A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  When harvesting time came round again there was the business with Goliath, for by that time we’d heard the rumors about slaves no longer being required to work on Sundays and a lot of other things: working time fixed at ten hours a day from April to September and twelve from October to March, with extra food for overtime during harvesting and threshing and so on; floggings limited to twenty-five lashes at a time; enough food and drink to be given to us; and a dominee instructed to make the rounds once a year to marry slave couples and baptize their children; that sort of thing. Which was why I told Goliath, and I’m still not ashamed of it, to put in a complaint. “It’s the only way we can find out if it’s true or not,” I said. “Perhaps it’s just a lot of lies. But perhaps it’s true and then we got a right to know.” He was very obstreperous about it all, shit-scared of what might happen to him. But the moment Klaas was out of sight I belabored him properly. “It’s not just for yourself you got to go,” I explained to him. “It’s for the whole lot of us, man. How else will we find out what it says in the newspapers?”

  After all, one can feel it in one’s guts when there’s something rising and swelling and pushing from below like a flood; and you got to find out in time if you don’t want to get drowned. That was how I saw it when Galant and I discussed it, and that was how I put it to Goliath.

  And so in the end he went, and it turned out a bad thing. The commissioner came round and questioned Goliath, and then rode off again, accompanied by all the jolly farmers of the Bokkeveld. It was difficult to restrain myself that day. I had murderous thoughts in my heart. But what could I do? I couldn’t take on Baas Barend and his gun all by myself. The worst of it all was that he didn’t even realize I was mad. Just called me to take his horse, and took off his gun and went home; and that was that. Wiping his ass on the lot of us. I stood there, in that dying day, looking after the Baas and thinking by myself: Now it’s no longer fun: now it’s serious. No matter what the newspapers say, they’re white men’s things and they lie. We got nothing more to hope for from over the mountains. We’re on our own here, in this lonely place, and it’s a scary feeling it gives one. Now it’s up to us.

  Hester

  New day; old familiar ache. It never recedes into oblivion, it is always there, even though its intensity may vary from a mere dull presence to the stab that amazes the flesh.

  For one strange month, while Barend was away to the Cape, it was different. Not freedom but a suspended existence, a wholeness I’d known only in pregnancy before. But different too: this time there was a feeling of being more intact, there was no disquieting intrusion of another life in my body; at the same time I missed the experience of existing round the kernel of a child, enclosing it, securing in the process a new self-containment, an independence from the world. This time the children were there to be cared for, there was a household and a farm to run; even Klaas’s obsequious competence was obtrusive. I was lonely, not alone; but if that were the price of a brief respite I would pay it.

  Barend had wanted me to go with him, of course. He’d even insisted. And not quite sure in my own mind whether the enchantment of the Cape might alleviate the daily ache, I might yet have yielded. But then in one of our fierce quarrels he’d struck me. It hadn’t been the first time, but in the past it had been in the rage of his efforts to gain entry into my body. This time it had been more calculated, in contempt, and in the arrogance of his superior strength. And this made it easier to hold my own and disobey. The boy Carel was there too, howling in terror at seeing me struck, and that immediately set the baby crying too; but a cold detachment ruled me, as I thought: Look sharp, Carel, you’ll need this recollection later. This is what I’m bringing you up for. To do the same to your women one day. It is the only revenge accorded me. Leaving Barend to comfort and explain, I went outside and saddled my horse. And when that night, for the first time in our married life, he asked forgiveness and begged me to go to Cape Town with him, it was easy to refuse.

  “I don’t know what got into me this morning,” he said. “For God’s sake, listen to me, Hester. I promise you it won’t ever happen again.”

  I smiled and turned away. What would be the point of telling him: Of course you will do it again. There are always new thresholds to cross. How else shall we survive? Already I could see us in our old age, two dry bodies clawing and fighting each other to delve ever more deeply in search of whatever rare moisture remained in the hideous bone-dry carcasses.

  And it did happen again, just after his return, on the first Sunday when he insisted on going to visit Nicolaas and Cecilia. Still unused to his new presence after a month on my own, refusal came naturally. I might have justified it as resisting another exposure to Cecilia’s immaculate household and her pious Sunday face, or to the quizzical dog’s eyes Nicolaas would turn towards me; but essentially it was rebellion against being forced into renewed obedience. Once again it became a violent and unnecessary argument; once again he struck me.

  In fury I hit back, but he caught my arms and held me out of reach.

  “I swear to God,” I hissed, choking in frustration, “if I were a man I’d break your neck.”

  “Well, you’re not and you’re going to do as I tell you.”

  “If my father had been alive you wouldn’t have dared.”

  “Your father was a drunken good-for-nothing.”

  I cried out in rage, trying in vain to wrench myself free, kicking him. The baby was crying on the bed and attracted by the noise little Carel also came in.

  “Go on,” I told Barend. “Show your children how bravely their father can fight a woman.”

  “Get out!” he shouted at Carel, who began to scream. In shame and anger, like the previous time, he let me go.

  “One day your sons will be strong enough to avenge their mother,” I said, still panting, and pulling together the flaps of my nightdress that had been torn in our struggle. That was always the first he would go for in our fights: tearing my dress to expose my breasts.

