by Andre Brink
“Drink” says the old woman, holding a skin bag to her mouth. She is sickened by the smell, the sweet and sour of curds and honey; but too exhausted to resist she acquiesces dumbly. Cool and thick it slithers down her throat. But her stomach revolts. There is a fire burning in her guts.
The worst should have been over by now, but it seems to be only a beginning. They’re trying to poison me, she thinks. Because I’m a stranger, and they don’t trust me: I’m white. But why don’t you choose stronger poison, why didn’t you kill me swiftly and effectively? Can I help it that I’m white?
Too white for the truth. Those were his words. How does he know? A slave! He thinks lies and deceit are good enough for me. Does one really trek all this way in search of a lie? It's always different from what one expects. Don’t torture me any more. You and the likes of you are stretched out on the rack in front of the Castle: it's clear-cut and easy for you. There are other forms of suffering, unending. But perhaps it leads to the same end for all of us. Ultimately we’re all broken. It's this land: my mother knew it long before me. She should know, she has buried two children. Her two sons. And I remained, the girl, the lesser, the least, the not-a-son, the not-what-I-wanted. A woman in the interior, have you ever heard of such madness? She, too, was once young and undaunted; she too thought she’d conquer the world. That's what he said. She gave up everything she had, her family, Batavia, comfort, class, to marry a man from the Cape. Leaving France to settle among savages; but free. To cling to you, one flesh. Is that all? I can do it better with my own hand! Now strike me with madness if you wish. Poor young Van Zyl, he desired me. That, suddenly, made you jealous and aggressive: now he's dead. Now we’re all dead. Except for old Uncle Jacobs in the Cape, he may still be waiting. “Just grow up nicely, my child. If no one else wants you, your old uncle will look after you.” Playing chess with Father under the mulberry trees, for hours on end. “Let me teach you, Elisabeth, we’ll give your Pa a thrashing.” Touching, when no one sees, the inside of my thigh under the dress; fingers stroking upward, furtively. Poor old Uncle Jacobs, who caused me to lie awake at night, sinful and shaking with fear—now I’m missing even you. There's no sin left here: God hasn’t come all the way with us. Somewhere along the road, I presume, he turned back to the Cape. The bleak new church, the house parties, the slaves serving almonds and figs: the sweetest ones, the purply red ones, are brought from Robben Island. Do try them, Mr. Larsson. And the sweetest water is drawn from the prisoners’ well. Strange, if you think about it: to find sweet water if you dig a hole on an island. Why not salt, with all that sea around? I was there once, remember, with my father. It's the best view, by far, of the Mountain. I almost envied the prisoners.
One has the same view entering the bay from Patria. A mountain like a psalm, I shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Provided you stay this side of the Hottentot's Holland range, it's so much safer. For a woman. Never to be able to do what you really want, because you’re a woman; never to be allowed to become what you desire, because you’re a woman. Like those dwarf-trees imported by the Governor. They too, I’m sure, would have wanted to grow tall and broad for nests and birds, giving shade to people and animals below: but they’re forced to remain small and stunted, hideous little pretty trees for useless ornaments on window-sills or overmantels. But this once I refuse to obey them, I shall break free. This once I’ll trek into my own wilderness.
So in the end I really was nothing but a curious little mammal to be noted in your diary. You must have had some satisfaction finding a name for me. Naming, you said, didn’t you, was your way of possessing a part of the earth.
You thought I was a barrel or a wagon or a cow you could possess? Two wagons, five boxes, two frying pans, sixteen guns, nine Hottentots, one woman. How many rixdollars does that amount to? And will the Company ever compensate you for the loss? They’re so damned stingy, sir.
Perhaps it would have been easier to be possessed after all. A possession needn’t worry about eating or drinking, about tomorrow, or happiness, or love, or faith. Even a slave is given all he requires, food and stripes at the appointed times. So why couldn’t I yield myself? What is there in me which refuses to be possessed by another? Here in this wilderness without end, I am alone. Even if I have to die: no rest in peace; unmourned. Just a heap of stones on the plain. Sooner or later the jackals and hyenas will dig you out and devour whatever can be torn off you.
