David's Story

by Zoe Wicomb

  She would have liked to hear about that missionary forebear. About the stories from faraway places told to the child in a foreign tongue. But not a word did Andrew say about him, not a syllable of French could be prised from his tongue, just as if, she thought, there had never been a laughing child dandled on the knee of old Eduard. A pity, for that would surely have stopped him from ranting about foreigners. She knew, of course, nothing of the anachronism, of the century lost between Eduard’s arrival and Andrew’s birth. (Nor could she have known that the celebrated writer Mrs. Sarah Gertrude Millin, then still stumbling about in bulky nappies, would one day turn Eduard into a lily-livered Englishman lost in filth and apathy, and stunned into silence by his own motley brood—in other words, an ancestor that Andrew would later completely disown.)

  Not only will the land be restored to us, but the charlatans and hypocrites will be exposed, he shouted, as if she had not spoken. Take the Clydesdale farm or the claim of poor old Johannes Kok. Who would have thought that a magistrate would stoop to such low tricks, swindling a blind man so carelessly, so contemptuously? As if it mattered not in the least that the rest of us can see and know of their dishonesty. If it takes my life, I swear by the God of justice that our poor will once again swing their hoes and lift their heads with pride. And we will have our Forty Years’ Money. It was a disgraceful agreement with the Koks, a pittance for driving us out of Griqualand West, and now, predictably, they won’t honour it.

  She understood little of what Andrew said; she had never before heard anyone speak like a book. Besides, he never gave her any details, and since she was not allowed to ask she learnt little of his clandestine activities.

  It is safer that way, he said. These things are too complicated for women. Which sounded to her much like the Reverend Dower’s speech, but she knew better than to say that. So he did not explain about the discovery of the deed of sale which was supposedly signed a good couple of years after the owner’s death. How would they get themselves out of that fraud? No, there was no other way, he frowned, tapping the leather pouch he had taken to carrying with him at all times, if demanding justice is about agitation then yes, I am the Great Griqua Agitator. And yes, I am working with the chiefs of the Bhaca and the Hlangweni; we will fight together to restore the land to the Griquas and the natives. Our land will be purged of these white thieves and the rinderpest they have brought to kill off our livestock.

  Thus he resigned his partnership in the wagon-making business and preached anew the virtues of frugality, for he knew instinctively of the extravagance of women, of their frivolity. Andrew would even have had her do her own housework, both for her own good and as an example to the people, but the very people would not see their lady stoop to a scrubbing brush. It was they who sent Siena, collected a wage for her, so that a humbled Andrew in turn insisted on employing her himself. Rachael supposed that the people paid their meagre dues as always, but certainly housekeeping became a business of juggling with copper coins.

  Rachael’s moment of high adventure started as a rude disturbance in her sleep. Andrew had been in conference for most of the night with his right-hand men, Lodewyk Kok and George Abrahams, and when finally, in the early hours of the morning, he came to bed, he sighed and fidgeted so horribly that she woke up. Resentfully, she stroked his fevered brow while he grunted and ground his teeth, until at last he sat up and, being in touch with another world, spoke in a strange monotone, punctuated with long silences that caught her nodding with sleep: There is a hand sliding across a sheet of paper. It is the chief magistrate with a warrant for my arrest.

  He drew away peevishly, ungratefully, she thought, from her own soothing hand. Now Andrew don’t fret, she said firmly. The Griqua chief couldn’t possibly go to prison. They wouldn’t dare—

  It can’t be helped, he interrupted. Such things will happen in the quest for justice. Shu-ut, Rachael, shu-ut, I am troubled—blessed or burdened with vision. I see three dark figures … they move about furtively … thieves in the night … I can’t tell. Then, bolting out of bed, he whispered, I do not know the third, but there, unmistakably, are Lodewyk and Abrahams, their plotting heads bent with shame. Don’t think that Judas is not ashamed from the start; from well before that money is mentioned, before he has even agreed to the act of betrayal, he suffers the shame of knowing his own weakness.

