The Other Side of Silence

by Andre Brink

  Where is my home? Hanna asks through Katja. I have no home, Katja has no home. We have only this land to live in. Together with the other people from your omumborumhonga tree.

  Kahapa shakes his head, but says nothing.

  “You must go to sleep now,” Katja tells him. There is still hostility in her voice.

  Hanna puts an arm around her shoulders. They remain there for a while, until Kahapa has disappeared behind the white blemish of the house on the smooth black skin of the night. Together they turn back.

  When they slip through the front door, a black shape detaches itself from the darkness like an errant ghost and comes towards them. It is the missionary.

  “I have just come to check that all is well,” he explains. “You two really should not wander about in the dark.”

  In an impulsive rush of emotion Katja throws herself against him, her arms around his neck. “Thank God you’re here to look after us,” she exclaims impulsively, her voice strangled with emotion. “You are such a good man.”

  He remains standing awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his hands. In the faint light from outside only Hanna can see his face. And what she reads there is unexpected: not pleasure, no hint of tenderness, but revulsion, as if he has been assaulted by something sordid and hideous.

  “Take your hands off me, you little slut!” he hisses, so loudly that all the breathing in the dark room stops abruptly. “I will have none of this lewdness. You are a child of the Devil.”

  His reaction is so out of proportion to what has happened that it leaves both Katja and Hanna gasping with incomprehension.

  Before they can recover he stalks away through the dark; they can hear him tearing open the curtain in the doorway as he rushes into the bedroom. Slowly, hesitantly, studiously, the breathing resumes around them.

  Hanna pulls the front door shut. The two of them lie down together. Katja is shaking.

  “I just wanted to…” she stammers. “I thought…I never meant to…It was like hugging my father, but he…My God, Hanna, what is going on?”

  All Hanna can do is to hold the girl very tightly against her, making low soothing sounds in her throat; but she is conscious of her own heart beating.

  “He thought I…” Katja begins again. Hanna covers her mouth with her hand but she pushes it away. “Hanna, I’m not like that! I’m not what he said…How could he…”

  That’s enough now, Hanna conveys to her with her fingers moving across her trembling face. I know you’re not like that. A silence. But to him it makes no difference. She breathes in long and deeply. I’m afraid he is just like those other men who came to Frauenstein. And the ones that punished me on the train.

  “I can’t believe it. He always talks about God.”

  He has to. Because he is scared of himself. Deep down he is no different.

  Next door, beyond the thin curtain, the now familiar rhythms of the dark begin again.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Six

  Hanna cannot shake off the memory of that German woman and her piano in the wilderness. Was she brought out, like Hanna herself, in expectation of a new life, a place to live, a place with palm trees? For a piano to survive the voyage by sea, the train journey, the trek through the desert – dear God, it must be almost more unlikely than for a woman. When she herself came out she had her magic shell with her; and even that she’s lost. Only the memory of a sound has lingered, like something dreamt. That woman, now lost too, buried in an unmarked grave, brought her sound with her. Now smashed to pieces. They would both of them have fared better with Opa’s mute instrument. This terrible land.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Seven

  Imagine Hanna sitting in the narrow shade of the wall, staring out into the arrogant light which is beating down on the desert landscape as if it has the sole right to be there; as if no shade or darkness has a purchase on existence. In the distance the men of the settlement are toiling, as they do every goddamned day, heaving stone upon stone to add to the greater glory of God and his able servant. Soon, she knows, she will have to move on. They could do with a few more days of rest – Kahapa, in particular, has not quite recovered his strength – but an uneasiness has been building up inside her, and in him. Katja, especially, has been showing signs of distress ever since the night she had the emotional encounter with Gottlieb Maier. At the same time there is a shadow of reluctance in Hanna’s mind. If the missionary has whetted her resolve, honing the hate in her to an even keener steel, the knowledge of what lies ahead cannot but contain a sad fear as well. Not because of what awaits her, for she has been prepared to face it since they left Frauenstein, but for what it may demand of Katja.

  It is not the violence as such that intimidates her, nor the pain it inflicts. It is rather the denial inherent to it: the threat it poses to whatever that strange, secret thing may be she would like to think of as ‘human’. The horror perpetrated by that man – those men – on the train: yes, of course it cries out to be avenged. In the name of being human. But if she sets out to avenge that, is there anything in herself which is not placed in jeopardy? Is it possible to destroy another without destroying at least something in oneself? Can blood be redeemed by blood alone?

  She has not heard Katja approaching and looks up, startled, when the girl comes up from behind, carrying a Bible in her hand.

  Hanna raises her hands in a gesture of questioning: What are you doing here? I thought you were helping Gisela with her classes.

  “I couldn’t stand it any more. Do you know what that man made her teach the children today?” She opens the book where a pencil protrudes from the pages. “The story of Noah and his sons. You know the bit about Ham, the father of Canaan, who sees the old man lying naked in a drunken stupor, and then telling his brothers about it, and then they walk backward into the tent to cover him up?”

  Hanna shrugs, vaguely amused.

