A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  Still, he was a dependable worker. The only times he seemed to find it difficult to get started on a job was when I was making shoes. Then he would invariably think up some excuse to leave his own work so that he could watch me.

  “What is it, Galant?” I once asked him directly. “Why aren’t you getting on with the wall you’re supposed to be building?”

  “You must make me a pair of shoes too, Baas,” he said, much to my amazement.

  “But you’re a slave. You’re not allowed to wear shoes.”

  “You got to make me a pair, Baas. I’ll hide them away so no one can see them.”

  “What do you want them for?”

  “For walking.”

  “Your feet are tougher than any soles I can cut from my hides,” I joked. “You can walk barefoot where I won’t risk it with my shoes.”

  “I want shoes. I got to have them. And you must make them for me.” The way he could persist!

  “And how would you pay for them?” I joked, hoping to dissuade or dishearten him.

  “I can pay you a whole sheep. Even more. Just tell me how much you want, Baas. I’ll pay everything I got.”

  In the end he was nagging me so much that there seemed to be only one way out of it. “All right, Galant,” I said. “I’ll make you the shoes when I have time for it. But I’m a busy man and it may not be soon.”

  “I can wait.”

  I knew of course that it was entirely out of the question. The neighbors were already suspicious about me. What would they do if they found out that I’d made shoes for a slave? At the same time I didn’t want to put him off altogether. Why should the trust of a slave have meant anything to me? Still, shunned as I was by most of the farmers because of my foreignness, and sneered at or ignored by the slaves, the simple fact that Galant accepted me—our only bond the possibility of a pair of shoes!—must have persuaded me to behave with such indulgence towards him. So I never gave him an outright No to his entreaties, while ensuring at the same time (considering my precarious situation in the neighborhood) that I would always have a valid excuse for postponing the business of actually making the shoes. Once, when he was getting very excited and I began to fear the consequences of a refusal, I placated him by taking his measurements; on another occasion I went so far as to cut out the soles. Whenever he came over to work at my place after that he would first take out the soles and measure them on his feet and admire them and handle them as if they were infinitely precious. But that was as far as we got. I was hoping that in the end his enthusiasm would wane and he would forget about the whole ridiculous business, but I’d never known such a persevering man. Patient, but persevering. Only once I really saw him in a temper. It was soon after Nicolaas had visited me in the night; and while I was working on his boots Galant came in, mistaking them for his.

  “You making my shoes at last?” he asked eagerly.

  “No, they’re for your Baas.”

  “But I been waiting for a long time, much longer than he! Why you making his first?”

  “Because he’s your master, Galant,” I said as soothingly as I could. “You must understand that.”

  He grabbed a hammer from the table I was working on; for a moment, fearing he might attack me with it, I cowered. But without looking at me he threw it down again and went out in such a rage that I didn’t risk going near him again that day. And when I glanced through the window I saw him dismantling the stone-wall he’d been working on for days, lifting one stone after the other from the wall and throwing them away with such force that when they struck something I could see the sparks flying in broad daylight.

  But the next day he was calm again and although we studiously avoided the topic of the shoes for some time after that our relationship resumed its even tenor. When he brought the matter up again it was without the urgency of before; perhaps he too had acquiesced in the knowledge that it would be no more than a game between us. At times he even waxed talkative, as if the shoes had lent me some special importance in his eyes. Perhaps my position as a foreigner, and the tales I could tell him of distant places, encouraged him to regard me in a light different from that in which he viewed those masters who had always inhabited his familiar world. I cannot deny that in a way I was moved by it. I certainly tried to use the opportunity to talk some sense into him; for the slaves seemed to be unusually excitable those days. On one occasion, especially, I was very frank with him. It must have been about April last year, just after the latest regulations about the punishment of slave women had been promulgated, causing a wave of illogical reaction among the farmers.

  “You know, Galant,” I said—I remember it was a cool autumn day and he was wearing his jacket while he weeded the garden: not the presentable one I’d given him but the torn remains of the old one, as usual—“I really don’t understand you people. If you consider everything the papers have been saying this last year—”

  “What do they say?” he asked.

  “You’re treated much better than slaves in any other country I know of,” I went on. “The Government has made sure that your circumstances are improved beyond all measure. You’re given proper food and clothes. You’re working for limited hours. There are restrictions on punishment. You have the right to get married. Husband and wife may no longer be sold separately. Provided you carry a pass from your baas you can move about with reasonable freedom. You can even have your own possessions. So for Heaven’s sake tell me: what more do you want?”

  And what did he reply to that? “Across the Great River,” he said, “there are people who are wholly free.”

  I know I’m growing old; but truly I cannot understand such reasoning. One might have expected a hint of appreciation.

  So in a way I was relieved when the foreman Campher arrived. Barend van der Merwe had hired him upon the recommendation I believe of a farmer near Graaff-Reinet for whom he had worked previously. A real Brabander, lots of hot air and very little hard work; and distressingly fond of spirits, especially over weekends. But at least he was a free man and a Christian, which was different from the mentality of a slave. He would be able to keep the laborers in check, I thought.

