Half of One Thing

by Zirk van den Berg

  The stoep looked out over a well-kept garden with a large English oak, roses and a thin, barefoot native who seemed to be there permanently. Sitting there day after day, Gideon saw the man weed, water the garden from irrigation ditches and sometimes just sweep the earth with a bundle of reeds, the scene framed by iron lacework around the pillars and eaves. Gideon found the gardener more interesting than the wounded men around him, the man’s singular dedication to keeping order in his little corner of the universe. Some of the wounded were in wheelchairs and some on crutches, others walked but with bandaged or missing arms. One man was blinded and shuffled along the walls, fearful of what he might encounter in the coming seconds or decades. Each of the men had a hard-luck story. What had happened to them was sad, but, because there was no rhyme or reason to it, uninteresting. Rather than invite conversation, Gideon preferred to flick through the papers, searching in vain for something to hold his attention.

  On the last day of the year, there was a report of General De Wet’s attack on the Eleventh Battalion of the Imperial Yeomanry at Groenkop near Harrismith, where they had been stationed while the blockhouse line was being built nearby. Surprising the British on Christmas morning by attacking via a supposedly impassable cliff in the small hours of night, De Wet’s force, consisting of men from a number of eastern Free State commandos, overpowered the four-hundred defenders in less than an hour. Jacob Eksteen was probably there. Gideon wondered if he might have been able to really lead the Empire forces to De Wet, to prevent this defeat and any others that may follow. But it was no use and he closed the paper, choosing instead to concentrate on the activities of sparrows in the branches of the oak.

  He felt strangely devoid of motivation. For once there was no mission for him to concentrate on, no objectives to achieve. He couldn’t think of any worthwhile goals to pursue. The only test was one of endurance, and it was devoid of romance, just keeping the flesh alive. His body healed despite what he felt. All that remained of his wound was a red tear mark on his abdomen and a welt like a rose behind his hip. They were not his biggest concern.

  That morning, he had received news he was going to be repatriated along with the men of the Sixth New Zealand Contingent, due to sail for home in February. Meanwhile, he was given leave of absence. Whether that was in recognition of his service so far or to prevent him from causing more damage he wasn’t sure, nor did he care.

  1902

  18 January 1902

  The train was moving at a good clip, but the carriage was built to be a cattle truck and there wasn’t enough ventilation. It was stuffy inside. The men had become quiet, too hot to do much. One group tried to play cards, but the game disintegrated into chaos as rules were flaunted or forgotten. A few men slept. Some just stared blankly, rocking to the rhythm of the train. Gideon had taken off his shirt and folded it into a pad. This he used for a cushion, leaning with his head against the side of the carriage, staring through a slit at the passing landscape. Springfontein station had come and gone. Many places here bore the name fontein, like wai back in New Zealand, places named for water. It wouldn’t be long now before they crossed the Orange River into the Cape Colony.

  On the bridge, Gideon put his shirt on. It had to be close now. It was just before midday, after a slow turn to the west, that the brakes went on and the sign came into view – Norvalspont. Gideon gathered his things together. The other men looked at him, but he had kept to himself throughout the journey and nobody made any remarks when he slid the door open and clambered out.

  Norvalspont was the kind of place that normally only interested railwaymen and generals, an X where a train line crossed a river. The station was small, but rather pretty, built of sandstone blocks. On the platform, black men staggered with heavy bags on their shoulders, carrying all manner of goods and the stench of sweat from a freight car to a store room. A dapper white man stood at the door with his hand raised as high as his face, moving his finger up and down as each man passed, counting the sacks. The station master’s office stood open and Gideon went in.

  The shutters were closed, keeping the room dark and cool. There was a counter and behind it three desks, one of which half obscured the shape of a man ruffling through papers. A smooth stone held down a pile of documents on the man’s left. He spotted the arrival and got up to shake Gideon’s hand across the counter. A wiry man, his middle finger stained with ink. ‘Good morning, or is it afternoon already? Coming to the camp, I presume?’

  Gideon nodded. ‘How far is it from here?’

  ‘About a mile, that way.’ The clerk pointed to the south. ‘There’s often a cart or someone who goes that way. Maybe if you wait …’

  ‘No, I’ll walk. Can I leave my things here till later?’

  ‘We’ll put it behind the counter. Less tempting for thieves.’

  Gideon shoved his kitbag across the counter.

  ‘Oops, that’s heavy, huh?’ The man groaned as he swung the bag to the ground.

  It’s just earthly goods, not the heaviest baggage one can carry. Gideon saw no sense in sharing this thought with the man. Behind him, the train whistled, made a series of quick, metallic bangs and started rolling, puffs of steam everywhere. You could feel the earth shake. Gideon stepped outside and watched the train leave. The carriages gained speed, flicked past, carrying the soldiers home. Last came the armoured carriage and then that high, narrow shape, too, got smaller. The tracks made screechy noises that faded, leaving only the smell of coal in the still, heavy air. The men on the platform dragged the last of the offloaded goods into the shade and stayed there themselves. Time to go.

