by Irma Joubert
She looked across the pool at the orange trees covered in blossoms. She drew the sweet smell deep into her lungs. “I don’t think you’re a bad mother,” she said. “Gertjie and Baby didn’t get the right food, that’s all. Once they get strong again, the welfare will bring them back.”
“Yes,” her ma said. She picked up Sissie’s dress again and began to rub.
Tuesday morning, Pérsomi said, “I’m going across to the Big House to fetch the papers.”
“Ask Aunt Lulu if we can borrow a bowl of sugar while you’re there,” said her ma. “And if she can spare a spoonful or two of coffee, that would also help. And maybe something for Sissie’s tummy, tell her she’s got a blockage. Say I haven’t been able to get to town, but I’ll give everything back as soon as we’ve got plenty again.”
“I really don’t like to beg,” said Pérsomi.
“Heavens, child, it’s not begging!” her ma said indignantly. “I just want to borrow a few things!”
“Yes, Ma,” said Pérsomi. But she knew very well that nothing Ma borrowed was ever returned.
She washed her face and feet at the river and dried them in the sun. Klara and Irene would be at the Big House, and De Wet. Maybe even Boelie, though he might be at the kraal. Boelie loved the farm, just like his pa and oupa.
When her feet were dry, she walked slowly through the orange trees. She breathed in the sweet smell that filled the air.
At the back door of the Big House she paused for a moment. Inside she heard girls’ voices, laughing. Somewhere deep inside the house she heard real people talking and laughing.
She knocked timidly. Only the housekeeper Lena was in the kitchen, stoking the fire in the stove. “I just came to fetch the newspapers,” said Pérsomi.
“Wait here, missy, I’ll fetch them in the pantry,” said Lena.
“I must also ask for some sugar and flour. No, wait, coffee,” Pérsomi hastened to add.
“You’ll have to ask one of the family,” said Lena. “I can’t give it to you. Wait, I’ll call Miss Klara.”
Pérsomi looked down at her bare feet. Klara would be better than Irene or Aunt Lulu.
But Klara wasn’t alone when she entered the kitchen. Two girls followed her in, all three of them laughing.
Klara wore a pale-yellow summer dress. Her brown hair had glints of gold in the shaft of sunlight that fell in through the back door.
Behind her was Christine le Roux, Oom Freddie’s daughter. She was small, with curly blonde hair and big blue eyes, like a doll.
The third girl was striking: tall and slender, with long legs and a sun-kissed complexion. Her dark hair fell down her back, shiny and silken. Her dark eyebrows were neat arches, her full lips a deep red color.
“Hello, Pérsomi,” Klara said cheerfully. “Are you also home for the vacation?”
“Yes.”
Klara said to her friends, “This is Gerbrand’s little sister, she’s Irene and Reinier’s age.”
“Yes,” said Christine, “I know her, but she’s growing up so fast!” She turned to Pérsomi. “What do you hear from Gerbrand?”
“He’s well. They built a bridge across a river,” Pérsomi answered awkwardly. Her green dress felt extra short.
Klara laughed. “They should have sent him here to build a bridge across our Pontenilo,” she said merrily. “I doubt it will ever happen! Did you want some sugar?”
The tall girl’s dark eyes seemed to be assessing Pérsomi. She was the girl who swam in the pool with Gerbrand and the others, the girl with the big sunglasses. Pérsomi wondered whether she was Reinier’s sister, Annabel.
“Just sugar, Pérsomi?” Klara asked.
“And . . . flour. Please.”
On her way back, Pérsomi’s thoughts kept returning to the three pretty girls. They had lovely clothes and elegant sandals. The kitchen had been filled with sunshine, and the smell of coffee had hung over everything.
At home Hannapat asked, “Did you bring the sugar and the coffee?”
“Coffee? I brought sugar and flour.”
“Oh, you are stupid,” Hannapat said, annoyed. “Are we supposed to drink flour? I was so looking forward to a sip of coffee!”
Wednesday evening Pérsomi’s ma said, “Mr. Fourie said they need help with the meat. They slaughtered a cow.”
