A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  Pamela senses it. For what other reason would she slip from the house one night to come and soothe away those nightmare ants? She brings new light to my darkness, and once again her voice is in my ears in moans of joy: “Galant. Galant. Galant.” In her voice I recognize myself. I know who I am. We are together.

  On other nights she comes again, waiting for them to sleep before she unbolts the back door and slips out to me through the dark in her petticoat, soundless on her bare feet; and in her fertile furrow I plant my seed.

  “What will they do if they find out?”

  “They won’t know. They all asleep.”

  I want to ask her: Was he with you again? This wetness in you, is it his? But I hold my tongue. It will bring a blight over everything and we have little enough.

  “There’s no need for them to know,” she says. And just before daybreak she creeps out again; her place grows cold beside me.

  But Nicolaas does find out. One morning, as I come into the kitchen with a bundle of wood, he is standing in front of the hearth where he has cornered her.

  “Where were you last night?” he asks.

  I put the wood down carefully, and the long-handled axe beside it.

  “When I came to the kitchen last night you were gone,” he says.

  “She was with me,” I tell him.

  He pretends I’m not there. Still looking at Pamela he asks: “Pamela, didn’t I tell you I wanted you to stay in the house at night?”

  “She was with me,” I say again. “She is my wife and she comes to sleep with me.”

  “Let me be, Galant,” she says quickly. “I’ll have it out with the Baas myself.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” says Nicolaas. “Pamela, if you leave the house again at night I’ll put the sjambok to you.”

  “You not allowed to beat a slave woman any more,” I say. “Frans du Toit brought the newspaper that said so.”

  “What do you know about newspapers?”

  Slowly I put out my hand and pick up the long axe, stroking the blade with my fingers. “We’ve spoken enough about Pamela,” I tell him. “She’s mine.”

  He stares hard at me; then at the axe.

  “Galant,” says Pamela.

  “Look here,” he interrupts her, speaking in sudden haste, “if I ever catch you coming in late in the morning there’ll be trouble.” Without another word he leaves the kitchen. At night she’s mine again.

  And now Pamela is with child. I can see her swelling. In the dark when she is with me, she puts my hand on her belly so that I can feel him stirring inside. Throughout the summer months, past harvesting and threshing, she carries the child, growing larger all the time; and I stride across the veld as if my feet no longer touch the earth. “There’s a child coming,” I tell Ontong. “Now everybody will know about Galant.”

  Usually it’s she who brings our food to the lands—the wheatfields, the threshing-floor, the bean patch—whenever there’s too much work for us to go home at midday. Sometimes it’s Lydia or Bet; but mostly Pamela. Standing up to watch her as she comes towards us and walks away again, I feel something swimming and swelling inside me, fit to burst. There comes my woman. And it’s our child she’s carrying inside her. We are of today and yesterday; but he is tomorrow’s dawn. “You wait. You’ll all see him with your own eyes,” I tell the others—Ontong and Achilles and the young ones, and the hands from the Oubaas’s farm, and Dollie and old Plaatjie Pas and also the white foreman Campher from Oubaas D’Alree’s place, all working together to get the harvest home—“You’ll see him. He’ll be Galant just like me. And from where I stop walking he’ll go on, all the way. With shoes on his feet.”

  But at night the anxiety returns; all sorts of different ants gnawing at me. For just about the time when I can feel the first stirrings of the child in Pamela’s belly a bad thing takes place on Barend’s farm. It’s Goliath who’s almost flogged to death after running off to Worcester to complain about working on Sunday or something. I’m in the stable feeding the horses when Nicolaas comes in with Barend who’s just returned from the Drostdy. They are sorting the harnesses for tomorrow’s threshing and when they start talking I keep out of sight behind the horses, for I can hear it’s newspaper business they’re discussing.

  “There’s a lot of new rumors about liberating the slaves,” says Barend. “It’s time we all join forces against the bloody English in the Cape.”

  “The slaves will stab us in the back,” Nicolaas replies.

  “We’ll first shoot the slaves in a heap,” says Barend. “I’d rather do that anyway than set them free. And then we can take on the English.”

  “You can count on me,” says Nicolaas.

  Barely a week afterwards we’re told about an Englishman who’s been shot off Elandsfontein and nearly killed.

  “Now we got to watch out,” I warn the others. “This is just what Barend and Nicolaas were talking about. So one of these days it’s our turn.”

  “There are many more slaves than masters,” says the foreman Campher, who is again with us. “If you all stand together they can’t touch you.”

  An extraordinary man, Campher. Very thin, very blond, with a manner of speech different from ours, since he comes from another country. What amazes me is that he’s as white as the masters, yet he’s working with us like a slave. At Oubaas D’Alree’s place he got a hut like Dollie and old Plaatjie Pas, and when the slave bell is rung in the morning he has to fall in just like us. He’s given his food and his daily sopies with us, although he’s neither slave nor Hottentot and can come and go as he wishes.

  “The way I see it,” I tell him one day, “you must be a slave that ran away from your land.”

  He laughs loudly. “I’ve never been a slave in my life,” he says. “Where I come from there are no slaves. Everybody is free.”

