by Andre Brink
“I could have stayed there,” he often said to us. “It’s a good life in the Cape. But I came back so that we can all be together when our freedom comes.” And then he would take us one by one to ask each in turn: “What do you say? Are you with me or against me?”
“If that day is really coming,” Abel said, “I’ll be right at your side. Dancing all the way to the Cape.”
“You can count on me,” Dollie also joined in. “If the Cape is such a good place why don’t we go there right away?”
“Because this is our place,” Galant answered. “We got to walk about right here with shoes on our feet.”
“I think I’ll stand by you,” Goliath said, still rather cautiously. “But I got to be really sure it won’t go wrong, for then we’ve had it.”
The people from Oubaas Piet’s place also had their say; as well as those from Buffelsfontein. Only Ontong and Achilles seemed careful not to take sides.
“Let’s wait and see first,” they said. “If the day comes we can make up our minds. We don’t want unnecessary trouble, man.”
So each man had his own opinion about it. And in the end Galant would come round to me and Rooy: “What about you two? Are you with us?”
I tried to keep out of it for as long as I could, but it wasn’t easy. I was scared by all the talking. What was it to me? I had my work to do and it was about as much as I could manage. Minding the sheep, and preparing the clay when it was time for replastering the walls of the outbuildings and the farmyard wall, planting and harvesting beans, weeding and cleaning new lands and burning scrub, enough to keep one going all year round; and at the first sign of dawdling or skimping the Baas would be there with his strap. And there was Rooy to keep an eye on too. The day our mother died of the cough, she left Rooy in my care because he was still a child, and when the Baas hired me I persuaded him to take Rooy too. He didn’t seem very keen, for Rooy must have looked very small and helpless, but in the end he took us both. And to keep the Baas satisfied I saw to it that Rooy did his bit, even though in the beginning it was only light work like chopping wood, gathering dung, burning scrub and so on. Sometimes Rooy gave me trouble, for whenever he got the chance he would slip away to throw stones at birds, or rob their nests, or catch meerkats, or play around the vlei dam; what else could one expect of a child? But I did my best to keep an eye on him and to teach him what he needed to know, the way our mother had told me to.
Which was why I was troubled by Galant’s talk. But he wouldn’t let me be. Every now and then he would corner me again to ask: “Well, how’s it with you and Rooy? Can I count on you? Are you with us?”
“How can we be with you?” I would protest. “We’re not slaves that got to be made free. We’re Hottentots, we’re Khoin. So we’re free already.”
“Show me your freedom,” Galant would mock me. “Where is it? Whose farm is this you walking on barefoot? Who is it gives you food and beatings? Who tells you to come and go?”
“We can go away if we want to.”
“Then they just fetch you back. Right or wrong?”
“It’s so,” I had to admit, beginning to feel very worried about what he said. “But it still doesn’t make slaves out of us. It’s better for us to stay out of it.”
“It’s not a matter of better or worse, Thys.” Galant was looking right through me as if he could see the Cape far away. “No use you saying you want to keep out of it. When that day comes it’s going to be one big flood that takes the lot of us along. So it’s better to choose now. Else it may be too late.”
“Give me time.”
“Time’s short, Thys. It’s masters on one side and the rest of us on the other. There’s no difference between slave and Khoin no more. We all go barefoot.”
Then I would stare away into the silence, wishing I could see the Cape as he did. For there was no telling what I would do if that flood came of which he spoke. I was scared. And beside me, from the way he was pressing tightly against me, I knew that Rooy was just as scared. For whatever Galant said it was their business, not ours: a matter of masters and slaves, not of Khoin. Why draw us into it too? Could it really be like he said: that when the flood came no one would be able to keep out of it?
I was scared.
Deep in my heart I knew it would be a wonderful feeling to be marching down to the Cape with a gun over my shoulder, free to go wherever I wished, without having to glance over my shoulder all the time at the Baas standing behind me.
But I was scared. I was scared of the changed Galant. And of that freedom threatening us all.
Nicolaas
The flood. Taken by themselves—mere bits of flotsam and jetsam in the torrent—the events of the two years between the night we’d sheltered in the mountains and the July night when Galant ran away to the Cape were perhaps unimportant and redeemable; but all the time I was aware of the dark motion continuing, gathering momentum, tearing at my remaining roots. So often I thought: If only something visible and graspable would present itself to grapple with and overcome; if only the adversary had the innocence of those afflictions of the past—Bushmen, pests, droughts or floods—I might confront it and survive. But in this anonymous flood I was helpless. And most ineffectual of all was the Word which had earlier been such an easy and obvious lamp to my foot. The fault, of course, lay in myself, in my sin. God had turned His face against me, rendering His own Word powerless in my mouth. Around us was the groundswell of threats, prohibitions, prescriptions and regulations from the Cape, issued and withdrawn it seemed at random, and the increasing menace of an unknown force from outside, beyond the deceptive protection of the mountains, threatening to overtake our lives. Inside was the growing uncertainty about where I stood, not only on my own farm but in my own life: was I central to it or had I become peripheral? There was this thing inside me, this rage, this madness, breaking out when I should restrain it, causing me to panic when I was supposed to be reasonable and collected.
