Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  And quite apart from his Jewishness, Barney lived with Monsaraz, and Monsaraz was generally considered to be a devil.

  One night, after he had shared a supper of beef dumplings with the Du Plooys, and was driving back to Derdeheuwel in his surrey, he stopped the ponies by the banks of the river, where the willows grew dark, and the fires of the diamond diggers glowed in the night like the encampment of some strange crusade. He sat with his eyes closed, praying for a bolt of lightning from the Lord – not to strike him down, but to illuminate his life, to show him clearly and emphatically what he had to do.

  Nothing happened. The Orange River rattled over its rocks; the night breeze blew through the willows like the breathing of sleeping lovers; and the insects sang their monotonous ihubo, a song for a thousand voices.

  But there were sparkling reflections on the surface of the water from the hidden moon, and Barney thought how much they looked like diamonds.

  In the winter and spring of 1871, three completely unrelated events changed Barney’s life for ever.

  The first was that diamonds were discovered on Vooruitzigt, the estate belonging to two sour-faced Boer brothers, Johannes and Diedrich de Beer, about a mile away from Bultfontein. To begin with, the stones were picked up in the fields, sparsely scattered about. But after two months of only moderately profitable prospecting, a group of diggers, whose distinctive hats had earned them the nickname of the Red Cap Party had the good fortune to throw their black servant Damon out of their camp one night for drunkenness. The following morning, after wandering erratically up and down a small hill nearby known as Colesberg Kopje, Damon came back to them with his hands crammed with rough diamonds – more diamonds of better quality than any of them had ever seen in one place before. The rush was on. Within hours of the news getting out, scores of diggers swarmed to Vooruitzigt, and set about excavating the yellowish diamond-bearing soil with the fury of ants. Colesberg Kopje was promptly renamed ‘De Beers New Rush’, and a cluster of sheds and tents were erected around the hillock in double-quick time to house the prospectors, the diamond buyers, the gamblers, the attorneys, the tricksters, and the prostitutes. Even Harold Feinberg left his shack at Klipdrift and went up there, too – setting up a fresh office just opposite the London & South African Exploration Company on the muddy stretch of track that served as De Beers New Rush’s main street.

  Barney recalled afterwards that ‘the whole of the countryside was humming with excitement, and there were dozens of stories of incredible fortunes being made overnight.’ The De Beer brothers, who had bought their farm ten years previously for fifty pounds, sold out for six thousand, and went to farm elsewhere. They later said, ruefully, that a fairer price might have been six million pounds.

  The second event that changed Barney’s life was that an English attorney-at-law, Brian Knight, came to De Beers New Rush to set up in business, and brought with him his wife Clemmie and his two daughters, Agnes and Faith.

  The third event was that Barney found Joel.

  Barney trekked up to see Harold Feinberg at De Beers New Rush in October 1871. He was carrying with him a small leather pouch of uncut diamonds which had been given to him in exchange for fresh milk and eggs by the diggers along the Orange River, and he knew that Harold Feinberg would give him a reasonable price. Apart from that, he needed to get away from Monsaraz for a while. His Portuguese employer was becoming daily more drunken and less rational – breaking windows, collapsing over his meals, and beating the Bantu women who came around to ‘jigajig’ with him. Only the night before he had left Derdeheuwel, Monsaraz had regaled Barney with a long, sour-breathed story about the time he had locked himself in his room for three days with two Venda girls, aged nine and twelve, and what he had done to them.

  Barney took Donald with him to Colesberg Kopje, and left the lanky Adam Hoovstraten in charge of the Kaffirs. Donald relished trips around the countryside, and he would sit self-importantly beside Barney on the wooden seat of their surrey, singing psalms at the top of his voice. Barney had not heard such quavering, off-key singing since Cantor Mittelman in New York. Donald regarded himself these days as Barney’s permanent major-domo and gentleman’s gentleman, and never talked about going back to Paarl.

  ‘Maybe we find you a nice girl in Colesberg,’ he said to Barney, as they sat by their evening campfire a few miles north of Ritchie, where the Modder River runs into the Riet. It was a cool, quiet night, and the sky was prickled with stars.

  ‘What makes you think I’m looking for a girl?’ asked Barney. He had hung his bush jacket and his riding breeches on a nearby bush, and now he was intently stitching his veldschoen, where the upper had come away from the sole.