  With no man in the room whom he could trust, he turned to her and how thrilling it was to open the bedroom window inch by inch, to slip out together into the night and in the light of the rising moon to dig up right by the gatepost, for heaven’s sake, the leather pouch of documents that he had, with the help of the abominable Judases, those snakes in the grass, Abrahams and Lodewyk of all people, buried for safekeeping. In the moonlight the bag shone eerily.

  Take it, Rachael, I cannot bear to touch it, for already it jingles with the shekels of treachery.

  She dusted it down fastidiously while he replaced the soil and smoothed the earth. And only then did she suggest that they take out the documents and rebury the bag. Again they dug into the earth, making for a second time a hole where a hole had already twice been. Taking the spade out of his hand she carefully lifted out the earth, sensing from the density the site of the original walls of the hole, for a hole being a thing of absence, she focused on the presence of its walls. She would have liked to replace the plug of earth precisely as it had been, each clod packed into the very same ill-shaped cylinder that the men had dug earlier; in other words, she wanted the hole to remain theirs.

  Meekly, he turned to her: And so, Rachael, where do we bury the papers now?

  No, she said, and felt for the first time the chill of the night so that he put his arm about her. No, leave them with me.

  They climbed back through the window. He looked distastefully at his soiled hands but again, and not without relish, she said, No, no, it’s only God’s earth; we can’t risk fiddling with water buckets now.

  So they wiped their unwashed hands and slipped into bed. But not before she had tied the papers into the centre of a strip of sheet which in turn, under the voluminous nightdress, she tied around her body, the package settling in the curve of her back, in the generous space shaped by steatopygia, where it would never be found. He slept like a child with his head on her breast while she lay awake awaiting the day.

  At eight o’clock the following morning, as he predicted, Chief Constable Demmer arrived to arrest Andrew, who by now had had a good wash and had returned to his manner of curt instructions, telling her only what he thought necessary. It was safer, he said, as he hastily shook her hand, that she knew nothing, and he turned his attention once more to the constable, demanding to know what the poor man, who after all had not issued the writ, understood by the word sedition.

  Some hours later, Rachael watched impassively the arrival of the magistrate and his boy—who was, of course, a grown man. The man/boy tethered their horses to the gatepost. She carried on kneading dough as she waited for him to yoo-hoo at her window. Then she went out to where the magistrate paced her yard. For as long as she could manage, she rubbed her hands, watching the little worms of dough shower to the ground, before looking up at him.

  Good morning, he cried jovially, and in an admonishing tone rushed headlong into fast English, which she claimed not to understand, but following her uncle Captain Kok’s advice about speaking to white people, replied, By the grace of God, my husband and I are well. And how goes it with your good self?

  He looked alarmed for a second, then launched into another passionate speech that she assumed to be about his horse, to which he pointed several times.

  Ag ja, she said, oh shame, yes, nodding sympathetically; she knew how strongly these people felt about animals and so concentrated on cleaning her hands of the flaking dough. When his sluggish man/boy appeared with a spade, he informed her that they were unfortunately obliged to dig for information by her gatepost. By which he meant that the other would do so, for the red-faced magistrate kept his hands folded be
hind his back throughout. Emboldened by the knowledge that red faces come from drinking tumblerfuls of whisky, she begged him to be careful; she was particularly anxious that the earth should not be too greatly disturbed. If the precise plug of earth could be lifted—for if there had indeed been a burial of information, there would necessarily be such a plug—and replaced, so much the better. Her husband did not like things disturbed in his absence. And by way of buttering him up she said what a fine horse he had.

  His eyes gleamed as if they had found diamonds when the boy held out the bag. As he bid her a grave good-day, she tied her slackening apron strings in the small of her back while the slow sad smile developed like a photograph on her face. She could not stifle the feeling of well-being that made her anticipate the smell of baking bread and think of the sunny days ahead as something of a holiday.

