February 1901, Silwerfontein, Orange Free State
Dear Wolf,
I’ve hidden in the fort we made in the hedge. Ma is looking for me to start the week’s washing. Kristina is looking for me to walk with her to the orchard. I just need a little time to write to you without being disturbed. You’ll be able to imagine the scene exactly. It’s a hot day (it’s why Ma wants to get the washing done and hung out) and my hideout here in the shade is delicious.
The farm continues as usual. Not much to report, except Oupa Jakob returned from the neighbours worried. Oom Steyn said more farms are being burnt. He said the British aren’t even waiting for an argument or proof that we are ‘colluding’ with the commandos. That they are just burning indiscriminately now. Ma said that Oom Steyn has always been full of gloom and we can’t believe everything he says. Anyway, I think that th
The sentence ended abruptly. Underneath, a heavy double line had been drawn across the page. Below the line, Rachel continued in pencil. The writing became much harder to read, scrawled and more desperate.
March 1901, Goshen, Orange River Colony (Have I given up on our ‘free’ state already?)
Dear Wolf,
Oupa Jakob always told us that reading and writing would be more valuable than shooting, riding, or making a fire. Everyone used to shake their heads at him. How could it possibly be true when you lived in the veld where those skills would keep you alive? Most people only have the family Bible and most cannot read it anyway. I never understood what he meant until now. Now this ledger is most precious to me.
I think of Oupa Jakob every time I take it from my blanket. I think of the lessons on the stoep at home, squeezed between our chores. Oupa Jakob’s insistence on the lesson time every day, even though Ma wanted us to help more. Especially me. I can feel that sideways guilt of knowing I should be stirring the washing rather than sitting there with you. You, peeking at my slate, copying my answers. Me, keeping my arm clear to give you a good view. I loved every moment of sitting next to you.
I tried to work harder, faster, to make up the time for Ma. I heard her tell Ouma Anna it would be trouble teaching me to read. That Oupa was spoiling me for work – what good could come of giving me ideas? But he loved me. He said I was clever and quick. And he was the head of the family. Who could cross him? I can see him cajoling Kristina to sit with us too, but she danced away from him, laughing and tossing her curly hair. Even Oupa’s stern look behind those bushy eyebrows wasn’t enough for Kristina. Six years old and she had all of our hearts on a string, didn’t she?
I want to write and write about our family, as if I could write them into life, to stand in front of me like before. I fear so much that I will forget their faces. I thought, if we were compliant and quiet and careful, then the British wouldn’t bother us. I had no idea what was coming.
Groups of soldiers began coming to the house more. What happens when men are in a group? How does an ordinary man on his own turn ugly in a group? They became more demanding, not satisfied with a simple parcel of food. They wanted information. They wanted liquor. They wanted anything valuable in the house. They shouted and demanded. Ma started to hide the little girls when she saw riders approach. They called us undesirables because you and Pa are on commando fighting. They said that if you surrendered, we would be looked after. We must tell our menfolk to give up, they said. Ha! If only they knew Ma like I do. I saw her eyes harden, the signal to get out of her way. Her lips, compressed and silent, but I knew how angry she was.
I was in the fort in the hedge, hiding from Ma, when the British came to the house for the last time. I heard their shouts and stamping horses. I kept hiding. I am a coward. I just couldn’t come out. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, Wolf. I could see Ma and the girls running, grabbing what they could, coming out the house with blankets, pots, and what warm clothes they could find.
The soldiers took all the food. Even the jars of konfyt we’d worked so hard at last year were loaded into their carts. Two Boer men herded all the cattle together and drove them away, their shame sneering like dogs, tails between their legs.
Then the worst – the soldiers went into the kraals and shot everything – the pigs and goats, the chickens. Wolf, they shot Lofdal. He and Sokkies came to the fence to greet them, and they just lifted their rifles and fired. And when the horses tried to get up, they shot them again and again. They chased the dogs into the stable and shot them till they were quiet. Kristina’s dogs. Like a nightmare, those shots ringing off the stone kraal walls and Kristina screaming.