  Donald drew his long frogged coat around his shoulders. He was smoking a pipe, and the aroma of the tobacco mingled with the smells of the night. ‘Mr Monsaraz says you look for a girl. But, a fine girl. Not black. Not whore, neither.’

  ‘It’s none of Mr Monsaraz’s business. Nor yours, for that matter.’

  Donald shrugged. ‘You say so. But I help you find sister, if you want. I have five good sisters in Oranjerivier, maybe two in Bultfontein.’

  ‘I’ve seen some of your sisters, Donald. Each one looks uglier than the last.’

  ‘Ugly, maybe,’ nodded Donald. ‘Yes, ugly! But good for hours! Never get tired!’

  Barney reached over for his enamel mug of strong Dutch coffee, and swallowed a mouthful. Tomorrow morning, they would arrive in De Beers New Rush, or ‘Kimberley’, as it had now been officially named. The British Colonial Secretary had protested that he could neither spell nor pronounce ‘Vooruitzigt’ or ‘Colesberg Kopje’, and he was not even going to try. Moreover, he thought it undignified for Her Majesty’s Empire to include any community known as ‘De Beers New Rush’. He had therefore taken it upon himself to rechristen the diamond diggings after his favourite foreign administrator, himself.

  Barney said, ‘What do you make of Monsaraz, Donald. I mean, really?’

  Donald’s glittering eyes looked back at Barney through the firelight. ‘The Bible says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” ’

  ‘Monsaraz has already judged himself,’ replied Barney. ‘Whatever he’s done, the memory of it is strangling him just as surely as a rope.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Donald, noncommittally, ‘if Mr Monsaraz judge himself, we do not have to. Already done.’

  ‘It’s the farm that worries me – my own livelihood,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve worked for two years of my life straightening that place out. What’s going to happen if Monsaraz dies, or decides to sell out to the diggers?’

  Donald took a glowing twig from the fire to relight his pipe. ‘Mr Monsaraz will not sell. He say to me once – Donald, I come here to Oranjerivier because it is the end of the earth. A secret place. You say to anyone in Portugal, where is Oranjerivier? And they say, no, I don’t know that place. Never hear of it, man.’

  ‘People have heard of it now. The diamond rush is world-famous.’

  ‘There you are,’ agreed Donald. ‘Because of that, Mr Monsaraz is a frightened person. But, he will not try to escape any more. He says he will die on his own kleinplasie, his own little farm.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s so sentimental about the place that I’ve licked into shape for him.’

  Donald did not answer. He had never owned anything himself, and had never aspired to. White acquisitiveness was one of those mysteries of nature, like the extraordinary whims of Rhubega, the weather-god.

  Barney lay back on his bedroll. A warm wind began to steal through the grass from the direction of the Modder. North Cape Colony on a spring night was one of the driest, most musical places on the Lord’s earth. Dry music through dry grass, like the whistling of Venda herdboys, who could talk to each other over miles of veld by imitating speech patterns as they whistled.

  Harold Feinberg was pleased to see him, although depressed about the world price of diamonds. He did not like his office much, either; it was nothing more than a stuffy le
an-to with a corrugated iron roof, and a red-haired Irishwoman was annoying him by doing brisk business next door as a prostitute – ‘so every ten minutes, the whole place shakes like an earthquake.’ Harold offered Barney hot rum and milk, and while Donald went off to find himself a sister, the two of them sat on the step outside the office and talked.

  ‘This diamond mine’s even richer than anybody can believe,’ said Harold. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m doing princely – especially when you consider the world slump in the market. The diggers are bringing me first-quality diamonds out by the bucketful. I mean, literally, by the bucketful. In buckets! I can pick and choose what I want to buy.’

  ‘So how come your office is so seedy?’ asked Barney, with a smile.

  ‘I’m supposed to build myself a Gothic building, five stories high, out of mud and straw and corrugated iron?’ Harold wanted to know. ‘They’re sending out bricks and cast-iron balconies and all that kind of thing from Cape Town and Durban. But they won’t arrive for a couple of weeks yet. Anyway, the office doesn’t matter so much. The most important thing about diamonds is to be where they are. Whether you set up business in a hovel or a palace, that’s not important. Be where the diamonds are dug, and you can’t fail.’

  Barney stirred his rum and milk with a spoon, and drained it down. ‘I’ve been surrounded by diamond mines ever since I came here, but I’m still as poor as I ever was.’

