by Andre Brink
Lys had a bad time with the birth. I was with her, she refused to let anyone else come near. At first I thought the child was stillborn, so I put it aside to tend to her, for she was in a bad state; and after a while I called Ontong to dig a hole and bury the baby. But suddenly he came back, ashen with shock, carrying the little thing stiffly in his palms, standing there shaking in the light of the candle, and saying: “Look at it, Rose, it’s alive.” And then I saw it stirring; wriggling like a puppy. I took it from Ontong and bathed it and put it to my breast, for I was flowing with milk after the death of my own baby and I was also feeding Nicolaas who was then a few months old. The little creature blindly nudged me with its small puppy-head for a while; then it got hold of the teat and started drinking, as tight as a tick. Spoiled him from the first.
Just as well I was in milk, for Lys refused to take him. She was all set against the child, refusing even to look at him, to say nothing of holding him. Lay there crying day and night until I thought she was going down. “Don’t take it to heart so much,” I told her at last. “I’ll feed him, I got milk enough.” That seemed to calm her down, but she remained ill for a long time. I think she was scared of getting well, scared the men would start again. One night Piet came in, demanding: “How’s the slave girl? It’s getting time. I’ve got the feeling tonight.” He was wearing his nightshirt so I could see how things were with him; but Lys turned her back, drawing up her knees to her chest and started whimpering, not like a woman but like a dog. Piet wanted to force his way past me to her, and it was his good right of course; he was her master, and he was a big man, with that wagon-pole of his. But as he came past me I lifted his shirt and gave him some of my breath on his man-thing, and as he turned towards me I got hold of him properly. I have a way of holding a man that comes from way back. And after a while I pulled him down on me, and with a sigh he moved into me; and then the earth came to life again in a big storm. Deep in the night I milked him once more, just to make sure he wouldn’t bother Lys; and when it was time for early coffee and prayers in the front-room, as the morning-star came out, he staggered outside, a weary man; there’s no weariness like that, ask me.
In the same way I kept the others from her too. My body is deep and I am marsh enough for herds to wallow in; and if I could help to spare Lys, so much the better for all of us.
But Piet was getting annoyed and in the end I had to speak to him straight. “You take Lys again,” I told him, “and it will be the death of her. She’ll drown herself in the hippo pool.” I’d seen that look in her eyes whenever he came our way. And I suppose that’s why he sold her to the man from the Karoo who passed Lagenvlei on his way to Cape Town with his produce wagon.
It worked out all right for the child. The man who’d bought Lys didn’t want to take the baby too; and since Lys wasn’t interested in having him anyway he stayed behind with me. He was perched on my arm as we stared after the wagon, Lys sitting in a small heap at the back like a bundle of washing that might fall off at the first jolt—odd that I should have thought that at the time, for when the wagon came past the farm again on its home journey a month later, the man told us that she had indeed fallen off and the wheel had gone over her and she’d died; he wanted his money back, but Piet refused and there was a bad quarrel on the farm that day, it even came to shots before the stranger left—anyway, the baby was sitting on my arm, his tiny round head erect like a meerkat’s. I couldn’t help laughing. “Look at this,” I said to Ontong. “Gallant little fellow.” And that is how he got his name Galant.
Ontong helped me to bring him up. The child was the only thing he’d ever had to think of as his own in this land. And maybe it really was his, who knows? But he might have been anyone else’s too, any one of the many who’d come from far and wide to lie with Lys, some of them faceless in the night and gone before daybreak. So, if you think of it, he might just as well have been Piet’s. In which case he and Nicolaas would have been the lambs of one ram pumping my dugs. Who am I to say? Galant has many fathers. No one is his father, and everybody is. That’s the answer I always gave whenever I was asked. But they gave up asking long ago. Now I’m old and worn and weary. Every winter I feel I’m going down, this Bokkeveld is fearsomely cold. But in summer I seem to sprout again, every time anew, like a thing growing. My body swells and withers with the seasons, but my roots are deep and sure; I’m. rooted in rock. Piet and I have grown old together. But he’s had it, and I still have life in me.
Piet
Dumb. That’s what they bloody well think I am. Just because I’m lying here and like this. Because I cannot move my tongue in my mouth to speak they think I understand nothing. What do they know about the thoughts running like an underground water-course? Think I’m senile, they do. This is no place for the old or the very young. They think we’re difficult or obtuse. In the beginning I cursed them as I lay here. Shouting in silence, in fumes of sulphur. They didn’t even know. Old Rose, maybe. She’d always had a way of looking at me and understanding. But Alida sent her away and except for the day of the funeral I haven’t seen her again. Now I’m left to lie and die. I’ve given myself over into Alida’s hands. What else could I do? There’s no window on the mountain side. Pity. I’d have loved to cast mine eyes up to the hills. All I have to look at is the bleak veld sloping down from the house, a monotonous grey in the summer drought. In Grandpa’s day the plains were abundant with game. Predators too. Even in my own youth, when I trekked back to these parts. And when the boys were young, the unexpected lion marauding on its own. But that was the last. There are still jackals in the mountains at night, or the occasional whoop of a hyena. Then Alida snuggles closer against me. After all these years she’s still not used to our Bokkeveld.