“As long as they give us meat as well,” Hannapat said, “and not just the innards.”
“Poor people can’t pick and choose,” said her ma.
“I’ll eat anything that looks like meat,” said Sissie. “I’ll help too.”
Pérsomi thought about eating meat nearly every day at the dormitory.
But the next day as they were leaving, Sissie felt sick. She didn’t get up from her mattress. “My tummy aches,” she said, drawing up her knees, “and my head.”
“Oh, Sissie, just shut up,” said her ma.
“Auntie Sis said we must pick some burstwort,” said Sissie. “She said we must boil it with wild dagga and white turmeric for my tough tummy.”
“Oh heavens above,” said her ma.
“You forgot about your tooth, you lazy lump,” Hannapat scolded as they went out.
Things were hectic at the barn. Boelie and De Wet were hoisting up the heavy cow with a block and tackle, Mr. Fourie was sharpening a knife on the whetstone, Klara came walking toward them with an armful of bowls, and Lena was scrubbing the tables, making sure they were spotless.
“Hello, Pérsomi,” De Wet said. “Any news from Gerbrand?”
“He says he’s fine,” said Pérsomi.
“Oh, here you are,” said Aunt Lulu, coming from the kitchen with a bowl of water. “Go wash your hands. Klara, call Irene to come and help.”
“Here she comes, Mommy,” said Klara.
Boelie looked up from where he was cutting up the carcass with a big knife. “Hello, Pérsomi, are you also on vacation?” he said, as if he hadn’t expected her there.
“Yes,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear.
“Hannapat, bring the wheelbarrow so that you can take the entrails,” Boelie said. “Do you want any of it, Ma?”
“Only the liver and kidneys, and of course the guts for the sausage casings, the rest can go,” said Aunt Lulu. “There’s no time today for scraping offal.”
Pérsomi saw Hannapat’s eyes narrow before she turned and went over to the wheelbarrow in the corner, swinging her hips impertinently.
With one deft stroke Boelie cut the carcass open along the stomach from top to bottom. The entrails spilled out—bundles of guts, the stomach and its contents, the gall bladder and pluck and lungs—and landed in the wheelbarrow. “Oh, yuck, I’m going to be sick!” Irene screamed and ran back to the house.
Boelie looked up, disturbed. “High time someone taught that little girl a lesson,” he said as he removed the last of the entrails.
“She’ll come and lend a hand later,” said his mother. “There isn’t much for her to do at present.”
Boelie raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“Hannapat,” said Aunt Lulu, “take the entrails home. And make sure you cook them today, or they’ll attract the jackals. Boelie, keep the feet to make brawn.”
“Hold here for me, Pérsomi,” said Boelie as he pulled on the cow’s foreleg.
The sun was high and the entire forequarter had been cut up into biltong and meat for dried sausage by the time Irene’s ouma brought a pot of coffee. Behind her followed Lena with a tray laden with cups and a large plate of sandwiches. There was no sign of Irene or Hannapat.
“Cut the biltong into thin strips and salt it well,” said Irene’s ouma. “Bring the tongue, Klara, I want to pickle it.”
Aunt Lulu said, “Jemima, when you’ve finished your coffee, go home and and deal with the innards. I’m worried about the heat, maybe we should have waited a week or two with the slaughtering.”
“Then you would’ve had to do without the slave labor, Ma,” De Wet teased her.
“Slave labor, my eye,”
said his mother. “When I was a child—”
“Yes, yes,” said Boelie.
When Aunt Lulu disappeared into the kitchen to start making the brawn, only De Wet, Boelie, and Pérsomi remained.
“So they drop out, one by one,” De Wet said. “Only the three of us are left and the hindquarter is still hanging from the hook.”
“Hmm,” said Boelie. “Ma will have to get Irene in line. What good is it Ma telling us how hard she had to work as a child, while that young lady sits around reading stories like Queen Victoria?”
“Pérsomi, I think you should start cutting up the sausage meat,” said De Wet. “Here, cut the cubes this size. And try to remove as much of the sinewy bits as possible, or we’ll be cleaning the mincer more often than we’ll be mincing.”