Little Lizzie had her head buried in Ma’s skirt, and Ma just stood with her eyes distant and cold and hard as stone. Ma and the little girls were loaded onto our wagon.
Oupa Jakob stood in the yard, turning in a slow circle, looking for me. I knew he couldn’t call me, didn’t want to give me away, but his eyes were desperate, searching, searching. He looked like a crazy old fool, turning around and around. I couldn’t stop the tears or the sobs which seemed to come from so deep, my stomach hurt. Then I heard his voice. He was too far away for me to see his lips move, but I heard it as clearly as if he were crouching next to me in the bush, a whisper, ‘You’re strong and clever, Rachel. Think on your feet and make yourself useful, make yourself indispensable.’ To this day I don’t know how I heard him whisper.
The soldiers bundled him into the wagon, another old man crazed with grief. Kristina was quiet now and sitting on Oupa’s lap with his long arms wrapped around her. I remember her big eyes, shocked and staring. Lizzie clung to Ma, her face hidden from me. And me, trying so hard to be brave for Oupa, but I could feel my eyes stinging and my mouth twitching like it wasn’t mine. I watched them drive away from me – and that was the last time I saw them.
The soldiers were finishing up now, and they set fire to the house. They smashed our lamps against the walls, the oil running down the white-washed walls, its stringent reek reaching my nostrils across the yard. A soldier had been slouching against a wagon and now he took one last deep pull at his cigarette before tossing it into the paraffin. Blue flames flared tall, stretching for the roof. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, waiting for the thatch to catch, and suddenly it was a snapping, cracking roar. Then the white lattice on the stoep buckled and collapsed. That sweet smell of grass fire, which I always loved, now makes my stomach clench and brings before my eyes the furious fall of our house.
They found me eventually, hauling me out of my hiding place and dragging me over to the officer in charge. He cast disinterested eyes at me until his gaze rested on this book. Pulling it from me, he opened it and threw it on the floor. He gestured towards a wagon which was being loaded with sacks from our barn. I just managed to scoop it up before I was pushed into the wagon. I knew those sacks were full of our potatoes and cabbages. As the wagon began to trundle out of the yard, I asked the driver where we were going. He was a black man, dressed like a burgher, and he spoke Afrikaans to me. He told me they were taking me to the camp close by, the one called Goshen. I asked if the others were going there too. He looked at me strangely and shook his head. ‘No, child. You are now alone. They’ve gone to Winburg.’
Hannah sat back in her chair, her thoughts skittering around what she had found. She knew there had been concentration camps in the South African War. They were run by the British as refugee camps for Boer women and children displaced by the British farm-burning policies. She remembered her fierce ouma saying that, though the Nazis took concentration camps to another level, the British had used them before Hitler had been out of short pants. Hannah had never taken it any further, never read or researched that part of South Africa’s history at all. More than that, it had been local; it probably happened within a hundred kilometres of where she was sitting. Bethlehem, where the box of books had come from, was the closest town to Leliehoek, after all.
Closing the ledger and carrying it to the shop desk, she typed into the Google search page, concentration camp, South African War, Goshen. A thrill of anticipation bu
bbled as the page loaded. A list of options appeared, references to the war, to the camps, but all had the search word Goshen missing. Underneath these came references to Goshen, but they were unconnected to the war. She changed the search words to Goshen, Orange Free State. A link appeared at the top of the list and she clicked on it. A scenic shot of fields with red-gold sandstone cliffs in the background. The page was titled ‘Goshen Farm, farming for the future by restoring the past’. Below this banner were posts about game auctions and stock sales. She clicked on ‘Contact Us’. Farm telephone numbers below the name Alistair Barlow. The address, a post office box in Leliehoek.
Hannah jumped as Barbara peered into the room from the doorway.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘No, I’m just silly. I was so engrossed, I forgot you were here.’
‘Nice to hear I’m forgettable,’ Barbara said with a grin. ‘I’m off. Going home to make myself some lunch and have a little siesta before the rugby. Don’t stay locked up inside all day.’