A skeleton is what one should be allowed to be, clean and bare, bones. Discovering it in the veld you can’t even tell whether it was man or woman. It's pure bone-being; human thing. No wonder Eve was created from a rib. There's more bone to us, we are more indestructible. He is all bloody, dust unto dust. Who possesses whom? You the earth, or the earth you? Phoenicopterus ruber, a species of grallie, if I remember well: I’ve never had—how did you put it?—a faculty for scientific understanding.
The old woman returns with curds and with ghom, squatting beside her and mumbling words Elisabeth does not understand: tkhoe, kamgon, tao-b, gomma. Passive, she listens, unable to grasp what is happening. When, once, she dares to speak, the old woman only laughs, baring her toothless gums, and goes away. Behind her, in the doorway, stands the tall shadow of a man. He remains for a while. But when she tries to push herself up on her elbows, she finds he's gone.
You, dark man, death or life: who and what are you? You with the terrible truth of your lies, you who have bedecked yourself, lean and strong, with my husband's outlandish clothes—what are you doing here with me? Why do I fear you? I used to order the slaves in our house without reflecting on it; when I bathed in the mountain stream, the slaves kept watch. I wouldn’t even have minded if they’d seen me without clothes; the dogs and cats of the household staring.
I’m afraid of you. All right, in this darkness I’m prepared to admit it. The only way to control you is to command you. To be the white Cape woman whom I loathe. Fear is more imperative than one's little dignity. But why should I fear you? I’m not afraid that you’ll violate me—you’ve had more than enough opportunity for doing that, it's too obvious, too ridiculously easy. What else? That you dare look at me without averting your eyes when I look back? That you’re so silent? But not with the impertinence of a slave who can be flogged to teach him his rightful place. What is your place? Have you any place—or do you come and go like the wind?
You said we were going to the sea, “your” sea, and I’m following meekly. Obeying like a dog, forced back into womanness. Why don’t you abandon me? Why don’t you let me die peacefully on my own? Let me be, I’m tired. I do not want to think any more.
When she opens her eyes again the old woman is back in the hut with her. It takes some time before she realizes that her nurse is wearing one of her dresses, the yellow one. It's obvious that she didn’t know how to put it on, so she resolved the problem by tying it round her waist with an ox-tail.
“It's mine,” complains Elisabeth. “Mine. Give it to me.”
The old woman grins with glee.
She tries to sit up and take it back; she begins to cry. You have no right to take everything from me. But a new attack of fever sweeps through her, shaking her body; followed by a coldness which makes her teeth chatter. The old crone goes out, returning with a couple of younger helpers who pile up some twigs and branches on the floor and set them alight with a glowing stick brought in by another attendant. The sudden bright flame of paper burning. Smoke fills the hut and swirls round the women, obscuring them.
Paper? Once again she raises herself and crawls closer, rescuing a crumpled piece from the fire, peering at it with painful eyes. It's a fragment of the map.
They cannot understand what she is saying and reply by laughing uproariously and nodding with great conviction. The old woman mutters something which sounds like kom-hi and kz”oa; then they all file out again, Elisabeth remains behind, restored to silence, her eyes tearful of smoke.
If I can crawl up to the fire I may be able to set the hut alight. It s
hould burn easily. Then it will be all over. I can’t go on. This must be the end, they can’t do this to me.
But she doesn’t move. She is too tired even to make an effort. And frightened; and cowardly.
The little old man with his watery red eyes and heavy spectacles, in his shack assembled from bits of wreckage on the beach. Old Mr. Roloff and his innumerable maps under the yellow lamp. But we’re not allowed to take one with us: we’ll have to draw our own as we go on, mile after painstaking mile. A yellow lantern swinging through my days. You sit there entering details on your map, compiling the catalogue of the completed day, writing in your journal. Elisabeth very demanding last night. You didn’t know I was reading it behind your back, did you? Women are such treacherous creatures: to this you have degraded me. And for that, I think, I can’t forgive you.
