by Trilby Kent
Tucking my legs beneath me, I curled up on the heather and folded one arm under my head. I tried to imagine my father lying deep in the earth beside me, tried to imagine the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way his mouth pulled downward when he slept. I imagined threading my arm through his, squeezing it gently as I used to when we would sit together on the veranda, counting the stars late into the night.
I fell asleep.
Sipho discovered me the next morning, curled around my father’s tombstone like a cat.
“Kleinnooi?”
As he squatted beside me, I was aware of his bony kneecaps, his bare toes digging into the earth for balance.
“Eh?” I sat up and brushed the dirt from my shift, embarrassed by his presence. Sipho continued to stare at me, full lips parted but speechless. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow in the corners. Long eyelashes curled up toward a high, smooth forehead.
“You slept outside, kleinnooi, all night?”
“I’m fine, Sipho.” As I made a motion to stand, he leaped up and offered me his hand.
“Hungry, kleinnooi?”
I nodded, and Sipho cocked his head toward home.
The servants’ huts were located on the far side of the koppie, overlooking the scrubland where they kept a few goats and chickens. Sipho was the only son of my father’s farmhand, Bheka, who had joined my uncles on commando over a year ago. Like me, Sipho had been left behind with his mother and two younger siblings — twin girls, Nosipho and Nelisiwe.
Most Boer children grew up with a matie, an African playmate. Sipho had been gifted to me two weeks after I was born, when he was six months old. His father called my father baas, and Pa called him Bheka; if Pa hadn’t known his name, he would simply have called him kaffir, which was what we usually called a black person.
While my parents directed the labors of Sipho’s parents, Sipho and I played at being equals. We dug grooves in the ground and used dried beans to play oware, or we gathered our siblings for a game of mbube, mbube, where one of us would pretend to be a lion stalking impala. Sipho showed me how to track animals by looking for fresh droppings and disturbed bush, and how to read the direction and speed of hoofprints in the dust. He taught me the difference between the curving marks left by a puff adder and a mamba, and how to recognize the spitting bugs that could blind a man with their acid saliva. He said that we needed only to listen to the earth, because it spoke better sense than most men, most of the time. He told me about the San tribesmen who hunted kudu over many days, staking their prey by outrunning it, and about the glorious victories of old. When the river was high we would fish, and when the sun grew too hot we would explore the nearby caves, which were decorated with ancient paintings. I told Sipho about Piet Reteif, the Boer leader who made a covenant with God and saved hundreds of Boer lives at the Battle of Blood River, and Sipho told me about Shaka, the warrior who united all the Zulu tribes under one banner and used a buffalo-horn formation to defeat Europeans armed with guns and canons.
Now that we were getting older, my mother said that it wasn’t proper for me to spend so much time with Sipho. Soon the games of oware and mbube, mbube would have to come to an end, as would the fishing trips, tracking, and storytelling. If the war carried on much longer, Sipho would have to go and fight as a loyal African, as his father before him.
Sipho’s mother was sitting in front of their thatched hut, pounding mealie corn when we arrived. Her head was wrapped in a blue cloth, and her molasses-smooth skin glistened with sweat. Seeing us, she stopped to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun and beckoned us inside. The walls were made of clay and the floor of packed earth, so the hut was cool and dark. They had only two rooms — one for cooking and eating, and one for sleeping — but it felt comfortable to me. There were no preserve jars to break, no shoes to remember, no crocheting or needlework to practice. Just a stove and some straw mattresses, and a tankard of dop left behind by the men.
Before I could stop him, Sipho had told his mother about my night on the gravesite. Lindiwe clicked her tongue and removed the wool blanket from her own shoulders and wrapped it around me. The coarse blanket smelled of sweet smoke and roasted corn. She then turned to the pot on the stove, and tipped the contents into two bowls.
“Eat,” she said. “Eat, kleinnooi.”
Soft clumps of rice had settled at the bottom of the bowl, which was filled with thin porridge. I took a sip. Then another. All at once, warmth filled my mouth and throat, at last reaching my empty stomach like a spear.
