by Jenny Hobbs
The Germans knew that we had receiving sets … They were a triumph of ingenuity ... News time in the evening was, apart from the weekly issue of Red Cross parcels, the highlight of our existence.
No one was allowed to talk or cause a disturbance while the news was being read.
– S G WOLHUTER, The Melancholy State
Stalag Luft VII, Bankau bei Kreuzburg. November 1944.
The worst thing was the soul-rotting knowledge that they were sitting around like spare parts while a war that could change the world raged on outside the barbed wire.
Older officers tried to keep the younger men busy with activities that still made them howl at the tedium. Rat hunts were the highlight of J J’s days. His midnights were defined by the faint crackle of the BBC news in a hut full of silent men straining to hear. In between, he did what he was told with the sullen acquiescence of a trapped adolescent burning with injustice. He raved about killing Germans to anyone who would listen.
With his usual disdain, Kenneth said from the workbench, ‘That’s puerile. Help me with this blower. Or go and kick a ball somewhere.’
‘Boy Scout.’J J had loathed the DHS scout troop that Victor made him join to learn some bushwhacker tricks.
‘It’s better than doing nothing. OC’s always on about idle bastards not pulling their weight.’
‘Bugger that. We volunteered for action, not prison. I want to dig an escape tunnel or shoot Huns.’
‘Oh, grow up.’ Kenneth was two years older and thought he knew it all because he’d been to university and had his pilot’s wings.
J J couldn’t sit and do nothing. A handful of dried peas stolen from the camp kitchen to make contraband soup gave him an idea that caused him and other conspirators weeks of grief.
He remembered the pea-shooters he and Bobby had made from the reeds by the lake. After checking that there were no crocodiles basking on the bank or eye bumps floating in the water, they’d creep down and hack off a thick stem with a cane knife, then run away dragging it to safety. Each cut himself a long section with his penknife and rammed the bore clear with a thin triangular steel file pinched from Reg Brewitt’s tool box.
Hard black canna seeds made the best ammo. The boys lay along the wall of the naartjie orchard where there was a footpath to the store. They’d choose two victims walking together and let fire, then drop down the other side of the wall with silent laughter at the shrieks of terror. It was great sport. Canna seeds stung, and the story of the mamba that hung from a tree to bite passers-by was common knowledge.
J J proposed at a hut meeting that they could have similar sport with the guards. ‘Tickle the goons,’ he called it.
‘Not on your bloody nelly. It’s a daft suggestion.’ The hut commander was emphatic.
One of the other hotheads said, ‘But sir, it’s having a go at Jerry.’
‘Unnecessary provocation. Permission denied. Is that clear?’ He jabbed an authoritarian pipe to underline the refusal.
But the idea was too alluring to resist. A clandestine group experimented with copper tubes liberated from the latrine plumbing until they found the right diameter for dried peas. J J tried out the prototype on Kenneth, who was hunched over a brazier he was redesigning.
‘Ow!’ He clamped his hand on his neck, then swung round and saw J J waggling the tube. ‘Quit that, you idiot. You’ve been warned off.’
‘I’m keeping myself occupied, as decreed by the OC. Hun-baiting is a form of recreation.’
The guards who’d been stung didn’t agree, nor did the camp Kommandant. An SS ferret was brought in to search the huts. He flushed out six pea-shooters and all the concealed, diligently assembled receiving sets that picked up the BBC news. The men who slept nearest the hiding places were interrogated, forced into freezing tin isolation boxes on the parade ground, and starved for three days. None of the pea-shooting offenders were caught, but their punishment was worse. The camp committee ordered them shunned. No one could speak to them or share utensils and Red Cross food parcels until further notice. Even friends turned their backs. J J had never been so lonely in his life.
When he tried to apologise at a meeting for being the instigator, the hut commander barked, ‘Poor show, Kitching. You let the side down.’
‘It was just –’ a bit of fun, he wanted to say, but the scornful expressions on the circle of tense faces stopped him.
