A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  “It is madness, Galant,” she says, sobbing; and when I pay no heed to her she calls Ontong to talk to me. “Just give it time, man,” he says. “Tomorrow things will look different again.”

  “It will never be different. I’ve had enough of this place and all its shit.”

  “Now don’t make trouble again,” says Achilles, sighing and shaking his grizzly head. “You’ll bring a cloud over all of us.”

  “Then look after yourselves!” I shout. “I’m going off, this very night. I’m going all the way to Cape Town and I dare anyone to try and fetch me back.”

  They’re all talking and shouting and threatening at the same time; and Pamela is crying. But I feel blind and deaf and numb; and the black ants are gnawing at my insides, crawling up in my throat and attacking the root of my tongue, I try to spit them out, but they won’t let go. Tonight no one will stop me. Try anything you want to. Let the masters try too. Anyone. I’m going. Tonight I’m taking my freedom. I’m going to Cape Town. There I’ll get on a boat and sail off to a land across the sea where there are no slaves. With my own eyes I shall see it. I’m taking my freedom. Let the ants do their damnedest.

  Klaas

  If Baas Barend should get it into his head one rainy day to say: “It’s dry,” I’ll answer without even looking up from my work: “Yes, Baas, it’s dry.” And if in the middle of the night he were to say: “The sun is shining,” I’ll answer without opening my eyes: “Yes, he’s shining, Baas.” One learns. In the early days I resisted. All it brought me was a raw back: worst of all that day the woman interfered to stop the flogging. Which was a bad thing. It was bad enough among us men; but when the woman came it turned bitter. Man is stone: you can see him clearly, you can walk round him and touch him, he’s right there. But woman is water, you cannot stop it. That was what I couldn’t bear.

  Ever since then I did things his way and that made life easier. I was made mantoor and even Abel who used to be over me had to listen to me. By being a worm to the Baas I was given the right to shit on their heads. It made them so mad that sometimes I wondered whether I would wake up one morning with a knife between my shoulders. But what can one do? I had to survive.

  I could have stayed in my hut the evening Galant was here. But I knew the woman was alone. I didn’t mean anything bad, following them. It was just the feeling that, perhaps, this was my real chance. She’d come in among the men the day of the flogging; no insult to a man’s pride could be worse than that. And now, perhaps, I could have my own back.

  “Galant interfered with the Nooi tonight,” I told Baas Barend when he came home. “And she didn’t stop him either.”

  In a way that even gave me a hold on him. He would never look me in the eyes again; that gave me a power I’d never known, even though I remained a slave. And it had really been so easy.

  Du Toit

  When they need me, in the face of danger or perplexity, it is with alacrity and enthusiasm that they call on me, addressing me as “Field-cornet” or “good old Frans”; but as soon as everything has returned to normal they no longer feel the need to acknowledge me. The mothers hide their daughters when I turn up on their farms, and the men are invariably too busy to invite me in. When there are new proclamations on grazing licenses or the Opgaaf or regulations on slaves I’m instructed by Landdrost Trappes to spread the news through the district: but the farmers blame me personally for it, as if I were responsible for promulgating the law. For the representatives of the Government I’m a wretched bumpkin they can order to fetch and carry as it pleases them; for the Boers I’m the darling of the English, a harbinger of evil with the Devil’s own mark on my face. And when I feel driven beyond endurance by the need and the desire of my lonely flesh, I realize in my humiliation that God Himself must have rejected me. No curse is for them too terrible to brand me with. But the moment anything untoward occurs in the district it’s once again the Field-cornet who must be solicited and courted to help them out.

  Like the time the slave Galant absconded. I was rather suspicious when I heard about his desertion, knowing too well that there had been trouble between Nicolaas van der Merwe and his slave before: every now and then a complaint or a report of new conflict; and Landdrost Trappes had asked me to keep a special eye on the Van der Merwes who had proved themselves only too ready to take the law in their own hands.

  The problem was that one couldn’t simply arrive unannounced on a farm to make enquiries, for those farmers were fiercely possessive of their slaves. It was better not to get involved unnecessarily. On the other hand I knew Galant to be a difficult character; on one occasion he’d landed me personally in a most unfortunate position, but it is a matter that does not concern the present instance.

  “Are you sure it’s necessary to send out a search party?” I asked Nicolaas after he’d explained the case.

  “Would I have come to ask you if it wasn’t necessary?”

  “For how long has he been gone?”

  “Three days.”

  “What makes you think he didn’t just go to Worcester again?”

  “He told the laborers before he left that he was going to Cape Town.”

  “Give him another couple of days just to be on the safe side.”

  “You want to make quite sure he gets away?”

  “I want to see justice done. To round up a commando only to find out afterwards that he’d done no more than exercise his right to lodge a complaint in Worcester seems rather extravagant to me.”

  “Frans, you’re just as bad as the damned English with whom you are in league.”

  “I’m not in league with anyone.” His irresponsible accusation cut me to the quick: how often had I heard it before? “In a civilized land there must be respect for law and order, otherwise everything will go to pieces.”

  “Look, if you’re too scared to do something, then tell me, so that I can round up my neighbors myself to hunt the slave. But then we’ll do it our way.”