“Dankie, Lindy,” I said. Lindiwe smiled broadly, exposing teeth the color of ivory tusks, and began to untie the knotted ribbon from my hair.
“Does your ma know you were out all night?” she asked in isiZulu, combing her fingers through the matted bits.
I shrugged.
“She’s angry,” murmured Sipho. He knew that confronting an elephant in musth was only slightly less frightening than facing Ma when she was in one of her rages.
“Ja-nee.”
Lindiwe grunted. “Ja-nee, yes-no. That’s not an answer, kleinnooi.” She began to twist my hair into plaits, humming a low melody until words began to form. “Likhona ithemba, likhona kuye, thembela kuye, thembela ku Jesu …”
I wriggled on the mat. “Not a Jesus song, Lindy. Something else.”
Sipho looked up, grinning, from his porridge.
“O bring my t’rug na die ou Transvaal, Daar waar my Sarie woon …”
I couldn’t help but join in. “Daar onder in die mielies, By die groen doringboom, Daar woon my Sarie Marais …” We’d learned the song from a couple of men who’d recently returned from Pretoria, where it had become popular among the Boer commandos.
O take me back to the old Transvaal
where my Sarie lives,
Down among the maize fields near the green thorn tree,
there lives my Sarie Marais …
Lindiwe pulled a face and shook her head, waggling her hands at us. “So much noise, you two! Go, now — out, out. Take these.” She passed us two small loaves of mealie bread and a few shriveled strips of biltong, suddenly looking very serious. “Wrap the bread and meat in the blanket and leave them in the pigeon lofts for the men, kleinnooi. Albert Siswe said that their supplies are running low again.”
I considered the meager bundle. “No salt?”
Lindiwe stared down at her palms, shaking her head slowly. “Your ma sent coffee and sugar two weeks ago — there was no salt then, either.”
I heaved the bundle under one arm and tried to sound cheery. “Never mind — things are getting better. Soon, the Transvaal and the Free State will be just that: free. You’ll see.” I grabbed Sipho’s hand and tugged him out the door. “Totsiens, Lindy.”
The pigeon lofts were on Tant Minna’s land, near the edge of the Lowveld where the herds grazed in winter. As Sipho and I followed the trickling stream that divided the Highveld from the foothills, I could tell that my friend’s mind was elsewhere.
“Things aren’t getting better,” he said solemnly. “The commandos are outnumbered.”
“Don’t say that,” I snapped. “We won at Colenso, didn’t we? And at Spion Kop. You could hear the pom-poms firing from the ridge.” I strode on ahead, irritated by my friend’s silence. “Pa used to say, ‘There’s no better horseman or marksman in the world than a Boer’ — and he was right, too. My uncles blew up two telegraph sites last month, and your pa was there when they raided the storage depot —”
“That was in the spring. It’s different now.”
I kicked at a stone in stride and shifted the bundle of food from one arm to the other. “That’s not what the generals say. De Wet isn’t giving up.” I turned around and prodded my companion in the ribs. “Our great General Christiaan de Wet / Is still too small for the khaki net. Remember that, Sipho?”
Sipho only grunted.
As we rounded the bluffs overlooking Tant Minna’s farm, I felt Sipho’s fingers snap to my shoulder. “Listen,” he sai
d. “Do you hear that?” He began to kneel slowly, reaching for a sharp-edged stone by my feet, his gaze trained straight ahead.
“Is it kudu?” Sipho may have been a crack-shot with a rifle, but I couldn’t imagine him felling a large animal with a rock.
“Get down.”
Sipho had never spoken to me like that before, and at first I was too affronted to do anything. Then I saw the fear in his eyes, the way his brown irises seemed to tremble in their yellow-white sea, and I too sank to the ground.
“There,” whispered Sipho. “Do you see?”
From where we crouched, I could just make out one of the slatted pigeon lofts. Wildflowers and weeds sprouted brazenly around the hut, bending in the breeze that whisked sprays of sand against its walls. The corrugated metal roof glinted in the sun.
