Over the years he had become almost skeletal with knees and elbows jutting out like knobkerries. It was not because of ageing. It was because of the longing of the heart. It had taken its toll on him. These were its physical manifestations. When the heart was longing it ate the body bit by bit. It started with the fatty areas, and then chewed the muscles and even gnawed parts of the bones, making them brittle. Longing made his body convoluted, twisted and grotesque.
He had not been to see Mhlontlo for more than a year now. Two months before Cesane came with the news that shocked him and he felt that it was Mhlontlo’s final betrayal. First, Mhlontlo had tried to commit suicide. Secondly, he had now become igqobhoka – a convert – of the Roman Catholic Church.
The way Cesane put it was like this: Mhlontlo, or ’Mamalo as the Basotho liked to call him, had gone to white Catholic priests at Holy Cross Mission, and had told them that he was so depressed that he went to the mountain and covered his eyes with a qhiya headscarf. Then he ran with all his strength towards a cliff with the intention of killing himself. But he heard a voice saying, ‘Hey, you stop that right now!’ That stopped him in his tracks right at the edge of the cliff. He took off the blindfold and looked around but there was nobody there. Then he blindfolded himself again for a second attempt at suicide. But he felt someone grabbing his arm and heard a voice saying, ‘Go and find a church service and offer yourself to God.’ That was how ’Mamalo went to the Catholic Fathers and became a man of the Church.
‘Today he prays and he goes to Holy Mass every Sunday,’ said Cesane. ‘He carries a rosary with him all the time.’
Malangana was happy about only one thing: Mhlontlo was not alone. Charles, his son, was there at Phiring with him, although he travelled back and forth to Qumbu.
The moon sat on the mountain. The silly mongrel thought now for sure it was going to lick the moon. It jumped up with its tongue hanging and licked the air. It fell to the ground and rolled once. A jackal howled. Malangana laughed. His body rattled.