He had bad dreams afterwards, and woke sobbing night after night until Kenneth jabbed him and spoke the first words, ‘Shut up, J J,’ followed by a chorus of ‘Shut up, J J!’
He was back in the human race.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN RED CROSS SOCIETY:
BOOKS FOR PRISONERS OF WAR
Relatives and friends may send any number of books to prisoners of war through the South African Red Cross Society, provided the full camp address is known. Those wishing to do so may send books, or money to purchase books, to the Secretary, especially in the case of Afrikaans books or those of South African interest. Other books are generally obtainable in England, and for these it is advisable to send money, which will be forwarded to London to purchase and send books direct, in accordance with the “Additional Comforts” regulations – PW/116. Books purchased through the South African Red Cross Society and sent from South Africa, are less 10% of retail cost. Second-hand books may be sent provided these are in good condition.
All books sent from South Africa are subject to Censorship by the Union Authorities, and any books which are rejected under the Censorship regulations will be returned to the sender, or the cost refunded, as the case may be.
For general information, the following list will show the type of book which is not allowed:
1. Books of a political or polemical character.
2. Books giving suggestions of escape. (Frequently such suggestions occur in novels.)
3. Scouting books – on account of hints given.
4. Chemistry books which include directions for making invisible ink.
5. Pharmacy books which give practical instructions.
6. Books which include directions for making mechanisms for the transmission of messages.
7. Books by Jewish or Émigré authors.
8. Anti-German or Anti-Italian books.
9. Atlases and maps.
10. Magazines and Digests.
‘The dead man was stealing from the Führer,’ a Dolmetscher translated. ‘He said one of you helped him. Who?’
J J’s knees turned to water. He didn’t want to die.
He hadn’t helped the guard.
He’d been given a coin in exchange for silence. That was all.
He was only twenty and terrified of bullets thudding into his body.
He didn’t want his life to bleed away in German mud.
Not now. Not ever. He couldn’t move. God, please …
· 18 ·
THE STAINED-GLASS LOZENGES HAVE CRAWLED higher up the granite columns by the time the bishop reads, ‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?’
Johnny often said he had fought with beasts, Barbara remembers. This service must have been where the words came from. He buried friends lost in the war and most of the rest have gone. That’s the problem with living so long: people drop off the perch all around you and everything dwindles. Strength. Resolve. Health. Pride. Cash. I hope he’s left me more than a few bob. I can’t face going on with just a state pension. It’s too dreary living like a sparrow when I’ve got the heart of an eagle. People don’t see it, though. Shirley’s always said I’m too flamboyant. I even heard her calling me gaudy once. Gaudy! It’s so unfair that she should end up in clover while I have to scratch for pennies. She’s never understood why Johnny helped me – and I’m sure she won’t. Just as I’ve never understood what he saw in that drab little brown job when he could have had his pick of women.
Theodora is no longer listening to St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians. She’s transfixed by
the way Barbara is looking at Madam, leaning forward with apprehension and fear on her painted old face. She’s often seen that look on goats with bound legs being dragged to a place of sacrifice. And she knows what’s worrying her: no more two hundred rand notes slipped into her bag by her brother as she’s leaving the house. Madam doesn’t believe in extravagance.
Eish, those settler titles stick, she thinks. I should have started calling them Shirley and John long before now, even if only to rub in that we are equals. That last time I saw him, when I took the madumbes, he looked so old and helpless. But for the first time he spoke to me as a woman, not the maid who’d worked in his house for so many years.
‘Are you happy, Theodora?’ he’d asked as though he really meant it. ‘Do you have a good life? Did we treat you well? We knew so little about you.’
‘So many questions,’ she answered. ‘And yes, most of the time. I have a big house and a family to be proud of. Six grandchildren too.’
‘No husband?’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘No need.’
‘Ah.’ He took a while to digest the idea, then said, ‘Men don’t have a good track record in Africa. All of us.’
