A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  But back at Elandsfontein, after the neighbors had ridden off, a very disturbing thing happened. As I came round the stable leading my horse, I saw the slave Abel coming from Goliath’s hut. Behind him in the semi-darkness I could make out the shapes of other men, but I couldn’t see who they were.

  “Abel!” I called. “Come and take my horse.”

  He quickly stood up from his stooping position as if he’d been caught in some mischief.

  I waited, the reins held loosely in my hand.

  Suddenly he swung back towards the hut he’d just left and picked up a spade that had been leaning against the wall: I didn’t know how it got there, as everybody had strict instructions always to put away the tools after use. Holding the spade casually balanced on both hands he turned to me. There was a long silence between us; neither of us moved or uttered a word. Perhaps he didn’t mean anything by it; but there was something in his attitude which hit me in the stomach with a numbness of fear I’d never known before.

  “Abel?” I said at last.

  He still stared at me silently, the heavy spade in his hands. Behind him were the shadows of the others in the darkness of the hut.

  I suddenly remembered the gun still stuck into one of the saddle-bags. Reaching behind me I gripped the muzzle and slowly pulled it out. It must have caught Abel by surprise. For a moment he still glared at me; then he dropped one end of the spade and came towards me to take the horse, casually swinging the spade in one hand.

  Had it all been my imagination only? Or had I really been saved by the gun? Worst of all was the sick feeling with which, afterwards, I realized that if he had come at me with the spade I would not have been able to shoot after all. The shock had too much dazed me. I’d, quite simply, been too scared to move. It was like walking in the dark and suddenly becoming aware of something moving: you can’t see anything and you’re not quite sure that you actually heard it: perhaps there is no real danger at all: it is only an intimation, a disturbing suspicion that the night is no longer as safe as you’ve always thought.

  Had I been truly convinced that Abel had deliberately threatened me I would have flogged him as severely as I had Goliath. But what perturbed me was the uncertainty of it all, a vagueness infinitely more dangerous than any predator or enemy I could recognize and kill. In one brief illumination I’d caught a glimpse of how precarious our peace really was, how exposed our lives: how easily the earth could be washed away from under our feet.

  If the gun hadn’t been at hand that afternoon, what would have happened?

  But if it had really been only the gun that had saved me: what about the moment, imminent or remote, when one might be surprised without it?

  Ma-Rose

  In the beginning there was nothing but stone. And from the stones Tsui-Goab made us. But then He saw that we couldn’t live without water, since it’s water that makes the grass sprout and the trees grow and which is drink for man and beast. The inside of a woman is water; her children swim from her into the world. And whenever the earth gets dry and threatens to return to stone, it’s rain we pray for, in the prayer my people have said since the beginning of the world:

  You, Tsui-Goab

  Father of our fathers

  Our Father!

  Let the thundercloud stream

  Give life to the herds

  Give us life too, we beg you.

  I am so weak

  Of hunger

  Of thirst

  Let me eat juicy veld-fruit.

  For are you not our Father

  Father of our fathers

  You, Tsui-Goab?

  That we may praise you

  That we may bless you

  You, Father of our fathers

  You, our Lord,

  You, Tsui-Goab!

  These are not words lightly to take on one’s lips. Not for any ordinary little drought. For it’s something I’ve noticed long ago: the same water that turns the veld green with life and provides drink for man and beast also floods the earth and drowns flocks and levels mountains. These Skurweberge of ours, these Rough Mountains, have always been here and they’re always the same—and yet they’re always changing. What changes them is water. Sometimes patiently, wearing away its courses through many years; sometimes in a wild and sudden flood. Which is why one should be very sure of what one wants from Tsui-Goab before saying the Rain Prayer. For He gives life, but that life may bring destruction too. Only through water can the world be changed; but one cannot force it to do one’s bidding. Once you’ve prayed for water and it is sent you cannot predict the changes it may bring about. You got to take it as it comes, even if it washes you away with the soil in which you’re rooted.

  That was why I kept telling the people not to be impatient. It was better to learn to endure and to wait. But men don’t know patience; they don’t know what it means to wait for the breaking of the water. “Just don’t give up,” I told them when they came to me for advice. “Don’t press anything. You yourself don’t know what water you’re asking for.”

  I could feel it coming. An impatience, a restlessness in the earth itself. And each was worried by it in his own way.

  There was Nicolaas who’d started coming to me for help since the early days of his marriage. He didn’t want the others to see him at my hut, so he would wait till late at night, pretending to stroll about in the veld. When there were others with me he stayed away; I could hear his shadow passing in the night. But if I was alone he would come in to my fire like the days when he and Galant would come to me for stories. It was some time before he came out with it, only after many visits when he’d do nothing but say good-night and sit in silence for a while.

  “Ma-Rose,” he said at long last, “you’ve got to help me.”

  “What’s the matter then, Nicolaas? I been watching you for a long time and I can see you got a deep thorn in your heart.”

  “I’m married now, Ma-Rose. But I’m having problems with my wife.”

  I had eyes in my head to see; but I pretended not to understand. “She looks a fine woman to me. She’ll make a good mother. She’s broad-hipped.”