  “But don’t you understand?” I said, trying to be as reasonable as I could. “In the old days it was different. Every man had to fend for himself. But the world has changed, Nicolaas. There are more and more people around, the towns are getting more populated and they’re moving closer to us. Now the law must be enforced to make sure that one man’s justice doesn’t become another’s injustice.”

  “You can be very glib about justice and injustice. To you it’s something you read about in books or newspapers. To us it’s a matter of life and death.”

  “But not each man for himself, Nicolaas. We’re not animals.”

  “Who are you to talk? No pig can feel safe near you.”

  It took all the restraint I could muster not to strike him with my riding crop. The insults one has to learn to bear.

  “A lot of people living together don’t create a civilization just like that, Nicolaas,” I pointed out. “One needs a law before which all men are equal.”

  “Not if it affects my right to decide for myself what is to happen on my own farm.”

  “It’s a price we all have to pay. Each must give up a measure of his freedom to ensure justice for all. And even if it means that some individual has to bear the brunt of it from time to time, it is still worth while, for the sake of an ordered world that guarantees justice and room for everybody.”

  “It’s always easier to talk than to do something,” he said in bitter reproach.

  “I believe in what I’m saying!” My voice sounded more shrill than I would have liked it to be; but it was terribly important to me to make him understand my urgency. What, if not justice, was there for me to believe in? What would become of us all unless we agreed to step in under a single legal yoke and pull together in one team? If we forfeited that it would mean negating the very meaning of our presence in the land: and all our forefathers would have lived in vain. Law. Law and order. This was the only passion permitted me. The onl
y recourse in a miserable world.

  “The law has become your God!” he said contemptuously.

  “Certainly not. But we cannot survive without it.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Nicolaas said. “No law can be good in itself. It depends on who applies it. Only a man whose hands are clean dare handle a law. Else it’s smudged with his own dirty fingermarks.”

  “You’re being personal again, just because you can’t stand me.”

  “No.” In his characteristic manner he pushed his right hand through his white hair so that it stood stiffly upright. “I’m only surprised that you should find it necessary to preach such a long sermon when the only thing I asked of you was to bring back Galant.”

  In the end I persuaded him to postpone action for one more day. I would have preferred a longer period, but the next morning old D’Alree’s foreman Campher brought me a message that Galant had been to their place—in search of a pair of shoes, of all things!—and when he was turned away he went to a grazing place of old Piet van der Merwe where he stole a gun. That left me with no option but pursuit.

  I called up a dozen men for commando duty—I, the two young Van der Merwes, Campher, old Jan du Plessis, D’Alree, and six Hottentots—all of us armed. We rode out from my farm, past Elandsfontein, and over the mountain to the grazing place where old Piet’s slave Moses was in charge. However, he couldn’t tell us anything about the robbery as it seems he’d gone to Lagenvlei for new provisions the previous day. The two Hottentots, Wildschut and Slinger, told us their story, which I took with a pinch of salt since their versions differed rather startlingly on several points. In broad outline it seemed that while they’d been asleep the previous night their gun had been stolen; and upon waking up in the morning they were confronted by Galant who threatened them with the gun and ordered them to slaughter and roast a lamb for him; after devouring a substantial part of it he packed the rest into a knapsack and went off into the mountains, waving his hat at them and announcing that he was now on his way to Cape Town.

  These mountains make search or pursuit well-nigh impossible. Rocks, cliffs, boulders, precipices. Horses are useless and even on foot one makes difficult progress. Out of the question to look for tracks: the terrain is too rocky and uneven for that. And Galant had been born in this neighborhood: he knew it like the back of his hand.

  “I’m still puzzled by something,” I said to Nicolaas. “What on earth made him decide on such a drastic step? In the past he always came back on his own.”

  “He just ran away.”

  “After a flogging?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “But what did he do?”

  “Well, if you really want to know.” He posted himself directly in front of me. His nostrils were deadly white, and flaring. “He interfered with my sister-in-law.”

  “You mean he—?”

  “What he did or didn’t do is no concern of yours!” Barend interrupted, grabbing me by the lapels. “You just do your job and bring him back. Dead or alive.”

  But it was impossible in those mountains. After the first few hours we split up into several small groups in order to spread out across a wider area to prevent him from slipping past us in the direction of the Rear-Witzenberg, on the way to Cape Town. But he’d already disappeared without a trace. For five days we went on scouring the mountains, but then the farmers had to return to their work. The weather had worsened too: the real Bokkeveld winter that made one grit one’s teeth with cold. A sudden spread of snow when we got up one morning. A sky murky in the howling North-wester. No hope at all to track him down.

  “Well, I suppose that’s that,” Barend said grimly. “Let’s hope the bastard froze to death.”

  After the snow had melted and the wind abated slightly, I sent out a few more search parties, giving the Hottentots a firm instruction: “If you find a spoor, then follow it wherever it leads, even if it means going all the way to the Salt River in the Cape.” But after another fruitless week they, too, gave up. For all we knew Galant had either died in the mountains, or reached Cape Town.

