A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  It takes an effort to stir new life into the coals to warm up some bush-tea on the smoky fire; above all, Bet must not be wakened. The warmth eases the worst stiffness; the fragrance of the tea briefly soothes the pain. You cover yourself with the tattered remains of the new jacket and tiptoe away from the fire. A single person emerges from a hut as you pass by. The woman Pamela. Is she watching you even at night then? Something in her look says: Come to me. And you know it will be good with her. You’ve tried her once or twice, the way things happen on the farm. But because you have that slight experience of her you deliberately keep off. You’ve had one bad encounter with Bet. Now you got to mind your step. You can see it in Pamela’s eyes. There’s women you can go into and pull out again, and that’s that. But there’s others, and you can see Pamela is one of them, who are different: you get in between her legs and you’re in for good. It’s like climbing in the mountains, when the world is shut off behind one and only the cliffs and rocks remain: and unless you go all the way to the far side you’ll die there and leave only a skeleton for others to find long afterwards; not even a footprint in the stone.

  “Where you going then, Galant?” says Pamela, and her voice still has the heaviness of sleep, all the stillness of woman and night.

  “Over the mountains.” I am reluctant to answer; begrudging her the question.

  “You going to complain?”

  Those eyes seem to peer so deeply into me that I feel like covering up, but it’s useless.

  “Yes.” Suddenly I feel a need for her to understand. “It’s not about the beating.”

  “Because of the jacket then?”

  “Why you asking?”

  “Because I care.”

  It makes me blind with anger. She has no right to say this. She has no right to interfere with me. I swear to the Blue God: all my life no one has ever cared a damn. Not even Ma-Rose: not really. And that’s saying a lot.

  In the dull dawn light I stare at her sternly. She shows no fear. There is something about her that reminds me of a gazelle. The eyes. The attitude. As if she may dart off at the slightest move.

  “What you looking at me like that?” I ask her.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “So?”

  “You must come back, Galant.”

  “Of course I’ll come back. Where else could I go?”

  Inside me something seems to be saying: Here is another wall.

  “If they ask you about me,” I say, “will you tell them I’ve gone to Tulbagh to complain or will you be silent?”

  “Do you want me to tell or do you want me to be silent?”

  “You can tell them.”

  “Then I’ll tell them.”

  The light is turning to grey. Soon it will be time for the bell. But it’s not the bell I carry with me in my thoughts as I limp along. It’s the woman. This Pamela. All the way, and it’s a long way, it’s Pamela who keeps me going when weariness and pain threaten to overcome me. Her eyes are with me. And her attitude, a young gazelle ready to dart off, thin and wild.

  The pain is so bad that the usual day’s journey stretches to two and a half. There’s an ache in every step. My footprints strain at my feet, pulling me back to Houd-den-Bek. To this woman. To Nicolaas. Pain. In every brief movement I’m reminded of back and shoulders, buttocks, legs. My chest is aching as I breathe. In my feet I drag along my whole world. Impossible to shake it off.

  Nicolaas, I think: if you’d taken me to the Cape with you I may not have been struggling through these mountains today. I begged you. You know very well I’ve always wanted to go. When we were boys you were the one who told me about the Cape and its tall white houses and its people, about the flat-topped mountain and the hill from which the cannon is fired when the ships come in from the sea; about the horse races and the markets, the streets and gardens and the castle, and the soldiers with their red jackets and shiny buttons, and the slaves dancing to their own music on Sundays. You told me. And I begged you to take me along. But all you could say was: “I want you to stay here. Who will look after the farm if you’re not here? I trust you, Galant. There’s no one else I can rely on.”

  You have Ontong and Achilles to rely on. You have a brother living on a farm barely two hours away. No need to deceive me with kind lies. What you really mean is: “I’m the boss and you’ll do as I say.” Don’t try to bribe me with smart new jackets. Jacket today, tatters tomorrow. And my child lies buried in the earth. Don’t ever forget that.

  Step by step I drag my torn body through the mountains. Far overhead I can see the last remaining swallows coming and going, diving suddenly, changing course, careering in the wind, as my feet keep feeling their way across earth and stone, daunted by the demands of the journey.

  “I come here to complain,” I tell the gentleman of the Drostdy. One feels out of place in such a place. The high white walls and the arches and the beams of the ceiling and the tall stoop. Everything seems tall here; only I am shrunken in my tattered jacket and stained floppy hat. “One gets flogged at Houd-den-Bek. The food is bad too. And when one is given a new jacket it’s beaten to shreds by their sjamboks. Look at me.”

  “Where’s the letter from your master?” asks the Landdrost.

  “What letter?”

  “Didn’t you ask his permission to come here?”

  “If I ask his permission he’ll just beat me again.”

  “So you deserted? Do you realize that is a serious offense?”

  “I didn’t desert. I came here to complain.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  So I’m put away in a cell down in the cellar. Not much light there and the straw is heavy with the stench of old piss. A small bowl of rice water, a chunk of bread, a piece of rancid pork fat. Somewhere high above the small window, under the awning of the tall roof, a family of swallows must have built their nest. What are they still doing here in winter, not gone with all the others? I cannot understand them. They are free to go, yet they stay. All day long one can hear them twittering. Only after sunset they grow silent and an awful loneliness settles in the cell. How long will I have to wait before somebody comes for me?

