The Other Side of Silence

by Andre Brink

  This is what it means to move into the interior, she thinks. Not arriving on a boat, meeting people, talking to strangers, bringing with one a language made beyond the seas, bestowing words on things – stone, bush, root, earth, sky – but walking into it, merging with it, body to body. The way, perhaps, it was with Lotte in the total darkness of their submarine cabin.

  “But how far do we go on?” asks Katja. “Until what happens?”

  Until we know what is on the other side.

  “Suppose it never ends?”

  Then at least we’ll know the desert.

  “Are you not afraid, Hanna?”

  Of what?

  “If someone comes, some time…?”

  We are armed.

  “Do you know how to use a gun?”

  No. A smile. You are right. We must learn. Perhaps this man, this Kahapa, can teach us.

  Kahapa does, once he can stand up on his own again and the smell of his festering wounds diminishes and his strength returns. With endless patience he shows them how to load, and take aim, and shoot. When Katja finds the Mauser too unwieldy she is given the Luger. Neither becomes really proficient, but at least they no longer pose a danger to themselves. Then Kahapa takes them on a hunt. He shoots a springbok, an old crippled animal presumably rejected by its herd. The meat is tough and stringy, but they feast on it for days.

  It is while they are sitting beside the fire Kahapa has made to roast the meat that he begins to tell them about how his people first came from what he calls the Far Country, a place without a name, hundreds of years ago, bringing the sacred fire of their ancestors with them. And where they settled in the new Hereroland, from Aminuis to Epukiro, to Otjimbungue, to Otjituuo, to Otjihorongo, to Ovitoto, to Tses – all these places with the magic names that ring in Hanna’s ears – they brought their fire with them, each new settlement or tribe lighting its own from the coals of the first fire, so that it would never die. At the great omumborumbonga tree in the region of Okahandja, he explains, the two brothers who arrived together first separated. The descendants from the one became the Ovambos, who remained in the north; from the other brother descended the Hereros who spread down across the whole countryside as far as the Nossob River and covered the grassy plains with their great herds of cattle.

  But then came the Germans – and Kahapa’s voice trembles with subdued rage – and started occupying their land and taking their cattle; and the Namas from the south began to make raids into Hereroland to lay waste great tracts of it; and the terrible cattle disease destroyed the herds; and the destitute people were forced to become labourers on the farms of the very whites who had scattered the ashes of their forefathers’ fires.

  “And now I am here,” he says. “But I shall not stay here. First I shall go to the farm where he do this to me and take back my wife. And one day I shall go back to our Great Place in Okahandja where our chiefs lie buried.”

  A few days later, when the last of the meat has been consumed, they finally set out in the direction Kahapa has pointed out.

  Are you sure you’re strong enough for this? Hanna makes Katja ask him.

  The tall man growls deep in his throat. “I am ready,” he says. “Ndjambi Karunga, the god of my people, will help me.”

  They are both in trepidation of what may come from a confrontation. Katja, especially, shudders at the prospect.

  “We must try to keep him away from that farmer,” she pleads with Hanna. “The violence will be terrible.”

  What must happen must happen, Hanna replies. Kahapa has to do his duty.

  Katja shakes her head in despair, but she is given no choice.

  Proceeding very slowly and making many halts, they take a full day and a half to reach the farm. Kahapa leads the way. The landscape has become more turbulent, with high ridges and outcrops breaking the plains; and the farmhouse, little more than an unplastered hovel of stone and reeds, sits high and exposed against a rocky slope. The farmer must have spied them from a long way off because he comes down to meet them, gun in hand, clearly intrigued by the unusual visitors. He is a man with a wild beard discoloured by tobacco juice, on his head a filthy hat decorated with a strip of leopard skin around the brim. They are very near to him before he recognises Kahapa. His small eyes set close together register unspeakable shock.

  “I left you for dead,” he stammers. “How the hell did you survive? And what are you doing here?”

  “I come for my wife.”

  “The meid is not here.”