And there was Hester, too. Even after losing her to Barend I’d clung to her as an image of ultimate salvation: until she turned against me, and away from me: You’re disgusting. I’m ashamed of you. And when Galant went to her that day, behind my back, what unspeakable dark deed did he perpetrate of which neither he nor Barend would say a word? Impossible to demand the truth from her: I’d already lost whatever “right” I’d ever had to be frank with her and expect frankness in return.
Flogging him for it was a terrible way of torturing myself; and when he ran away, a last grasp I retained on her was gone, since only he could tell the truth. Whatever happened, he had to be retrieved; and killed if need be. Would that remove the menace, the lie, the lack of knowledge? I don’t think it really mattered. It was a blind intuitive urge to destroy something in the hope that life would miraculously spring from it. To catch him and drag him back in chains or thongs, to make him run home ahead of our horses, would reassert my paltry authority over him and through him over the life I could feel slipping from my hands. But he escaped, which was the worst insult, I thought, he could hurl at me. Except that there was one still worse I had not expected and which he cannily prepared: his return. Of his own free will he gave up the gun, offering no resistance; he was, in fact, smiling. I tried to beat it out of him, but realized in time the futility of it, and stopped. All night I lay awake beside the gently snoring body of the woman who was my wife: I couldn’t even seek solace from Pamela, as she was too far advanced in pregnancy. And anyway, without even asking my permission, she’d left the house after supper to return to his hut, as if it were the most natural thing in the world (and wasn’t it?) and I had no say in the matter at all. There was an uncontrollable urgency in my body, and no means of expending it. In a rage increased by disgust I reached down to touch myself, to rid myself of the bitterness that was building up, gathering heavily in my stomach, and in that root of shame at which I tore in hate. Cecilia woke up; she knew what was happening.
“Aren’t you ashamed?” she said. “Your hand will wither. Why don’t you take me if you have to?”
I turned away, but she would not be denied. Naturally, when at last I yielded, I was impotent again. Her scorn was even worse in silence, leaving me with a rage more destructive than ever before. All because of this man, Galant, who in voluntarily returning to his serfdom had demonstrated nothing so much as the compass of my own bondage. I had not chosen this for myself, God. It had been Your decision. I was caught in Your inscrutable will.
In the morning I had Galant flogged again. I wanted to destroy him utterly, finally to rid myself of the evil conscience he’d become. But at last I stopped. It was becoming a mockery. Instead of asserting myself I was humiliating myself in all their smoldering eyes; in his.
“Untie him,” I ordered Ontong and Achilles. All day long I sat in the house with the Bible. From now on, God help me, I would never lose my self-control again. If something was in fact gathering to destroy me at least I would have no hand in it: withered or otherwise. Let God be the judge of my intentions.
1 Chronicles 21: So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing floor of Oman the Jebusite.
And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, O Lord my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on thy people, that they should be plagued.
Then the angel of the Lord commanded God to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the Lord in the threshingfloor of Oman the Jebusite . . .
And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.
And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
Galant
There’s a silence on the mountain when it snows. In the falling of a stone one hears the silence that comes before it as well as the silence that follows. The men on commando must have gone away a long time ago, they won’t be able to stand this cold. In the cave I’m protected against the worst, and I have my kaross with me; but a fire would be useful. When things get too bad I build a small one and light it by rubbing twigs together. But one has to be careful that the smoke will not be seen from the valley below.
Little difference between night and day. Cold. My body grows chapped and dry; scaly like a tortoise. Hands, feet, ears. My ribs begin to show. But I got to survive; it’s important. From time to time I trek to one of the more distant farms to catch a sheep, taking care to avoid the dogs and to cut up the carcass and leave bits of skin behind to make it look like the work of a jackal or hyena. They mustn’t know I’m right here in the mountains. They think I’m far away in the Cape like I told Ontong and the others.
When one sits hunched up like this, arms clutching oneself, fingers touching one’s own hard ribs, there is a new intimate awareness of the body. My fingers move from one scar to the next, some old, others still covered with scabs. I read myself like a newspaper. Here all my life is written up: every callus, every cut and scar and ridge and hollow, every mark telling of something specific; all of it carried with me wherever I go. That’s why it’s useless to trek to the Cape. At last it is very clear to me: one can run away from a place and from some people; but one’s body can never be left behind. And in your body places and people are contained. This bite on my shoulder: Pamela. This callus: handling the pitchfork on Oubaas Piet’s farm. This mark: Nicolaas’s sjambok. This old burn: Ma-Rose’s three-legged iron pot. One cannot escape. And then there are those other scars, those that leave no mark on the body and which are invisible to the eye, but which remain inside: the ridges and marks you discover in your sleep, in your thoughts, your dreams. This word; that look; that gesture. You can’t go swimming with us today, for Hester is with us. A lion tumbling head over heels as the bullet hits it. Sitting together under a hairy kaross: Hester, Hester.