Her sons, too, worry about corrupt leaders and the endemic violence against women, though only in private round her kitchen table. All four of her grown children have moved to city suburbs where they live in nice homes and send their children to nice schools, but they talk of feeling cut off from their communities with undertones of regret and guilt. When they come home to visit, she makes their comfort food: chicken or offal stew with phuthu, imifino, pumpkin, isitambu and beans.
She’d asked J J, ‘What are you saying?’
John Kitching’s skull inched round on his pillow until the blue eyes bored into her. ‘I am saying that dying makes you conscious of your failings. I hope I haven’t disrespected women. Tell me if it was so with you.’
He was asking for absolution, she realised. It had taken white people very long to make such admissions. Did he deserve her forgiveness? She looked back over the years of being a black cipher tending his house and children, doing his and Madam’s bidding for a monthly payment a fraction of his income. Was that disrespect? Yes. When she had to clean his shoes – before he took over the task – and iron his shirts and make his bed and scrub away the brown streaks in his toilets, as invisible to him as the leprechauns were in Lin’s books of fairy tales, was that disrespect? Yes.
But he wouldn’t have seen it that way. He saw servants as his due, and rewarding them was a matter of occasional thanks and an annual bonsella with the Christmas box. Servant! The very word made her feel demeaned. Shirley had begun calling her and Mtshali and the gardener ‘the staff’ during the eighties, but it was too late.
Were there mitigating circumstances, as her law-lecturer son might enquire? Again, the answer was yes. She had never been shouted or sworn at, or ridiculed, or expected to work overtime without pay. For those years, her employers were fair, treating her as a responsible adult and allowing leave if her mother or children were sick. She had retired with a pension and a lump sum. As a dignified woman, no longer what people called a maid, she could afford to be charitable to a dying man.
With an inward chuckle at the thought that she was telling a white lie – what else? – she’d said, ‘I did not feel badly treated in this house. Not appreciated enough and sometimes ignored, but never disrespected.’
‘Thank you,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t deserve it. Throw my weight around, like most blokes.’
‘Not Hugh, nè? He was always a good boy. Strong in his beliefs, but also soft. He’s a kind man.’
‘Yes. I’m learning that about Hugh. Among other home truths.’
He’d looked exhausted and Theodora left when his eyes closed, after stroking his bony arm with a quiet, ‘Lala ngoxolo, John.’
She saw Shirley glaring from the doorway, indignant at the liberty, and didn’t care. Theodora had paid more than her respects.
The bishop always finds it difficult to maintain the required tone when he reads the next line: ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ People smile when they hear the words so often spoken at parties.
Rabindranath Pillay thinks, So this is where it comes from. Those old Christians lived well under the spiritual smoke and mirrors. So what happened to ‘and be merry’?
As a waiter and then head waiter he’d had to endure endless evenings of Durban socialites braying the phrase to egg each other on. In the early days, waiters had been required to stand like amenable sentries, ready to react to the whims of the patrons. ‘Bring more cocktails, waiter.’ ‘I’ve dropped my fork.’ ‘Where’s an ashtray?’ ‘Get a move on with that glass.’ ‘Pass the canapés.’ ‘Why isn’t seventy-four on the menu?’ ‘This meat isn’t cooked.’ ‘The peas are soggy.’ ‘Bring the bill.’ Seldom a please or thank you. He was shocked at first by the lack of courtesy and the way hotel guests seemed to look through him, but, whatever his annoyance, he schooled himself to present a bland face.
The patrons’ attitude changed over the years, starting in the sixties after Sharpeville, when the effect of three centuries of colonialism exacerbated by apartheid began to sink at last into white consciousness. There were a few who went out of their way to be courteous to the less privileged, or affected not to notice blackness, and their number grew over time. As he became more confident climbing the arduous ladder from employee to owner, he encountered self-assured men like John who didn’t need to measure themselves against others.
