by Andre Brink
All of this to make you understand that the family prospered. Eighteen Samuels all told. Then Lottie couldn’t take it any more; and Bart began to feel more at ease.
Nicknames had to be found to distinguish between the swarm of Samuels. There was a White Samuel and a Black Samuel (presumably some of them were throwbacks), a Stupid Samuel and a Crosseyed Samuel, a Samuel Bigarse and a Samuel Windball, there was Samuel Stone and Samuel Busy and Samuel Dew and Samuel Ribbons, and only by the grace of God was it possible to tell them apart. And foremost among them was Samuel the firstborn, our Samuel, the girl who became our ancestor.
She was exceptional from the beginning. People came from far and wide to stare at her hair. She was the only Samuel of them all who was very nearly stillborn, half-strangled by her own hair which even at birth was as long as an umbilical cord. It made one feel uneasy just to look at her. The neighbour women were wondering aloud whether it didn’t amount to the same thing as being born with a caul, perhaps worse? Everybody believed that the first hair would soon fall out, but it never did. It only grew longer and denser, as blonde and golden as honey from a deep hollow in the mountains. An improbably beautiful child. Before she was six years old her hair was reaching down to her thighs, and still it grew, to her calves, her ankles.
At first the mother plaited it, making a double loop in the plaits to tie them up. When they began to touch the ground she wound it round the girl’s head, an amazing sight to behold. On Saturday nights it was brushed out and then she would sleep like that, covered by the golden fleece like a kaross spread over the whole bed, down to the floor.
She was a very grave child. Her father never paid much attention to his children once they were born: provided there were enough Samuels around, the future was safe. Most of the time he was away from home, hunting, or on commando to track down game or native people, all of it part of a man’s good life. He only came home in time for new births, when he availed himself of the opportunity to ensure the next harvest. Lottie submitted to his ardours; perhaps she was pleased to discover that her husband needed her so much. Even though she herself remained apprehensive of children. The moment a new baby had been weaned she would pass it on to the firstborn Samuel to look after; and then she’d either begin to hatch the next or go her own secret ways. Five singles, three pairs of twins, one set of triplets, and then of course the quadruplets. In due course they all learned to take care of one another; but Samuel was in charge until at last, God be praised, the mother dried up.
From the time Samuel was fourteen or thereabouts would-be suitors made their appearance on the farm to enquire about her health and advertise their prospects. But the Groblers quickly made it clear to them that Samuel was not available; her duties required her to remain at home. Some of the young men later married her younger sisters. Samuel couldn’t care less. Wrapped in her hair, like a golden whirlwind on the veld, she went her way, looking after her parents and her siblings, hardly ever saying a word.
She spoke even less after her mother had left them, which is another story. Then father Bart died of a San arrow in the left lung, quite a common complaint in those days; but he went in peace, knowing his tribe’s covenant with God was secure. It was only then that Samuel began to think of a life of her own. There was still a number of little ones to look after, but much to the consternation of her brothers and sisters she calmly informed them that she’d had enough and would henceforth leave them to their own devices.
Most of the time she just wandered about in the veld, all on her own, her loose hair trailing like a train in the dust, several metres long, an incredible sight. She was really turning into a wild creature altogether.
But not for long. Once the news got round that the older Groblers were out of the way an increasing number of men – not only from the environs but from quite far afield – began to show a renewed interest in the girl with the golden hair. They were surprisingly timid, I should add, as they weren’t quite sure whether she was real, or a mirage on the plains, a walking sheaf of wheat, a column of sunlight moving across the veld, almost too beautiful to believe. But gradually, as they discovered she was human after all, they became more frank in their approach. And Samuel accepted the first one who had the courage to ask her outright.
They hadn’t spoken much, just enough for Samuel to be reassured that he’d come from very far away. One can only guess that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and that noisy bunch which carried on worse than a flock of birds from early morning to well past sunset; and it is more than likely that she wished to move to a region where there was no chance of ever again encountering another person called Samuel. Only after securing this promise did she leave with the man who was called Harm Maree. They travelled all the way from the Prince Alfred region to what was to become the district of Cradock in the Eastern Cape.
Harm was totally enraptured with her hair. He preferred her to go about without tying it up in any way; and in the evenings he personally and lovingly combed out the twigs and grass and ants that had got caught in it during the day: he would comb and comb, and brush and brush and brush, moving his hands up and down to let it run through his fingers like water; he could swim in her hair as if she were a long undulating golden river. What he loved above all was to take her to the stream that ran across his farm and wash her hair in it. It took hours and hours, soaping and lathering and rinsing until it rippled like small shiny wavelets. But those were the only caresses she ever permitted him. The rest of her body was strictly out of bounds.
And he was quite happy with it. To him she wasn’t a woman, but a kind of plaything, something miraculous he could care for and relish; it didn’t even bother him that she hardly ever spoke. He wished for no more than to groom her hair.