  Kahapa takes a deep breath. “You kill her too?” he asks.

  The man retreats a step. “She ran away.” He is clutching the gun very tightly, evidently not prepared to take any chances.

  “You lie,” snarls Kahapa. “If she run away she come to me where you put me.” He takes a menacing step closer.

  “She didn’t know her place,” the farmer retorts. But behind the anger in his voice one senses real apprehension.

  “Where is she?”

  “How must I know? I told you she ran away.” In the background, at the front door and around the corner of the house, other figures appear. Judged by their miserable appearance they must be labourers. Three barefoot women, a shirtless man with tattered trousers. Sensing their presence, the farmer glances round. He appears openly nervous now. “Go ask them,” he says curtly.

  Kahapa stares hard at him. “I want my wife,” he says, coming slowly past the farmer.

  The man edges out of his way. For a moment Hanna and Katja are afraid that he may shoot from behind, but their presence appears to make him hesitate. They prepare to follow after Kahapa, covering his rear.

  “You two can stay here,” says the farmer quickly, stepping forward to block their way. He is looking at Katja with some interest. In a way Hanna finds this more ominous than his belligerence towards Kahapa.

  “Where do you come from?” the farmer asks, an unpleasantly cajoling tone in his voice. “Did this bastard try to do you any harm?” Only then does he notice Hanna’s face under the hood of the kappie. He takes a step back. “What in God’s name has happened to you? You look like something out of hell.”

  Hanna puts a hand on Katja’s arm. The girl tries to keep her voice in control. “Kahapa told you. We are here with him to find his wife.”

  Many unarticulated feelings move like shadows across his blunt face. There is a difficult pause before he lets them past. The gun is shaking visibly in his ferocious grip.

  At the front door Kahapa is talking to the women. They appear reluctant to comply with whatever he may be asking, and furtive glances are cast in the direction of the farmer with the gun. But in the end they lead him round the house. Hanna and Katja follow to the back, skirting the rocky top of the outcrop, and down the side of the rise, past two makeshift sheds, a few untidy enclosures of stacked branches, towards parched, dispirited fields.

  Only now, out of earshot of the hovel, in angry spurts, do the women dare to inform Kahapa about what has happened. It is as he has feared. His wife was killed. And as Albert Gruber had refused to give permission for a funeral, which would interfere with the work on the farm, the dead woman was buried in the night, without any fire or light to betray the mourners. There was no time, and the soil was too hard, for a proper grave to be dug, so the body, rolled in an old blanket, was laid to rest in a shallow trench at the far end of the mealie land, among the stalks of the last failed harvest.

  When the small procession comes to a standstill, Hanna and Katja remain a few yards away. In the full glare of the midday sun they take off their kappies and hold them against their breasts.

  Kahapa is standing beside the small mound of the grave, staring down at it.

  “Tell me what he do to her,” he asks the three women who have guided him to the place. He is speaking in his threadbare German, as if he wants to make sure that Hanna and Katja will understand.

  They hear one of the black women protest, “Hau! It is better not to ask.”

  “I must know.”
r />   For a while they stubbornly hold out, but when his attitude becomes threatening they relent. Retreating a few paces, as if scared that he might vent his anger on them, they take turns to tell the story, haltingly, drastically truncated. For it would indeed have been better not to know. How Albert Gruber kept on calling Kahapa’s wife to his bed, and how she went on refusing, trying to persuade him by pointing to her swollen belly. She was five months pregnant. In the end he lost his temper and attacked her with his fists and beat her to the ground. When she went on resisting, he ordered two of his labourers to hold her down with force. Then he had his way with her. And afterwards he ordered the men to flog her in the ‘German way’, tied down on her back. They beat the child out of her. They didn’t stop before every movement in the battered body had ceased.