  Just as well I told Pamela about it, so it turns out to be only one night before Nicolaas arrives. But it’s a night that changes the look of my world, the way an unexpected rainstorm rips open a new course for a mountain stream, milling and turning the pebbles below, scouring off all ridges and edges so that round and smooth they form a dependable new bed for the water running above.

  It is a night of endless talking. There are three of us in the cell, but one is very old and broken, whimpering by himself in a corner and paying no attention to us; so it’s only the other man and I. A giant of a man who’ll have no trouble lifting a loaded wagon with one huge shoulder. When he bends those great arms his muscles bulge as if to shatter the heavy chains that bind him. I am unbound, but his arms are in chains and his legs are shackled; in some places the flesh is visible where the iron has worn away the skin. From time to time, when he moves to change position he utters a groan, for he’s been flogged. I’m there in my tattered clothes but he is quite naked and in the dim light one can see that no part of his body has been spared. The red of flesh. And in places the white of bone and of gristle. When he groans it’s the great deep sound of a lion. How can I ever forget the sound of the lion that faraway night, and its roar, as if the very earth is trembling?

  “What you doing here?” he asks me when they first throw me in and I slide on hands and knees through the rotten straw.

  “I came to complain. Now they keeping me until the Baas comes.”

  “You still bother to complain?” He laughs harshly, but it is more like a groan, and I hear the chains clinking. With a great effort he pushes himself up against the wall and grabbing the bars in front of the window pulls his broken body up so he can look out; but
outside there’s nothing but the untimely swallows, and only from time to time. The light touches his broad shoulders and the muscles of his arms, his knotted bloody back, his buttocks, the legs as thick as logs.

  “You still bother to complain,” he says again, holding on to the bars with one hand so that he can turn painfully to look at me. “You’ll learn it’s no use. I’m past complaining.”

  “What did you do then?” I ask.

  “The worst.”

  “Killed your master?”

  He grimaces. “You think that’s the worst a man can do?” Letting go of the bar he sinks back to the ground. Once again I hear him utter the low growl of a lion; then he’s silent for such a long time that I’m wondering whether he’s given up talking. But at last I hear the chain again and he starts to speak; but he doesn’t seem to be speaking to me, it’s to himself. He tells me about a hunt. I don’t know when. Perhaps it’s not even a real hunt, only a dream, but what does it matter? He’s trekking with his baas and with a host of other masters and slaves, with sunrise on his right and sunset on the left, laying waste the land as they go on. Buffalo. Eland. Zebra. Rhino. Elephant. Whatever crosses their way. Until the wagons are groaning under the weight of the ivory and horns and hides. On the trail of the carcasses packs of hyenas follow the trek, and jackals, and vultures. From the circles of the vultures in the sky one can follow their progress from afar, for weeks on end, all the way to the Great River. And there they find people, a whole colony of them: bastards, runaways, all sorts of people who have escaped over the years to settle there and be free.

  “I don’t believe it,” I say.

  “Saw them with my own eyes,” answers the big man. “Spoke to them myself. They used to be slaves like you and me. Now they living there in their own place.”

  “What did you do when you got there?”

  “The masters wanted to shoot them, but the people brought us milk and vegetables and all we needed. In the night they all disappeared as if they’d never been there; only the tracks of their cattle were left, and the empty huts.”

  “And then?”

  “The masters burnt down the huts and laid waste the fields, but it was no use anyway. The people had all gone. They’re free.”

  “Slaves like you and me?”

  “Yes, like us.” The chains grate on the stone floor. It’s almost too dark to see him, but his deep lion’s voice goes on talking.

  “On our farm there’s a big rock some distance from the house, with a piece of rusted chain still fixed to it. I heard the people say that in the old days there was a slave woman who used to run away from the farm ever since she was a young girl. A Malay, I think. Every time she was brought back and punished. But no matter what punishment they gave her, inside or out, she always ran away again. At last they tied her up there in the chain fitted to the rock, far enough from the house so no one would hear her screams. Once a day a child was sent with some food and water; and they even put up a small shelter on poles to keep away the worst rain or sun. There she stayed all her life, and the people say she lived to a very old age. Chained to the rock she remained, and never spoke another word to anyone. At last she died, and the beasts of the veld and the vultures devoured the carcass and scattered the remains. In my time there was no one left who’d known her. But the rock was still there, and the piece of chain. And whenever a slave got it into his head to run away he would be taken there for his flogging to be reminded of the woman. So no one ever dared to follow her example. But after we came back from the big hunt I would often go into the veld after the day’s work was done, to sit on that rock and think about those people of the Great River. Couldn’t ever get them out of my mind again. Free men, like real people. And that was when I first ran away too.”

  “That’s not the worst a man can do!”

  “Running away was just the beginning.”

  “What did you do then?”