  ‘You’re doing well out of the farm, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not too bad. But I’m not rich. And what do I get at the end of it? The farm belongs to Monsaraz, not me.’

  ‘Maybe you should buy a holding at the mine.’

  ‘Have you seen the prices they’re asking? Well, obviously you have. Three or four thousand pounds. I don’t have more than seventy or eighty pounds saved up.’

  Harold, under his pith helmet, pulled a deprecatory face. ‘You should try to go into partnership. Find someone who wants to dig with you. I mean it, Barney. This mine is once-in-a-lifetime, and when they’ve dug out all the yellow ground, that’s going to be the finish.’

  At that moment, a brusque man with a thick moustache and a pointed sun-topi came strutting along the boardwalk, tapping the boards as he came with the ferrule of his cane. Despite the heat, he was dressed in a dark suit, buttoned right up, with a starched white collar and a necktie. As he approached, Barney could see that his eyelashes were as white and spiky as a pig’s.

  Harold eased himself to his feet, still holding his empty mug. ‘Mr Knight, sir. How are you this morning?’

  ‘Offish,’ delcared Mr Knight. He took out a handkerchief and loudly blew his nose.

  Harold looked suitably sympathetic. ‘I can’t say that I envy you attorneys, in this scramble.’

  ‘Well, it’s not Lincoln’s Inn,’ replied Mr Knight, his cold eyes staring past Barney across the street. Barney turned and looked in the same direction, and caught sight of two girls in plain ecru sun-dresses standing on the opposite corner, twirling their parasols and talking to a tall young digger in a wide floppy hat.

  ‘This is a young friend of mine from Oranjerivier,’ said Harold. ‘An American, from New York.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Mr Knight, but his attention was patently fixed on the girls across the street. At last, in a sharp voice that carried high above the clatter of a passing ox-cart and the general bustle of a mining town at mid-morning, he called, ‘Agnes! Faith!’

  The girls turned at once; and when they caught sight of Mr Knight they waved flustered farewells to the digger and came hurrying across the rutted road, their skirts held up out of the dust. They arrived pink-cheeked and breathless and obviously anticipating a telling-off.

  ‘You’ll forgive me for one moment, sir,’ said Mr Knight, giving Barney the briefest of glances. ‘But I have specifically required my daughters not to hob-nob with the diggers and riff-raff of this encampment; and, lo and behold, here they are flaunting my authority right in front of my eyes.’

  Barney looked at Mr Knight’s daughters first with curiosity and then with undisguised interest. Both of them were very pretty and trim; although the one he took to be Agnes was just a little more petite than her sister, and her fair ringlets were just a little curlier. Both girls had bright china-blue eyes, short straight noses, and squarish jaws. They could have been Swedes rather than Britons. But Agnes had the soft, slightly asymmetric smile that Barney would later have dreams about: the kind of smile that seems to be knowing and innocent both at the same time.

  ‘This is Mr – er –,’ said Mr Knight to his mischievous daughters, waving his hand at Barney.

  ‘Barney,’ said Barney. Harold Feinberg looked at him in mild surprise, but Barney remembered what Hunt had told him on the deck of the Weser. If I were you, old chap, I’d play that side of things down.

  ‘Mr Barney, from New York,’ said Mr Knight. ‘I’m ashamed that his first sight of you should be in the company of a ruffian like that fellow across the street.’

  Agnes and Faith both obediently curtseyed in Barney’s direction. Barney, who had already taken off his hat, gave them an appreciative nod of his head. He caught Agnes’s eye for a second that was as brief as a memory that he could not quite place – a snatch of music, or the sound of bells, or a familiar aroma.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Mr Knight,’ Barney said boldly, and somewhat to his own surprise, ‘as a matter of fact I can vouch for the good breeding of that fellow across the street. I’ve done business with him several times – in Capetown, and here. He doesn’t usually spread it around, but he’s related to British nobility. The Earl of Liverpool, I think.’

  Mr Knight squinted back across the street, but the digger had gone. ‘Well,’ he puffed, confused. ‘Nobility, is he? It’s surprising what a pass some of these blue-blooded gentlemen have come to.’

  ‘These days, Mr Knight, everybody has to make a living,’ put in Harold, gently. He gave Barney an exaggerated wink.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Knight. ‘I suppose you’re right. I suppose you are. And since he’s nobility, Agnes, I think I can overlook your talking to him, on this occasion at least. But next time, remember to ask my permission; or to mention it to your dear mother.’