“What?”
Sipho yanked me closer, forced my head at an angle. “Look.”
The door to the loft was open, creaking on a rusty hinge.
Before either of us could say anything more, two figures appeared from the open loft, shoulders hunched, heads craned forward through the low doorway. They wore cream trousers that were loose from the hip to the knee, but from knee to ankle the fabric was wrapped tightly with beige puttees. Brass buttons gleamed on starched jackets; laced boots had been buffed to a high shine. One of the men carried a domed helmet in the crook of his arm.
Khakis.
I glanced at Sipho, who was turning the rock between his fingers. I could tell that he was thinking of throwing it to create a distraction. If the English soldiers discovered the supplies that we had been hiding for our commandos, they would raze every Boer house for miles around.
Then, just as he was beginning to raise his arm, Sipho froze. We had both noticed the same thing: the package of clothes that we’d left beneath one of the beams in a dark corner of the loft, covered with straw, now lay piled on the open ground behind the house. They had already discovered the hiding place.
“Come, kleinnooi — we can’t stay,” hissed Sipho.
“Wait.” I wanted to see these men, to know their faces. I had never been this close to a British soldier before. One of the men was young, with bowlegs and a shock of red hair. The older one was taller, more solidly built, with black hair combed to the side and a neat black mustache. They were talking, but even if we understood English it would have been difficult to make out the words.
Sipho had already begun his silent retreat. I gathered the bundle of food together and wondered where we might leave it in case there were hungry commandos waiting nearby. The pigeon lofts would be off limits even after the British soldiers had left. The khakis would interrogate Tant Minna and see to it that all the outbuildings were destroyed …
“Please, kleinnooi. Come!”
Stealing one last glance at the soldiers, I followed Sipho into the long grass.
A PILLAR OF SALT
I arrived home to find my mother shelling peas outside the house, her face obscured by a peaked cap. The days were now so hot that even raindrops would sizzle as they hit the dry earth. Ma must have been stewing under her gingham dress — but if any woman was going to preserve decorum in that terrible heat, she would. My brothers, both in states of undress, crouched at her feet: Gert was showing Hansie the bushman arrow that now hung from a leather cord around his neck.
It was almost a happy scene, and I was about to ruin it.
“Where have you been?” demanded my mother as she tipped the pea shells from her apron into a shallow bowl.
“Sipho and I saw khakis at Tant Minna’s,” I blurted. “Coming out of the pigeon lofts.”
I’d sent Sipho back to his mother with the bundle of food. At least until the khakis had gone, it seemed best not to risk drawing attention to ourselves. If there were any commandos waiting in the bush, they’d have to go hungry for another day.
“Minna’s?” The lines in my mother’s forehead seemed to deepen, and what little color there was in her face quickly drained from her cheeks, turning her gray as a stone. “If this is another story, Corlie Roux —”
“You can ask Sipho. They found the clothes we’d left for the men.”
“How many were there?”
“Just two.”
“And Minna?”
“We didn’t see her.” They’d be setting fire to the house by now, herding my aunt and my cousins onto cattle wagons …
“Andries? Danie?”
I shook my head.
“Did they see you?”
“No, Ma.”
We’d heard the stories of women and children who had been dragged from their houses even as they begged the British for mercy. If they were lucky, they would be given a few minutes to remove any valuables before the entire farm was set alight. Scorched earth, the British called it: destroying everything of their enemies — livestock, crops, food stores — so that there was no way they could sustain commandos in the bush. Then, the British poisoned the wells and salted the fields so that the Boere would not be able to begin again.
My mother was silent. She considered the fields, studded with prickly pear, and then she turned and stared up at our house. Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, she turned toward the fields again. For a long time, she seemed torn between two unspeakable thoughts. Then, with an almost violent assurance that made it seem as if there had never been any doubt in her mind, she grabbed each of my brothers by the arm and pushed them inside.
“We’ll join the laager,” she said to me. “We won’t wait for them to come to us.”