  Katja starts reading in a voice quivering with rage, stabbing at the words with her pencil: “And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed he Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

  What is that to you? Hanna gesticulates.

  “The pastor ordered Gisela to tell the children that because they’re black they’re the descendants of Ham or Canaan or whoever and that is why they’ve now got to slave for us. If you ask me, it’s because a few of the men started complaining about working on this bloody wall. So now the wrath of God and all his angels have to be called in to keep them in their place. Even if he has to twist the Bible to help. I mean, where in this piece does it say that Ham was black? Suppose he was, how did Noah manage to have two white sons and one black? And who was the sinner anyway? The old drunken bastard or the son who just happened to find him snoring in his tent, covered in his own vomit, most likely? And if that really was supposed to be wrong, why not go for Ham himself? Why hit on Canaan who wasn’t anywhere near, as far as I can make out?”

  Hanna reaches up to take the girl’s hand. Why should you let that bother you? she wants to know, making small soothing motions with her fingers. Just ignore it.

  “But Gisela is upset too,” Katja insists. “And she has no choice.” She shakes her head. “I suppose I should have stayed to give her some support. But I just couldn’t swallow it any more.” She makes an attempt to control herself. “I don’t know how she manages. She isn’t strong. And all those children. Now her baby is sick too.”

  You’re working too hard.

  “It’s better to be busy.” She sits down next to Hanna and flings the black Bible into the thin film of powdery grey dust which covers the rock-hard earth. “Perhaps, you know, I’m trying to make up for all the times I didn’t help my mother. Gertrud and I” – she seldom mentions her sister; there is obviously much she still has not come to terms with – “we were both very disobedient, difficult. The trading post was such a lonely place for us.” A long silence. “Y
ou know, my mother loved music. She had quite a good voice and would often sing to us. Hymns and things, mostly. But sometimes other songs, lighthearted and gay and sunshiny songs. I thought of her that day in the Grubers’ farmhouse when they broke the piano: it was such an incredible sound. Like an explosion. As if all the sounds the piano had ever made, all the sounds it was capable of making, suddenly broke out together. And then the terrible silence afterwards. All that sound – gone. But where has it gone to? It must still be somewhere. If only one could find it. And Mother’s singing too. All the music of our lives. I often he awake at night thinking about it, wondering, and I understand nothing of it at all.”

  I think you were forced to be a grownup much too soon.

  “They did what they could. So did I.” Her voice is infused with a new passion. “When we came to this place – I told you before – it was, in a way, like coming home. I remembered so many things from the time we were all together: Father, Mother, Gerhardt, Rolf, Gertrud and me. Mother’s singing and everything. Mainly because this man, Reverend Maier, reminded me so strongly…” She chokes, takes time to compose herself. “My father was such a gentle man, he meant everything to me, I loved him. Then the other night when I saw what the good missionary was really like…Hanna, it was as if all my deepest memories suddenly became lies. Suppose the father I knew was not the same man other people saw? Suppose he did the same things as the other traders the Hereros feared and hated so much – giving them credit and credit and credit, all the time, until they couldn’t pay any more and then taking their cattle, their land…How will I ever know? All I know is that I cannot trust my own memories any more. Everything that used to be good, and important to me…Now there’s nothing I can be sure of. And I’m just angry. I’ve never been so angry before. I want to do something. But what could I possibly do that would make any difference?”

  Hanna looks hard at her. After a long time she starts moving her hands again to ask, Are you sure you made the right choice when you came with me?

  Katja sniffs angrily, wipes tears across her scorched face. “I couldn’t stay in that place.”

  But now that we have left it…?

  “Where are we going, Hanna?” Katja asks with sudden directness.

  Hanna makes a gesture towards her scarred face, then lapses into silence again, trying to order her thoughts.

  “You want to take revenge on the man who did that to you, I know. I understand that. But that was more than four years ago, wasn’t it? What are the chances he’ll still be in Windhoek? And even if he were…Once you’ve taken your revenge, what then? Will it be over? Will you have made peace with yourself?”

  Hanna puts her hand on Katja’s to silence the girl. For a moment she looks round, searching, anxious to find a way out of her own muteness; then she sets to preparing a small square patch of ground, stroking and patting it with the palm of one hand. She finds a twig and starts scribbling hurriedly. But the cover of dust is too spare, the earth too hard, and the scratches remain near-indecipherable. In a rage of frustration she looks about her again, then notices the Bible Katja has dropped on the ground and picks it up, puts it on her lap. Feverish with eagerness she takes out the pencil still stuck between the pages of Genesis and begins to flip through the heavy book, past the whole of the Old Testament with its bloody histories and its genealogies and its bleak curses and exhortations and imprecations, and past the New (which is not nearly as dog-eared and fingered and worn as the Old), past all the dire prophecies and visions of Revelations, to the blank pages at the very end. She glances up at Katja, and begins to write:

  Why do you keep on talking about revenge, Katja? It is not just revenge.

