Child of the River

by Irma Joubert

  Oom Attie was prickly and wheezed. “Your Auntie Sis knew,” he sighed. “She hasn’t slept for months. She saw the coffins. This thing will be the end of your auntie.”

  Hannapat bawled with snot and tears. “I heard yesterday, at school,” she moaned. “I’ve been crying all the time, I couldn’t even sleep.”

  She turned back to her ma. Her ma’s face was empty.

  School consisted of uniformed arms and legs and eyes.

  “Shame, Pérsomi,” and they clicked their tongues. “We’ll pray for you, d’you hear?”

  “What happened, Pérsomi?” they asked.

  “When are you expecting the body, Pérsomi? I don’t suppose you’ll be able to see him.”

  Sometimes she heard Red Tab. Sometimes renegade or Khaki lover.

  She didn’t listen. She breathed and ate and did her schoolwork.

  “Pérsomi, tell me about him,” said Beth, her eyes gentle.

  Pérsomi shook her head.

  “Well, sit here on my bed, and I’ll pray for you,” said Beth.

  “Pérsomi, I’m really very sorry about your brother,” Reinier said with serious eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said and bent over her work.

  “Pérsomi, you and your family are in our thoughts,” said Mr. Nienaber beside her desk. “If there’s anything we can do, if we can help in any way, please tell me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. She looked down, didn’t want to see any more eyes.

  Three days later everyone had forgotten. They no longer looked at her. They did their math and ate their sandwiches and laughed.

  She did her math. “The teacher is focusing on trigonometry. I’ll bet we’ll get loads of questions on it in the exam,” Reinier whispered.

  She nodded.

  She ate her sandwiches. “I know I shouldn’t eat so much bread,” sighed Beth, “but I’m so hungry!”

  Pérsomi nodded again.

  Gerbrand had been the breadwinner in their home.

  The bread stuck in her throat.

  On Friday Mr. Nienaber asked her, “Can you watch the kids tomorrow evening? My wife and I would like . . . Oh wait, you’re probably going home for the weekend.”

  Home?

  “I’ll look after the children, sir,” she said.

  The days and the weeks and the minutes dropped into a black hole. If she worked hard enough, ran far enough, showered quickly enough, and washed her clothes daily, she didn’t hear the desperate cries of the minutes and the seconds.

  But the night became a menace.

  At the bottom of the darkness lay a pain that gripped her, a loneliness that kept her chained to the bottom. Because at night the memories came unbidden. And with the memories came the longing, harsher every time, and more painful.

  She had never hurt so much, or been so alone.

  “Fallen on the battlefield, laid down his life in the service of his people,” the local paper said. She cut out the small article and put it in her Bible. Maybe she would open the Bible again one day.

  Each dark night the treacherous thought returned: Gerbrand was dead. Her big brother. And the family’s sole breadwinner.

  She did not want to attend the funeral with Ma, who had still not cried, and Hannapat, who hadn’t stopped. But she did go home.

  The night before they brought him back there was a half moon, but the sky was cloudless, the stars bright. She walked slowly to her mountain, to her cave. She knew the way, knew every stone and every tuft of grass and every crevice.

  She had known the cold would come. The cold night was more bearable than the cold fire burning her up from the inside, freezing her.

  She rolled into a ball. Nothing eased the black pain that was everywhere. The broken moon limped through the dark sky.

  The morning of November 12, 1942, the sun rose as it had done for millions of years.

  The blinding pain was back in a flash.

  She got up, she walked all the way down to the fountain, she drank water, she washed her face. She walked aimlessly back to the cave.

  Much later she moved to a place where she could see the Big House. There was a bustle around the kraal. Smoke rose from the chimney. The Fouries would be having coffee at the kitchen table, eating those long rusks Irene’s ouma baked in the outside oven. Everyone had returned for Gerbrand’s funeral.

  “Mr. Fourie has put chairs in the barn, and a table in front for the minister,” Hannapat had said when Pérsomi arrived yesterday. “Aunt Lulu sent us this pudding.”

  “Oom Freddie gave us this chicken,” her ma had said. “Freddie le Roux is a good man.”

  But in the end only Hannapat had eaten some of the chicken and the pudding.

  When the sun had climbed a quarter of its way up the sky, Pérsomi saw a dust trail. A khaki-colored truck labored along the farm road to the Big House. She knew: it was the soldiers who had brought Gerbrand home. Someone pointed the driver toward the barn.

  Her throat began to burn, she kept swallowing. She drew her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, she lowered her head onto her knees, she kept her eyes closed.

  She couldn’t watch. Her heart ached too much.

  A while later she opened her eyes.

  The truck was parked at the barn. The yard was dead quiet, nothing was alive.

  She saw Boelie coming from a distance. He nearly walked past her to the cave, but then he saw her.

  She looked away. She didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” he said when he reached her.

  “Hello, Boelie,” she said.

  He nodded. “I was released from the camp last week,” he said.

  “Oh, I didn’t know,” she said.

  He was staring out over the farm.

  “Would you like to sit?” she asked.

  He looked at her. His eyes were dark, unreadable. He sat down on the rocks beside her.