Swinging, swinging, slowly. Is it the motion of the wagon which causes it to move like that, or the turning of the earth? Watch out, it's buckling, it may throw us off. Turn down the flame, it's smoking, I’m choking, one can’t go on like this. Why doesn’t he come to help me? He's gone off long ago, of course. I was a burden to him, that's all, on his way to the sea. He must have arrived there by now. Perhaps he has discarded my husband's stupid clothes, wandering naked on the beach, brown among the brown rocks, diving into the water. If he looks up, there’ll be a buck staring at him. He’ll recognize the little doe with her enormous eyes: the long hair, tender breasts, the swollen belly. And he’ll wade out, not caring about the doe watching him; large and strong, and stiff as a bull. Then they’ll set their dogs on the bull. He’ll toss them up, sending them flying like dirty rags. But in the end, in the end they’ll get him. They’ll grab him by the nose and pull him down and tear him to pieces while he's still alive. One is always betrayed.
They’re dancing outside, it must be dark. Is there a moon? She can hear the clapping of their hands, their feet stamping on the ground; the ghoera and the wailing flutes; through her throbbing head reverberates the beat of tkoi-tkoi and of sticks. In Amsterdam there was chamber music, clavichord, and the great booming of the organ in the Zuiderkerk; and carillons. The controlled ecstasy of the modern composers, Mr. Bach in Germany; the Italians Vivaldi and Scarlatti. This is civilization, says Mother, contented and with great conviction; for the first time since I’ve known her she has no ailment. This is civilization, it's as predictably beautiful as the gables of Amsterdam—oh, those frolicking red children in the snow, like Breughel—it's proper and tidy, like Steen and Vermeer. I don’t like Rembrandt so much, she says, he's too dark, too brooding, it makes one feel uneasy. Oh, Elisabeth, if you had any regard for your mother, you would marry a good Dutch merchant and settle here.
Let's go to the gypsy woman in the Kalverstraat, they say she knows everything. She merely glances at your palm before she translates: a dark man—a son—a long voyage.
Forget about that long voyage. Why return to the godforsaken Cape? But it's not godforsaken, Mother, it's very religious. No allocated seat in the Groote Kerk is ever empty on a Sunday; even a bullfight is opened with a prayer. It's only beyond those mountains that the heathen world begins, banished into oblivion.
Last night I dreamt I saw God. Then I dreamt he spoke to me. And then I dreamt I was dreaming. Did I accuse him of taking away my child? I’m sorry, I was quite wrong. (Forgive me, I’m only a woman. You made me one.) He had nothing at all to do with it. He simply withdrew himself. It's not a cruel land, just apathetic. It takes from you what is redundant: wagon and oxen, guide and husband and child, camp and shelter, conversation, help, imagined security, preparation and presumption, clothes. Whittling you down to yourself. I’m tired. Let me sleep.
When she wakes up her head feels cleared for the first time; and he is standing in the doorway. In her sleep she has thrown off the animal skins; now she hastily pulls them up to her chin again.
“What do you want?” she asks, on her guard.
“Are you still ill?”
“I thought you’d gone off to the sea already.”
“I came every day,” he says. “But you were all confused. I thought you were going to die.”
“It would have saved you a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it? I didn’t mean to be such a nuisance.”
He shrugs, withdrawn into silence.
“For how long have I been here?”
“A fortnight.”
“I’m still too weak to ride an ox.”
“Get well first.”
“Why don’t you go to the sea on your own?” she asks in weary protest. “If you run into people, you can tell them I’m waiting here.”
“You don’t even understand the language,” he says impatiently.
She lies still for a while. Then, complaining: “They stole my clothes.”
“No. They were only curious to see what you had. I gave them a few things you don’t need.”
“The map!”
He grins derisively, but says nothing.
After a time he asks: “Is there anything you need?”
She shakes her head.
“Then I must go. They don’t like men visiting a sick woman.”
Much later the old crone returns. For the first time Elisabeth willingly accepts the curds and honey. The old woman clicks with satisfaction and goes out with the calabash, her empty dugs swinging. And the next morning a number of young girls come round to wash her and clean the hut. They chatter and laugh without a moment's rest, but she doesn’t understand a word.
“Bring my clothes,” she orders at last.
The girls giggle uncomprehendingly.
