The Other Side of Silence

by Andre Brink

  She nods her head against him in the dark.

  “You tell me it is your war,” he says. “I understand. But you must know it is my war too. It is a war of all of us. And you cannot fight, fight, all the time. You rest now. It is better like that. You understand?”

  She nods. She is too tired to do more. She hears his voice rumbling in his chest again, but she can no longer make the effort to listen. She slides into sleep. For how long it lasts she cannot tell. But when she wakes up he is still holding her. Early light washes across his face which looms dark and peaceful above her.

  I watch for you.

  Empty, yet at the same time inexplicably fulfilled, she moves to her feet. Hesitates. Then bends down and presses her mouth against his forehead. Before she returns to the oxcart in the courtyard below.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Sixty-Three

  After that, I know, there will be other battles, skirmishes, encounters, other forts, other encampments on the veld which seems without end. Behind them they leave the spectacle – in due course the memory – of their conquered fort exploding, clad in flames, an unforgettable display: having loaded as much of the arms and ammunition on their cart as the oxen can haul, everything else was taken to the barracks. Drums of fuel kept for lamps, many bags of gunpowder, piles of thatch, stacks of roughly made furniture, were all heaped up, and once everybody had vacated the enclosure Hanna and Kahapa lit the torches and hurled them inside. There was an ungodly explosion, and the place burned for hours while they began to move on, almost reluctantly.

  They have kept a few of the horses. All the others – and this was an almost unbearable thing to do – had to be shot, as they would either die if turned loose, or arouse suspicion should they find their way back to wherever they came from. The two oxen will be slaughtered along the way for food, and replaced by the salvaged horses. What happens to these, will be determined when the time comes by balancing their usefulness against their requirements of fodder and, especially, water.

  The small trek zigzags across the plains, trying to track what Katja remembers of the directions young Werner had mapped out for her before she killed him: from one well to the other, the wells constructed a good time ago by von Trotha’s troops to make his war possible, to keep his army supplied as they trekked through the untamed land to subdue and destroy Ovambos, Hereros, Damaras, Namas, wherever there was still resistance to the might of the imperial homeland. Sometimes they meet a lonely smous in his wagon; then time must be spent to establish the side he’s on, and whether he is prepared to take them seriously or will treat them with derision. Depending on this, his life will be forfeited or spared. The same happens when they reach a farm, a small or extended family in the remoteness of the semi-desert. You are either for us or against us. To this immemorial formula everything is reduced. Life or death. It is so simple. When they espy a detachment of soldiers on some errand – and the powers of Kahapa, Himba and old Tookwi (still suffering from his injuries, often delirious) in detecting them never cease to stupefy Hanna and Katja and Gisela – they usually try to set up an ambush. They will use bows and arrows to pick off the last soldier in a straggling line, then the next, then the next; so that enough are eliminated by the time the vanguard discovers that something is amiss behind them. Only then will they resort to open battle.

  Forts are often avoided, depending on how well-manned they appear to be. It is not necessary, or wise, to lay waste the whole land. And if a garrison is too large, and the opposing forces involved in open violence too uneven, and stealth and subterfuge too risky, they prefer to move on. They do not want news of their movements, their slow inexorable advance, to precede them.

  More and more clearly, as they proceed, as one obstacle after the other is removed, their destination comes into focus. It may take months; late summer will be, abruptly, replaced by the translucent shivers of winter: but that is where they are heading for, and where the trek will end.

  Windhoek.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Sixty-Four

  All her life she has lived on the fringe of her own story, she thinks. Now at last she is taking charge of it herself. She makes it happen. She also sees it happen. Sees how through the last months of their wandering through the memory of the desert, as they move from ridge to ridge, from one armed patrol to the next, from well to well and fort to fort, their numbers increase. In the beginning, when she left Frauenstein, only Katja was with her. Then they found Kahapa, the man as massive as the omumborumbongo tree. From the farm of Albert Gruber they brought the monkey man T’Kamkhab who is no longer with them, and his strong wife Nerina enraged by her barrenness. At the mission station the woman of death, Koo, joined them, burnt up inside by the urge to find the bones of her child. And the medicine woman Kamma. And the warrior Himba, now still recovering from his wound. The rainmaker Tookwi. And Gisela, who has finally begun to avenge a lifetime of bitterness at the hands of her husband by killing men.

