Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness - Alexandra Fuller [33]
AT LAST CHERITO LURCHED ONTO the veranda with a tray of tea and a bottle of my grandmother’s homemade wine.
“Thank you,” my grandmother said.
Cherito staggered back into the kitchen. My grandmother’s hand hovered over the tray. “Tea, Mr. Prinsloo?” she offered. “Or something a little stronger?”
Flip blinked.
My grandmother poured them both a glass of wine. “It burns a little at first,” she warned, “but it’s not bad once you get used to it.” She took a sip of her wine. “Here’s to us.” She raised her glass. “There’re none like us, and if there were, they’re all dead.”
Flip took a sip.
“What do you think?” my grandmother asked.
Flip’s lips were stuck to his teeth, so he did not answer.
“Not bad, eh?” My grandmother poured herself another glass. “Mud in your eye,” she said. The second glass tasted better than the first, and working off the theory that the third would therefore be better than the second, my grandmother gave herself another helping. “To absent friends!” she cried. Which was how, when Flip finally got around to the reason for his visit, he found my grandmother in a pleasantly receptive mood.
“I’ve been watching your daughter riding,” Flip said suddenly.
My grandmother narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you?”
“I like her style,” he said. “Lots of blood.”
“Well,” my grandmother said, “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
There was a long pause. Flip cleared his throat. “Dingaan’s Day is coming up,” he said.
Each year on December 16 Afrikaners everywhere celebrated Dingaan’s Day. The most significant date in their calendar, it memorialized a battle in 1838 when a Voortrekker column defeated Dingaan’s Zulu warriors on the banks of a river in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal. In Zulu they call that battle iMpi yaseNcome, the Battle of Ncome River. In Afrikaans they say it was Slag van Bloedrivier, the Battle of Blood River. But whatever you call it, the outcome was the same. On that day—with everything you can imagine going against them—four hundred seventy Voortrekkers roundly defeated tens of thousands of Zulu warriors. By nightfall, the Ncome River ran red with the blood of three thousand slain Zulus. No Afrikaners were killed in the battle and only three were wounded. This proved, the Afrikaners said, that their tribe had a divine right to exist on South African land.
My grandmother sighed and looked with some regret at her empty wineglass. “So it is,” she said. “How time flies.”
Flip cleared his throat again. “I want to beat my cousin Pieter at the Dingaan Day races,” he said.
My grandmother sat up. If there was one thing calculated to catch her interest, even through the fog of her homemade fig wine and lots of violent history, it was horse racing. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” Flip said.
“Do you have a good horse?” My grandmother gave a little hiccup and wagged her finger at Flip. “That’s the thing to win a race,” she said. “A good horse.”
“I’ve got a very good horse,” Flip said. “But I need someone who will ride it. My sons.... Agh no, man.” Flip put his head in his enormous hands. “They’re no good.” He looked at my grandmother, his eyes desperate. “I want your daughter.”
My grandmother gave another hiccup.
“I’ll pay her,” Flip offered.
My grandmother looked horrified and flapped a hand at Flip. “No, no, no. Don’t be silly.” She hiccuped again. “You must have her for nothing. Free to good friends. Go ahead. Take her.”
SO THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Flip Prinsloo came to the house and picked up Mum and drove her to his farm. “He had a bottle of South African brandy under his seat,” Mum says, “and he’d take slurps out of it as we drove along. He offered me some, but I wasn’t about to drink from a bottle that some scrubby old Afrikaner had been gulping out of.” To make up for this, Flip bought my mother an enormous slab of chocolate when he stopped at the Venus Bar to replenish his brandy supply. “Which