  It was a hot, dusty walk under a cloudless sky. Pointy kopjes dotted the southern banks of the Orange River. They were covered in sparse green grass, scattered thorny bushes with blunt-edged rocks between. Hardy sheep and goats could live here. Gideon knew there were also more than three-thousand displaced civilians, most of them Boer women and children taken from their farms. As the concentration camp came into view, he was surprised to see no sign of anything or anyone to keep the inmates in. After the heavy death toll in the camps early on, civilian authorities had taken over their administration from the army. Seemingly they didn’t bother with guards.

  Nobody stopped him and he walked straight through to what appeared to be the administration block, one of a handful of stone buildings among hundreds of tents. The room was crammed with writing bureaus and harried men who had to run what amounted to an entire town where none was meant to be. Avoiding shortages was a full-time occupation. When Gideon knocked and said he was looking for an inmate, they took one look at his uniform and pushed a heavy book towards him so he could look up the name and tent number himself. The names were entered in order of arrival rather than alphabetically, so he had to pick a date and start from there. Many names had been struck through, with a decease date scribbled in the last column. For everyone else, the blank space awaited. He recognised surnames from men in the commando, wondered if these might be their wives and children, their sisters and mothers. This was the other side of the war, the one not fought by men. There, the name he had been looking for. His heart skipped a beat. She could have been standing in this exact spot when whoever wrote this down. Her mother too, but her name had a line through. No sign of the grandmother, but she may have had another surname. He made a mental note of the tent number and closed the book.

  It still looked like a military camp, a smaller version of the one in Bloemfontein. Gideon walked between the rows of white tents, painted white rocks marking the streets. Unseen children cried, the sound of it seemed to be all around. The ones who were outside looked at him dully, clinging to their mothers. Gideon had heard there was a camp school, but of course it was Saturday. Their thin bodies seemed too small in relation to their heads, even for children. The women eyed him with hostility. He was in the uniform of the enemy. It was like that morning of the raid when he had revealed his true identity to the Boers; Gideon felt their hatred as a palpable thing, like raw dough on his
tongue. Walking here was worse than braving crossfire – he felt less capable, less equipped. If there were special armour for this, he certainly didn’t have it. He would confront the one he loved not as a knight in chain mail, but as a troubadour and penitent.

  What should he say to Esther, which version of the many conversations he had played out in his head since he had last seen her? He had tried many without settling on an approach that looked like it might achieve the effect he wanted. How would she react to seeing him, to his story, which was more of an excuse than anything else? Would anything of their old relationship remain and, if not, could something be built on the ruin? He dreaded what answers he might find, but relished the prospect of seeing her again, the gestures and expressions he remembered, the face and figure that danced in his dreams.

  Near the end of the third row of tents, on the left, he found the right number, a tent for single women.

  A chubby-cheeked girl who sat crying and darning clothes out front called to someone in the tent. ‘There’s an Englishman, come hear what he has to say.’ In the Dutch of the Boers.

  ‘Actually, I do speak the taal,’ said Gideon. Another woman, thin and bent, came out of the tent. Gideon wondered if Esther had told her companions what had happened, what she would’ve said. Did they have any idea who he was? Since the seamstress was obviously consumed by her own grief, he addressed the other one, a praying mantis of a creature who held her head at an angle while she listened. ‘I’m looking for Miss Calitz.’

  ‘Esther has gone to the butcher.’ The woman pointed. ‘It’s up there, the stone building.’

  The squat building was divided into three sections, the butcher in the middle, and the carpenter’s shop and cobbler on each side. A small crowd had assembled, women and a few old men, to collect their meat ration. Esther was inside, in cool semi-darkness with the buzzing of voices and flies. It was a lottery, collecting your meat ration twice a week. The meat was cut into one-pound portions and handed out by fellow camp inmates who took care not to look up from their task. They did not want to be accused of favouring one over another, so everyone had to take whatever the butcher had in his hand when it was their turn at the front of the queue. She watched some of the better cuts go as she came closer to the table. The women in her tent all shared, so they each had a small helping of fresh meat almost every day. The day before, the meat was so stringy and gristly they had to boil it from lunch to suppertime. She draped a strip of cloth over her hands to receive her ration, said thank you for the fatty sheep heart placed in her hands. No point in making the butchers feel bad. Every little bit had to be used and they meant well. Other butchers were to blame, the ones who did things on grand scale, the illustrious personages who wrote the story of history by making decisions on behalf of others without seeing their suffering. On the way out, she folded the ends of the cloth over the wet organ, rolling it into a bundle. It helped to keep the meat clean and cool, and prevented blood from dripping on her dress.

  She nearly let it slip from her grip when she recognised the Khaki soldier through the doorway. There was no avoiding him, standing only three paces away, watching the door. She stepped into the blinding sun. ‘Gideon.’ The name was a sigh more than a word.

  He couldn’t make any sound at all. Here she was, no less beautiful than he remembered, much more real. Breathing and unpredictable.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘They’re sending me back home. To New Zealand.’