  In the first fort every living soul was annihilated. But from the next they recruited five more followers; from the one after that, twenty; then thirty, then more. Whole garrisons who have somehow learned – from the wind, avers Kahapa – of their advance, come over to their side. Young men in the prime of their life, with the bloom of youth and arrogant innocence still on them. Whole Nama villages through which they pass, abandon their huts and goats and pots and mats to follow them. Travellers, smouse, farm labourers trekking in search of grazing, explorers, prospectors lured by tales of fabulous treasure waiting to be discovered, gun-runners, once the entire population of an unlikely brothel flourishing in the wilderness – everybody comes flocking towards them.

  A day’s journey from Windhoek they reach one of the vast concentration camps von Trotha has had constructed before his departure to contain the hundreds and thousands of indigenous people rounded up as a protective measure in the war: the populations of whole villages are siphoned into them, women and men and children indiscriminately, to ensure the safety of the hinterland. At the approach of Hanna’s army the garrison in charge surrenders without firing a shot. Eight thousand detainees flood through the gates, famished and wasted but jubilant, to join the new army. Stretching from horizon to horizon, they move on, triumphant before they have even engaged in battle.

  And not only the living, but the dead as well, come flocking to Hanna’s standard of buckram and silk, in blue and silver and gold. Graves open as they pass and yield up their humble occupants, some still with skin and dried flesh on them, others skeletons with rattling bones and invincible grimaces. The numerous ghosts from the corridors and empty spaces of Frauenstein return to Hanna to show their solidarity. A host of ghosts, from all over the country, from the distant south where the great Gariep runs into the Atlantic and washes out its diamonds on the sand to the far north where the Kunene winds its tortuous way through mountains and forests, spilling over its banks to leave whole plains inundated, brilliant in the moving sun. And still they come, from all times, all layers of time. The black women stolen by Diaz from the coast of Guinea, the hordes of slaves gathered in the House of the Dead on the isle of Goree off the coast of Senegal and who died even before they boarded the ships for the New World, all the innumerable ghosts of the wastelands on the great continent. The hei nun, as the Nama people call them, the grey-feet; the sobo khoin, the people of the shadows. Throbbing and thriving, grim and grey, they advance from all sides to clamour for their liberation, at last, God, at last. A horde so great that not even the light of the sun can penetrate them. Like a vast cloud they come sweeping across the landscape, a shadow of death claiming the life they have been deprived of, over centuries and centuries. Moving with Hanna and her host, an army like no one has ever seen or dreamed of, growing, ever growing, like a silence trapped inside a shell suddenly starting to swell into a whisper, a drone, a boom, an exultant triumphant roar that demolishes everything before it, a huge wave breaking over the ruined land to bring hope, and l
ife, and life, and life.

  This is what she sees, what she dreams of.

  In a mirage the trees are always upside down.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Sixty-Five

  What really happens in the desert is very different. In retrospect, the moment of their great triumph in the fort seems more and more to have been also the beginning of a decline, an entry into darkness and adversity. It begins with the death of old Tookwi. In spite of all Kamma’s remedies (or because of them, Katja dares to suspect) the old rainmaker never gets well again; and eight days after they have blown up the fort they wake up to find he has quietly died in the night.

  “It is Tsui-Goab,” says Kamma with a knowing nod; as if they needed the reminder.