  It must have been more than a month after his desertion that I heard about his unexpected return to Houd-den-Bek. Quite voluntarily it seemed. The gun he’d stolen he handed over to Nicolaas, and he willingly accepted his due punishment. And that appeared to have settled the matter. The farmers were free to forget about me again.

  Thys

  It was a changed Galant who came back from the Cape, descending from the mountains after the last snow had melted. He was very thin and sinewy, his hands and feet cracked, his face ashen. But there was a gleam in his eyes, the way a man might look when he’s seen something he has never seen before. I’m not sure how to put it, except that he looked new and different, as if he’d been washed inside and out.

  Rooy and I were the first who saw him. We’d just come back with the sheep from the winter grazing in the Karoo, and we were mending a hole in the temporary kraal of logs and branches we’d put up for the new lambs, where the jackals had broken in the night before. Galant came down to us and sent me to the Baas to find out whether it would be all right for him to come back and give up his gun. If not, he would just be on his way again.

  “Of course,” the Baas said, looking terribly pleased with the news. “If he gives himself up I won’t hold anything against him.” One could see he really felt relieved, for things had been going badly on the farm without Galant to run it.

  But the Baas did not behave properly towards Galant. After all he’d promised, and after Galant had given up his gun, when he came to the kitchen for food, the Baas suddenly lost his temper and started beating him with his kierie, until it broke. And when we thought it was all over, the next morning, the Baas called Ontong and Achilles to tie Galant up in the stable; and it was a bad thing, the way he was flogged then. We all expected him to run away again after that, as we’d known him to do in the past. But all he did was to keep away from all of us for a long time, without saying a word to anyone. Which is why I said he was a changed man. He stayed with Pamela until her child was born, for her time was near. And when, afterwards, we asked him about his plans he just shook his head and said his days for running away were over. Life was different now.

  “I saw many things in the Cape when I was there,” he said. “And I know my place is here. I got to be at my own place when the freedom comes.”

  “What freedom?”

  “They all know about it in Cape Town. It won’t be long now. They told me the things the newspapers spoke about is just the beginning. We won’t be going about barefoot for much longer now.”

  And then he started telling us about the Cape. He’d seen the man of the Tulbagh jail again, the Man-without-a-name who’d been taken away in irons. The man had overpowered his guards on the way to Cape Town, said Galant; and he’d broken open his chains with a crowbar, and now he was going about as a free man, hiding in the bushes of the Table Mountain in the daytime and coming out to hunt at night, like a leopard. And it was this man who told Galant that the people were making preparations for the big day.

  That was only the beginning of Galant’s stories. He told us about the horse races in Green Point. Someone had lent him a horse and he’d won, which didn’t surprise us for we all knew Galant’s way with horses. With the money they gave him for winning he bought the horse for himself. A great grey stallion, he said, the best horse the Cape had ever seen. And from then on he just kept on winning, winning all the time. But the other men at the races were getting envious about all his wins, so they sent soldiers to catch him, saying he’d been causing a disturbance. There was a hell of a fight. They just kept on shooting and they even killed his horse and took all his money; so he and his friends had to hide in the Mountain. But in the night they came down and attacked the barracks, and the second battle was even worse than the first. The cannon was brought down from the Lion’s Rump, and ma
ny people were shot to pieces. At daybreak they nearly caught Galant, but he got away and hid himself on a ship in the harbor, a ship bigger than three houses. But just as it started to sail away a fire broke out and the ship went down and everybody drowned except Galant who swam ashore.

  Another time there was a man who ran amok in the streets, attacking people with an axe as far as he went, chopping them to bits; in the end it was Galant who overpowered him and took away his axe. For that, everybody said, he deserved his freedom. So he was taken to the Governor’s room deep in the heart of the Castle, but unfortunately the Governor wasn’t there that day, so the whole plan had to be dropped. Afterwards, said Galant, he went right up the mountain to where one could see all the way to the Bokkeveld. And then he pissed from the highest cliff and it hit the Governor who just happened to be passing below. So Galant was caught and taken to the gentlemen of the court, and they said he had to be tied to four horses and torn apart; but on the appointed day, when they took him to the town square, he recognized his own grey stallion that he thought had been killed but wasn’t, so he started speaking softly to it; and just as they prepared to tie him up he tore himself loose and jumped on the back of the big grey stallion and galloped off. From then on he had to keep out of the town, so he lived with his friend, the Man-without-a-name, in the bushes on the Mountain. When it got dark they came out and made merry in the streets. Once they broke into the Church and held a party; all the slaves from the Cape were there and they danced right through the night. They made friends with the slaves from the Castle and arranged for them to steal food from the Governor’s own table, dishes and dishes the likes of which no one in the Bokkeveld had ever seen. And they discussed everything about taking their freedom. They wanted Galant to be their leader and promised him he could live in the Castle when the big day came; and Pamela too. But first they wanted him to go back to the Bokkeveld to prepare the people for the day of freedom. Which was why in the end he came back to the Bokkeveld and gave up his gun. And that was why he couldn’t care less about the floggings, for he knew it wouldn’t be long; it was just a matter of bearing it for a little while longer.