  She looked at the hard African soil. It was firm and you could trust it to be what it seemed. ‘So Java, the whole story of who you were … That was all a lie.’

  ‘I’m a soldier, I did my job.’

  ‘Yes and I’m a Boer and I’m doing mine, resisting the invaders.’ Now she looked at him, an enemy soldier, and treacherous too.

  He loved her for her independence. Hated not being on her side. ‘Can we leave fighting the war to others, just for a while? Surely we’re more than just subjects of this country or that.’

  ‘Surely we’re more than just two lone individuals, drifting along without attachments or loyalty.’

  People were beginning to look at them. He did not want to consider anyone else at the moment. It had to be just the two of them, Gideon and Esther. ‘Are you allowed to walk out into the veldt?’

  ‘There’s no fence. Where can one go anyway? It’s like a desert out there. You’ll die or the Khakis, your people, will just round you up again.’

  He decided to ignore the barb. He couldn’t blame her. ‘There should be a good view of the river from up on that kopje. Maybe there’s shade.’

  She knew there wouldn’t be, not until late afternoon, not enough for anything much larger than a rock rabbit, but she walked with him anyway. She had had a lot of time to think over the last seven weeks and felt strong enough to confront whatever he had to say. He looked so different without the beard, so dreadfully thin. The easy grace she had once treasured was marred by an awkward stiffness of manner, an unevenness in his gait. Was it just the effects of his wound or was he no longer as comfortable in the world? There, look, like that – his jaw jerked up and down even before the words came.

  ‘I was hoping we could talk.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about? You lied to me and betrayed my people. End of story.’

  ‘I was only trying to save you.’

  ‘From what? You think you saved my life, but is this …’ She motioned towards the tent town behind them, bare of trees or animals, row upon row of disowned souls. ‘Is this life?’

  ‘It won’t last forever.’ He looked at her, the fire in her that was the most irresistible thing. ‘You’re alive and things can change. As long as you’re alive. It has to be more important than who happens to run the country you’re buried in.’

  ‘Gideon, if that’s even your name, I’m not going to argue with you.’ To him one’s country was just a piece of land that the wind blows over. For her it was an indelible part of her soul – the landscape and all its parts, dead and alive, the light it reflected in her eyes, its sounds and smells, local landmarks, the way the wind and rain felt on her skin, her people, their way of doing things, shared language and history … And with every one of these that was taken away, the others gained in importance. What her people had, even living nomadically like they did those last months, was terribly precious. ‘You may have saved my life, Gideon, but you also ruined it.’

  They were away from the tents now, with only lizards to hear them. Heat-waves danced on the rocks.

  ‘I couldn’t let anything happen to you.’

  ‘You’re so convinced Jacob would’ve shot me, but you don’t know what would’ve happened. All you have is what you had imagined, but I have to live with this, all this … dreadful …’ She made a noise that wasn’t a word, yet expressed meaning. ‘Your fears are nothing compared to my reality.’

  A bell sounded. Down among the tents a man was banging a pole against a large-calibre cannon cartridge that dangled from a wire.

  ‘Does it mean you have to go?’

  ‘It’s just Oom Twakkies. He’s crazy, every day he thinks that peace has come.’

  Gideon couldn’t stand what was happening. Here he was an arm’s length from the woman he loved, and the distance was too much to cross. Sweat glistened on her temples and there were lines in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘You look beautiful.’

  This rattled Esther. She had expected to hear many things, but not this. ‘How can you come here and say a thing like that? Until a few minutes ago I didn’t even know if you were alive after getting shot. And you look so different now.’ It was unbearable, so confusing. ‘I hardly recognise the man I almost loved.’

  Almost … Whatever she decided about the future, he thought, she had no right to deny the past. The love that had driven him to betray the Boers and mislead Major Bryce was real. It was important she acknowledged that, so at least he could live with himself, if not with her. ‘I thought you did love me.�
��

  ‘The man I loved wasn’t you … What are you doing in this uniform, what’s this black fern on your lapel? The man I loved turned out not to be anything, not a man at all. He was a lie – half of one thing, half of another. That’s no goddamn way to be.’ She was angry now, at him, at herself, at life. ‘What did you think you could achieve by coming here?’

  A slow wind took the words away and left silence. The sun stung the back of Gideon’s neck, the part that had been covered by his long hair when he was living unkempt among the Boers. He had a birthmark there, a faint rosy stain.

  ‘I thought perhaps I could not go on that ship. I wanted so for you and I …’ But it was pointless and he didn’t even finish the sentence. He had betrayed her country and her trust, and with that any expectation he may have had for a life together with her. He could never tell her he loved her and expect it to ring true with her. He could never tell her anything.

  In Esther’s hands the sheep’s heart seeps, that fat and rubbery thing with its dark canals, its soggy chambers.

  POSTSCRIPT

  1902–1960

  The Second Boer War ended on 31 May 1902 with the surrender of all the Boer generals, despite initial objections from General De Wet.