  And not even a week later they lose Nerina as well. The death of T’Kamkhab in the ambush among the koppies has hit her harder than they would have expected from someone as strong and angry as Nerina. Often she has seemed more of a mother than a wife to him; as if in looking after a man brought up to be the fool of others she could express all the dammed-up love left in her after being compelled to accept the fact of her own barrenness. She seemed, Hanna sometimes thought, condemned to continue looking in the desert for the children she’d lost by aborting them when she couldn’t face the idea of bringing into the world the babies of German soldiers. As if for the rest of her life she wouldn’t be left in peace by their shadows. And now she is gone. One morning when they wake up she is no longer there. Hanna is stricken. Her first thought is that a predator may have come in among them in the night and carried her off. But there are no tracks; and there were no sounds.

  It is Kahapa who tries to explain the inexplicable: “T’Kamkhab is dead. Her children is gone. She must go too.”

  “But she has nowhere to go!” protests Katja.

  “So that is where she go. Nowhere. To find what she has not lost.”

  “How can we go on like this?” asks Katja, a hint of despair in her voice. “There were ten of us. Now we’re only seven.”

  It is not a matter of numbers but of will, Hanna gently reminds her.

  But she thinks: We are all in search of what we have not had, are we not? The children, the dreams, everything that was never allowed to become what might have been. Everything which diminishes what we are capable of and now will never know. But for that very reason we cannot stop. The going itself is more important than loss or gain. We are here because we must go on. We will go on because we are here. As long as those of us who remain can stay together we shall not give up.

  She studies the others when they are not looking. Her army, her sad menagerie. Katja, the gazelle girl, her early sprightliness beginning to fade. Gisela, a pale beaked stork, withdrawing more and more into herself. The toothless Kamma, a shrivelled little baboon, mumbling over her herbs and smelly tufts of hair and bits of skin. Koo, the owl-woman, whose eyes are ever on the distance where she imagines the bones of her lost son. Kahapa the lonely elephant bull. Himba the wounded buffalo. And she herself, the morose marabou. They can make it. They must. They will.

  Then comes their most calamitous day.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Sixty-Six

  They see the little fort from quite a long way off, set on a low rise above a plain covered in thorn trees. There are too few of them now to work out the kind of battle plan that worked so well at the first fort: not knowing how many soldiers are housed inside they would be foolhardy to mount an ambush with only two or three of their own; and the thorn trees provide less shelter than the rocky outcrops they were able to use as a hideout the first time. So all they can do is to approach as openly as possible and hope to devise something once they arrive; if the odds are too big, as they have been on a few more recent occasions, they will simply feign innocence and ask for shelter overnight.

  Their approach is closely watched from high up on the front wall of the little fort: they can make out at least eight men, later ten, several of them with binoculars, all armed with rifles. Hanna leads her group on a relaxed trot so as to allay suspicion. As by this time they have only five horses left, apart from the two pulling the cart, Katja and Gisela share one mare, Kamma and Koo another. Kahapa and Himba each has his own gelding; so does Hanna, as befits a commander.

  Six soldiers in uniform emerge from the wide front gate when they draw up outside. Hanna reins in her horse. Her troops follow suit.

  “Who are you?” shouts the commanding officer, a man with bright red hair and a red moustache. “What do you want?”

  By this time they all know the story by heart, so Katja replies without prompting, “We come from the mission station of Pastor Maier. This is his wife. We’re on our way to Windhoek. Can you put us up for the night?”

  “What are these natives doing with you?”

  “They’re escorting us for our protection. They are all members of Reverend Maier’s congregation.”

  “You three white women can come in.”

  “What about our two domestic servants?”

  The officer confers with his men. “All right then,” he announces, clearly reluctant. “But the men must be locked up until you leave. We can’t take any risks.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry, but I’m sure you will understand.”

  “Can’t the men camp outside?”

  “No.”

