A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  But to start a disgraceful tug of war with my own wife, with all the slaves looking on, was unthinkable.

  “Untie him,” I ordered my helpers. “I hope he’s learned his lesson.”

  Hester looked on in silence while they untied Klaas. After they’d dragged him out she said, without deigning to look at me: “Is this the only way you can be master to them?”

  “Hester, you’re looking for trouble.”

  “Are you threatening to beat me too?” she said.

  I grabbed her by the arm. It was like the occasions in our childhood when I would try to hurt her and she would refuse to cry. She didn’t even groan. Suddenly I let go, turning on my heel to stride out of that shameful shed smelling of straw and hides, and of Klaas who’d pissed and shat all over the place. Didn’t she realize it was for her own good too that I was forced to act like this? I had to turn this farm into a paradise for her so that we could rule over it together. How could I risk to let her live among half-wild creatures unless they’d been thoroughly broken in? I had to make the world a safe place for her to live in, so that she would be proud of me. Yet every time she wounded me.

  That night I subdued her in another way. But once again she uttered no sound, no groan, no whimper of pain or delight. She was dry. Unyielding and dry, sterile as hate.

  The next morning I found that all the casual laborers, all of them Hottentots, had absconded in the night. But Klaas was still there. Partly I suppose because he couldn’t walk; but I don’t think that was the only reason. He’d learned his lesson, and from that day he was as docile as any dog. Just goes to show. Later I acquired Abel too. A difficult fellow, and not the most dependable of workers; but he was a good influence on the farm. A man who could laugh at anything, a real rascal who’d never outgrown his boyish pranks; and with music in his fingertips. I’ve never known anyone who could play the violin like Abel. He brought a new spirit of cooperation to my slaves; and even the ones I bought much later he taught to pull together, like a good team of oxen.

  If only the English had left us in peace we would have prospered on Elandsfontein. But all the time they were there, like a boil that wouldn’t clear up properly, reappearing in different spots, now here, now there, making you unhealthy and irritable; but scratching doesn’t help. At first there was the opgaaf, the tax on slaves. Then, in quick succession, a flood of new regulations, each causing more trouble than the others: slaves were no longer allowed to work on Sundays; working hours were fixed at ridiculous times which paid no heed to the requirements of farming: did they expect one to stop harvesting or threshing at appointed times even when a storm was brewing? Punishment was prescribed: so many lashes, administered with such an instrument, under such circumstances. Slaves had to be taught religion. Man and wife could no longer be sold separately. With a lot of it I had no quarrel: I knew for myself that a man worked harder when his wife and children were at hand, and that was to the master’s advantage too; we’d always read the Bible to our slaves and prayed with them. What got me was that these regulations were made in the Cape as if we were a lot of heathens. What need had I of them? On Elandsfontein I was the baas, it was my right to decide what was good for me and mine. All right, argued the newspaper, but in the West-Indies or some other godforsaken place slaves were treated poorly and the English law had to apply to everyone, everywhere. Even so I felt that the Bokkeveld was no concern of the English. They knew nothing about us and had better keep out. It wasn’t England who’d cleared this land of wild animals and Bushmen and vagabonds and other pests. It wasn’t the English who’d suffered here from drought and floods and snow and jackals and leopards and vagrants. And it certainly wasn’t England who would be separating the sheep from the goats on the Day of Judgement. Whatever the Bible said I would try to do; what the papers said England could stick up its ass.

  The Bokkeveld had become a worried and anxious place. Wherever one went the farmers were cursing and complaining. Some of the older men like old Jan du Plessis, Nicolaas’s father-in-law, tried to keep out of it, but the rest were grumbling. “I got no complaints,” old Jan would say when the matter was brought up. “It depends on the master. If you treat your slaves properly nothing will set them against you.”

  “But they’re plotting in the dark, Oom Jan.”

  “My slaves respect me. Ask old Adonis.”