  That too, of course. He cannot he allowed to get away with it. But it’s so much more. You must believe me. You’re seen for yourself, in Frauenstein, and even here in this place, how many have been maimed. Not necessarily in the same way, not always so visible, but all of us harmed. Scarred. And for as long as we bear it in silence it will go on. There will always be new ones to suffer. There has been too much suffering already. There comes a time when one has got to say No. Someone has to stop it. And the world must know about it, they must learn what has been done to us, they must know our names.

  She shoves the book across her knees for the girl to read. Her fingers are stiff and cramped, she is no longer used to writing. But she hasn’t finished yet. When Katja looks up, opening her mouth to say something, Hanna grabs the book back, tears out a single page, and resumes on the next.

  It’s like what you said about the piano, remember? Those sounds are still somewhere. We are somewhere. And someone must find out about us and hear our sounds.

  Katja has risen on her knees to read over her shoulder. Hanna stares out across the desert, makes a wide empty gesture towards it, and starts writing again, pressing so hard that the point of the pencil stabs holes in the paper.

  Look at this desert, with its stones and its little bushes and its silences. It does not need me, it will be here long after I have gone. But I don’t want it to forget about me. I was here! You are here. I want this place to know about us. That is why we’re going to Windhoek, don’t you understand? And we must take with us all the others who have also suffered and who have also forgotten the need to say No.

  She drops the pencil and pauses to pick it up.

  So you see, it is not just the one man we are looking for, she writes, the letters now thicker and smudgier than before as the point grows blunter. Our hunt is on now. To find everybody who has joined forces with that man. Everybody who has made him possible.

  Incredulous, dazed, Katja moves her palm across the page as if to erase the words. “How can you do that?” she asks, almost with awe. “One woman – against the whole of the German Reich?” She shakes her head silently. “Against the world?”

  Hanna tears out the second page, coaxing the pencil stub into writing a few last words on the third: If we move as an army against them, she writes, they will destroy us. But there is no need to fight an ordinary kind of war. We’ll do it slowly, bit by bit. But in the end we shall prevail. Because I’m not alone. Never forget that. We are not alone.

  They sit in silence for a long time. Then Katja reaches for the Bible to tear out the last page. She picks up the book.

  Katja takes it from her. “I must return this to the church,” she says. “He will kill us if he finds out.”

  Hanna crumples the pages she has torn out and stuffs them into the bodice of her dress; she will burn them later.

  Katja makes to go, then comes back, and bends over, and presses her cheek against Hanna’s. Perhaps she has understood after all.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Eight

  In the late afternoon they find themselves behind the stocky little church, where they have fled to escape the incessant wailing of the sick baby. Gottlieb Maier has refused the help they offered, arguing emphatically that one is expected to show fortitude in the face of adversity sent to test the faithful. “It is probably something Gisela has eaten which has corrupted her milk,” he said, casting a reproachful glance at his wife. “Now it is in the hands of God. I shall pray, and he will respond as he sees fit.” He has also turned away, much more testily, the Nama women who came to offer their arcane brews and philtres: “Heathen superstition! Not only will they harm the child, but they’ll offend the nostrils of the Lord.”

  Hanna has to let off steam. That man is a monster.

  But Katja is more pensive. “You know,” she says cautiously, “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. Why he is always so frantically busy. It’s not just because it’s his work. Or that he’s scared of himself, as you said. I think it is worse. I think he’s covering up, he’s trying to make himself believe. Suppose, like Gisela, he doesn’t really believe in God either. But because of his vow he’s now got to spend the rest of his life in Africa. And perhaps he hates every moment of it. But there’s no way he can ever get out of it.”
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br />   That is no reason to make others pay for it, Hanna reminds her. His wife. His children. Everybody. Perhaps that was why he needed the story of Noah to control his grumbling workers too.

  Kahapa appears round the corner of the church to join them. There is a small group of people with him, nine or ten, men and women.

  “I bring this people,” he says to Hanna. “They want to go with us.”

  Do they know where we are going?

  “I tell them Windhoek. I tell them it is to fight, it is a hard thing to do.”

  And why would they want to give up the life they have here to go with us?

  Kahapa nudges the first of the group forward, a tall and somewhat surly young man. “You tell her,” he instructs the man.

  He doesn’t have much to say, though. He comes from the far north, the Kaokoveld – the only moments when he waxes eloquent is when he starts talking about the great ana trees on the banks of the broad river on its way to the cold sea, and the wild hills and the dark patches of bush in the folds of the valleys, the magical spring of Kaoko Otavi where the elephants gather to drink in the moonlight; and his proud people who live there, the Ovahimbas, their tall bodies plastered with red ochre – but the ripple effects of the war these last ten years have disturbed the peaceful life his tribe had known for centuries, so some of them started trickling south, ever further, in search of employment; and unable to find anything stable or permanent (how could a proud man be content to work for strangers?), he ended up here at the mission station. But he dislikes the pastor and hates the work, and now he wants to go back to his own country. Windhoek will be a convenient stop on the long road home.

  Tell him I’ll think about it, announces Hanna. But as soon as the Ovahimba has left, she tells Kahapa through Katja, No, this is not enough for us. He will go with us and then leave us when it suits him. We need people who will stay with us all the way.