A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  At last the cocks began to crow, although there was no sign of dawn yet. That was when Galant woke up, pushing himself up on his elbows and staring round him with a lost, bewildered look. Then he lay back again and gazed at me, gravely, with a small frown between his eyes, as if he neither understood nor wished to find out what was happening.

  “Don’t worry,” I said at last. “It’s only me. I’ll look after you.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  “One can’t go on like this.”

  Once again he stared at me in silence.

  “You can’t fight them on your own,” I said.

  “I’ll be going to Worcester in the morning,” he snapped.

  “Not in this state.”

  “Then as soon as I can walk I’ll be going. I got to complain.”

  “It will only make things worse. You can’t start all over every time.”

  “I’m not. I’m pushing it further.”

  “That’s what you think!” Anger choked my voice; I couldn’t face the thought of it happening to him again. “Every time you come out of it the loser.”

  “No.” He sat up, even though the effort caused him to wince in pain. “Nicolaas comes out the loser. It’s he who got to follow me and bring me back. It’s he who got to make them beat me. I can bear that.”

  “You think you can bear it?!” I touched his torn shoulders with my fingertips; he shuddered.

  But he clenched his teeth. “Yes, I can! Don’t you understand? In the past, when he wouldn’t touch me, my hands were tied. Now that he beats me it gives me reason to fight back.”

  “No one can fight back.”

  “Pamela.” When he said my name it became very quiet between us. “I thought you would understand me.”

  I bowed my head, leaning my forehead against him. “You must do what you know best,” I whispered. “If you’re really sure. I’ll stand by you.”

  “You’re right,” he said after a while. “I can’t go on alone any longer.” He took my chin and raised it so that he could look at me; suddenly his voice had a smothered sound. “But I got no right!” he said. “Can’t you see? I got no right to ask anyone to be with me. There may be a terrible thing coming.”

  “Then it’s better to face it together than alone.”

  “You must leave me while you still can,” he said.

  “I’m here,” I said in the half-dark. “Let me stay with you. Take me if you want to.”

  I had to help him. How he did it with that broken body I don’t know; perhaps he felt, like I did, that no matter how much it hurt, and no matter what would come from it, this could no longer be avoided. Afterwards, with one hand, with the knuckles of his fingers, he stroked my face.

  “Galant?” I said, as if his name was the most difficult question I’d ever asked. “Who are you?”

  His eyes became troubled. For a long time he stared hard at me, before at last he began to talk, slowly at first and with long pauses in between; then more and more urgently as if he could no longer stop. He told me about Ma-Rose who’d suckled him, both him and Nicolaas, and of his childhood at Lagenvlei and all the things he and Nicolaas had done together; of a hole they’d dug and which had caved in on them; of swimming in a dam and of a lion they’d shot on the farm; of a man in irons he’d met in the jail at Tulbagh, and of the Cape, and of people living in freedom across the Great River. He told me about horses he’d broken in, and of long rides in the night no one knew about, off to nowhere, riding and riding blindly in the dark, rider and horse like one. In the wildness of that galloping, he said, one could forget about being a slave. All that mattered was the riding itself. Nothing could stop you. And all the world was yours. All these things came flooding out in his talk: and just because I’d asked him: “Galant, who are you?” But when at last he stopped talking I still didn’t know the answer. He was sleepy, and his voice began to drift off into sleep as he spoke; and then we both slept, his body still a dead weight on mine; and I only woke up when I felt him throbbing back to life inside me, and by that time the light outside was already turning the depressing grey color of an old moldy loaf. But to us it didn’t matter, not then, for we were together to comfort one another with the warmth of our bodies which was all we had. In such a night one aches with the awareness of death—not just because of what may have happened to one or the other, but because you discover it as part of yourself, marrow in your bones—and it brings suffering and soothing of suffering, and a tenderness, a willingness to share whatever is available of love and caring, to make the pain more bearable for one another, against the terrors of the coming day. So I opened myself to him, not just my body but myself, for him to flow into me and flood me and sweep me along with him like a tree uprooted by a swollen river, wherever he might wish to take me, beyond all darkness.