  Alida

  Such a little runt. Could this possibly be the man about whom I’d been wondering so often: Suppose he’d asked me first? Seeing him again after so many years was like a final renunciation. And what else could I do but bear him a grudge, not for being a runt but for diminishing me by exposing my dream as a mockery?

  All I had left was what I had. That was the single bitter thought in my mind, the day they brought Piet back from the lands.

  It had never really been otherwise; except that the dream had been intact. Now I’d been pruned like a tree. That was what his return had done to me. And here we all were, each woman left with the destiny of the man assigned to her. Hester with Barend. I with Piet. Cecilia with Nicolaas. Not even death could make a difference.

  Galant

  Another newspaper. I’m working on the farmyard wall repairing the damage where the wheels of the carriage dislodged a few stones, when Frans du Toit arrives with it in his saddle-bag and asks if the people are at home. “You can leave it with me,” I say, “I’ll give it to them.” “No, I don’t trust you with it,” he says. “The news is much too important.” As he eases the reins I jeer at him: “Why don’t you go round to the pigsty first? It’ll make the time pass more quickly.” He aims a blow at me but I jump out of reach.

  “Better keep your ears open,” I warn Pamela. “If they say anything about the newspaper you must come and tell me.”

  “They never talk in front of me,” she says. “The Nooi keeps me out of the voorhuis and the bedroom. Since the Baas began to use me she’s brought Bet back into the house and I better stay out of her way.”

  “Keep your ears open when you working in the house,” I tell Bet. “There’s a newspaper come yesterday.”

  “W
hy should I tell you if I hear anything?” she says tartly.

  “Because if you don’t I’ll bloody well break your neck.”

  But when I press her afterwards, all she can say is that the Nooi is keeping quiet about it: “If you ask me, the Nooi is just as scared of newspapers as you are. She says it can stay right where it is until the time comes to open it. We got enough trouble as it is, the Nooi says.”

  “Then there’s only one thing to do,” I tell Pamela, though it takes gritting my teeth to say it. “When he lies down with you again you must ask him straight.”

  Not even that draws anything out of them. All he says to her is: “There is a time for all things and this is not the time to talk about newspapers.”

  “You must bring me that newspaper,” I tell Bet. “I got to know what it says, because I know it’s about us.”

  “They’ll kill me if I steal it.”

  “And I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  For days on end they keep looking for that newspaper on the farm and all the while it’s lying safely under my mattress. Next time I go to Oubaas D’Alree I take it with me and ask him to explain to me what it says. Why him? The others despise him. What respect, they ask, can one have for a master who doesn’t behave like one? That is why I take to him, I tell them. Because he’s not like them. He comes from a far place. He listens to me and talks to me as if he doesn’t mind that I’m a slave. He doesn’t laugh at me when I ask him to make me shoes. So I take him the newspaper. But this time he is different. He refuses to answer my questions and he has a scared look about him. “Why do you bother about such things, Galant?” he asks. “If you really want to know, go and discuss it with your Baas. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” “But they won’t tell me!” I cry. He keeps out of my way, pretending to be very busy with someone else’s shoes. “If your Baas decides it’s fit for you to know, he’ll tell you himself.”

  I’m beginning to wonder about the man. What about those shoes he’s supposed to make for me? Why can’t he ever get them done? Is he lying to me? Are they really all the same?

  The newspaper is burning my hand. By the Blue God, I think by myself, is there no one in the whole bloody world who can tell me what this damned thing says? I spread it open on an antheap and peer at all those weird small black ants running motionlessly across its pages. They are talking about me, that I know for sure, yet I can’t make out a word they’re saying. I press my ear so hard against the paper that it hurts, but I still hear nothing. Then something seems to burst inside me and I start tearing it to pieces; I thrust all the crumpled shreds into my mouth. If they won’t talk to me I’ll eat them up. Perhaps they’ll start talking inside me. I chew them and eat them and swallow them until there’s nothing left.

  But it’s the beginning of something awful. When I fall asleep at night beside the emptiness that used to be Pamela’s place, those ants start swarming about in my guts. I can feel their tiny black feet moving about, this way and that, everywhere. I can feel them fidgeting, wriggling, burrowing. All through my body they’re crawling, down to my toes, in my fingers, right inside my eyes, in my head. They’re crawling and crawling, making dry rustling sounds, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. And then they start gnawing at my insides, and I realize they’re going to chew me up until there’s nothing left except a dry shell, like the shell of an old tortoise stripped clean by the ants. I start beating my own body, slapping wherever I can feel them crawling about and gnawing and chewing, but I cannot reach them. I bash my head against the walls to silence them, to stop them, but they go on gnawing at me, my tongue, my eyes, everything I got inside me. I start shouting, bellowing like a bullock that’s being cut, and I jump up. And suddenly I’m awake, wet with sweat, and with the sound of my own bellowing still in my ears; and around me there’s nothing, but I know very well the ants were there, they were eating me. I grasp at Pamela beside me but her place is empty, she’s sleeping in the house, and it’s Nicolaas who lies with her.