  “How can that be?” I ask. “Who does the work then?”

  “Everyone does his own work.”

  “Don’t believe you. They got slaves everywhere. Here and in Tulbagh and Worcester and in the Cape, everywhere. The only place there are no slaves is across the Great River, and those are runaways.”

  “The land I come from lies across the sea,” says Campher.

  “There are many other countries too where there are no slaves.”

  “Must be true,” says old Achilles. Usually he’s very quiet, but for once he joins in our talk. “Where I was born, where the ’mtili-tiees grow, no one was a slave either. They came to catch us and made us slaves.”

  From that day I often catch myself staring at the man Campher, wondering what it must be like to sit behind his eyes and look at a land where there are no slaves.

  “But if there’s no slaves there,” I ask him, “why must there be slaves in this place?”

  “That’s the way it is,” he says. “But don’t worry. It won’t go on like this. One day everybody will be free here too.”

  At night when Pamela is with me I talk to her about the things Campher tells us on the lands. “Be quiet,” she whispers, pressing her hand against my mouth. “The walls may hear you. These are dangerous stories.”

  “Campher says it’s all true.”

  “How can you be sure that anything another man says is true?”

  “When you tell me something I know it’s true.”

  “Take me,” she says. And this, I know, is true. Her body and mine, and the child between us; the child still to come but who is already inside her. It’s true. No one can take him from us. Not even Nicolaas. There are some things even he cannot be baas over.

  This is what I think when I am with Pamela, in the dark. But when the light returns and I find myself alone again, when she’s slipped out quietly in my sleep to be back in the kitchen on time, I’m left wondering: Can I be sure that even this is true? Was she really here with me in the night, and I inside her, and the
child moving between us? Or is it like the nightmare of the ants that never let me be? Truly, life is a mysterious and difficult thing.

  All this is in my mind the day I ride out in search of the bullock. A Saturday. When we were cutting the young bulls the other day, his one hind leg got broken as we brought him down and so he was left with the young calves for the leg to mend; but at milking time that morning Achilles reports to me mat the bullock has broken out. Knowing Nicolaas will be annoyed when he and the Nooi come back from Buffelsfontein where Nooi Cecilia’s father has a birthday party, I decide to set out after it as soon as I’m through with the morning work.

  “Where you going?” asks Ma-Rose when I pass her hut, all by itself on the low rise from where she can look out to all sides.

  “That little bullock that broke its hind leg got away.”

  “I think I saw it grazing down there early this morning,” she says, pointing. “What about some bush-tea before you go?”

  “No, I’m in a hurry,” I answer, for Ma-Rose is getting more and more talkative as she gets older.

  At old D’Alree’s place I dismount to enquire about the beast, but the little old man knows nothing about it: he’s too short-sighted anyway, and all he’s ever concerned with is cutting and sewing.

  “Where’s my shoes?” I ask him, not expecting much of an answer, for I have little trust in him left.

  He only stares at me through his dusty round glasses and mumbles something about having to be more patient. So I leave him and go to enquire from Dollie and old Plaatjie Pas who are cutting bushes on a new patch of land; and they point in the direction of the little stream that runs down from the next ridge.

  But there’s no sign of the bullock in the thickets on the banks of the stream; and as the chilly afternoon wears on I find myself moving further and further away from Houd-den-Bek, following the narrow valley between the mountains and round the bend of the Vaalbokskloofberg. From time to time when my hands grow too numb to hold the reins I stop to blow on them and rub some life back into them. In the late afternoon I reach Elandsfontein, where I go directly to the huts, as it’s Saturday afternoon and I know everybody will be lying about.

  “You’re early,” calls Abel from where he’s sitting in the last patch of sun, holding his mug in both hands. “Have a drink.”

  “I’m just looking for a bullock that’s run away, I’m not staying over. I got to get back to Pamela.”

  “Never let a woman tie you up too fast,” says Abel.

  Klaas comes towards us, suspicious and inquisitive as ever, looking hard at me. “I don’t believe this bullock story,” he grumbles. “Where’s your pass?”

  “Who’re you to ask me for my pass?” I brush him off.

  “Don’t listen to that old cunt-face,” jeers Abel.

  It turns out that no one has seen the bullock; so I lead the horse to the water-barrel in the yard where he can drink before we set out for Houd-den-Bek again; the sun will be down soon.

  “Good day, Galant,” says Hester behind me.

  It gives me a sudden wateriness in the legs to hear that voice; for it’s the first time I see her again since that day in the stable, and it’s a memory a man can get lost in.

  “There’s no need to look so nervous,” she says. “Barend has gone to Lagenvlei.”

  “I didn’t pass him on the way.”

  “He took the short cut through the mountain.”

  I tug at the reins to warn the horse. “I got to go back,” I say, not looking at her. “I came to look for a bullock but Abel says he didn’t come this way.”

  “You must be tired,” she says. “Let me give you something to eat in the kitchen first.”

  “There’s no need.”