  “The . . . people came,” she said.

  Boelie nodded.

  There was a long silence before he said: “Thanks for writing.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “And . . . I’m sorry about Gerbrand.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  There was still no movement in the yard below, no sound in the veld.

  A lizard moved across the rocky ledge, its head raised high. “He’ll have the fright of his life when he notices us,” Boelie said softly.

  The lizard scurried away, startled.

  “Are you glad to be home?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said.

  She saw the tension in his clasped hands, in his averted gaze. “It must have been terrible for you,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  It was an easy silence, calm. For the first time in weeks she experienced a kind of peace. Her pain was no less intense, but her body felt softer, the way it felt when she was very, very tired.

  Another half hour passed, maybe an hour. Then the yard below came to life. People emerged from the barn, the truck moved slowly backward.

  Pérsomi felt the iron fist grip her again. The truck would follow the bumpy path through the orange trees down to the river. They would have to cross the Pontenilo and continue up the ridge on foot.

  The grave had been waiting a short distance from the bywoner house since the previous day, open and raw.

  The truck moved slowly until she could no longer see it. “Let’s sit where you can watch,” said Boelie.

  “I . . . don’t want to watch,” she said.

  “Let’s move anyway. You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”

  He got up and walked down to the left. He sat down in the thin shade of a wild plum.

  After a while she followed. “Sit,” he said.

  She remained on her feet. From there they could see the river. And the bywoner house on the barren ridge. “Why aren’t you down there?” she asked.

  He paused before he answered
. “Those are Red Tabs, Pers.”

  She nodded and sat down beside him.

  People appeared at the river. It was too far to make out who they were.

  Six soldiers lifted the coffin from the back of the truck. They carried it on their shoulders. At the river they lowered the coffin and carried it between them over the rocks. Then they put it back on their shoulders and carried it up the hill.

  A small procession followed slowly—a handful of people who had come this sweltering summer’s day to bury Gerbrand Pieterse on the barren ridge next to his family home.

  The small group stood motionless around the grave for a long time.

  After a while a soldier brought an instrument to his lips. Through the silence of the veld Pérsomi heard the thin sounds of the trumpet. She began to shiver, her entire body trembling as if she were cold. Boelie put his arm around her shoulders.

  The sounds of the trumpet died down.

  The six soldiers raised their rifles. She saw the rifles jerk as they fired the ceremonial salute. The shots reverberated through the languid silence of the bushveld.

  She jumped when the sound reached her. Her body jerked, the hard cocoon around her heart burst apart, her heart bled out into her body, filled her entirely with mournful blood.

  Boelie’s arm tightened around her shoulder.

  The sun blazed down. She was shivering from head to toe.

  Boelie said nothing. He stared at the ground and kept his arm around her.

  They sat without moving until long after it was all over, until the grave was filled, until everyone was gone and her ma had disappeared into the house alone.

  Boelie lowered his arm and leaned back. “It’s over, Pérsomi,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. She felt utterly empty, exhausted. The lump in her chest was still pushing up into her throat.

  He dug into his pocket and said, “Here, take this, I brought you a rusk. Let’s go to the fountain, I’m thirsty. It’s bloody hot, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s very hot,” she said, getting up slowly.

  “Aren’t you going back home?” Boelie asked when the sun began to set.

  “No,” Pérsomi said.

  “You’ll have to go home in the end,” he said.

  “Tomorrow, not today,” she said. “Aren’t you going home, Boelie?”

  “No,” he said.

  There’s a time after sunset and before the light has gone when the world holds its breath for the arrival of the stars.

  Boelie and Pérsomi lay back, gazing up at the night sky.

  The familiar ache began to fill the emptiness in her heart.

  “Why are you staying?” she asked.

  “I need time,” he said, “and quiet.”

  After a while he said, “I didn’t mean I don’t want you to talk. Your words are quiet. You can talk if you want.”

  “I don’t really want to,” she said.

  The stars became brighter. “You can almost touch the stars,” she said. Maybe that’s where Gerbrand was now.

  Much later she said, “Tobruk is a place with small white flat-roofed houses, all shot to pieces, Gerbrand wrote in July. And the harbor is full of oil from the sunken ships.”

  Sometime during the night Boelie said, “I’m not angry with Gerbrand, Pers, I just want you to know. Gerbrand was my friend, he always was, will always be.”

  She nodded in the darkness. “You’re angry with the government,” she said, “for what they did to our Afrikaner boys.”

  “Yes. You understand.”

  Somewhere high up in the cliffs a baby baboon screamed. The rest of the troop barked, upset about the nocturnal disturbance. “They’re a rowdy lot,” said Boelie.

  “Gerbrand once wrote that he often thinks of you in that camp,” she said. “He said they must rather . . . shoot him before they keep him captive behind barbed wire.” She felt the pain flooding her again, growing, becoming wider and thicker. “It’s just so . . . final,” she said.

  Suddenly the pain intensified, and she put up a strong barricade against it. She had to think of something else. “What will you do now?” she asked.