“Clothes,” says Elisabeth, louder and more deliberately, but they still do not understand. Irritable, she sits up and makes explaining gestures to her body: I want to cover myself, I’m naked, bring me…
It causes great mirth among them, and they laugh and whisper together before one girl is sent out with a great amount of nudging and gesticulation. After a while she returns with Hottentot clothing.
“I want my own!” demands Elisabeth angrily.
But they only laugh at her and manage to pull her to her feet. For a moment she tries to resist; then, tired by the effort, she resigns herself to whatever they want to do to her. Soon, in fact, she begins to be affected by their glee, smiling back at them, almost relieved by their silliness after all these days of illness and isolation. With a curious voluptuousness, as if she were back in her own room in the Cape surrounded by mirrors and slaves, she abandons herself to their hands. Of what concern are they to her? They’re servile and comical, tying a few strings of beads round her neck and her waist, and rushes round her knees, fitting a copper ring round one ankle.
The young girl who has brought the clothes and taken the lead laughs with uncontrollable joy, her magnificent white teeth sparkling. She's very young, quite lovely, with the small firm breasts of bare nubility. Once, without warning, impish and impudent, she puts out a hand and touches Elisabeth's pubic hair, pointing, laughing. Elisabeth frowns, not understanding, defensive.
Unexpectedly, while the others collapse in smothered laughter, the girl removes her own minuscule pinafore and takes up position directly in front of Elisabeth, her legs widespread, her young pointed hips thrust forward, forcing her to look at the peculiarly elongated inner lips protruding from her almost hairless cleft and hanging down in long pink lobes, like the wattles of a turkey.
Surprised by the girl's unabashedness and her own frank curiosity, for one brief moment woman confronting woman in total innocence, Elisabeth stares at the girl. Look: this is me. This is the most intimate thing of myself I can show you. It's sweet and funny, isn’t it? What about yourself ? Once again the girl puts out her hand to touch her mound. Immediately the spell is broken, the frankness gone. Blushing, Elisabeth turns her head away as if she is the one to be ashamed, experiencing again something of the gaze of the small doe. Hurriedly, almost in anger, she undoes the beads and rushes and removes the copper ring, and hands them back.
“
I want my own clothes,” she demands. “Bring me my dress.”
Still they fail to understand; giggling and whispering and nudging one another, their small breasts bobbing, glistening with grease.
“My dress.” She explains with emphatic gestures.
They confer with their backs to her, glancing over their shoulders, controlling their mirth. At long last some of them leave the hut, returning, soon after, much to her amazement, with the dress she wore when she arrived: crumpled, but obviously washed and dried in the sun. With a haste she herself finds inexplicable she grabs it from their hands and puts it on, ties up the bodice and arranges the fichu. The girls watch her, now silent with curiosity, before thronging out back into the sun. She tries to comb her matted hair with her fingers. But soon she finds the effort too much and lies down again, half propped up against the back wall so that she can look out through the oval doorway, past the cluster of trees to the distant darting movements of children and goats in the village.
I’m recovering, she thinks. I thought I would die, but I am recovering. At home, if Mother felt dizzy, there was always someone at hand to sponge her temples with vinegar water or to offer her sel de corne de cerf. But here there hasn’t been anything apart from the revolting stuff in the old hag's calabash. And yet I’m recovering. I’ll be able to go on. I, alone. For the child has died.
The night the Bushmen came. The first they knew about it was when the dogs began to bark, and the wailing yelp when an arrow struck one. The cattle milling round in consternation, the Hottentots cursing and jostling each other in their scramble to hide under the wagons. Sonkwas! Sonkwas! Sonkwas! Sonkwas! Koetsri! Koetsri!
Larsson fired a shot into the air. By that time the cattle had already stampeded into the dark, surrounded by the Bushmen, with their shrill calls, like birds of prey. In the confusion he grabbed a gun and jumped on a horse to gallop after the marauders, accompanied by the two Hottentot foremen, Kaptein and Booi, the latter still with his arm swathed in heavy bandages. Their shots thundered in the night; the sounds of the cattle grew silent. After an hour or more the men returned. The Bushmen had disappeared; but they’d managed to save ten of the oxen. The trek could still go on.