This suited her perfectly. In his care she became the child she’d never been allowed to be. She played with dolls, dressing and undressing them all day long; Harm took a special pleasure in bringing her more and more new dolls every time he had to go to Algoa Bay to trade. Dolls, and mirrors. Samuel could spend hours in front of a mirror without ever getting bored. In the beginning she had only one, a broken piece, a mere shard she’d brought with her from her parents’ home in the Karoo. When he discovered her infatuation he started bringing her new ones. Within a few years every single wall in the house, inside and even out, was bedecked with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. And while she would preen herself and turn this way and that to look at her reflection from every imaginable angle, Harm would stare from a distance, entranced by the cool voluptuousness of her hair.
Could it have gone on like that forever? It is an intriguing possibility. Where it went wrong is difficult to tell at this remove. One may conjecture that in the long run his male nature had no choice but to assert itself, but it may well have been her femininity that proved decisive. All that is reported in the story is that a good ten years after they were married, there was another celebratory session one night, lasting for many hours, in which Harm enfolded and enmeshed their two bodies in the endless flow of her hair, twisting and turning, tying and untying themselves, on the bed, on the floor, from room to room, rolling and tossing in a pleasure that gradually became uncontrollable. And this time he broke the rules, diving in, all the way, and fell asleep like a castaway tossed up from the sea. Samuel lay unmoving, her husband’s body half-covering hers. Was she in a kind of stupor? Or was it shrewd calculation to make quite sure he was fast asleep?
Only when she had no doubt that he was beyond redemption did she cautiously disentangle herself from him; still naked, she bent over him and started winding her hair around his neck, an ever-tightening noose. He hardly stirred. And she calmly continued until his body turned slack and she knew he was dead.
Then she rose, and boiled water, and washed herself laboriously and thoroughly, as if to rinse every last memory of him from her. When she had done, she took up position in front of the tallest mirror in the house, in which she could survey herself from head to toe, and slowly a
nd methodically, with a pair of sheep-shears, cut off her hair. She finished off the task with smaller, sharper scissors. At her feet, surrounding her in a motionless golden ripple that reached to her knees, lay the hair, a pool from which she rose, more naked than she’d ever seen herself in all her life.
For a long time she stood there inspecting herself – did she already know it was the last time in her life she’d be doing it? – and went to pick out some of her husband’s clothes she could wear. He was much taller than she, but quite delicate of frame, and with some shortening of sleeves and legs the shirt and moleskin trousers and waistcoat she chose turned out to fit her reasonably well. She added a wide-brimmed hat. Now she was a man, a young man built like a boy.
She dug a hole in the back yard, in the vegetable patch where the earth was soft, and buried Harm’s body in it, with the hair piled on top; and then she filled it up and covered it meticulously with leaves and manure so that it would not be conspicuous. From under their bed, which he’d made himself – he’d been skilful with his hands – she took the tin trunk in which he’d hoarded his money, a sizeable heap of gold coins, they were prosperous; this she packed into a saddlebag, added her collection of dolls, and provisions for a few days, saddled the best horse in the stable, and rode off. In the east the day had just begun to break, the stars were fading, only the morning star was still bright.
4
SAMUEL RODE AND rode and rode, for days, for weeks, until she reached the sea which she’d never seen before and which she found so beautiful that she decided to stay there.
In the beginning she literally lived in the bush, in a rough shelter of branches she’d stacked with the help of a few Xhosa men. They belonged to the vanguard of a black wave that had unfurled itself across the Great Fish River, occupying tracts of land vacated by anxious white farmers. Those were tense times, and there was never-ending conflict between white and black: raids to and fro across the eastern frontier, campaigns, wars and rumours of war. Only in the area where Samuel had settled, in the very eye of the storm, there was no trouble; in fact, going about her private business she wasn’t even aware of anything untoward. The Xhosas were the only ones to whom she ever confided that she was a woman: and this guaranteed her safety, as their nation never harmed women or children. Throughout her pregnancy she remained there. When she needed anything the Xhosas who had befriended her would travel to Algoa Bay for provisions. She learned to speak their language. When her time came they brought their wives to assist her.
It wasn’t an easy birth. Samuel nearly died, but the women pulled her through with their cures and remedies; when she was in a really bad shape they brought an igqira, a medicine man, who hauled her back from death with his powdered musk-cat nails and tortoise shell, acrid gli-roots and puffadder poison and other unspeakable brews. After that she convalesced rapidly; but she was unable to feed the baby. That proved to be no problem as one of the Xhosa women had a baby of her own, and without further ado she took the small white girl to her breast as well.
Had it depended on Samuel she might well have spent the rest of her life there. But perhaps to avoid exposing her benefactors to unnecessary danger, or because she felt a new kind of responsibility towards her daughter, she eventually decided to move. The child, Wilhelmina, must have been about four or five, Samuel in her early thirties. The year, if one has to put a date to it, was probably 1810 or thereabouts.