  “I hope to build a dam on the Pontenilo. For the dry seasons. If I can convince my dad to part with the money,” he said. “I’m not allowed to leave the farm anyway. I’ll have to do something to stop myself from going crazy. Actually the plans for the dam are ready. I worked on them at camp. But I’ll have to get an expert blaster to excavate the cliffs in places. Yesterday when I went to take a look at the terrain . . .”

  “Pérsomi?”

  The barricade burst as if it had been blown apart with dynamite. Rubble shot up in the air. She felt the impact, felt her body being ripped apart. She heard the sobs erupt, take over uncontrollably.

  Somewhere during this eternity she felt Boelie’s strong arms around her. She turned and clung to him.

  Much later there were no more tears left, just random sobs sporadically finding their way out from somewhere deep inside.

  “How do you feel now?” he asked.

  “Empty,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  They sat in easy silence for a long time. “What are you saddest about?” he asked.

  “There are so many things I still wanted to ask Gerbrand,” she said quietly. “He was my . . . big brother.”

  “Such as? Ask me if you like, I’m a big brother, too,” he said.

  “Such as”—she hesitated a moment—“who my real father is.”

  “That I can’t answer,” he said. “Ask your mother.”

  “She refuses to say. But Gerbrand was old enough. He might have remembered who called on my ma at the time.”

  “Hmm.” Silence. “What else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What else did you want to ask Gerbrand?”

  “I can’t remember.” Pain began to seep back. “I wanted to go to Joburg with him next year,” she said. “He wanted to learn to fly planes, but he had to pass matric first.”

  Boelie thought for a while before he asked, “Why did you want to go to Johannesburg?”

  “To find a job,” she muttered past the lump in her throat.

  The sobs began to tear through her again. They came from somewhere very, very deep. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I really . . . never . . . cry.”

  “It’s okay, Pérsomi,” he comforted her clumsily and put his arm around her again. “It’s okay, Pers.”

  After a while she calmed down, though an occasional shudder still passed through her body. Boelie raised his hand. With one finger he pushed a strand of hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. Then he cupped his hand around her head and stroked her hair. “It’s okay, Pers, it’s okay,” he said and kept stroking.

  After a time he said, “You’re not going to Joburg, you’re going to write matric here at the town school.”

  She shook her head, exhausted.

  “You are a top achiever and an excellent athlete. You can definitely get a grant.”

  Exhaustion almost paralyzed her. “We don’t even have food at home.”

  “Your mother will get Gerbrand’s army pension.”

  She kept shaking her head.

  “But it won’t be much,” he said.

  She nodded mechanically. Wearily.

  “Pérsomi, I promise we’ll think of something. I understand, I truly understand. But I promise you, next year you’ll be in Form IV, and the year after that you’ll be writing matric at our local school.”

  Exhaustion took over. But she believed him. She believed him the way she had always believed her big brother.

  “I have to report at the police station before ten this morning,” Boelie said when they had quenched their thirst at the fountain. The sun was blazing down from a cloudless sky.

  “Then you’d better go,” she said.

  “Will you be okay?”

  She looked up into his dark eyes. “Yes, Boelie. I�
��ll be okay.”

  PART II

  EIGHT

  DECEMBER 1944

  “OUR RESULTS WON’T BE OUT UNTIL THE DAY AFTER NEW Year,” Pérsomi said to Yusuf in his grandfather’s store. “I’ve come to say good-bye. I don’t suppose I’ll be in town anytime soon again.”

  “In that case, let me make some tea,” said Yusuf, leading her to the kitchen. “What did you think of your last paper?”

  “English essays? How hard can it be?”

  “Hmm. What time is De Wet fetching you?” He took two mugs from the shelf.

  “Boelie is fetching me. He and . . . his friend have to buy materials for the dam they’re building.”

  “You speak of Antonio,” Yusuf asked cautiously.

  Pérsomi set her lips in a thin line.

  “Have you made peace with the Italian?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “and I never will.”

  “You don’t know that it was an Italian who shot your brother,” he said, pouring milk into a saucepan, his back turned to her.

  “Please don’t start with that again,” she said. “Why an Italian prisoner of war should be stationed on the farm where I live I’ll never understand. And please don’t make my tea with boiled milk, and hold back on the sugar.”

  “You can’t carry so much bitterness inside you, Pérsomi.”

  “I don’t like sweet—”

  “I’m not talking about the tea. I felt the same toward the Germans after my brother was killed. But war is war and our brothers knew what they were getting themselves into.”

  “I’ll leave if you don’t stop lecturing.” She rose to her feet.

  “Sit,” he said. “Here’s your tea, made with water, not milk, and only half a teaspoon of sugar.”

  She took the cup. “When do you have to be at Wits?” she asked, referring to the research university he would attend in Johannesburg.

  “The end of January,” he said. “Just think, in a few years’ time you’ll be addressing me as Dr. Ismail and I’ll call you the Honorable Judge Pieterse.”

  Pérsomi laughed. “I’m going to be a lawyer, Yusuf, not a judge! But let’s drink to our futures anyway.”

  Yusuf got to his feet and raised his tin mug. “To Counselor Pérsomi and Dr. Yusuf!”