  Much later, when at last I dared to open my eyes again, I said: “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “What did you ask me then?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  We slept again until the bell rang. Galant stayed in bed; I told him not to move. Outside the hut, in the chilliness of the dawn, Baas Nicolaas found me as he came by, as always, on his way to the kraal. Obviously surprised to see me there he hesitated.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m with Galant now.”

  He looked hard at me, a strange look that caused a fist to clench inside me, because he seemed to be looking into me at what he had no right to see. But I said nothing. Only, from that moment I knew that his eye was upon me.

  He seemed to find it easier to speak to me than to Galant, and during the next few days he would often stop to tell me something meant for Galant: “Tell him he mustn’t get me wrong on this thing.” “Tell him to pull himself together.” “Tell him it’s for his own good.”

  But Galant wouldn’t listen to anyone. He stayed in bed for three days. Then, still shaky and staggering like a drunken man, he got up to tell the Baas he was going to Worcester to lay a complaint. I tried my best to talk him out of it, knowing very well it would be useless: and even if I felt my heart contract for him I was proud too that he hadn’t submitted—although I knew it could only lead to yet more suffering, first at the Drostdy and then, after his return, at Houd-den-Bek.

  Bet blamed me for everything. “You’re setting him on,” she flew at me. “Can’t you see what you doing to him?” But her heart wasn’t in it; and perhaps she even felt relief finally to have him off her hands, for everybody on the farm could see that the man she really wanted was the Baas himself. And just after Galant had come back from Worcester he finally cut his candle with Bet and she moved to the new hut Ontong had made for her, while I stayed with Galant.

  There was trouble with Nooi Cecilia too. She’d always been against Galant; in her eyes he could never do right. And I soon discovered that when there was trouble between Galant and Baas Nicolaas more often than not she was behind it. She could be very holy in front of others but when she thought they were alone she did her share of prodding—I could hear her from the kitchen. She also set to work on me in her nagging, persistent way. Sometimes while I was washing or brushing her hair, she’d say:

  “Pamela, you’d better watch out for that Galant,” I would rinse the hair in warm water, pretending not to know what she was talking about.

  “He’s bad company. He’ll lead you astray.”

  “I’ll manage, Nooi.” Then I’d start rubbing her scalp vigorously, which would make it difficult for her to go on talking. But I knew that at the first opportunity she would start nagging again. I tried to ignore it, but when our plan to get married became threatened by her attitude I began to feel cornered. After all, the Nooi herself had brought me up a Christian and I’d been told that slaves were now allowed to be married by a dominee. But when I mentioned it so she could talk it over with the Baas, she got ang
ry.

  “Why should you want to get married?”

  “I want to live according to the Scriptures.”

  “Galant is a good-for-nothing.”

  “I want him for my husband. We want to have children and it’s not good if one isn’t married.”

  “I’ll discuss it with the Baas.”

  But every time I brought it up she would avoid the issue, until I realized that she had no intention of ever mentioning it to Baas Nicolaas. And when in the end Galant went straight to him to ask his consent, Nooi Cecilia took it out on me:

  “Didn’t I promise you I’d discuss it with the Baas myself, Pamela? Why are the two of you scheming behind my back?”

  “We just wanted to find out, Nooi.”

  “You’re no longer the reliable girl I used to know.”