  •

  Prison made no impression at all on Andrew Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur. She supposed that nothing would. He had been born with the caul, which was to say, she now knew, with a complete, already printed history book in his head, so that his behaviour amounted simply to a matter of reading aloud, intoning like a preacher and in the strange language of books. Something like the reading of a recipe, acting upon instructions and awaiting the expected dish. Take this, sift that. Which is a strange way to treat a recipe, she ventured, for a person should be prepared to throw in an inspired pinch of nutmeg, to do without a second egg, to mix the wrong way round and hope for the best.

  So he stepped after all those months of waiting for his trial into a kitchen filled with the warm breath of her perfectly risen loaves, shook her hand, then crossed the room to shut the extravagant fender of the stove. He looked exactly the same, had lost not an ounce of weight and declined a slice of bread.

  Surely, she said, you could do with a nice slice of this. Look, I’ve put raisins in the loaf. The people brought raisins for your return, also cabbages. We’ll have a nice cabbage bredie tonight.

  He had predicted the precise hour of his release, and the faithful carrying gifts had shamed her into believing, into the festive baking. She had looked forward to celebrating and above all wanted to see him enjoy the warm, fragrant bread. But, offended by the exuberance of the fire, and as if they ate nothing but fresh raisin bread in prison, he drank his bitter black coffee, then said kindly, Perhaps tomorrow, my Dorie. It will keep until tomorrow when Lodewyk and Abrahams and Kleinhans come over.

  Lodewyk and Abrahams, she shrieked, not noting the new name he had given her. Not those vipers. What would they be wanting here? They’ll not eat or drink in my house; this is no place for traitors.

  They are our people Dorie, and we have things to talk about, to plan our next move against the settlers.

  They are treacherous vipers who sold you to the enemy for a few shillings; they are no longer my people.

  It’s your womanly heart, Dorie. You don’t understand that this is war and that one has to put up with people behaving strangely during war. It is not their fault. In topsy-turvy conditions people can’t always tell right from wrong; they get confused and fall by the wayside. The same God who showed me the day, the very hour of my release, the very drops of rain as I would step out of the prison door, that God has also shown me that people will, like stubborn oxen, turn to the devil; that we must be patient, swallow our pride, and think of our land occupied by the thieving settlers. There is too much to do to hold petty grudges.

  Well, she could not believe her ears at the nonsense he was talking. So he had changed after all; he who had never been tolerant of wrongdoing. She could not believe that he had been born with that speech in his head. Plain madness, if you asked her, that she who had slaved over a raisin bread was to serve it to the vipers themselves. She would never understand the ways of men and their politicking, of how they passed off their inconsistencies as good sense. Which made her speak boldly, waving the bread knife she still held incredulously in her hand: The bread I always make with my own hands I would rather feed to the dogs. Siena can make something for them. I, for one, will need some time to think of Lodewyk and Abrahams as my people. As far as I can—

  Rachael, he interrupted, they will be here tomorrow at three which gives you, the mother of the volk, twenty-four hours in which to remember that they are your people. What would happen to us if we do not forgive? How will we learn humility? No, traitors cannot be banished; they must be taken into the bosom of the volk. Forgiveness can only strengthen us. Otherwise, how will we ever become a nation independent of the lying missionaries?

  He patted her hand on his way out to inspect the garden and Bleskop’s new foal. She thought of having a slice after all; she thought that this new lenience might allow her to canter bareheaded on her horse. But as she held the knife to cut, the raisins turned into sores, so that she sprinkled the loaves instead, wrapped them to steam off in the bleached flour bags, and knew, not least from the mad glint in his eyes, that the all-change would never be to her advantage.

  •

  From the photograph captioned A. A. S. le Fleur and following, Kokstad gaol, 1898, there is neither indication that he has lost his marbles, nor that he has had any brush with humility, although a person can nowadays take comfort from the new knowledge that the camera often lies.

  The gaol is a low-roofed building designed not for maximum security in the usual sense of the word but rather to reassure Griqua inmates, who prefer the familiarity of an oppressive ceiling. On the western side of this gaol there are two windows. The lower half of each is boarded up with six vertical wooden slats, with an extra crossbar dividing it from the six panes of the upper half. Light bounces off the glass of the window on the right; the panes on the left have been painted a cheery white, for the glare of the afternoon sun can at times be unbearable. Brightness in any case is not desirable in a prison cell where easily incited Griqua passions can flare uncontrollably. The windows are open at the maximum angle of twenty degrees.