  Many of my arguments were with Frans du Toit who’d recently been appointed Field-cornet in our part of the world—a post I would have been much better equipped for; but he knew with whom to ingratiate himself. “It would be much better for all of us if we could learn to make do without slaves,” was his line. “The only problem is that the Colony is too big to be cultivated without their labor. We’re only a handful and the land is enormous. So it’s a necessary evil.”

  One of the others, Hans Lubbe, was in favor of going it alone anyway, before the situation got completely out of hand. “If we free all the slave children at birth no one will get hurt,” he proposed.

  “But the work on the farms is increasing all the time,” I said. “Do you expect white men to start doing slave work?”

  “We’d better get used to it while there’s still time,” he said. “I know we’ve been getting a bit soft, but—”

  “It’s not a question of getting soft at all!” I interrupted angrily. “It’s just that there’s a difference between slave work and white man’s work. Why did God give us slaves if not to make things easier for us? Do you want to set yourself against the Bible?”

  More often than not Nicolaas would enter the conversation at this point: “Who will suffer most if the slaves were to be freed? They’ve got more to lose than we have. How will they ever subsist on their own? They can’t do without us.”

  Once Hester also butted into one of our discussions. Usually I tried to keep her out of it—there are things a woman simply cannot understand—but it was impossible always to avoid such topics when she was around. On that particular day, if I remember well, the conversation had been going on for a considerable time and was getting quite heated when she suddenly asked in her calm but provocative way:

  “Would any one of you like to be a slave?”

  “Why must womenfolk always be so difficult?” I said, trying to be patient so that she wouldn’t turn vicious in front of the others. “It’s not a question of liking or not liking. It’s quite simply the way things are. And the land’s got to be cultivated.”

  Then Cecilia also decided to make a contribution. Normally she was very restrained and commendably silent in our presence, but I suppose Hester’s comment had provoked her; the two of them were always at each other’s throats. “One thing I can tell you,” she said to Hester, and a pretty withering response it was, “I don’t know of a single slave in this country who has to lie awake at night for fear a white man would come and murder him in his sleep or carry off his belongings.”

  “I shouldn’t think they have anything one could carry off,” Hester said tartly.

  But the brief exchange had given me new respect for Cecilia. She was not what anyone would call an attractive woman: she was much too big and clumsy for that; and then that unnaturally pale freckled skin and red hair and almost colorless eyes; but a formidable woman nonetheless, her feet planted firmly on the ground; and she knew her place.

  When Hester asked: “But don’t you read the newspapers? Can’t you see what’s happening in the Colony?” Cecilia answered very firmly. “I read the Bible and that’s enough for me. The newspapers only confuse one with all their reports, and what you don’t know cannot hurt you.”

  These conversations were taking place wherever one went, all the way from the lower reaches of the Warm Bokkeveld, up our narrow valley and spilling into the Karoo; and then back again, across the mountains to Tulbagh and from there to Worcester or seaward to the plains of the Four-and-Twenty Rivers. Everybody talking, talking all the time. And whenever a new Gazette was de
livered by someone who’d paid a visit to a town beyond the mountains, or whenever a new messenger or agent from the Government showed up in our part of the world, the beehive would be stirred into action again. Worst of all was the feeling of angry impotence created by those papers—English papers and almost unintelligible to start with. Who was this Government they constantly spoke about? It wasn’t something one could touch or grab by the throat to throttle it. Far away in the Cape anonymous gentlemen gathered in closed offices to decide our destinies; or worse still, in strange cities across the sea, sending their messages by ship while remaining well out of our reach. And all we could do was to bow and say Yes, Baas, no longer allowed to decide or arrange our own affairs. We couldn’t even properly take it out on those under us: we needed them too much; and they were only too well aware of it, and exploited it at every turn. Something in the world had become unjust and unmanageable; and it was obvious that only evil could come of it.