  I didn’t answer. But I put the thought away with all the others that had been boiling up inside me about the things that happened to me at Houd-den-Bek. In themselves perhaps they were not important; and taken separately, in fact, they were just a nuisance, no more. But not when it went on day after day, year after year. When we were making merry of a Saturday night, especially when Abel was there too, it was never long before the Baas would call from the house: “Will you stop that noise now? The lot of you drunk again?” When a couple of us sat in the shade in the heat of a summer afternoon, chatting and whiling away the time after lunch, it would be Nooi Cecilia’s turn: “Don’t you know I’m trying to rest a bit? Can’t you people talk without raising your voices?” When one was in need of anything, flour or bread, lard, medicine or whatever, one had to go up to the house to ask for it. Please, Nooi. Thank you, Nooi. In the house everything was always kept locked up because we were suspected of carrying off whatever we could lay our hands on. And if something got lost, mislaid most likely by one of the children, either Lydia or Bet or I would first be accused: “Can’t you keep your hands off other people’s things?” And there would be neither apology nor explanation when the thing was later found, more often than not in the very place where it was supposed to be. Otherwise I might be working in the kitchen, the Nooi sewing in the voorhuis; then she would call: “Pamela, come and pick up the cotton, I’ve dropped it.” I would pick it up from her feet and give it to her. Ten minutes later it would be the scissors. Or the needle. Or something else. After supper, when I was exhausted and in a hurry to get back to Galant, there would first be all the dishes to wash up, and then the house to be tidied from one end to another—in case the Lord decided to come in the night and found anything out of place. On and on it went. Until I had to admit that Galant had been right: violence was by no means the worst. But for his sake I gritted my teeth and took whatever came my way. I knew if I spoke to him about it he would just get mad at them again, and then he’d take it out on them one way or another: breaking a plough or a yoke, injuring a lamb, beating the Baas’s horse, poking a hole in the water barrel. He had many ways of getting at them without their ever suspecting it. And I didn’t want to encourage him, since there was peace on the farm at the time, albeit a precarious peace in which one remained aware of something invisible brooding in silence, waiting for the right moment to break out. So I didn’t do or say anything to provoke them, but tried to bear to whatever happened: accepting the remains of their food on my plate, their worn clothes on my body. And every night before supper I bowed my head and bent my back and contained the rage in my heart as I brought in the tub of warm water and knelt in front of them to take off their shoes and wash their feet with my soap and cloths, first the Baas, then the Nooi, then the children. Let Thy will be done. It was the thought of Galant that kept me going, knowing he was waiting for me in what was now our hut; and one day, when finally they’d made up their minds and given us their consent, we would be married, husband and wife in the eyes of the Lord. Or would it never happen? Since the day Galant had spoken to Baas Nicolaas about marriage I noticed that the Baas would use any ploy or pretext to keep Galant away from me, as if he begrudged us our time together: he would send Galant with a flock of sheep to a farmer in the Roggeveld; the following week he would be ordered to take a wagonload of produce to Tulbagh; and for days on end he would be sent to help old D’Alree on his little patch of land—that was before the foreman Campher was hired—and when he came back there would be something else again.

  Most difficult of all to bear was the way the Baas had, ever since that early morning when he’d first seen me coming out of Galant’s hut, of staring at me as if I was naked. Washing his feet was especially unsettling, for then I would feel his eyes on me from very close by. His leg pressing against me as I washed the foot, he would try with his sole to caress my body as he sat paging through the Bible in search of the passage he meant to read after the meal. Every night. And yet I never thought it would go beyond that.

  How did it change then? There was a day just after the winter, and the vlei was still swollen with water; the hens had already started brooding on their nests. Amid the preparations for the first big soap-making of the new season there was another quarrel between the Nooi and the Baas, what with her nagging about his not being enough of a man about the house, and unable to control his underlings, and allowing Galant to get out of hand. At the first opportunity I could find I slipped away to warn Galant:

  “Watch your step with the Baas today. The devil is loose again on the farm.”