‘What rugby?’ said Hannah, her eyes glued to the screen.
Barbara rolled her eyes. ‘When I said it’s good to be eccentric, Hannah, I didn’t mean there are no limits. If you are going to make any kind of conversation with any men in the district, you had better keep up with the rugby. Eccentric to them means supporting the Sharks instead of the Cheetahs.’
‘I’d better do some research, then. I mean, my primary motive in coming here was to meet men after all.’ Hannah looked up, a smile tugging at her mouth.
With a grin and a wave, Barbara let herself out the door.
Hannah returned to the screen, clicking on maps and finding directions from Leliehoek to Goshen. A flag appeared, not far out of town. She took note of the road to get to the farm and then shut down the computer.
As she retreated to her apartment, Hannah’s stomach reminded her that it was past lunchtime. She took her chicken and rocket sandwich out onto the deck where Patchy hadn’t moved an inch since early that morning. Pulling a wrought-iron chair into the shade of the umbrella and drawing her feet up, Hannah reimmersed herself in Rachel Badenhorst’s story.
As the wagon rolled away from the house, I stared at the crate of jars from our pantry, some with shaky labels written by Ouma Anna before she died last year. Pickled green beans and chutney and stewed peaches we would never taste. My mouth waters now at the thought of those jars, the sweetness and bite I’ve almost forgotten after weeks of camp food. Her berry jam on hot, thick slices of my bread. Remember Ma saying I had the touch when it came to baking bread? Somehow my kneading hands could draw the dough to rise light and soft as air. Oupa Jakob called it Rachel’s Best Bread. My mouth has forgotten it now, even though my mind has not. I came with no money, so I can’t buy extra rations, and the work I do in the latrines just pays for mealie meal once a day.
My old dress hangs on me. It may be just rags, but I’m better off than most. I work in the camp fields some days. The soldiers bring us seed, and we grow decent vegetables, but most of the produce goes off in wagons to the army. Only people with money get to buy from the soldiers. I sneak a carrot or a cabbage leaf. I see the children who only eat mealie meal. Their gums swell and their teeth fall out; the babies’ joints ache so that they cry when they move. They don’t last long. I’m strong and clever, and now I’m a thief. Would Ma and Pa be proud of me? Pa’s Bible reading haunts me. We knew passages by heart, and sometimes I say them over and over. It takes me back to the voorkamer, to the candlelight and our family’s voices saying the Psalms.
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
But I can’t finish it, Wolf. I can’t say I trust in His mercy. My heart cannot rejoice. I will not sing to the Lord. He has not dealt bountifully with me. Ma would slap me for that. It is ungrateful and blasphemous, but I am angry and I don’t know how I will ever be peaceful again. I am alone. I am useful but alone.
Hannah surfaced to the slight chill on her skin. Great charcoal clouds now obscured the sun. The light had shifted to a surreal green. The garden had a glow to it she had never seen in the Cape. And she thought of Rachel, who would have lived through afternoons just like this, but seen them through a pall of hungry misery. The aloneness of Rachel’s voice pulled at Hannah. It drew a deep recognition, a feeling Hannah knew well but refused to let surface. Even in the midst of a family, a full and busy life, Hannah sometimes felt it too. Not being invisible exactly, but living unacknowledged.
Fat drops of rain began to fall around Hannah, spotting the deck slowly at first, and then faster and harder. Hannah gathered her things and ducked into the kitchen, leaving the French doors open. The earthy scent of the rain infused the room. Sheets of white rain now drummed on the corrugated-iron roof, punctuated by flashes of lightning. Thunder rolled in the distance.
Half an hour later the storm had moved on, leaving lighter flurries of rain which then dwindled to nothing. The sun ventured out and cast flashes of reflection off every dripping branch. Who wouldn’t prefer this to the days and days of grey winter wet that the Cape weathered? She glanced at the journal lying open on the table. Rachel had prodded something in her, something tender, like a bruise you couldn’t help pressing. What on earth would come of it?