It’s because of her that I’m here. She told Barend: “Galant interfered with me.”
High up in the attic I lie on my stomach; and peering through the slit in the floorboards I see the man lying on the big bed; the woman on the chair staring through the window. I cannot grasp it at all. In its total simplicity it eludes me. And now I’m looking down from another height, this time at myself. And once again I fail to understand.
All I know is that I’m here. This is my body: feel it. I am Galant. This, at least, at last, I know. There is no place for me in the Cape. I’m here, in this low deep cave while the snow is snowing outside; and in the falling of a stone I hear its surrounding silences.
My feet will have no difficulty finding the road to the Cape: I’ve trekked on that journey so many times in my mind. But it will be only my feet: I’ll remain behind here, in these mountains. For down there at Houd-den-Bek is a woman bearing my child inside her. Tomorrow’s sun waiting to rise. Now it’s night; but the sun will rise from her. How can I leave her? I’m not free to go. One enters between a woman’s legs and is caught forever. Inside her a child is shaped who holds on to me. I can pretend not to know about it; I can pretend that the road to Cape Town will make me forget. But cornered in the snow, where I have nothing else to do but think, with everything gathered up inside my body, I know very clearly: it is impossible to escape. Running away is the solution of a coward and it gets you nowhere, for your body goes with you and everything is right there in the body.
Hester.
No: through her own word against me that bond, I think, is finally broken. From her I’m free at last. I have to be.
Pamela: from her nothing can set me free, because of the child who will rise from her.
To be free is not going to the Cape. It’s not wandering through the mountains either. My feet remain bare: it is the mark that brands me. To be free is to want to be where you belong: to dare to be who you are.
The swallows that stayed behind that other winter: I understand them now.
Back to the beginning every time. The woman; the child. The child.
In the melting snow I come down the mountain, running like water. I give myself up in order to return to the child. It is like reaching the place for the first time. As if it is wholly new. I have chosen it for myself.
Tied to the manger, while the blows break the skin of my back and rip into the already scarred flesh, thought breaks from me like a falling stone. All the endless tales of setting free the slaves. Here I am. My hands are tied. But I shall repeat those tales to them until they believe me.
I am back with the woman in whose belly life is blindly stirring, like a fish. Ma-Rose moves in with us to be at hand when she’s needed.
In the night the waters break. The child struggles to swim free. Pamela heaves and sobs and moans to rid herself of the terrible burden.
At sunrise the child lies sleeping in her arm. A child with white hair and blue eyes.
A stone falling endlessly. And in it the silence of before and after.
Part Three
Campher
Surely it can’t go on like this forever. How often did I comfort myself with this thought; including the day we were reaping in the fields, and the afternoon on the threshing-floor. Then I would see Mother’s face in my mind, old before her time, an
d worn out, and dog-tired. How many more times? “Joseph,” she’d always said, “I can foresee only one of two things for you: you’ll either make a fortune or die on the gallows.” Adding, with a sigh and a shake of her grey head (she must have turned grey before she was thirty): “I’m sure I don’t know who you take after. Definitely not my side of the family.” Which, if Father was present, would lead to a new argument. He was from Northern Brabant and we lived not far from Breda; while she was from the south, from the Belgian territory, so that great explosions of temper were frequent in our home. “Just you wait, Mother,” I would try to comfort her. “I’ll show you. The world will look up to me yet.” Perhaps we both had reason for believing what we did, for I’d been born with a cowl, which from my earliest age had prompted a wide variety of predictions about my future, alternately dire and enthusiastic. In the meantime all I could really be sure about was that whatever lay ahead for me wouldn’t tumble into my lap by itself; I would have to get out and make it happen. We were like a great litter of puppies, with not enough teats available for all; and the only way to survive was either by outwitting or by outfighting the others.
From as far back as I can remember we were surrounded by wars and rumours of war; and the armies took turns to march through our sandy region—Austrians, Prussians, French; while at Hondschooten and Camperdown the English announced their presence on the coast. One day we would be a republic, the next a kingdom, or part of the French empire. I grew up with the names of the members of the House of Orange; then came Pichegru (his name in our home the equivalent of Beelzebub’s; in Father’s mouth the account of his progress from Antwerp to ’s-Hertogenbosch and Nijmeghen sounded like a voyage of Lucifer; and what his soldiers, had done to Mother and my sisters in the house while Father and the rest of us were guarded by bayonets in the pigsty, I only realized many years later, although I’d long suspected that it must have been something atrocious, judging from the way Elsje turned soft in the head, able only to utter unintelligible sounds); and afterwards Louis Napoleon.