  “The fault doesn’t lie with her, Ma-Rose. It’s with me. I can’t do it properly.”

  “What?” I tried to drag it from him.

  It was quite a while before at last he blurted out: “It’s what a man does with his wife, Ma-Rose. It won’t work for us. She’s too impatient.”

  “What makes you think she’s impatient? You know what to do, don’t you?”

  “I have no desire to do it.”

  “Is it because of Hester?”

  “Why do you ask that?” he said angrily.

  “I know you had your heart set on Hester long ago. But that’s an egg you won’t hatch just by brooding on it.”

  His voice became shaky. “But what can I do, Ma-Rose?”

  “You got to be a proper husband to your wife.”

  “I know. I’ve tried. But it doesn’t work. I think she despises me. She treats me like a child, not like a man.”

  “Then you got to show her you’re different. Ride her like a man.”

  “I—” Even in the firelight I could see him blush. “That’s what’s wrong, Ma-Rose. Is there no medicine you could give me to cure it? I can’t go on living with Cecilia in this humiliation.”

  “Pretend she’s Hester.”

  That stung him. “I don’t think such things about Hester!”

  “I thought you wanted to marry her?”

  “Of course. But not to—not to do that to her.”

  “I don’t understand you, Nicolaas. You white people make unnecessary problems for yourselves.”

  “I need your help, Ma-Rose! What will Pa and Ma say if they must find out I can’t do it?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Nicolaas. I watched you and Galant often e
nough when you were small. You had a horn as good as his. You think I don’t know what you used to do behind the dam-wall?”

  “But what’s gone wrong then?”

  I tried to comfort him with medicine—the herbs we give to old men—and told him to take it with a stiff sopie of brandy at night. What the herbs couldn’t do the brandy might. And for a while I believe things improved for them. But soon he was back again.

  “Only one remedy I can think of,” I told him at last. “It’s a sort of blight some white men suffer from. Perhaps your women aren’t deep enough. A man’s root needs the water she has inside her; and some white women don’t seem to have it.”

  “What must I do then?”

  “Soak your root in a black woman. That’ll let it grow and give it life.”

  “I won’t! It’s sinful.”

  I shrugged. “If you won’t you won’t. But don’t keep on coming back to me then, complaining you can’t make it spurt.”

  “It’s against the Bible.”

  “You want to tell me your own Pa did what was against the Bible?”

  “What’s that?!” He stared at me as if a horse had kicked him.

  “Who do you think made your Pa the man he is?”

  Perhaps it was wrong of me to tell him. But he had to know. “I didn’t always look the way I look now,” I said. “Today I’m an old dried fig. But when I was young I had a body. And your Pa knew me.”

  He left in a hurry, as if I carried some evil disease; stumbling in his haste to get away from me. And he didn’t come back after that. But I kept my eyes open. And my ears too. When he began to visit Lydia at night I couldn’t help smiling by myself. And when the first child was born I thought he was on the way to recovery. What I hadn’t expected and what disturbed me was the way his wife started treating Lydia. What did that poor madwoman know about right or wrong? It was a bad thing. But I had to watch my step with Nooi Cecilia; she could be very short-tempered with us.

  And I was worried about Nicolaas too. It soon became clear that his problem lay deeper than just in the root. With his father it had been simple. He could be treated with the wetness of women. But the moisture Nicolaas needed was different, deeper and darker and more dangerous. It was the flood I felt swelling below the surface of our farms long before the storm broke out. An invisible flood, and all the more ominous for that. And what could I do to avert it?

  Galant didn’t make it any easier either. One night I found him in the veld where he was throwing stones in the dark. It was a long way from the farmyard, in the rocky spot where in the beginning of the world the stones had come tumbling down the mountain. For a long time I stood watching him without being seen. Picking up stones and throwing them, picking up and throwing, each one hurled with all his might, until I could hear his breath rasping in his throat.

  “What you doing?” I asked, going towards him in the dark.

  He swung round as if in fright; and wiped the sweat from his face. “Just throwing stones,” he said sullenly. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You mad at someone?” I asked. “Who is it?”

  I knew, of course; but I thought it was better for him to tell me and get it out of his blood.

  He picked up another stone and shattered it against a larger rock, striking sparks in the dark.

  “You better watch out,” I told him. “If one of those stones fly back and hit you in the face, you’re dead as dead.”

  “What do I care?” He threw another stone.

  “Why don’t you come with me, Galant? I’ll give you some bush-tea. That’ll calm you down.”

  “I don’t want to be calmed down.”

  So I sat down a little way from him, out of reach of his angry stones, so that he could get it out of his blood. He went on throwing and throwing until he couldn’t lift his arm any more, which is saying a lot, for Galant might be thin but he was tough as leather.

  All the time he was throwing the stones he was talking too, shouting and cursing so that one could almost smell the sulphur, as if the place had been struck by lightning; and in his voice I could hear he was crying. When at last he stopped, panting with exhaustion, he was sobbing too.

  At last I said again: “Come home with me, Galant.”