  “It’s your own fault,” he said. “You drive me to it. You know I don’t want to.”

  “I told you before you’d do it again,” I said, and picked up the baby to comfort it. Looking at him over the small head I said: “All right, we can go to Houd-den-Bek. I’d like to see my father’s grave again. Now please go out. I want to get dressed.”

  We left early. It was more than two hours by carriage to Houd-den-Bek. We rode in silence, as usual, Barend holding the reins and Carel sitting between us, his back very erect, his frail shoulders squared in the innocent independence of his three years. I was holding the baby but from time to time, as the cart swayed and rattled over the uneven tracks across the ochre veld, I tried to support Carel with my arm, relishing in secret his small fierce shrugs of refusal. My boy. My little man. Would it not have been normal to be pained by his amusing self-assertions? Through what perversity did I take pride in seeing him emerge as the boyish copy of the man with whom I was locked in unceasing battle? And yet in his very independence he was mine, formed and shaped by myself; in him I had a hold on the man he would be one day. I’d never wanted girl-children. If there had to be children at all, let them be men. The mere idea of a girl repulsed me: her pathetic challenge to others to prove themselves through her, her ultimate vulnerability. In a girl-child I would finally have to acknowledge my own defeat. Were boys, then, simply a means of getting my own back? Had vengeance become the only conceivable course and utterance of love? No, no. I did love them, I do; perhaps in their frailty I even discovered the possibility of gentleness concealed in the man who himself had no choice but to dominate me in his blind struggle to survive in his stern man-world. In my sons something of myself lay invested for future freedom. For the first time I was beginning to understand my mother-in-law and the sources of her strength. She, too, could exist only for the future through her sons. Even though that might be illusion too: for what freedom was there in store for them if it
lay exclusively in the possibility of subjugating others? But that awareness came later, I think. All awareness came later, in that terrible night. On that bright Sunday morning, so serene in its essential Aprilness, in the first intimation of autumn, leaves yellowing, grass turning brittle and white, a hint of brown creeping into the reeds and rushes of the marshy vleis, all I did was thoughtlessly, bluntly to resist the unpredictable motion of the carriage, shaking and jolting on its way between the rude and unselfconscious ridges of mountains towards the more exposed openness of what had been my home.

  The first time Barend spoke was when we drove past the small cottage the old tailor D’Alree had built on a corner of Houd-den-Bek. “Just look at it,” he remarked, striking the horses in annoyance. “That bloody man doesn’t know a thing about farming.”

  “He’s not harming anyone,” I said. “Why shouldn’t Nicolaas allow him to stay?”

  “The place is a mess.” And indeed it was, with the remains of a few old broken wagons strewn across the yard, chickens scratching all over the place, a sow with her litter grunting and wallowing near the back door, half-built outbuildings abandoned before they’d been finished. There was a wretchedness about the place that depressed one; and yet I felt a spontaneous warmth towards the old man whenever I met him as he busily stumbled about on his spiky legs, wild white mane unkempt, myopic eyes squinting against the light. He must have been a failure wherever he’d been and whatever he’d been doing; but here he could live in peace with his handful of undisciplined laborers. And there was something in his gentle inefficiency that reminded me of my father, which was why I always spoke up for him whenever one of the periodic family quarrels would erupt around his continued presence.

  “I’ll speak to Nicolaas again,” said Barend, and I knew it was only because he had to reassert himself after we’d spoken of my father in the morning. “It’s not only that D’Alree is wasting a useful part of the farm, but he’s attracting all sorts of vagabonds to the place. If he stays on he should get a good foreman to run the place for him.”

  I hardly paid attention. Barend was always planning other people’s lives for them. And as it turned out he never, as far as I know, got round to broaching the subject of old D’Alree with Nicolaas that Sunday, for instead of the peaceful Sabbath on the farm we’d expected the visit turned out a deeply disturbing experience.

  The baby was crying as we drew up at the front door, and all I wanted to do was to take him inside to change and feed him, which was probably the reason why I was unaware of any commotion at the back. Cecilia came out to greet us, her red hair as always drawn back in a severe knot, a flush on her very white freckled face, her lips negative like cold porridge; and the three little girls followed in tow, blonde, red, blonde.

  “We haven’t seen you for months,” she said. “Come inside. Shall I take the baby?”

  Although I knew he would probably fall silent the moment he was pressed against that soft, luxurious bosom I declined. But once inside, after I’d changed him and while I was fussing with the bottle, she swept him up, unbuttoned her dress and started suckling him; her own youngest daughter, at fifteen months, had not yet been weaned. Offended and spare in the face of her overwhelming motherhood, I had to restrain myself from snatching my child from her; but I knew she would satisfy him better than the bottle. At home he was nursed by the maid Sarie but there had been no room for her on the carriage with us, which was another reason for my reluctance to go out.

  “Where’s Nicolaas?” Barend asked after a while.

  “He’ll be here soon,” she said, offering a finger to the baby’s small fist. “He’s correcting a slave in the stable. There’s been some trouble again.” She sighed. “These people don’t even leave you in peace on a Sunday.”