  Throughout the whole narrative Kahapa utters no sound. His face is contorted, but he does not speak. For a long time, minutes, perhaps half an hour, he stands beside the mound. Until, in the distance, from behind the derelict little dwelling, the figure of the farmer reappears, staring down towards them. Only then does Kahapa begin the long walk back, very slowly, moving his arms as if he is rowing upstream. As he comes past them, Hanna reaches out to touch his arm, but he shakes her off.

  “Kahapa,” whispers Katja.

  He does not even seem to hear.

  They follow at a distance, their hands clenched together.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Thirty-Eight

  “What do you want?” demands the farmer as Kahapa comes up to him.

  “I come for you,” says the dark giant.

  “You know what you wanted to know, now get the hell off my farm.”

  “You kill my woman dead,” says Kahapa. “You try to kill me. Now I kill you.”

  Albert Gruber raises his gun. There is outrage in his small eyes, but also – perhaps – a glint of fear. Above all incomprehension, for this is something that has never happened to him before, something beyond the reach of the possible.

  The black man lunges at him. The white man tries to step aside but stumbles. Before he can get his rifle to his shoulder Kahapa grabs hold of the barrel. A furious tug of war begins. Kahapa is much taller, but he is still weak from his ordeal; and Gruber, though shorter, is heavy and stocky, he has the body of a primate, with hunched shoulders and long arms.

  “You’ve got to help Kahapa,” pleads Katja, clutching Hanna’s hand.

  But Hanna pulls away. This is the men’s fight, she gestures. Let them be.

  They are like two fighting dogs, grunting and snarling, pulling, pushing, stumbling this way and that. But at last, managing to drag the white man off balance, Kahapa wrenches the gun from his grasp and flings it away. Now they have only their hands.

  Using his slight advantage of higher ground, the farmer hurls himself down against Kahapa. They land on the ground, grappling, wrestling, hitting, tearing. They are covered in grit and dust. Both are bleeding. The white man manages to head-butt Kahapa in the face; there is a crunching sound. The black man bellows in rage and pain, rears up, digs his knee into his opponent’s groin. He doubles up. Kahapa staggers to his feet, his face bleeding profusely. But seeing his chance he kicks the white man in the stomach. The farmer grabs him by the leg and tries to pull him down again. Then they are both on their feet once more, thrashing about, stumbling up and down the incline in front of the hovel.

  More figures appear in the background, hovering. Not just the three women who escorted Kahapa to the grave, but a small crowd of farm workers, dusty and dishevelled, ribbed like mongrels, clustered together in horrified eagerness, grunting and moaning as if they, too, are in the fight; but not daring to take sides.

  At one stage the two wrestling men lurch through the front door into the house. There is a sound of breaking and splintering wood as they reel and stagger from the single room into the lean-to kitchen and back, then out into the fury of the sun again. Strip by strip their clothing is being torn from them. Soon they are naked, black and white, body against body, but both so covered with blood and grime and dust that the colour of their skins has become almost indistinguishable.

  Hanna finds herself staring at the spectacle, transfixed, in a kind of awe, unable to turn away. Always in the past, when there was violence, she was involved in it, the victim, unable to watch from the outside. Now there is an urge to observe. She has to see, for this is what men do and she cannot deny or ignore it. She has to see how pain is inflicted, how it is made to hurt, what it does to the one who causes it as much as to the one who suffers it. She must know. She isn’t even aware of Katja’s nails digging into her arm as the girl keeps on repeating in a wail of distress, “Just stop it. Just stop it, Hanna, please make them stop…”

  Kahapa shows the first signs of weakening. His breath comes gasping from his throat and he seems dazed, trying to wipe blood from his eyes, groaning deeply like some dying large animal.

  “That man is going to kill him,” whimpers Katja. She is crying without realising it. Tears are making wet patterns through the red dust that covers her cheeks. “He’s going to kill him, Hanna, you’ve got to do something.”

  And indeed the white man seems to be preparing for a final assault, going down low on his knees, then rearing up and grabbing Kahapa round the neck, his arms tightening, his muscles moving like moles under the skin. The black man is making choking sounds. His knees are buckling. On his forehead large veins bulge out, throbbing.