  But he was already in a black mood, scowling and snapping at everything in his way, because of something that had broken and for which he’d been given the blame. And when he went to chop wood later that afternoon he deliberately kicked to pieces a little wagon he’d made for the children a few days earlier. Strange that he should do that, he always had endless patience with the children; but he was difficult that day. And then Baas Nicolaas came upon him just as he was grinding the splintered remains of the little wagon into the ground with his heel. It so happened that I was on my way from the kitchen to feed the chickens, and from the tone of voice in which the Baas shouted: “Galant!” I immediately knew something was wrong.

  I stopped in my tracks, the grain-box still under my arm. Oh God, I thought, not again.

  “What are you doing there, Galant?”

  “The thing got in my way.”

  The Baas walked towards him, slowly clenching and unclenching his fists, the knuckles showing white through the skin.

  “You’ve been looking for trouble again lately, Galant.”

  Galant split a piece of wood with his axe, sending the two halves whirring through the air, narrowly missing the Baas.

  “You trying to kill me now?” he asked.

  “Get out of my way then. I got work to do.”

  Would there have been another ugly scrap if I hadn’t been there? I don’t know. As I stood there, trembling, I wasn’t even aware that I had any influence on the matter. I only saw the Baas turning away from Galant, trying I suppose to contain his anger; and then he noticed me, and stopped. After a moment he snapped at Galant:

  “Well, hurry up and finish your work then.”

  “For God’s sake don’t provoke the man like that,” I pleaded with Galant as soon as the Baas had gone.

  “Mind your own business.”

  I went away to feed the chickens; afterwards I had to prepare supper in the kitchen. When the food was on the table, as I entered with the tub, I could see the Baas gazing at me again, but I avoided his eyes and lowered my head. Kneeling at his feet I untied the laces of his heavy boots and took them off. First one foot, then the other I put in the warm water, soaping and rinsing them. To dry them I had to lift them on my knees; and I could feel him resisting my hold in order to press his toes against my lap. It brought a sickness to my throat, but I kept it to myself, taking my time to finish with him before I moved on to the Nooi and the children. Then I carried the tub back to the kitchen. Every now and then they’d call me back for this or that: to pick up a spoon a child
had dropped; to hand on the plates; to dish out more meat; to cut another slice of bread. After the meal I cleared the table and took my place with the other slaves on the floor near the door for prayers. There seemed to be no end to the Baas’s reading and praying that night, the words washing over one like the lazy water of a broad river. But at last it was over and we rose to leave.

  As I reached the kitchen door the Baas said behind me: “Pamela.”

  I stopped and looked round.

  “You’ve been late with the tea these last few mornings,” he said. “It will be much easier for you to sleep in the kitchen so that you can boil the water as soon as you get up.”

  “What’s this, Nicolaas?” asked the Nooi, a sharp tone of suspicion in her voice.

  “I’m master in my own house, Cecilia,” he said without looking at her.

  There was no thought in my mind. I tried not to feel anything. Numbly I turned round and went to the back door.

  “Where are you going now?” he asked.

  “I’m just going to the hut first, Baas. Galant is waiting for me.”

  “There’s no need for you to go. I told you to stay.”

  “Yes, Baas.” The words choked in my throat, but I managed to say them.

  Behind him, sitting all alone by the long empty table, I saw the woman, large and straight-backed, her hand resting on the Bible; only her head was bowed.

  That night, on the kitchen floor, in the dull warmth of the hearth, Nicolaas took me for the first time: with the violence of someone who’s scared of what he’s doing, but who feels himself provoked and will not let anyone stop him, for the very reason that he knows it to be wrong.

  Cecilia

  Not once did I speak a single word against his abominations. (Held back as much by a consideration of my state as by that recurrent dream that had plagued me since my youth and for which his conduct was in a sense the just punishment?) If he wished to bring a judgement upon himself it did not behove me as his wife to demean my indignation into presumption. I did what I regarded as my duty: humbling myself before God I assured the purity of my own flesh and that of my daughters. But when he began to take Pamela to him, and that within the sanctity of my own house, I called him to me and opened the Bible and admonished him in the words of Joshua: