Philida

by Andre Brink

  Now I want to go and show it to the Ounooi, I say. Ask her what she think.

  Better not, say Ouma Nella. I don’t trust that old cow.

  She was right, of course. But I was too eager to show it to someone, and so instead of listening to Ouma Nella I take the jersey straight to the Ounooi.

  She churning the butter when I get there, for that is something she always do herself, won’t let any dirty hands spoil her new butter. If she don’t keep her own fat hands on it, the butter turn out too hard or too runny, too salty or too insipid. Yes, she ask me, what you doing here? What do you want?

  I just come to show the Ounooi something.

  Well, show and be done, don’t waste my time with your nonsense. What have you messed up this time?

  It’s a jersey I make for one of the children. For Alida or someone, I think.

  She give it one look and ask, Who the hell told you to knit a jersey this time of the year?

  Nobody tell me, Ounooi. I do it on my own and in my own time.

  You’re not supposed to have time of your own. Who taught you this?

  Nobody, Ounooi.

  And you think we got enough time in this house to waste on things like this?

  I think it is a pretty jersey, Ounooi.

  You listen to me, meid. You’re not here to think. You’re here to work and to do what we tell you.

  Yes, Ounooi. But –

  Don’t talk back to me. And for all the time you’ve been wasting, bring me my riem.

  But that’s not fair, Ounooi. I just try to –

  Just this or just that, it’s all shit. Bring me that riem.

  And then she beat me until I can no longer stand.

  Not the end of it yet. Because after that I got to undo that whole piece of knitting in front of her eyes until there is nothing left of it. Nothing, I tell you. I just cry and cry. And that’s something the Ounooi can’t stand. So she beat me again. And she shout: For being so hard-headed and obstreperous you’re not getting any food tonight. That’ll bloody well teach you.

  Luckily Ouma Nella was in her room to give me some bread and a mug of milk. But that night I cry myself to sleep. One of the very few times, for crying is something I do not sommer easily do.

  But I do not stop knitting. Frans love watching me, and he like me to show him. I even show him to do some stitches himself. He don’t do too badly. But what he like best is to play auction-auction with me. He first teach me, because he often go to the Caab with the Oldman so he learn everything about auctions. And when he come back home to Zandvliet again, he show me. Back to the bamboo copse. For whatever we want to do that is always the best place. Usually he is the auction man or the buyer, or both of them in turn. Then I am the slave that got to be auctioned. I got to take off my clothes and stand on a block, so all the buyers can have a good look at me. And Frans start talking in a high singing voice. Mijne heeren. Because there is usually only men at the auction. Mijne heeren. Here we have a young slave girl. Take a look. I got to open my mouth to show them my tongue, and my teeth. And my hands, and my feet. Then back to the hands to show the gentlemen all my fingers, one by one. That’s when he start telling them about my knitting. All the clever things I can do with these thin fingers, he explain very proudly, all the things I can knit and sew. And how much a girl like me is worth to a farmer’s wife, more than money or corals, he say. Whatever corals may be.

  Once he is done with the fingers he can carry on with the auction. The part I don’t like is when he want me to bend over to show my backside to the people so that he can show the men between my buttocks. And then to turn round so he can open me between his fingers.

  Until I get fed up with the game and tell him to stop. One day I get off the block and I tell him straight, That’s now enough. Now it’s your turn to be the slave and I’ll be the Baas. That I like. Off with your shirt. Down with your breeches. And move your arse, the Baas don’t have time to waste.

  Frans try to protest, so I whack him with the kierie. Mijne heeren. Take a good look at this fine young boy. His eyes. Those two eyes are so good, they can see a duiker three days away and they shine in the dark. He can see round a corner if there’s any game coming. Now look at his ears. Let me tell you, mijne heeren, he can hear from a hundred paces away when a chameleon turn its left eye to you. Now watch closely. Those two arms may be thin, but they tough. Those legs are not exactly tree trunks, but they can run as fast as a ribbok, from one sunrise to the next. Look at his front. Look at his backside. Look at this mouthful of teeth. Those teeth can chew stones. I turn Frans round and round, I tell them to look, I show them everything. I pull his fingers apart. I show them his foot soles. I make him bend over. Take a close look, mijne heeren. Then I show them his front again. By the time I come to his little thing, it already stand up like a stick. I do to him what we always do when we get together in the bamboo copse. Look again. This thing can shoot like an elephant gun. It’s a bargain, mijne heeren, and the man that get him, he get more than he can see. For this boy-child is a clever little bastard. He can read and write. He can do anything you can think of. You won’t get a better buy in this Caab of ours. Caab of Storms, Caab of Good Hope, Caab of Anything You Wish For in the wide world. His name is Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink, they call him Frans for short. Who will make me a bid?

  All those auction games that go back over the years. But nowadays there is no time for games any more. The world now catch up with us. Today there is a very real thing waiting for us. When everything else is over and done with, this is what we got left: we’re on the wagon on the road to the Caab, it’s time we did something about leaving Zandvliet for good. Today the feet must be spared, so I can look in good form in case there’s people interested in buying a slave girl. Just like Frans and I used to play, except there is no play-play today.