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ said Agnes, contritely.

  ‘Good, then,’ said Mr Knight. He tapped on the boardwalk with his cane as if he were trying to remember something that had escaped him, and brushed at his moustache with the side of his hand.

  ‘Business good, Mr Feinberg?’ he asked.

  ‘Tolerable,’ nodded Harold.

  ‘So it should be,’ said Mr Knight. ‘And how about you, Mr –?’

  ‘Barney,’ said Barney.

  ‘Well, yes. What’s your line?’

  ‘I’m a farmer.’

  ‘Farmer, hey? Business good?’

  ‘Tolerable,’ said Barney.

  Mr Knight fidgeted and puckered his lips. ‘Yes. Well, how about joining us for dinner this evening? Is that a distinct possibility? Or is it not?’

  Agnes, from the becoming shade of her sun-bonnet, smiled at Barney in obvious entreaty. Faith, seeing what her sister was doing, gave her a dig with her elbow.

  ‘Yes,’ said Barney. ‘Dinner would be a distinct possibility. I’d be pleased to.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Knight. ‘Eight then, at my place. Mr Feinberg here will tell you where to find us.’

  Harold nodded, and smiled, playing the part of the obliging East End Jew. Anything you say, my boy. Anything you say. Mr Knight grimaced at him, and then continued his staccato promenade along the boardwalk.

  ‘Well,’ said Faith, giving Barney another little curtsey, ‘you saved our lives! It seems that we owe you a favour!’

  ‘You were very gallant,’ smiled Agnes. ‘You know who that really is, don’t you?’

  Barney shook his head. ‘I haven’t a notion.’

  ‘His name’s Jack Westbury. He’s a digger, that’s all; and not a very successful one so far. He spent all his inheritance on two claims at the Kop
je, but so far they haven’t turned up anything more than a few small stones that aren’t worth anything much at all. But, he’s very handsome,’ she added, looking at Barney with her head slightly tilted to one side in a way that suggested he was handsome, too.

  Mr Knight had stopped a few yards along the boardwalk, and had turned on his heel to glare at his daughters again with his piggy little eyes.

  ‘We’d better hurry along,’ said Faith, and took her sister’s arm. ‘But we’ll look forward to seeing you at dinner tonight, Mr Barney. Good afternoon.’

  Barney raised his hand as the girls hurried along the boardwalk after their father, a wave that lingered like a photographic pose. Agnes, he thought. The lamb. A meek name for a very provocative young lady. He watched with amusement as the two sisters bustled past three half-drunken diggers, splendid in their unkept whiskers, their clay-caked trousers, and their hundred-pound velveteen jackets. The diggers stopped, colliding with each other like the boxcars of a shunted train, and stared after the Knight girls as they flounced along, obviously transfixed by every arousing glimpse of their narrow ankles. One of the diggers said something crude in Spanish, and the other two cackled high and silly, like geese.

  ‘What’s this “Mr Barney”?’ Harold Feinberg asked Barney, gently, as Mr Knight took a daughter on each arm and marched them out of sight round the corner of the ramshackle Dutch Reformed Church.

  Barney replaced his hat. ‘Sometimes, it doesn’t help to be a Jew.’

  ‘Sometimes, in the Orange Free State, it doesn’t help to be British. But you wouldn’t catch Mr Knight calling himself some damned Boer name like Mr Botha, just for the sake of a dinner invitation.’

  ‘You’re misjudging me,’ said Barney.

  ‘All right,’ shrugged Harold.

  Barney turned on him. ‘Listen, Harold. I was brought up to be a tailor. Measuring and cutting and delivering bespoke overcoats. That was considered to be a suitable vocation for a Jewish boy. That, or being a rabbi. Well, maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s terrible of me to deny my background. But since I’ve left the Lower East Side, I’ve realised slowly that there’s a whole world out here, A world of money, and influence, and class. A world where you can do a whole lot more than take orders for overcoats until you’re a hundred years old. It’s taken me a long time to build up the courage to say that I’m going to take what this world has to offer me. I’ve been guilty about my father’s memory, and what I did to my mother. But now it’s time for me to make something out of myself. To get some respect. And if I have to deny my Jewishness to do it, then I will. Because the day will come when I can stand up and say I’m Jewish, and I’m proud of it, and I’ll be too rich and too powerful for anybody to be able to do a damned thing about it.’