“If we’d lived in the Cape this would never have happened.” That was her sole reproach after Nicolaas’s death. Must have been hard on her.
To think that Galant did it. Grew up with my own sons. But it goes to show. You can never really trust them, never really tame them. Like a jackal cub you bring back from the veld. You rear it like a dog. Tame as anything. Suddenly, when you least expect it, it snarls and bites your hand. There’s a wildness there you can never really subdue. And still I thought.
My God, can you imagine Barend running off like that into the night when it happened, leaving wife and children behind? Hester and Alida were standing at my bedside discussing it. Thought I wouldn’t understand them. Think I’m dumb. But I heard every word, scorching like live coals. Barend is thirty. But if I’d had my strength I’d have thrashed him for it. Running off into the mountains in his nightshirt. Much rather dead like Nicolaas. And I swear to God.
Is it something I did wrong? God has raised His arm against me that day He struck me down on the wheatfield. Everything going black, the world plucked from my grasp. And when I woke up I was like this. Paralyzed. And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drove the cart. And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and He smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God. I don’t mean to reproach You, Lord, but it does seem unjust to me. The man only tried to help. But You struck him with Your lightning.
All my life I’ve tried to keep Your commands. You can ask my wife. And my remaining son. And my daughters-in-law, Hester and Cecilia. Ask all the slaves, everybody from my household. Didn’t I read Your Word to them and prayed for them every evening of my life? Didn’t we sing hymns together? Did I not teach them the Ten Commandments and set an example to them?
I have never had other gods before me nor made unto me any graven image; never had time for such nonsense. On this farm it’s a matter of working from dawn to dusk
and beyond. I’ve never taken the name of the Lord my God in vain, except when they made me bloody mad and then I had good reason. I have remembered the sabbath day and kept it holy when my work allowed it. And my father and mother I’ve honored, You are witness to it. I have not killed; not needlessly. A few marauding Bushmen in my youth, but they tried to steal my sheep. A few other times I came close to it when slaves made me angry. But I always knew where to stop. Adultery? Ever since I took Alida I’ve never been with another woman. At least not a white one and God said nothing about others. They were made to give us a bit of sport in a hard land, otherwise it would all be labor and sorrow. I have never stolen anything, so help me God, and false witness I have never borne against my neighbor; in fact, I’ve always tried to stay as far away as possible from my neighbor to avoid trouble. I have never coveted anything belonging to him. His wife and his ox and his ass and his maidservant were his own concern. I had maidservants of my own
So where did I sin against You? I must have an answer to this question when I appear before You.
Today l lie helpless; and Alida must feed me soup with a spoon. But it was different before. The world was different. In Grandpa’s time. Pa’s time. Even in my own. I often think: There were giants in the earth in those days, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bare children unto them. The same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Why has it changed then? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.
A hundred years ago, this I have straight from Pa’s mouth, Grandpa Van der Merwe trekked away from Tulbagh and moved in here, after a quarrel with the Landdrost; and staked out a farm to his own liking, galloping on horseback from sunrise to dusk. Some time afterwards messengers were sent to summon him to the Drostdy. Then came a detachment of dragoons, but Grandpa shot them off his farm. “In this place your word counts for nothing,” he told them. “No one but I have the right to speak here.” And so he called the farm Houd-den-Bek, which means Shut-Your-Trap. In those days it comprised not only Lagenvlei and what is now Houd-den-Bek but stretched all the way to Wagendrift and round the bend to Elandsfontein.
But a few years later there was a severe drought and some of the children fell ill, so Grandpa loaded his wagons again and moved away to Swellendam. In our family, however, talk about this distant valley high in the mountains never stopped: the freedom they’d known here, the fertility of the soil. In the tales of the old people it came to sound like Paradise, and this image was rooted in my mind. I’d become attached to Houd-den-Bek long before I’d ever set foot there. It was a place destined to be mine, ordained by God and my forefathers. And that was why I eventually returned here from Swellendam, to drive off the intruders who’d settled here in the meantime, and buy out the rest (only Wagendrift remained in strange hands), to rebuild the broken walls and plough the fields again. That was after Hendrina’s death. I’d married her in Swellendam, a girl Pa had chosen for me; but since she’d died in childbirth I didn’t feel a need to remarry for many years. Only after I’d come back to this place and started the farm anew, I felt the time was ripe to find myself a new wife. It was not good for a man to be alone; in the Garden God had created woman for his comfort and delight. So I rebuilt the house and reploughed the lands and pruned the old trees and started my grazing places, and then I loaded two wagons and drove to Cape Town to fetch a wife and buy slips and cuttings for trees—peach and plum and apricot, pear and fig, quince and pomegranate; and vines; but also oak and willow and poplar for shade in the dry land.