“But the laager’s miles away,” I protested. Weeks ago, we had been asked if we wanted to join the company of families that were going to live in wagons on the veld, moving every few days to keep out of the enemy’s sights. “We’ll never find them –”
“I’m not staying here to see everything destroyed,” hissed my mother. I recognized the growing hysteria in her voice and clamped my mouth shut. “Put on everything you can wear, and then go and tell Lindy to bring the children.”
“Yes, Ma.”
In our bedroom, Gert watched me roll on three pairs of stockings until I could barely squeeze my feet into my boots. I reached for a pair of socks that was draped over the back of a chair and pointed to the heavy leather shoes in the corner.
“Put those on, Gertie,” I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice.
“I don’t want to wear shoes,” he said softly.
“Put them on,” I told him. “We’ll have to walk a long way.” He continued to stand there, wide-eyed, and so I paused from helping Hansie to give Gertie a shove. “And find a shirt. A jacket, too. Roll up the blankets.”
My brother did as he was told, then disappeared into the other room for a few moments before returning with my father’s hat. It was far too large for Gertie; trying it on, his face disappeared beneath the wide, floppy brim.
“I want Pa to come.”
“Pa can’t come. Don’t be dom.”
“I’m going to bring his hat, then. I don’t want the khakis burning his hat.”
I stopped trying to stuff Hansie’s chubby legs into his breeches and looked up at my brother. He was fingering the arrowhead absently, twisting the leather cord as far as it would go before starting to turn it in the opposite direction.
“Do you know where Pa’s coat is?”
“Ja, with the hat.”
“Bring it here.”
For once, he did not argue but came straight back with my father’s calfskin coat. The leather was as soft as felt, and it smelled of sweet grass. I pulled it on and rolled up the sleeves. The pockets reached down past my knees.
“Goed.” I glanced about our room, taking in all the little details that had never seemed terribly important: a washstand with china jug and basin, my unfinished embroidery sampler, a plant pot decoupaged with images of the cathedral in Ghent, the skittles that Oom Jakob had carved for my brother. “Fetch as many rusks as you can fit in your pockets. Biltong, too. Fruit will only spoil —”
>
“Are you still here?” My mother had appeared in the doorway, Pa’s rifle slung over one shoulder. “It’s time you fetched Lindy and the children — Gert can help me with Hansie.”
“Yes, Ma.”
When Sipho saw me — dwarfed by my father’s coat, wool stockings bunching out of my boots, twin petticoats rustling under my smock — he made no attempt to hide his surprise.
“Playing dress up, kleinnooi? Haven’t you told your ma about the khakis?”
“We’re going to join the laager, Sipho. You must get your sisters ready quickly — we’re leaving as soon as we can.”
My friend looked as if he might say something, but then he seemed to think better of it. We had known this day would come, sooner or later: either we would have to join the laager, or watch our farm go up in flames. There wasn’t time to be afraid. After all, this was what Boer women and children had been prepared for since the war started; this is what made us strong — my father had said so himself. I wasn’t about to let him down.
Sipho bolted into the hut. Seconds later, Lindiwe emerged, supporting Nelisiwe on one hip and Nosipho on the other.
“What’s this, kleinnooi?”
“Ma doesn’t want to be here when the khakis come. They’ll be searching all the houses in the area —”
“Aiyoh …” Lindiwe handed Nelisiwe to Sipho. “There’s mealie pap in the pot, and morogo from last night. Can we take the chickens?”
I shook my head, not daring to meet her in the eye. Lindy doted on her chickens as if they were her own children. Her favorite was Mbaba Mwana, a silky hen with full feather pantaloons and a cat’s purr.
“Not even the goat? Nothing?”
“There will be animals at the laager,” I said lamely. “We can leave some corn out for Mbaba Mwana …”
But Lindy had already steeled herself, was busily retying her headscarf: a sure sign that there was work to be done. “Don’t worry about Mbaba Mwana, kleinnooi. She’s only a chicken. We must get you all away from here. That’s the important thing …”