Pérsomi drew the bowl closer and began to cut. She did her best, because she didn’t want to disappoint Boelie and De Wet.
“Oupa irritates me a bit with his English ways,” Boelie said suddenly.
“Goodness, you’re in a bad mood today,” said De Wet.
“He still believes in Smuts, can you believe it?” Boelie complained. “And this knife is bloody dull.”
“You seem to have your knife in for everyone,” De Wet said calmly.
“Oh, De Wet, stop being witty. Oupa won’t hear a word against Smuts, can you deny it?”
Pérsomi felt herself grow tense. What if Boelie and De Wet began to fight?
“What has Smuts done now?” asked De Wet.
“I swear Smuts and Van Rensburg are hand in glove,” Boelie said crossly. “I don’t trust Van Rensburg anymore.”
“Why not?” De Wet asked and put another large chunk of meat on the table. “This is the last piece,” he said to Pérsomi, “then we can begin mincing it for the sausage. How’re you getting along?”
She just nodded.
“Smuts and his spies are everywhere,” said Boelie. “I’m beginning to believe Van Rensburg was planted by Smuts to keep the OB in check. Why isn’t Van Rensburg doing anything useful?”
“Who’s Van Rensburg?” Pérsomi asked.
“Leader of the OB,” De Wet answered. “I’ll set up the mincer. He’s a lawyer. Used to be Tielman Roos’s private secretary, later he became Secretary of Justice, and in 1936 he was appointed Administrator of the Free State. In January this year he became Commandant-General of the Ossewabrandwag.”
“Must you always deliver a bloody lecture when someone asks you a question?” Boelie asked.
“Now she knows,” De Wet said coolly. “You’re the one who always says she’s so bright.”
Pérsomi’s hands stopped moving for a moment. A warm feeling rose up inside her—Boelie had said she was bright. He had told De Wet, who was very bright, that she, Pérsomi, was bright.
The warm feeling settled somewhere deep inside her.
“It’s nice being back at school,” Pérsomi said to Beth the first evening. She was drying her hair, her body still tingling after a hot bath.
“I suppose so,” said Beth, “but it’s much nicer at home.”
No, Pérsomi thought, no. But she didn’t say it out loud.
“I brought you a present,” said Beth, smiling timidly. She took something out of her suitcase. “It’s a bit old and unfortunately it’s in English, but it’s all we have at the mission,” she said, handing Pérsomi a Bible.
Pérsomi ran her hands over the worn leather cover. Then she opened the Bible and drew a deep breath. She was aware of the vaguely moldy smell of the closed pages in her nostrils. “Thanks, Beth,” she said.
“Mrs. Reverend also made cookies,” Beth went on. “Here, have one.”
Pérsomi had nothing to share with her. “I’ll have one later, thanks, Beth,” she said. “First I . . . want to write to my brother.”
At home there had been no paper and no pen.
“At our church Reverend prays for the soldiers at every service,” said Beth. “They’re fighting in Abyssinia now, I think.”
“Yes,” said Pérsomi, carefully tearing a page from the middle of her math book, “that’s where my big brother is.”
Beth was the only one at the school she could tell. To everyone else the Red Tabs were traitors, fighting for the enemy.
She unscrewed the inkpot, dipped her pen, and began to write.
22 APRIL 1941
Dear Gerbrand,
It’s the second school term now and I’m back at the dormitory. I find high school
She shouldn’t have written Dear Gerbrand. He wouldn’t like it. But she couldn’t very well put a line through it and write Hello. What would that look like? And she couldn’t afford to tear another page from her book.
So she carried on.
very nice. I am good at the schoolwork and also at athletics, I was the junior Victrix Ludorum and at the Potties meeting I was named best junior female athlete.
She worried she was boasting. But Gerbrand was the only one who would understand, and she was dying to tell him.
The athletics season is over now, but the teacher said I should come and play hockey, she will find me a stick and boots.
The boy who sits next to me in class is Reinier de Vos. He says you were a very good rugby player. His sister Annabel was in your class.
I have a very nice roommate, Beth Murray is her name. She brought me a Bible, because she’s from a mission station. I’m glad, now I have a Bible as well.