That Kitchen Boy was a force of nature and a friend indeed. Though even he talked of ‘charras’ in the early days – to others, mind you, never to Pillay. Musing, he realises that ‘charra’ is very close to the !Xam word ‘/xarra’ in the national motto. Could there be a common root in Sanskrit? Maybe it was his ancient forebears who’d discovered the sea route round Africa, not the Portuguese. Joining the ripple of mirth stirring the congregation, Pillay smiles in the third pew behind Kenneth and Lofty. Bang go Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama, eh?
Irked, Bishop Chauncey trumpets the next pronouncement: ‘Be not deceived! Evil communications corrupt good manners.’
There it is in a nutshell, Pillay agrees, his bald head rocking forward and back like a nodding Buddha. A prophecy about the modern addiction to cellphones and emails. What has happened to trunk calls and telegrams in orange envelopes, and handwritten letters delivered to your door by the postman? They’re extinct, like the Nationalists.
As the Springboks prepared to play the All Blacks … Hendrik Verwoerd delivered a speech … in which he declared that Maoris would not be welcome in any future All Black team to tour South Africa.
– EDWARD GRIFFITHS, The Captains
Retief Alberts sits in his wheelchair considering what it meant to be a Springbok all those years ago. A neighbour had to read him The Captains because he can’t see too well now, only colours and shapes.
He’d laughed when a pedantic coach once explained the English distinction between gentlemen and players. As a steelworker, Retief had played rugby with men who were by no means gentle and often diehard bigots. He was a Northern Natal farm boy brought up to value hard work. He had a lot of respect for the blacks who toiled with him in the clanging steel workshops – straining and sweating like he did – but they weren’t his equals. In his world, blacks played soccer and the Springboks were white.
As the fifties and sixties wore on, the sniping in overseas papers about apartheid teams became louder, and he’d been offended by the accusations of intolerant racism. He’d once retorted in an interview with a pushy sports reporter, ‘But don’t you understand, man? Natives don’t play rugby except for a few in the Eastern Province, plus the coloureds in the Cape. Natives mostly play soccer.’
‘There aren’t any decent clubs for them to play rugby in, let alone fields to play on,’ the journalist jeered. Next day, the headline in London read: EX SPRINGBOK CAPTAIN WHINES RACIST EXCUSES.
It hurt. He wa
sn’t a whiner and he had been describing how things were, not pleading justification. Springboks were honourable men – on the whole, not counting in the heat of the scrum or a ruck – and it wasn’t their fault that their country was out of step with the rest of the world.
Or was it? He gazes at the blurred colours concealing J J’s coffin and wonders: In hindsight, ou boet, did our wins on the rugby field keep feeding apartheid or were we just young men going for glory? Villains or heroes?
Retief was a Nationalist like his father. When the 1953 elections came, he took leave from Iscor to drive down to Newcastle with his wife Anna. His task was to man a tent outside a polling station to welcome voters and talk politics, wearing his church suit with a carnation-and-fern buttonhole. Anna in her best hat handed out coffee and koeksisters and advice to hesitant women. They knew who to vote for, of course. But the how was daunting for railway workers’ and colliers’ and farmers’ wives more used to heating kettles on coal stoves and bottling peaches than doing paperwork.
Dr Malan had said that it was imperative for all Nationalists to vote. Torch Commando parades were drawing crowds of English-speakers who would vote United Party, and the election could be lost if the volk were not galvanised. As the Springbok captain, Retief was a valuable vote-catcher and worked hard for that election and the next, by which time he had retired from rugby and been left the farm in the shadow of Majuba after his father died.
It was only as the Broederbond increased its stranglehold on jobs and team selections that he began to feel uncomfortable. He was a steel man turned farmer who had learnt through experience to employ reliable workers regardless of whether they spoke Afrikaans, and to treat them well to get the best out of them. When he saw newspaper photos and newsreels of white policemen hounding natives with flailing sjamboks, he felt it was wrong – though not strongly enough to protest. But after all those people running away at Sharpeville were shot, he handed in his party card and turned his back on the world beyond the farm. He was too loyal to criticise his community; instead, he would no longer take part in its politics. He focused on breeding Bonsmaras.