  There was the business with the slave Goliath. I’d acquired him a few years before in Worcester, for four oxen, from a man who’d run into problems on a trek to the Karoo. A well-trained youngster of fifteen or sixteen. Never gave me any trouble until the harvest before last, when we were working day and night to bring the wheat in. Then, one Sunday morning, he didn’t turn up for work; and when I went to look for him I found him sitting in front of his hut in the shade. Why, he said when I spoke to him, it was against the law now for a slave to work on Sunday; I couldn’t force him.

  “Then it’s time I explained a few things to you, Goliath,” I said. “What the law in the Cape says is one thing. What I do on my own farm where I’m the master is something else again.”

  After I’d flogged him he was quite willing to follow me to the lands where he worked very diligently until well after dark. But when the morning star came out the next day and I rounded up the farmhands to resume the reaping Goliath turned up carrying a skin bag over his shoulder.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?” I asked him.

  “I just come to tell you, Baas. I going to Worcester to complain about yesterday, Baas.” Very restrained in his manner, almost obsequious.

  I realized immediately that the others must have egged him on; Abel most likely. But in his servile way he could obviously be stubborn enough.

  I didn’t have time to waste; the wheat was waiting to be harvested. “I’m giving you one more chance, Goliath. Are you coming down to the lands with us or not?”

  “I’m sorry, Baas, but I got to go to Worcester first, Baas.”

  “Then listen very carefully, Goliath. By all means go to Worcester if your soles are itching. But God is my witness: the moment you set foot on the farm again I’m going to give you a thrashing you won’t forget for as long as you live. Do you understand?”

  He gulped; I saw his adam’s apple move up and down. But he was adamant. I went down to the wheatfield and he set out for Worcester. It was a bloody difficult time of the year to do without a pair of hands, but I refused to be made a fool of. Every day he stayed away I added something in my mind to the punishment I owed him; waiting for him to come back. We’d just brought in the last wagon of wheat, eight days later, when a messenger arrived with a note from Landdrost Trappes summoning me to appear before him on such and such a date etcetera.

  Hadn’t Hester nagged me so much I would have deliberately ignored the matter to await the consequences. But she insisted she needed groceries and dress material, and that the hides and pelts on the loft were taking up the space we would be needing for the wheat; and so I left for Worcester after all. Two days down, and another half-day taken up by the hearing. A good thing the Landdrost didn’t fine me like the previous time with Klaas, for I may not have been able to restrain myself; he was content to let me go with a stern warning and a long explanation of the latest regulations. What upset me most was to be told by the turd Trappes that in future he would regularly send out commissioners to make sure I and the other farmers in the Bokkeveld were abiding by the law. Just because Goliath had had the cheek to tell him about the arrangement we’d made before his departure.

  “Now you go home on foot,” I told Goliath the moment we got outside the Drostdy. “And you better hurry for I’m not allowing you more than two days.” Then I trekked on ahead with the wagon.

  Hester was in one of her intractable moods when I arrived home—“I hope you’ve finally learned your lesson, Barend” —which made me so mad that I saddled my horse and rode over to Houd-den-Bek just to find someone to talk to.

  Cecilia, exemplary woman that she was, served coffee and I gave vent to all the pent-up frustration in me. Initially Nicolaas seemed his usual cautious self, but Cecilia immediately sided with me. She was also growing fed-up with the slaves, she said; especially Galant who was getting more and more out of hand. Later Nicolaas and I went out to the stables where he wanted to inspect the harnesses of the threshing horses.

  “Did you have Goliath flogged at the Drostdy?” he asked.

  “When did you go down to the Drostdy last?” I said, flaring up. “Nowadays any black man’s word weighs heavier with the Landdrost than a Christian’s.” I took a thong from the hook and tested it against the bottom of my trousers. “But just wait till he gets home. He’ll get the thrashing he deserves. Can’t wait to lay my hands on him.” Thinking of Goliath made me angry all over again. “And if they do send a commissioner to inspect my slaves I’ll teach the man a lesson he won’t ever forget.”