  It is I myself who tell the Oldman it’s now time for me to get moving. I must get away from here. Zandvliet got nothing for me any more. And I won’t be sold like an ox or a goat inland and upcountry. The LordGod alone know what will happen to me upcountry, far away from everything, far from family and friends, far from myself. So if that is what it got to be, I rather find myself a new baas in the Caab.

  All right then, say the Oldman. Get on the wagon.

  XI

  In which Philida and Ouma Petronella travel to the Caab where they encounter a Woman who farms with Slaves

  SO WE GO the Caab. I and Willempie and also little Lena, because I’m not leaving my children behind. And Ouma Nella. Because she’s coming too, she say.

  We travel on the wagon with the leaguers of new wine, for this time our feet must be spared. If I want work I got to look fresh. It’s like a big rock I carry with me from the time we leave Zandvliet’s farmyard and I see Frans among all the other people waiting in the yard, so tall, with his white hair, and so thin. Only Ounooi Janna isn’t there, she’s too fat, may the Devil take her.

  The children don’t know what is going on, and at first they enjoy the ride. But as it go on and on they get bored and I can see the Oldman’s arse is getting itchy. It’s a long thing, this trip, like that business with knitting the tongue so long ago, but I can manage, don’t worry, and by the third day I can cast off. The Oldman first think we can stay over with his brother, but the house is full with visitors and family so he got to move in with people that used to be his neighbours, but Ouma Nella and me and the two children find a place up against the Boere Plein where she still know some of the slave people. She bring a letter from the Oldman with her to make sure we won’t get shit from anybody. But even so it’s not easy. Everybody turn away from us. There is no work, one after the other tell us. Some of them set their dogs on us, and at one place I get bitten on the calf. What make you think we need any more slaves? they ask. It’s just trouble and problems and money in the water.

  So it go on. Later on we find a woman who keep asking Ouma Nella question after question after question: can I knit this and that and the other? I can hear she know
what she talking about, and she look like a decent kind of person. But then she say: One thing, I don’t want a lot of screaming snot-nosed kids in my yard. You’ll have to leave your children at home when you come to work here.

  My home will be where I work, Nooi, I tell her. If my children can’t come with me I can’t come either.

  Right there she lose her temper. You people always want all you can get, as if you’re the Baas and we are the slaves. We give you a little finger and you grab us all the way to the kieliebak. I need a knitting girl, not a crowd of good-for-nothings that eat us out of hearth and home. You can go to hell.

  The same thing happen at another house. After that it is no, no, no, all the way Ouma Nella and I go. Same story the next day. On the third day the Oldman tell Ouma Nella to her face: Look, this has now gone on for long enough, Petronella. It’s time we get back to Zandvliet. I’m not a man that can just sit around waiting for things to happen and you know it.

  Just give us one more day, Cornelis, she say, because that is what she call him when there is no one else around. That’s all we asking.

  Asking my arse, he say.

  Nobody’s arse, Ouma Nella tell him. If you want to get rid of the child, then you do it properly, otherwise you got me to deal with.

  I think he know very well what she mean, and that make him shut up.

  The next day Ouma Nella and I are out in the streets before the cocks have even begun to crow. And from then till nightfall we go up and down every single street in the Caab. Because Ouma decide it’s the best way to do it, we start at the old stone castle on the beach. On the Parade right next to it everything is in commotion, even though it’s still dark, because it’s market. All night long farmers bring in heaps and mountains of fruit and vegetables, anything you can think of in heaps so big you have never even dreamed about. And it’s not just fruit and vegetables, but everything that’s made all over the whole wide world. It’s bread and sugar and rice and coffee and spices from all the faraway Dutch places and even from a land they call America, with lucifers and carved wooden toys from Germany, and large and small karosses from upcountry, and all the wools and cloths and doeks and muslin you can dream of, and the fur of beavers, and yellow cotton, and all kinds of foodstuffs in huge bottles and cans and jugs, preserved and dried ginger, citrons and oranges, dates, litchis and tamarinds. And lots of things you don’t see every day, like hops and agar-agar and smooth windowpanes and whale blubber and whale candles. Things that come by ship and got spoiled by the seawater and are now sold cheaply, and live animals nobody never set an eye on, and calves and lambs that come out badly, with five legs or three eyes or no eyes at all. There’s even horses and cattle and sheep on the market. It look as if anybody can buy or sell anything in the whole world on this market.

  I’d like to stay there for much longer, but Ouma Nella grab me by the hand and pull me along. On the corner of the Heerengracht and Strand Street she go to show me the shop of a man called George Greig, where one can buy chairs and tables and cupboards. And also materials and knitting and funeral clothes and umbrellas, peppermints and lovely stockings for women. Wherever we go Ouma Nella ask the people if they know anybody that want to buy a knitting girl? Or a slave woman for household work? Even outdoor work on a farm if it got to be? To everybody she tell how good I am, until I’m getting all shy and feel my whole face burning. But she keep on asking and enquiring. At last we move on down to the sea, to the place where the people go to empty their shit buckets, between the places they call the Amsterdam Battery and the Chavonnes Battery. It stink up to heaven, but Ouma say today I got to see all of it, so that I can know what kind of a place this Caab is if I really think of coming to work here.