  Just a dream, I keep telling myself. Have I become a child again then to have nightmares like this and scream myself awake? I should be ashamed of myself. It was only a dream! And perhaps everything is a dream: perhaps I never really ate the newspaper. Perhaps there never was a newspaper. Perhaps I never went to Tulbagh and never met a man with irons on his legs and chains on his arms. Perhaps I never had a child. How can I really be sure? All I have to prove that something happened is the tatters of my old jacket. But what does that amount to? I still know nothing about the newspaper, and now I’m too scared to ask. Suppose Pamela and Bet tell me they know nothing at all about it? All I can do is lie down again, and sleep. And then the ants return to gnaw and gnaw in my guts.

  “You can’t do this to me,” I say to Nicolaas when at last I decide to talk to him. “Pamela is my woman, I chose her, and we want to get married. Now you expecting me to sleep alone, and the ants are eating me up.”

  “We need her in the house,” he says, working on a new girth for his horse.

  “You need her to clean up after supper,” I say. “And then you need her again in the morning to make tea. In between she’s mine. It’s the only time we got to be together.”

  “There’s nothing more to discuss,” he says sharply, turning his back to me.

  “Nicolaas!” I try to keep calm, but it’s difficult. “I took Bet just because a man needs a woman. But Pamela I took because I want her to be mine. I never bothered much about women. She’s the only one. Do you hear me?”

  “Your work is waiting, Galant. Better get on with it before we have trouble again.”

  “If you don’t let Pamela be you’ll be the one looking for trouble.”

  He comes towards me with the newly cut girth in his hands. But at that moment Pamela comes from the kitchen, as if she’s been standing inside listening to us; and she says: “Please keep out of this, Galant. I don’t want to see another bad thing on the farm.”

  “You tell him that,” I say, before I turn to walk off.

  “Why are you wearing that torn jacket again?” Nicolaas calls after me. “How many times must I tell you I don’t want to see the damned thing again?”

  “It’s my jacket.”

  “You’re just wearing it to spite me.”

  “I’m wearing it because it is my child’s.”

  Whistling, I go down to the kraal where we’re raising the wall after a leopard managed to jump over the old one, barely a week ago. Straining to pick up and lift and settle the heavy stones I manage to contain the anger in me. Stone, stone, stone. But if he doesn’t let Pamela be, I swear to the dark heart of the thunder, I can see a new storm coming. I’ve always known it’s better to keep out of women. It hurts you where you can’t stop it. And with Pamela it’s even worse. Trying to smother the thoughts I put everything I got into the lifting and stacking of the stones. But my mind stays out of it. It’s Pamela I see before me. It’s her voice I’m hearing. In the dark light of the lantern she asks: “Galant, who are you?” It’s a word that tears me open, worse than any sjambok, ever. I’m lying on her, yet I cannot move, all because of that word. Who are you? Rooted deeply in her, I keep on talking and talking, telling her about Ma-Rose and Nicolaas and everybody; but I know it’s not what I really want to say, it’s not what I mean; it can’t be what she wants to know. No one got the right to ask me: Who are you? I can try to tell her about my father—but who is he, what has become of him? About my mother—but where is she, what’s happened to her? About Ma-Rose who brought me up; about Nicolaas who used to be my playmate. But those are other people, they’re not I. To tell her what she wants to know: where do I begin, and how? In the dark of the night on which I’m drifting as on deep black water, I feel a blind knowledge welling up in me: I know something must happen, something must be done, somewhere I got to get to, so that she and I can know for sure: This is me, I, Galant. Now, in this moment, in this darkness, with h
er, inside her, I can feel myself although I cannot say it. This body with its bruises and cuts and scars, this body shaped from pain like a figure shaped from clay beside the dam of my childhood, this back and stomach and arms and legs, these balls heavy with life, this stiff root planted inside her. But can this be all? Surely there must be something more, something which can make others say long after I’m gone: This is Galant. And this is what I got to find: with her. Which is why no one in the world has the right to take her from me for in this night she has become a part of me without which I can never be Galant. Something in me is now forever chained to her, and willingly. Why does it not choke me then? Why this feeling that only with this chain on my body can I know the possibility of freedom? I try to find the sense of it but the thoughts lay too heavily in my mind.

  When I fail to find relief in throwing stones I wait till nightfall to lead Nicolaas’s big black stallion from the stable and ride bareback into the dark. The feeling of that great horse moving under me, the hooves thundering below, tears torn from my eyes by the wind. I’m like a stone picked up by an invisible hand and thrown into the air, never to touch the ground again. Perhaps death is like this.

  But the moment I come back the ants return, gnawing and gnawing at me.