  “Ai.” He sighed. “I wish the first commissioner who stepped ashore in the Cape broke his neck right there. Then we would have had some peace of mind.”

  It comforted me to hear him agree with me, although I couldn’t be sure that he really was sincere about it: Nicolaas never wanted anything so much as to be liked, and he might say anything merely to win approval: like a dog begging to have his head stroked so he can wag his tail.

  “If it goes on like this,” I told him, “it won’t be long before they get it into their heads to free the slaves altogether. And what will become of us then, I ask you?”

  “That would really be a mess,” he agreed, still sorting out the harnesses for the following day.

  “Let them try. The first Englishman who sets foot on my farm to free the slaves I’ll blast right into the mountains with my gun.”

  “What frightens me,” said Nicolaas, “is the thought that if we start fighting against the Government the slaves may stab us in the back.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If ever they seriously start talking about setting them free I’ll first shoot all my slaves in a heap and then face the English.”

  “We’re living in difficult times, Barend. It’s getting very confusing. I’ve had no end of trouble myself these last months.”

  “It’s because you’re too lenient with them,” I said. “I’m not saying one must be unreasonable with them. But if you’re too lenient they shit on your head. A slave needs his food on time and the sjambok on time, the way it used to be on Pa’s farm. That’s the only language they understand. Especially now that the English are prompting them.”

  “We’re all in this together,” he said bravely, but then resumed his old cautious attitude: “Provided we don’t deliberately provoke trouble.”

  “You think I’m to blame for what’s happened to me?” I said. “You want my wheat to rot on the lands just because Goliath prefers to spend his Sundays on his ass in the shade?”

  “I didn’t mean to criticize you, Barend. I was just saying.”

  “Well, I’ll let you know when a commissioner turns up on my farm. I’ll send messages to all the neighbors, then we can all get together to blast them into hell.”

  The commission arrived sooner than I’d expected, barely a week later, when Goliath was still recovering in his hut from the flogging I’d given him. My first thought was to grab my gun and shoot the impostor. But one had to be careful; I di
dn’t want to provoke the Government into sending a whole army into the Bokkeveld. So I invited the man to sit down in the voorhuis and have tea with Hester while I went out at the back and gave Abel instructions to set out for the neighboring farms and round up the farmers. Then I walked up to the huts and looked in at Goliath’s. “Listen,” I told him, “if you want to get out of this alive then you better do as I tell you.”

  And when, an hour later, the commissioner insisted on personally inspecting all my slaves, Goliath demurely told him that he’d been thrown by a horse, which accounted for the state he was in; and that he had no complaint, thank you very much. The visitor didn’t appear too satisfied, but there was nothing more he could do. And after the afternoon coffee, just as he prepared to go, the neighbors started arriving in response to the message Abel had carried, each man with his gun. Didn’t say a word. Uttered no threats. Simply formed two rows so he could pass between them on his nervous little horse. We rode with him.

  “What’s the matter then?” he asked after a while, obviously uncomfortable in our presence.

  “Just riding with you to make sure you don’t get lost,” I said. “And who knows, we may find something for the pot on the way.”

  As luck would have it we spotted a small herd of eland in a kloof not far from the farm. And when the shooting broke out, by an amazing coincidence the fidgety little man kept on finding himself between us and the eland, so that a hail of bullets would come whizzing past him, once even chipping a bit off the rim of his hat. The horse got such a fright that it started neighing and rearing, and in no time the man was thrown. At that stage he was so scared that he started scampering off on all fours, while the bullets struck up dust left and right. In the end, of course, we stopped shooting and fetched him back and put him on his horse again, and offered him brandy from our hip-flasks, begging his pardon for what had happened: how unfortunate that he should have landed in the way of the eland. He didn’t say anything. He only glowered at us from under the torn brim of his hat; and he had the look and the smell of a man who’d learned his lesson thoroughly. We knew we would not have to fear any more trouble from English commissioners for quite some time.