  Another of those long silences. When he speaks again his voice has a sullen sound as if he blames me for asking. “It was the Nooi’s fault,” he says. “Kept on nagging me. She’d wait until the day’s work was done, then she’d give me something else to do. And if I complained she went to the Baas. So he would flog me. And the next day she would be back nagging me over this or that. A small thin woman, but a real bitch. Always trying to provoke one until you said something back, and then she’d slap you in the face and run off to the Baas to tell on you. She was there with the floggings too. Egging him on. More. More. And if I tried to run away, day or night, back to the free people of the Great River, they’d follow my trail and bring me back and everything would start all over. Until I couldn’t take it no more. We were reaping on the lands all day in the baking sun, prickling and burning with chaff. I was down at the fountain washing myself when she came to me. Ordered me to go and cut fodder for the cattle. That wasn’t my work but the man who used to do it had botched it up somehow. ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Who are you to talk to me like that?’ she said and she slapped my face. Sometimes there’s a blindness that gets into a man. I grabbed her hand to stop her. Suddenly she started screaming like a pig. I just wanted her to shut up. The screaming gave me a scare; it made me mad. As she struggled to get away her dress got torn, right here in front, all the way down. She gasped. And suddenly, her mouth still wide open, she stopped screaming and just gaped at me, clutching the torn bits of her dress. ‘Look here,’ she said. ‘Let me go. Please let me go. I promise you I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go. Don’t touch me.’ She was no longer the Nooi to me. It made me sick to see that creature pleading so sloppily with me. And in my anger I pushed her. She fell. She made no effort to get up or to move away. Just went on sobbing and pleading and slobbering. I don’t know what got into me. I just started tearing at her until she had no more clothes on, lying there like a bony white chicken plucked of its feathers, squawking and clucking and kicking its thin legs. ‘Do what you want,’ she said. ‘Do anything you want. But please don’t kill me. I’ll give you anything you ask.’”

  “And so you took her?”

  A fierce clattering of the heavy chains. “Of course not. I don’t fuck chickens.”

  “But you said—”

  “I kicked her, that’s all. Looking down at her, lying there like a bloody slaughtered chicken, I kicked her in the crotch and walked away.”

  “That all you did?”

  In the dark I hear his angry laugh again, that rumbling lion-sound. “That all? Don’t you know that’s the worst you can do in this world? The honor of a white woman: there’s nothing can match that.”

  “And what’s going to happen to you now?”

  “They finished with me here. Now it’s off to the Cape, they said. The horses will be here in the morning to take me.”

  “What they going to do to you?”

  “If I’m lucky I’ll die on the road. Otherwise, again if I’m lucky, it’s the gallows.”

  “And if you’re not?”

  “Then it’s the island.”

  “The island?”

  “Robben Island. With chains on your legs. Where you break stones till you die.”

  “It must be better than the gallows. You’re still alive.”

  “A man is not alive there. It’s the irons. And every day you can see the Mountain across the water. Don’t you understand? It’s like that woman they chained to the rock till she died. You’re tied up there, chained for life; and behind your eyes you still see those people of the Great River. The free people with their own goats and gardens. You don’t think that’s worse than death?”

  “You said the masters burnt the huts and destroyed the gardens of those people. So what’s the use anyway?”

  “Makes no difference. They’re free.”

  All through the night there’s his voice talking in the dark. At times he stops, and I doze off; but when I wake up I hear him talking again.

&n
bsp; “You better have some sleep,” I tell him.

  “Perhaps it’s the last chance I’ll ever have to talk to another man,” he says. “You hear me? On that island you’re not allowed to talk. Tonight I got to talk.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just listen. Don’t fall asleep. I got to talk.”

  Later he begins to ramble. It is quite impossible to follow his thoughts any longer. Bits about his childhood, about this woman or that; his master and the Nooi; the people across the Great River; all mixed up. He starts giving me long complicated messages. Tell Siena this. Don’t forget about Thomas. And if Katrina asks you—

  “Who’s Katrina?”

  He doesn’t even seem to hear me.

  “Where do you come from? What’s the name of your farm so I can send them a message?”

  “Don’t talk,” he says. “Just listen.”

  His talk gets more and more confused, the groans in between grow deeper and heavier. The sound of the chains becomes a steady rattle and I realize that he is shivering from cold fever. But whenever I try to say something he starts talking again, on and on. Sometimes I stretch my legs and try to peer through the barred window. A small slice of sky is visible. Stars. It’s like those childhood nights when the Oubaas came to Ma-Rose and I had to sleep outside. Except this cell is small and dark and the smell is bad; and the man never stops talking. He doesn’t even notice when I drop off to sleep, plagued by bad dreams. There’s a lion charging at me and I can’t move for I’m chained to a rock. A woman offers me water. “I care,” she says. But I know it’s useless, the vultures are already circling; and somewhere there are people like you and me, only they’re free. Then the lion groans again and I wake up to the deep voice of the man in chains. It drones on and on, broken by what now sounds like moaning sobs; until in the first light of day the swallows start chirping outside again, flitting from their nest and back; then he sinks into a sleep of exhaustion, sighing and mumbling.