  “I’ll go to him,” said Barend. “Perhaps I can give him a hand.”

  “Why don’t you stay out of it?” I asked angrily.

  He grinned. “Haven’t exercised my arm for a long time.” Ignoring my attempt to stop him he went out.

  “Shall we have some tea?” asked Cecilia; and without waiting for an answer she shouted: “Pamela! Tea!” The baby, already half asleep against her breast, started, choked, then went on gorging himself, a thin line of milk running from the corner of his mouth.

  “I told Barend we shouldn’t come today,” I said resentfully.

  “Nonsense. Sit down.” Again she shouted: “Pamela!”

  For an hour we sat in the voorhuis having tea, trying to make conversation, my child sleeping blissfully against her crude body, the two elder girls perched on the edge of their chairs like little ground squirrels, the youngest pursuing a kitten on the floor; in the harsh light coming through the open door I occasionally caught glimpses of Carel running about, riding on a broomstick. If only I could be there with him; or in the veld; or back at home—anywhere but in that oppressive room with its severe furniture and stark symmetry. Chairs, stinkwood bench, kists, large dining-table, chest of drawers, cupboard; on the dark floor the skins of springbok, a leopard, and the lion. From time to time she went out to keep an eye on whatever the slave women were preparing in the kitchen. (Once, as she rose, I managed to take back my child from her.) Our desultory talk was an ineffectual battle against the silence weighing on us from all sides. I’d always been made to feel an intruder in their house but never as much as on that Sunday. Almost nothing was recognizable from the time it had been mine. This woman had rebuilt and refurbished it entirely, enlarging it, smartening it; its very smell was different—soap, linseed oil, homemade starch. All the intimacy of my earliest years had disappeared. And there she was, this large ungainly red-haired, female, bolstered by a bland confidence in her own salvation as she ruled over the domain that had been my father’s and mine—with a sudden pang I remembered the smell of his pipe, the feel of his jacket—in preparation no doubt for Heaven where, with a host of lesser angels at her beck and call, she would immediately set about cleaning up and rearranging the furniture.

  The men came back, and the ground squirrel girls rushed with excited little shrieks to welcome their father. Nicolaas seemed nervous, his face flushed; and he was breathing deeply.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said as he came towards me to kiss me.

  He stopped, obviously perplexed. “What’s the matter then?”

  “She’s in one of her moods again,” said Barend, watching from the door, absently wiping his hands on his hips.

  “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” said Nicolaas. “I was just—”

  “You men make me sick,” I interrupted.

  “I hope you taught him a proper lesson this time,” said Cecilia in a tone of satisfaction. “I’m sure you would like some tea.” The customary shout followed: “Pamela!”

  “I’ll take the tray back.” Laying down the baby on the bench where I’d been sitting I began to collect the cups.

  “For Heaven’s sake, leave it to Pamela,” Cecilia said disapprovingly. “They’ve got little enough to do.”

  But I paid no attention. I knew that if I didn’t get out of that room soon I’d scream.

  “Really, Hester,” said Nicolaas, trying to hold me back, his voice openly pleading, “if only you knew how much trouble he’s already given me. And this morning I caught him—”

  “I’m really not interested, Nicolaas,” I said, holding my breath. “Now please let me go so that I can bring you the tea you so richly deserve.”

  “He nearly flogged my horse to death. If I hadn’t stopped him just in time—”

  I went through to the kitchen. It was empty. In the hearth hung several pots, some iron, some copper, one or two of them hissing energetically. I took the tea things to the tub on the scrubbed table near the back door and started rinsing the cups vigorously.

  “You really shouldn’t get upset so easily,” said Cecilia behind me. “Where’s everybody? Isn’t it typical? Turn your back for a mi
nute and off they go.” She went to the back door and raised her strong voice in a shout to waken the dead: “Pamela! Bet! Lydia! For Heaven’s sake, where are you?” She sighed, moving over to the hearth. “These people. You give them everything and this is what you get in return. Suppose they’re all sulking now because at last Nicolaas has got round to teaching one of them a lesson again. He’s too soft with them, that’s what. I keep telling him.” Then, turning to me, without a pause or a change of voice: “Bad time of the month for you?”

  “No,” I said fiercely. “It’s a wonderful time. It keeps Barend away from me.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” she said behind me as I went back to the voorkamer, leaving her to pour the men’s tea.

  They were still discussing the slaves when I came in. Trying not to pay attention I made sure that the baby was comfortable, then went to the front door to look out into the brilliant autumn light.

  “It’s the only way to keep them in check,” Barend was saying. “They’re all being poisoned by these rumours from the Cape. It’s the bloody English.”

  “At the moment it’s just rumors,” said Nicolaas. “But one morning we’ll wake up to find that they’ve all been freed overnight.”

  “You needn’t be afraid of that,” I suddenly said, trying in vain to control myself. “The English are men just like you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Barend gruffly.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I sneered. “No one will think of liberating an ox or a horse. You can only bother about liberating a slave if you think of him as human. So how do you expect men to think of slaves in that way if they haven’t even discovered that women are human yet?”