  “For God’s sake, Hanna!” sobs the girl, crouching on her knees now.

  Kahapa’s large body is going limp.

  Only now does Hanna come forward. Katja hasn’t even noticed that she has removed the Luger from her bundle. She cautiously steps up to the tangle of sweating, bleeding bodies, making sure she isn’t drawn into the fray. For a while she has to step this way and that to avoid their thrashing. Then she presses the barrel against the back of the white man’s head, and closes her eyes, turns her face away, and pulls the trigger.

  The report is stunning. In the background the miserable spectators erupt in sound, but whether it is jubilation or jeering is impossible to make out.

  There is a lot of blood.

  The bodies remain locked together, twitching, jerking. But at last Kahapa shakes himself like a big dog coming from the water, and crawls away on all fours, squats down, his head buried in his arms.

  The other body no longer moves.

  “How did you do it?” asks Katja, gaping in awe.

  It is only the first time that it is difficult, Hanna tries to say.

  No one makes any sound or movement. They are waiting for Kahapa. After a long time he raises his face from his hands and looks at them. He gets up, swaying on his legs, walks down to where the dead farmer lies, prods him with a foot. The body rolls over. It is not an appetising sight. The face, where the bullet has come out, has been blown away.

  “You do this for me,” says Kahapa, still panting. He looks at Hanna. “Two times you save my life.” He nods towards the dead man as if to conclude an argument with himself. “This is my man,” he says. “Now we go find your man.”

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Thirty-Nine

  No, she could never have thought that hate would be like this. So beautiful. So singular. So utterly pure. So abundantly full of life. It is as if she has always had an emptiness inside her – sometimes invaded temporarily by fear, by dread, by uncertainty and restlessness, occasionally even by a surge of love, all kinds of turbulent and opaque emotions, but mostly just empty – which is now filled with this resplendent hate. It’s like a magnifying glass which forces together a great number of disparate light beams to focus with terrible precision on one spot only, setting it alight, and in one amazing moment giving direction and meaning to her whole life. Over so many years so many separate moments have prepared her, unknowingly, for it. Frau Agathe in the orphanage. Pastor Ulrich. The people she worked for, the men with their sordid needs, their power, their helplessn
ess in her hands. The officer on the ship who denied her the right to her own name. The men on the train. Hauptmann Heinrich Bohlke. The blood spurting in her mouth and dripping down her chin on to her breasts. His subalterns in the crowded compartment taking off their studded belts. When I fuck a woman. That was the furthest she had ever been driven. But it was also the moment of ultimate emptiness. A space in which nothing could grow or move. Until the so-recent day when the army detachment came to Frauenstein with its wretched collection of prisoners. For the first time in all these years something stirred inside her when Colonel von Blixen drew Katja to him and said, “I’ll have this one.” Temporarily thwarted by Frau Knesebeck. But when he returned in the night and she found him beating the naked Katja, a flame was lit inside the darkest recess of herself. A flame as livid and dazzling as the sun. As if everything that had been gathering in her throughout her life had suddenly exploded. When she attacked him with the brass candlestick something broke free in her, an animal kept caged and tethered all its life. For the first time in the years since the train journey she could look at herself in the smudged and faded mirror. She looked, and she knew, everything she’d never even attempted to grasp. It was the beginning of hate, a liberation, an ecstasy she would never have dreamed possible. As if Herr Goethe himself was shouting inside her, Herrlich wie am ersten Tag…! From that instant she has known where her life is heading for. She has light, she has fire, she has the will, a passion that can never be extinguished again. That is what has brought her here. And will take her from here, to where she knows, with such clarity, she must go. There is no haste or impatience in her. Everything is serene, all is transparent in that light. No love can possibly be as fulfilling and as rich as this hate.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty

  They are ready to set out on their way to the Rhenish mission station which, if Kahapa is to be believed, is five days from the farm, even if one travels by oxcart as they are doing.