Samuel found work as a teacher with a farmer’s family on the bank of the Riet River, right on the coast, where she could be close to the sea. She still wore her hair very short, cropping it herself – without using a mirror, because she never allowed one in her home again. One of the only hidings Wilhelmina received in her life was when she came running home from an itinerant trader’s wagon with a small hand-mirror the man had given her as a present. Samuel pounded it to smithereens with a hammer, then ground the shards to a fine powder in a crucible and force-fed it, mixed with bitter aloe juice, to the girl. That did it.
They were then living with the Steenkamp family on the Riet River, as I said. Samuel received no wages as a teacher; she was content with a room and some basic provisions in exchange for the rudimentary lessons she offered the children of the neighbourhood. Whenever she found herself in company Samuel spoke in a whisper in order to keep her sex a secret; wearing men’s clothing and smoking a pipe did the rest. The child, she explained, was her own, the mother having died in childbirth. She would gesture to her throat to explain that the loss of her voice was somehow related to the tragedy in the family.
The Steenkamps only had sons, a lot of them; and from an early age Wilhelmina had a tough time holding her own. Samuel was, as she’d always been, a distant, unworldly person, who paid no attention when Wilhelmina came running for help; so it was only a furious instinct for survival that helped the girl prevail against that savage band of boys.
It lasted for a few years only. The Steenkamps’ farm, less than an hour on horseback from the frontier, suffered heavily from Xhosa raids. Being an unruly lot, the farmer and his oldest sons would then defy all laws and regulations, crossing the frontier to reclaim their stolen cattle as well as what they regarded as fair compensation. As a result they soon ran into trouble, not only with the Xhosa but with the British troops stationed in the forts along the Great Fish River. At the same time their harsh treatment of servants and labourers resulted in a summons to appear in court; and in the so-called Black Circuit they were heavily fined. Within days of their return to the farm a new tide of angry Xhosa washed across the frontier, taking with them every hoof and horn in veld and kraal. On horses borrowed from kindly neighbours the Steenkamps set out in pursuit; but the Xhosa must have been lying in wait for them for the little commando was ambushed in the thickets beyond the Great Fish and three of the Steenkamp sons were killed. It was the last straw. The father loaded his family on a rented wagon and trekked away, deeper into the colony, as far as possible from the border. It took all Samuel’s powers of persuasion to convince him not to set fire to the homestead, the outbuildings and the fields before they left. She took over.
As before, she talked a few Xhosa into joining her, not as labourers but as partners on the farm. And while most of the other farmers in the Suurveld region were staggering under their repeated losses, Samuel flourished. Nothing spectacular, to be sure; but she made enough for a comfortable existence. If she was lonely, it suited her; but little Wilhelmina had a hard time and on more than one occasion she tried to run away. However, as time passed it turned out that she had no choice but to adjust her life to the curious rhythms of her mother’s in that small dark house without mirrors. At night Samuel would play with her dolls (Wilhelmina was much too robust for that); during the day, leaving most of the work to her Xhosa partners, she roamed about, spied on meerkats, broke open anthills to see what was happening inside.
It is strange to think how untouched she was by all that was happening around her in those turbulent times. Not a day went by without drama or violence of one kind or another. Yet Samuel’s life reflected none of it. She simply went her unobserved way beyond the reach of history. And if she hadn’t told Wilhelmina, during the last years before her death, her secret story, nothing of it all would have been preserved.
5
THERE WAS ONE last important disruption in her later life, soon after a wave of British Settlers had moved into the area. A young woman made her appearance on the farm. No one knew anything about her. Wilhelmina, the only person who might have recorded something, left only a garbled account. As a result all kinds of wonderful tales were woven around the stranger. Some said she’d come from a ship that had been wrecked on the coast; others that she’d come all the way through Africa on foot; or that she’d been the unwanted, illegitimate child of an important gentleman from the Cape who’d tried to dump her in the wilderness; or that a herd of elephants, relentlessly following her family’s trek through the interior after her father had shot a calf, systematically killed every living soul
on the wagons, leaving her the only survivor; or even that she was a Water Woman who’d come from a deep pool in the river and then lost her way when she tried to turn back. The most likely explanation was that her family had been massacred by marauders, that in her attempts to find help she’d lost her way and gone mad from suffering and deprivation in the wild, assailed by hunger and thirst and predators; until Samuel found her in the veld, close to death, and brought her home, where she was saved with Xhosa remedies.
What difference does it make? The girl, Marga, about five years older than Wilhelmina, but much more fragile, strange and absent in her ways, much like Samuel herself, moved in with them, and stayed on. One could turn it into quite a romantic story: Marga falling in love with Samuel and trying to communicate her emotions through all manner of subtle and not so subtle hints; Samuel developing similar feelings towards the girl, but never daring to let on, resorting instead to more and more curt rebuffs. Then the unavoidable discovery: how? where? when? Did Marga unexpectedly come upon her as she waded through the rushes after a swim? Or on the white beach as she emerged naked from the sea? Or was it more mundane? – Samuel undressing in her room, or washing in a tub in the kitchen, and Marga entering absently to discover that her host was not a man but a woman?