April 1901, Goshen Camp, Orange River Colony
Dear Wolf,
Goshen. This is not what I pictured when Pa read to us from the Bible. Goshen was the best land in Egypt, given to Joseph to settle his family, wasn’t it? A blessed place, a refuge from famine. Here I am, in Goshen, with no family. I have to spend every effort to find food. What horrible joke is this?
The camp is so close to home – we travelled just a short distance on the cart to get here – but it is a wild, hidden place, a plateau with a hill between us and the road. No one will find me, even if you and Pa went back to the farm, why would you look here for me? The wind whistles ice across the hillside; there is no escape from it. I have a coat now. It does not fit me well, but it is thick and warm enough. Gone are the niceties of burying people in their best. Survival trumps respect, doesn’t it? Wolf, will you still like me when we meet again?
We found a bag of tree seeds yesterday, in amongst the other seed. Another delivery error. I joined the camp children and we planted those seeds in a line across the edge of the camp, a windbreak none of us will see grown. I tend those trees, though they have no benefit for me. Just a tin of water and they have taken. Tiny, spindly baby trees that grasp on life. They are like me, thirsty and desperate to cling on, but tough, showing a tenacity absent in the people around me. Something draws me to keeping those little trees alive, though it seems impossible even to think of a time beyond this camp. I know that so many of us won’t survive to see it.
People dig graves every day. Mothers burying children and children burying mothers. There are now rows of graves outside the camp. The British like to order everything, even death. The strength of those left behind determines how the graves look. Some are marked with flat stones from the veld, names carved in deep grooves into the stone. Some are heaped with small stones. And then, for those who have no one to mourn them, the earth mounds are just left to flatten over time. I don’t have anyone to bury, and when I’m dead it won’t matter who buries me. I’ll be piled into one of those holes with the other unclaimed dead. No one will visit my grave with a stone for every visit, a mark of memory. Perhaps this journal is my mark. Perhaps someone will read this and think of me, Rachel Badenhorst, of Silwerfontein, aged thirteen years.
I wish it to be you, Wolf.
CHAPTER SIX
Hannah opened her eyes and reached over to the bedside table, checking the time. Eight o’clock. And
Sunday. No reason at all to get out of bed. She rolled over and closed her eyes again, smiling at the prospect of another hour in bed.
Patchy jumped up softly, padding up to Hannah’s head. With one paw, she gently batted at Hannah’s face. Hannah groaned and pulled the quilt up over her face. Patchy eyed her through a gap in the sheets, and then a paw prodded Hannah’s cheek again.
‘Okay, okay, I’m getting up!’
Stumbling down the passage, she tripped over the Victorian iron doorstop as she headed into the kitchen. Both Patchy and Tim received a curse as she nursed her toe, the nail torn and bruised.
Sipping her strong cup of tea, she opened the French doors and stepped onto the deck. The sun was already deliciously hot on her skin, the garden humming with life after the rain.
Her thoughts wandered to the journal. Why not spend today exploring the site of the camp? She gobbled her breakfast and pulled on her running shoes, envisaging a walk up a hillside to the memorial site. Twisting her hair into a ponytail and, with her scribbled notes folded into her jeans pocket, she locked the cottage.
Just outside of Leliehoek, she took a tar road to the right, and drove for ten minutes before seeing a sign post for Goshen Farm. A dirt road ran between pastures on either side. Around a corner, the fields dropped away to a wooded ribbon which, she guessed, followed a stream. The road curved and, crossing a cattle grid, she found herself in a park-like garden where lawns stretched between the shades of old trees. She passed a quaint stone cottage, where standard iceberg roses stood in a row along the drive, and flowerbeds rambled up against the walls of the little house.
Further along the drive, she caught sight of a much larger house, also of tawny sandstone. A wide veranda sprawled along three sides of the house. It too was set amid a striking garden, but it was far more utilitarian, with agapanthus plants and succulents massed in huge groups, giving it a more formal feel than the warm softness of the cottage. The drive ended in a circle that had a sundial and aloe garden at its centre.
An Unquiet Place Page 4