  If some of us are not allowed inside, we’ll all stay outside, Hanna angrily prompts Katja. But Gisela interrupts her. They need a proper rest. And who knows, once they’re inside…

  After a moment Hanna consents. Kahapa and Himba withdraw into themselves in sullen anger. They are disarmed by the soldiers and roughly marched to a small dark cubicle attached to the barracks inside the enclosure; clearly some kind of detention cell. In the tussle Kahapa’s hat is knocked from his head. This so enrages him that for a moment Hanna fears that he will break loose and attack his captors, which will endanger them all.

  She urgently jabs Katja in the side and the girl calls out, “Please, Kahapa! Don’t!”

  In the brief silence that follows Hanna rushes forward, picks up the hat, dusts it, and presses it against her chest in a protective and reassuring gesture. Several of the soldiers look at her in open disapproval, if not disgust. The big man makes an effort to restrain himself before he is bundled into the cell. From the low heavy door he briefly looks back, smouldering.

  Hanna waves at him with the hat. It won’t be for long, she tries to signal; but whether he understands she does not know.

  The door is locked, the key pocketed by the lieutenant.

  The cart, with Gisela on it, is pulled into the courtyard and left in the care of Koo and Kamma, while the other women are offered a corner in the barracks. A couple of soldiers rig up a curtain to offer them some privacy. But from the way in which they eye Katja it does not seem as if much store can be set by that.

  It is not a happy place. The fifteen soldiers who man it have not been relieved for months, their commander’s discipline is strict, their food supplies are running as low as their morale.

  I’m sure we can win some of them over to our side, Hanna tells Katja while the red-haired Lieutenant Muller, flanked by two orderlies, takes them on a tour of the fort.

  “We don’t have time,” the girl whispers anxiously. “For God’s sake, don’t try anything rash.”

  We cannot let them get away with what they’ve done to Kahapa and Himba.

  “This is just a small stop on our way,” Katja reminds her. “We still have far to go. Please don’t risk everything now.”

  We shall see. The square set of her jaw alarms Katja even more than what she has said in her sign language.

  But Katja has to reconsider when in the late afternoon they are invited, with a suspect show of generosity, to attend a session of ‘target practice’ behind the fort. With the exception of two sentries left on the walls, the whole garrison is in attendance. In what looks like a cattle kraal a number of Nama prisoners, about thirty or forty of them, are ke
pt shackled together. They are in a shocking state. It is obvious they haven’t been fed in days, and in the open kraal, exposed to the blaze of the sun by day and the fierce desert cold by night, they are clearly in the last stages of deprivation.

  Six of the prisoners are unshackled and dragged outside and ordered to run. Only two or three make the effort to stagger to their feet, the rest remain sprawling on the ground. Lieutenant Muller makes a curt gesture with his head to his men. They need no further instruction. Surging forward, they set upon the prisoners with sjamboks and the butts of their rifles to beat them to their feet. The Namas break into a pitiful imitation of jogging. That is when the target practice starts.

  “Stop them!” shouts Gisela, grabbing the lieutenant by the arm. “For God’s sake, you can’t do that!”

  “My men need to stay in shape,” he answers with a pinched grin like the cut of a knife across his face. “You must try to understand. It is the only diversion we can offer them to keep them happy.”

  Without waiting to see any more the women hurry back round the walls of the fort to the entrance. Behind them the shooting and the shouting continue. Both Gisela and Katja have to stop along the way to vomit. Hanna doesn’t, but tears are running down her cheeks. She makes no sound.

  You see, we have no choice, she tells Katja once they are back at their cart inside the enclosure. These men have no right to live. Do you agree?

  Katja sits with her knees drawn up, hiding her face in her arms. “They will kill us all,” she says. She looks up. “But you’re right. We have no choice.”

  With strange detachment Hanna discusses her strategy with them. It is desperate; but they cannot come up with anything better. Koo and Kamma are brought into the discussion; Kamma silently starts working on her potions. Before the men return Katja goes to the heavy door of the detention cell to talk to Kahapa inside.