  Le Fleur has centred himself between the two windows with sixty men or more arranged around him. The ones in the front kneel on their right knees, their left hands resting on bent left knees so that their chests are bravely pushed out, and erect postures are maintained even by the bowlegged. An old man holds on to his knobkierie; another appears to be injured, for his jacket is buttoned peculiarly as if across a bandaged arm, and he wears a doek under his hat. All the men look at the camera directly, in stunned defiance, as if that instrument is the very source of their outrage.

  Andrew Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur, standing at the front of the group surrounded by seated men, cuts a tall, dashing figure, the only one who is fully visible. His right arm is crooked, allowing his fingers to be tucked between the buttons of his jacket, which gives him both an air of solemnity, as if he had just made a pledge, and one of supreme indifference. He is the only one who has turned his head away from the camera, who looks to the left. Standing at ease with his left foot slightly forward and the brim of his hat elegantly curved, he carries an air of exquisite disdain.

  The men are all in hats, wide-brimmed hats, not all of which are worn soberly. There are brims turned wholly back in a girlish fashion, there are rakish angles that leave not only an ear but a good inch or two above the ear exposed, and there is one excessively floppy hat, the front of which seems to be pinned to the crown. The wearer holds something peculiar in his left hand, a pair of shears perhaps—but no, the second blade is in fact the shadow of the object, thrown onto his jacket. His brooding face betrays the act of defiance: he has just before the click of the camera whipped out the pointed weapon.

  The rebel has tucked back his hat to ensure that even a casual glance at the photograph will draw the viewer’s attention to him. He is the sceptic who scoffed at Le Fleur’s messages from the Archangel Michael, who warned against bloodshed and who promised that no bullets would enter their bodies. It was he who persuaded the Chief that they should at least carry rifles, even if they did not plan to use them, that an unarmed brigade was
a sorry affair that the godless settlers could not take seriously. Then came the miracle that he for one could have done without: the rifles that many of them found necessary, after all, to try and fire at the imperial force refused point-blank. Which was surely no way to go about a rebellion, but what could he say in the face of a perverse God and his prophet, the Chief. So whipping out his own reliable dagger was indeed, as the picture shows, a two-pronged act of defiance for which he would later pay with a sound beating.

  The Reverend Dower, poring once again over his own well-thumbed book, flicking between the photographs of himself surrounded by his deacons and those of Le Fleur with his rebellious riffraff, noted three things: that Le Fleur was the very demon of pride; that standing whilst others were on their knees made for a more impressive portrait than being pressed in too large a chair by native deacons who stood around in what he now feared was mock humility; and that a new edition should therefore be printed without the photographs.

  •

  Rachael sat hunched over the report in the Eastern Province Herald.

  A widespread hostile agitation was undoubtedly got up by the Griqua agitator, Le Fleur, but has been nipped in the bud by the prompt action of the Chief Magistrate and the patrol of the East Griqualand Mounted Rifles.

  Was she becoming like Andrew, dependent on the yeast of their writings to feed her rage? She had on first reading crumpled the page in her fist but, remembering her duty, had released the paper, smoothed and patted and pacified the creases as if they were her very own babies. It was then that the task of collecting and filing struck her as an odd thing to do. But there she was, with the light quite gone, reading in the dark, for she knew by now every word. No mention of Sigcau, the Mpondo chief, who had betrayed the Griquas. Oh, no, it was all the work of their own intelligence, and she snorted at the peculiar word that in politics had unhooked itself from wisdom or cleverness in order to bow and scrape at heroic lies. How, Rachael wondered—and the thought unscrolled word for word, in line, like print—how would those who tend and nurse the bits of paper escape their tainted messages? Ag, she said aloud, impatiently, she was becoming like Andrew with his visions, and she rolled the thought back into a tight scroll; she had no business getting mixed up with ideas, even if these days auras and revelations were two a penny.