Everyone is fine at home, Ma and Hannapat and Sissie. You know about Lewies Pieterse, I wrote to you about him. It’s much better now that he’s gone.
I think Ma misses Gertjie and Baby. And you, especially, I know she does.
Gerbrand, I really want to know why you enlisted. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I just want to know why. There’s no one here who can tell me, so I’m asking you. Please don’t take it the wrong way, I just want to know. So that I can understand.
In the vacation I saw Boelie and De Wet. They slaughtered a cow. And I saw Klara and Oom Freddie’s daughter, Christine, too. They send their best wishes.
We also have a lot of mosquitoes here, but soon it will be winter and then they’ll be gone.
She couldn’t think of anything else to write. She wished she could tell him to come home, but he wouldn’t like it. So she ended the letter.
Best wishes.
Your sister,
Pérsomi
“You’ve never watched a movie?” Reinier asked her one Wednesday, astounded. “Everyone has been to the bioscope.”
“Not me,” she answered. “And I won’t get there anytime soon, because it costs money and that’s something I don’t have.”
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I’ll give you money, then you can go, on Saturday evening.”
“I won’t take your money, Reinier, and you’d know that, if you knew me at all.”
“Must you always be so pigheaded? I suppose I’ll have to ask you on a date then. We can’t let you go through life unbioscoped.”
“Date?”
“Ask you to go with me. Whatever.”
So that Saturday she stood in front of the town hall with the rest of the dormitory girls, dressed in their school uniforms.
“It’s so stupid that we have to wear our uniforms to bioscope,” said Irene somewhere behind her. “The town children wear day clothes. I can’t believe we boarders have to wear our jumpers!”
Pérsomi spotted Reinier at the door, waving their tickets in the air. She joined him.
“Let’s get good seats at the front,” he said. “The kids who want to make out sit at the back.”
“I don’t want to make out!” said Pérsomi.
Reinier laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t even try.”
The hall was dimly lit, the curtains drawn. A white screen had been erected against the heavy dark-blue velvet stage curtains.
“The movie is The Wizard of Oz,” said Reinier. “But first there’s a Western, a serial. There’s a new episode every month. And then there’s
African Mirror, the news program.”
Pérsomi sat quite still, but excitement made her entire body tingle. She wondered if Gerbrand had ever seen a movie.
The wonders of modern technology unfolded in front of her eyes. She gazed at the screen, enchanted. She watched the cowboys on their horses, heard them shoot, heard the girl in her beautiful dress scream, saw the wagon tumbling over the cliff, the wheels still turning.
“To be continued” appeared on the screen.
“Oh, no!” said Pérsomi. How was she ever going to find out whether the poor girl survived the accident?
“She’ll live,” Reinier assured her. He went to the movies nearly every Saturday, he would know.
There was the sound of trumpets from the screen. African Mirror . . . The words grew bigger and bigger.
Images of the war on a distant continent came to the bushveld, stirring the hearts of the people who saw what was happening.
The flat voice of the commentator went on and on, as if the news he was reading was nothing special. “On May the tenth the British House of Commons suffered damage during an air strike,” he said. The image of a ruined building, once part of the Houses of Parliament, flashed on the screen.
“On May the twentieth Germany invaded Crete,” said the commentator. Planes dived low over buildings, dropping bombs on their targets. Ships steamed out of a bombed harbor. “Britain is withdrawing from Crete,” said the voice.
Pérsomi sat riveted, watching, her hands pressed to her cheeks.
But Gerbrand wasn’t in Europe, he was in East Africa.
Then the scene shifted to a different part of the world. “On May the nineteenth the Duke of Aosta with five thousand men surrendered to Brigadier Dan Pienaar at Amba Alagi.”
Pérsomi leaned forward. That was where Gerbrand was. Maybe she would catch a glimpse of him. But all the soldiers looked the same in their uniforms.
“South African soldiers are being sent to North Africa.” Pérsomi watched as rows and rows of soldiers boarded a warship, cheerily waving at the cameras, their big bags slung over their shoulders.