One of the wagons broke on the road down the Witzenberg. We had to reload everything on the remaining one. Two teams of oxen in front. Rear wheels removed for the steep descent. Took us ten days to the Cape. Towards nightfall we outspanned beside the Salt River, and in the early dawn drove in to the Farmers’ Square. I gaped in amazement. Even in those days the Cape was a big place. At least twenty streets, crossing at right angles, and paved with stone. The oaks of Heerengracht, all the way to the Mountain. The rough-cast white houses, cornices and high stoops where people gathered in the shade to talk or smoke or drink sopies. The market-place. Grapes and melons, pears and figs and guavas, walnuts and almonds, chestnuts. I’d brought a bushel of cherries from the old trees on the farm: those were scarce in the Cape and fetched a good price. Two ships in the harbor, sails flapping in the wind and masts creaking. Gulls. Sailors strutting about on stiff legs and offering wads of dollars for rolled tobacco and brandy, if you could smuggle the kegs past the hawk-eyed agents of the East India Company. There was a fair at Green Point. Cape carts on the green grass. Races. Women in outlandish clothes. Hottentots clustered on one side, smoking and staring through narrow eyeslits.
It was Alida who took me there. A niece of Uncle Jan de Villiers whose name Pa had mentioned long ago. (“Well, Alida, aren’t you going to show Piet the town? I’m sure he hasn’t seen it before.”) Delicate, delightful little creature. Eyes shy yet mocking under the parasol. On the point of getting betrothed to a swaggering young foreigner; D’Alree in his natty clothes. Soon sent him packing. Poor man crawling on all fours in the front-room, chewing up the carpet.
One night I stole her a bunch of roses from the Governor’s garden. Stopped by the guard. Told them to go to hell and made my escape with the flowers. Next day, can you believe it, a detachment of soldiers arrived to take me away. Uncle Jan purple with indignation and shock. “Piet, how can you disgrace us like this?” Alida tried to hold me back, but I shook her off and broke through the cordon. That night I crept back. Just before nine the front doors were opened and guests came out to hurry home before the curfew. Lanterns bobbing away in all directions in the dark. Voices calling: “Good-night to you!” A few breathless Hottentots and slaves scurrying past to avoid the nine o’clock watch. Thud-thud, thud-thud the soldiers came marching past on the paving stones, farther and farther away. And at last only the sound of the sea remained, and perhaps an occasional night-owl in an orchard.
Gave her the fright of her life when I knocked on her shutters. Tried to stop me as I climbed over the low sill. I held her against me. Her dark hair loose down her back. The small painted lamp on a low table. The light shining pinkly through her ears as she turned her head. “Piet, we’ll both go to hell for this.”
I took her away with me. Luckily it was moonlight. Urging on the oxen across the Cape Flats. Alida sobbing in the wagon, hitting me with her small fists when I tried to comfort her; but I held them tightly in one hand and calmed her down. When she started crying again, it was a different sound. The wagon swaying and creaking under our bodies in the night, the single lantern swinging wildly under the canvas roof. Like a dream. All the time I expected to wake up and find her gone. When I did wake up it was daylight.
Months later a bailiff came all the way from Cape Town, instructed by Alida’s relatives. I chased him off the farm. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing that just about that time the English took over the Cape; in all the commotion that came with it they must have forgotten about us. We allowed her family a year to calm down and resign themselves to the will of God, and then invited them to our wedding in Tulbagh, taking little Barend with us to be christened. What a wedding party we returned to. People came from everywhere. Many of them we’d never seen before. Horses. Carriages. Wagons. Some on foot, each with his gift of food and drink. A whole row of oxen on the spit. Lambs and pigs. Game: springbok, hartebeest, bontebok, pheasant, bustard, wild duck, any living moving thing, pure or impure according to Scripture. Lasted a full week. And when we were too exhausted to move we called Rose to dance her wild reels for us. What a body she had in those days. Strange race, the Hottentots: smooth and beautiful until they’re twenty or thirty; then they grow old overnight. Less than ten years later Rose was an old hag. But at the time of the wedding she was still shining with smoothness, a half-wild female creature wearing only the briefest of karosses around her parts. And even that was soon shed as sh
e danced naked among the men, breasts bouncing. Trembling with every move. The brandy was flowing in torrents; and the men taking turns with Rose, some of them on all fours. Even the chickens were drunk by the time it was all over. Two men left for dead in a wonderful free-for-all, and not a single instrument in the orchestra left unbroken. All the feathers from our mattress shaken out in the yard and most of the chairs and tables broken. Even a haystack burned down. Verily, the hand of God was abundantly on us.
Then it was over. And from that day it’s been only Alida and I in the fear of the Lord and the sweat of our brow, comforting one another as we proved ourselves fruitful, multiplying, and replenishing the earth, and subduing it. In those days whatever I saw was mine. Farm, grazing lands, mountain, hunting fields. We were masters here, my sons and I. Whatever we needed was provided by God, and our hands, and our guns, summer and winter alike.
There were regular trips to Tulbagh and Worcester across the mountains, to barter our ostrich feathers and eggs, and hides, and produce; to buy ammunition and clothes and whatever the town could provide. But we seldom returned to Cape Town. Once I took Alida with me, but I could see it wasn’t good for her. She still had the sea in her blood, and it depressed her to return to it. I suppose we lived too far away to her liking. But she’s always been a good and dutiful wife, and I’m not complaining.