Page 27 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

corrupt, is banished to his homeland in disgrace.
He pleads to be allowed to stay, for his daughter he says, he cannot leave her, and all his businesses. His request is denied. Johanna has been married for a year already, to Henricus Beck, a church minister
and plantation owner, 21 years her senior. She is no longer at the Cape, has gone to live with her husband in the rectory in Kerk Street in Stellenbosch. A few years later a fire ravages the town and destroys the church, leaving Beck to hold services in the small rec- tory while the town smoulders around them, waiting to be rebuilt.
~
With his master banished and Johanna in her own home, Rangton is left to continue his servitude much as before, obeying the curfew, renting out his servic- es, the money being sent over the waters to Elsevier or to run his farms and properties here. Sometimes it feels as though the house is theirs, he and the other slaves, wandering through the silence of it, coming upon a slave woman staring out a window, dusting the wall idly, and he stands beside her, looks out at the passing world. He has no feelings for her, does not particularly like her, she is sullen, foul mouthed, but at that moment he could put his cheek against hers, hold her hand, pretend a life for them.
~
Sundays he goes to cock fights at the quarry. It is il- legal for slaves to gather, so there is a thrill in coming together in this way. He greets everyone, waves at the lookouts, telling them to keep their eyes open. He shares the frenzy of the circled gamblers, the
joy of throwing down his bet as the birds are thrust into the ring, watching their heads stretch forward, their feathers ruffle, pecking and ripping, everyone screaming, waiting for blood, until the death blow, then watching the body being picked up, the spurs untied from its feet, while the winner is raised aloft, staring blankly at the cheering crowd.
Later he saves up his winnings to buy a cock of his own, makes money this way, though there is always underneath the excitement something dark, that
old curse, and the sound of water around him in the dark, remembering the king’s cock fight at Mageng, how sure he had been, and then losing extravagantly. Hundreds of them caught in the same way. Having
to give himself up in order to pay the debt, being weighed, and even that not enough though he drank a lot of water before hand, drank until he thought he would be sick. Being told it was not enough, that his family would be taken into slavery too. Managing to
send word to his wife, to go into the forest with the children, to hide until it might be safe again. The same thing happens often here at the Cape, men getting so caught up that they stake their clothes, their children, anything they can think of. He walks away from the quarry with shame, darkness in his throat, knowing that, given the chance, he will do the same. He cannot even remember what his children look like.
~
On 9 May 1712, at the age of 39, Rangton buys his freedom. His master died the year before and left instructions that his slaves were to be set free. All of them except for Rangton, who must buy his freedom for 100 rixdollars. No reason is given for this fee, nor the fact that it is almost double what Elsevier paid for him 14 years before. In the year it takes Rangton to earn the money, he remains at his master’s Cape Town house, preparing it for sale. The house has stood empty for four years, rotting in the damp sea air. Rangton works with care; this has become his home and he takes pride in it. But when the house is sold, he is homeless, and he is free.
~
He has waited for this, to be able to leave the sea at last, to no longer smell it all around, to hear it all day, all night, stopping short in his work, putting aside his plane or saw, having to sit down, close his eyes, reach for his tobacco pouch, fill his pipe and light it, breath- ing deeply, to take away that smell, that sound. Walk- ing away from it and everything evil that had lived in him since then.
~
The first thing he does when he reaches Stellenbosch is buy a flintlock gun. In the first weeks he walks up and down the streets with it, wants to be seen with
it, to be known as a man, a free man, with a gun of
his own. In the evenings he sits on a stool outside the house where he rents a room, polishing the gun, at night he lies it down beside him on the bed. He con- siders applying for a hunting permit, he can get food, get money that way, but the thought of fouling his gun with the dirt and blood of a kill is unbearable to him. Sometimes he takes it out to shoot at targets but goes always alone. He has made friends, yet balks at the thought of them asking to use it, the marks from their fingers covering his, smudging the polished surface. Later, when he buys a sword, he treats it in the same fashion, hanging it on a nail in the wall beside him, ly- ing on his bed with his gun, pulling the blanket up to
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