  Then we move on again to where we can see a ship coming in. The whole top of the ship, that Ouma Nella call the deck, is swarming with people. But they first got to wait, she say, until somebody can come from the land to inspect the ship’s papers. And all the time as we stand there watching, small boats come rowing from the beach with baskets full of fresh fish and live crayfish and all kinds of fruit, all of it still shiny and smooth of freshness. And up on the high deck the ship’s cook come out with a huge fire-pan full with glowing coals to cook the crayfish right there. The people on the ship are so hungry they grab the stuff straight from the coals. And the fruit and vegetables they want to gulp down without even chewing. It’s because of all the months they been on that ship with only old rotten food or salty food to eat, Ouma Nella say, so they stuff themselves with anything that’s fresh. And even while we still standing there on the beach with all the others she start shouting like a trumpet: Isn’t there anybody up there looking for a slave girl? Her hands can take on anything. What about it, Mijnheer? Take a look, Juffrouw! But they don’t seem to believe she mean it seriously.

  Just once a woman come to us from the side, in a nice striped dress and a large floppy hat on her tall hair, and she say to Ouma Nella: If the price is right, I shall buy the girl. Just like that.

  And what do the Nooi think is the right price? asks Ouma Nella.

  A hundred rix-dollars, say the woman.

  Ouma Nella laugh from deep inside her guts and spit a slimy white gob right past the woman’s face. Make it twelve hundred, she say, then we can talk.

  You must be mad in your head, say the woman. I know what I’m talking about, I know all about slaves.

  You don’t know anything, Ouma Nella snap at her. You townsfolk know nothing about nothing.

  I’m not from here, meid! the woman shout back. Do you see those mountains over there in the distance? I have a farm on the other side of them. And there’s nothing you can tell me about slaves.

  And what do the Nooi farm with? Ouma Nella press her.

  Farm? jeer the fancy woman. It’s a hell of a big farm I got there, my meid.

  I’m not your meid, say Ouma Nella. I got my freedom.

  Free or not free, you’re a meid and you’re stupid.

  Well, so tell me then: what do the Nooi farm with?

  I farm with sheep and cattle, and I farm with slaves.

  And what does that mean?

  It means, you stupid meid, just what I said. I farm with a lot of sheep, some cattle, but above all I farm with slaves. And then she tell us that her whole farm is full of slaves. Most of them women. Then, from time to time, she get a few men from England whose only work is to make children. They are her studs. For every baby that’s born, she say, I get more money. So how about it? You must be too old for that, she tell Ouma Nella, but how about this girl of yours? She look young and strong to me, and ready to be plucked. I can see she’s already got two children with her. If we start now, we can have another one by Christmas. And again next year. Before you know where we are, that farm will be covered in children. Each of them worth a good bag of money. Listen to me, meid: for every one this girl of yours breed, I pay her fourteen rix-dollars. Just a few years, and she’ll be stinking rich, then she can buy her own freedom and retire in style. First she lie back and afterwards she sit back. What do you say?

  Ouma Nella lift Willempie to her wide hip and she take my hand so quickly that it almost get lost in hers. Come on, Philida, she say. We don’t belong here with the studcows.

  The woman in the striped dress is still standing there, shouting a never-ending stream of curses in our direction until we are well out of the way. Up the incline, back towards those huge barracks which they say used to be a hospital, but now they use it to care for slave women that land in trouble with the court. And here, next to it and further down, is the small clearing with the gallows in the middle, the gallows where years ago the Oldman took us to the hanging of the poor skinny man that shat himself so badly that they got to hang him twice. And next to the gallows are the stakes where they tie up the people for flogging. That is where they also have the wheel on which arms and legs are broken with iron poles. When we get to it there is a man hanging limp over the wheel. They must have broken him yesterday already, I see, but he must
have died soon afterwards and then they just left him there, because it’s vultures wherever you look, squabbling and fighting among themselves for bits of flesh and making a racket like a bunch of drunken washerwomen, fluttering up from time to time to tackle one another in the air before they flap down again to go on eating. Willempie start crying because of the noise and I have to give him to Ouma Nella to take him away.

  From there we go further. Through all the quarters where people live, the poor people and the ordinary working people and the free blacks, higher and higher along the mountain, past the woodcutters that come staggering downhill with huge bundles on their shoulders. But these people are much too poor for us, they cannot afford to keep slaves, I complain to Ouma Nella. I’m carrying Lena, Ouma Nella take care of Willempie. Even a baby grow heavy on a day like this. And I get tired of going from one house after the other, to the back door, asking if someone need a knitting girl. Or even an outside girl for the backyard.