  But without waiting for me to reply she goes towards the house ahead of me, her skirts swirling round her legs as she walks. The straightness of her body. It’s always been like that. Suddenly, but why?, I remember the day with the snake. She’s dying, I think, as I desperately tear open the ruffled leg of her pantalettes to reach the double marks of the fangs on her thigh. With clumsy fingers I open the little skin bag Ma-Rose has given me to carry with me wherever I go: and I press Ontong’s snake-stone against the neat wound: the smooth round black stone with the grey spot in the centre, perforated with small holes: brought from his own land across the sea, and no poison can withstand its hidden powers. Holding her leg tightly against my chest I keep the stone pressed against it until all the poison is sucked out and she begins to feel better, although she’s still pale and shaky. It takes an effort not to stare too openly at the thigh exposed by the tearing away of the lace. The smooth otter body of the dam. Keep away, Galant.

  “Thank you, Galant. I’ll never forget this.”

  Why shouldn’t she? What is so special about pressing a snake-stone against a wound?

  Forget it, I tell myself as I follow her across the great emptiness of the bare yard. From way back a man’s voice speaks to me: That’s the worst you can do in this world.

  “Here’s some meat for you. And bread.”

  “Thank you. I got to go now.”

  “There’s some cold soup on the hearth. I’ll warm it up for you.”

  “I’ve had enough. I’m not all that hungry.”

  “No, please stay. Come and wait in the kitchen. It’s getting cold outside.”

  Somewhere in the front part of the house I can hear the children playing, but the middle door is closed and their sounds are muffled, making the house seem larger and emptier than it is. My throat feels tight. How close she is to me as she bustles about stirring the coals, adding more wood, hanging the black pot on its chain. As if she is the slave and I the waiting master.

  “How are things at Houd-den-Bek?” she asks, her back still towards me.

  “No complaints.”

  “I hope Nicolaas hasn’t—”

  I don’t answer. She turns round. A few strands of hair slide from behind her ears and shade her cheek. Her eyes are naked.

  Naked I hang from a beam, my feet groping to touch the ground; the smell of horse-piss in my nostrils. Her hands. Quite shameless, her hands.

  “He does things his own way,” I say angrily, making an effort to counter the memories.

  “You mustn’t let him get you down.”

  “No one can do that.”

  “You know, I’ve always thought, even when we were children—” She pushes the hair away from her cheek and her voice closes up. “I suppose it’s silly of me.”

  Outside the sun is down and the light is fading fast. But against the glow of the fire in the hearth I can see the gentle roundness of her cheek.

  “What was it you were thinking?” I ask deliberately, finding in the falling dusk a reason to be more provocative than I would have dared to be in the light.

  “You were the only one who really understood me.”

  “How can that be?”

  “We were the only two who never belonged with them.”

  “The soup is burning.”

  She turns away hurriedly and resumes her stirring; after a while she ladles some out in a small bowl.

  “Isn’t it too cold for you to ride back now?” she says, watching me as I gulp down the soup.

  “What else can I do?”

  She is silent for a while. I finish the soup, still standing.

  “That’s true,” she says, her voice shallow, like shallow water. “I suppose there really is nothing else you can do.”

  “Thank you for the soup.”

  “Let me give you a sopie for the road.”

  “I don’t want to drink anything.”

  “Then take it with you.”

  She takes a small jug from the shelf and goes out to fill it in the voorhuis; coming back, she hands it to me.

  “Thank you. I got to go now.”

  �
�Yes.”

  I go outside, stopping as the cold strikes me. Hesitating, I look back. She’s standing on the threshold, her dark head leaned against the doorpost. But she says nothing.

  On the far side of the farmyard I notice a shadow scampering past, stumbling over something in its way, mumbling a curse. It is Klaas.

  Back home Pamela is still finishing her chores in the kitchen, and I give her the jug of brandy to put away on a shelf. Late in the night we hear the carriage returning from Buffelsfontein, and I have to get up again to help Nicolaas put away the horses.

  “Where does this brandy come from?” he asks me the next morning.

  “Hester gave it to me.”

  “What were you doing at Elandsfontein then?”

  “I was looking for the lame bullock that got away.”

  “You should have known it could never go as far as that,” he says, annoyed. “You stay away from Hester.”

  “She gave me something to eat.”

  He glares at me for a long time; but just when it seems to me that we’re heading for trouble again, he swings round and walks away. That is the end of it, I think. But later the same morning, soon after the last frost has melted, Barend unexpectedly arrives on horseback, riding so hard that the animal is foaming at the mouth. For a while he and Nicolaas talk heatedly at the gate. Then, leading the horse behind them, they come towards me. Nicolaas is trembling with anger; his face as white as anything.

  “Barend tells me he heard from Hester that you were interfering with her last night,” he says, his voice shaky.

  I stare at them in amazement, my ears ringing with the sound of cicadas.

  “Is that what Hester said?” I ask at last.

  “Are you accusing me of lying?” shouts Barend.

  Then it’s back to the stable.

  “Please don’t go away to complain again, Galant,” Pamela pleads with me, clinging to my legs. “You know it never works out.

  “I’m not going to complain. This time I’m just running away. They won’t ever find me again.”

  “You can’t leave me behind like this. The child’s time is coming close.”

  “I’m done with this place,” I answer. “This is the end. One can take it for years. But one day you just know it’s over.”