  This time he came, breathless, his shoulders drooping, all his fight gone. He picked up something from a wagon-tree, and draping it over one shoulder like an empty bag he came back to me and we went on to the hut. It was only when we reached the fire that I saw it was a brand-new corduroy jacket he was carrying.

  “Where you got that?” I asked him. “Did old D’Alree make it for you?” For that was just about the time the wizened old tailor and shoemaker had come to live on Nicolaas’s farm. Having been with Galant ever since I’d suckled him as a baby I knew that this was the first new thing he’d ever had in his life: usually he got all Nicolaas’s cast-offs as they were much the same size.

  “Got it from Nicolaas,” he mumbled, throwing it down in the far corner before he sat down. “Suppose it’s to buy me off.” He took a length of chewing-tobacco from his trouser pocket—I wondered where he’d found it, but I was careful not to ask—and put it in his cheek while I warmed the black kettle of bush-tea on the fire.

  “Is it for the child?” I asked at last, not looking at him.

  “Yes.” He spat. “Gave it to me this afternoon. Didn’t say anything, but of course I know it’s for the child.”

  I kept myself very busy with the kettle, adding new bits of wood and blowing on the coals and stirring the tea. “Galant,” I said, knowing that I had to be very careful now. “What’s the use of going about with a thunderstorm in your heart? It’s a bad thing that happened, but it’s over.”

  “Nothing is over,” he said in the darkness heavy with smoke. “Let me tell you something, Ma-Rose. Nothing ever goes away. It stays about you like stones lying on the ground. Some you stumble over. Others you can pick up to throw. They’re lying there. All the time.”

  “It’s a hard thing you saying there, Galant.” I poured the tea, strong, the way I liked it and he needed it.

  “I can take whatever happens, Ma-Rose,” he said, as gloomily as before. “We’re grownup. Our time is passing. But there’s always the children. And where is my child today? When I left Bet to go to the Karoo to fetch the cattle, David was still here and there was nothing wrong with him. When I came back he was buried. Bet said he got ill. She said the reason he died was the illness, it had nothing to do with the beating. Now I’m asking you, Ma-Rose: I got to know.”

  “Bet is your wife. If that is what she says you better believe it.”

  “It’s you I’m asking.”

  “I wasn’t near the house the day it happened.”

  “No one wants to tell me. They all afraid.”

  “Have you spoken to Nicolaas?”

  “Bet said he came to ask forgiveness. She said he never meant to kill the child. It died of illness.”

  “Nicolaas is baas on the farm, Galant. His hand is on us in life and death. It’s the way it is.”

  “But David was my child.”

  “It’s a terrible thing that happened,” I said, blowing my tea cold, watching him over the rim of my mug. His eyes were glowing through the smoke. I thought of the day he and Hester had sheltered in my hut in the storm, huddled under the big kaross, so many years ago. “It’s a terrible thing,” I said again. “But you’re a young man still and there’s nothing wrong with Bet. You can have a whole hut full of children.”

  “I’m through with Bet.”

  “You got along well with her.”

  “She didn’t look after the child.”

  “You can’t blame her.”

  “She didn’t stop him.”

  “Who can stop him? He’s the baas. Galant, you got to get this into your head. No matter what he does, he got the right to do it because
he’s baas. Stop asking questions or you’ll land in big trouble. Nicolaas is baas on Houd-den-Bek.”

  “Houd-den-Bek, yes,” he repeated quietly, bitterly. “Shut-Your-Trap.” That was all he said.

  In silence we finished our tea; and when the mugs were empty we remained sitting. It was like the old days. And the night grew heavy over us, a darkness that lay on us with its full weight. In the deepest blackness of the night we suddenly heard it, both of us at the same time: a strange dark sound: Tha-tha-tha. It was impossible to tell which side it came from; impossible to tell whether it was coming or going. But we heard it all right. Tha-tha-tha. I grabbed my kaross and crouched beside Galant and covered our heads with it. We didn’t even breathe, I think. He was trembling as if he felt cold, but it was a warm night. It was the thas-jackal. I recognized it immediately. No one has ever seen it, but it’s out there; and it wanders about when somebody has trodden on a fresh grave. It’s the spirit of the dead that turns into a jackal to haunt the living. Tha-tha-tha. Through the thick hairy skin of the kaross we heard it; and we remained like that until at last it was beginning to sound as if it was moving away, deeper into the night, perhaps in the direction of the farmyard.

  “I’ll strew buchu leaves on the grave in the morning,” I promised him when the night grew silent again and we crawled from under the kaross. “That will set him to rest. Now it’s time to sleep.”

  “I’m not going home in the dark.”

  “No. You can sleep here.”

  He curled up in a corner. I sat beside the smoking coals staring at the small bundle he formed in the dark, the new jacket covering his head. I remembered his childhood, the way he’d always slept beside me, snuggled against me; and how, when he was restless, I would stroke his little thing until he’d drop off to sleep. This night, I sensed, he was in need of a woman again. Not me; but a woman who could be a wife to him in his need. He’d turned against Bet, and that was a bad thing. A man like him couldn’t do without a woman.