A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  On our small farm, where we burned charcoal to make a living for the thirteen of us, and planted cabbages and turnips for our own table and the market—when they were not tending the poultry and the pigs the girls worked inside with Mother, spinning and weaving—all the slogans of those times came whirling past like rags blown by the wind and left fluttering in a hedge; and because they were all in a foreign language they reminded one of the magic chants from the fairy tales Mother used to tell us. Liberte—egalite—fraternite; three hot coals smoldering in one’s stomach of a winter’s night when one lay with a wriggling assortment of brothers and sisters listening to rain and wind or to the silence of snow, while on the other side of the wooden partition the cow and the goats and pigs would be trampling and uttering their low moans or sudden squeals. Les droits de l’homme. La commune. Vive la r´epublique. The men drinking their gin round the scrubbed table in the evenings—Mother sitting apart from them in the semi-darkness, darning or crocheting, a grey mouse with red-rimmed eyes and a perennial drop at the tip of her nose—and recklessly throwing the magic words about. L’homme est né libre et partout ii est dans les fers. Father slamming his fist down on the table amid a clattering of plates: “You can bloody well say that again! All the lot of us have ever seen of the so-called liberty everybody is going mad about, is famine and misery. The whole season’s turnips carried off by that last bunch of soldiers. A month’s charcoal requisitioned just like that. And my wife and daughters—my Elsje—!” There his voice would falter, for Elsje had been his favorite; and then another thundering blow of his fist.

  All the time that one name repeated again and again, no matter what the topic of discussion was. Napoleon. Napoleon. The Breaker of Chains. The Liberator. “Liberator my ass!” Father again. “If this is liberation I’d like to see oppression.” And Mother’s whining, monotonous reprimand: “Geerd, Geerd, not in front of the children.”

  Three of my brothers joined the army; two of them died within a year, one for Austria, the other for France, and the third came home with one leg missing. Once again Father was cursing to high heaven. “And then they have the nerve to go on talking about Liberty—Equality—Fraternity!” (A spurt of yellowish tobacco juice would come squirting through the gap between his large front teeth.) “All we’ve seen of it so far is its bloody backside. And that looks pretty grim.” “Oh Geerd. Oh Geerd, how can you?”

  I had to admit that he was probably right. Still, in the dark nights when the wind was tugging at the corners of the house, the words would continue to reverberate in my mind. Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. Somewhere beyond those words, beyond the misery and poverty, the charcoal and the turnips and the rags and the mumbling sounds from Elsje’s open mouth, I believed, a tremendous reality must be lurking. Otherwise I could see no sense in anything.

  The outlook became even more bleak after Father’s death, just a few weeks after he’d finally decided to leave home in spite of all Mother’s protests, and join the army to teach Napoleon a lesson. Unfortunately there was nothing heroic in his death: on his way to Hohenlinden he stumbled over a dog and shot himself in the chest.

  By that time I’d already discovered, thanks to the inspiration of Ome Fons, Mother’s consumptive elder brother, that war itself could be turned into profit if among all the scattered armies constantly moving about one could turn up with the right contraband at the right time and place. Soon our activities escalated into a broadly based underground resistance movement against the foreign occupiers. My remaining unscathed elder brother Diederik was the leader of our group. Eventually it was decided that on a given Wednesday night we would blow up the barracks of the garrison stationed at Oosterhout. At the last moment my courage failed me: thinking of poor Mother who’d already lost so much in the war I decided I owed it to her not to endanger my own life. So I packed all my possessions into a knapsack and ran off to join the war on the Tuesday night. (Afterwards I learned that the attempt had failed and that both Ome Fons and Diederik had been among the dead: sure proof of the protective powers of my cowl.)

  Mother was weepy when I woke her up to say good-bye. “You’re not even sixteen yet, Joseph,” she pleaded. But I pressed a finger to her lips. “I’m big for my age, Mother. I can easily pass for eighteen. And it’s high time I started doing something for the family.”

  “We’re dirt poor, Joseph, but we’ve always managed.”

  “It’s not good enough for my mother. Besides, I’ve always told you—I can feel it in my bones—that there are great things in store for me. It’s time I set out to find my fortune.” Thrusting my fist into the air I whispered proudly in her ear: “Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.”

  “Oh Joseph, Joseph, Joseph,” she sobbed. “You can’t even pronounce them right.”

  “You’ll see, Mother.”

  And so I went off in search of the Black Angel, firmly expecting history to open like a gate and let me through. I could already hear the trumpets. Stand back for the man with the cowl!

  Like hell. All that happened was that for years on end I plodded through the length and breadth of Europe, mostly on foot. Other soldiers around me held forth with shining faces about the great battles they’d been in—Ulm and Austerlitz, Jena, Vimiero, Gotschen, Leipzig, a veritable fanfare of names—but all I ever saw of the glory I’d expected was blood and shit, exhaustion, rags, misery, dead horses, curses; and unremitting hunger.

  Disillusioned with both sides I finally joined a band of vagabonds and deserters that followed the troops like a pack of scavengers, living off the spoils and leftovers of the armies. When peace was concluded and the talking began at Vienna I made up my mind to shake the dust of a ruined and impoverished Europe from my feet and to try out England.

  Mother was inconsolable, but I refused to be dissuaded. “I’ve tried Europe,” I explained to her as patiently as I could, “but it didn’t work out. Surely it couldn’t all have happened in vain. You’ve got to keep faith. I promise you, Mother, you’ll die a rich woman yet.”

  “There isn’t much time left for me, Joseph. Of the eleven children I had there are only four left, and of those one is a cripple and another an imbecile: now you want to leave me too.”

  “Not for long, Mother. I know it’s just waiting round the corner. England is full of opportunities.”

  But what with all the soldiers streaming home after the war there was little sympathy for foreigners. I was employed in a succession of miserable little temporary jobs—in a coal mine, in a boot factory, even in the potato fields—but it wasn’t the life I’d anticipated or thought I deserved; so I began to show an interest in reports of more distant countries. There was much talk of America, where, it seemed, the resounding slogans of my youth had already come true and people lived in freedom and prosperity. Others spoke about Australia. Still others about the Cape of Good Hope. That was a name that appealed to me, and it so happened that when I reached Southampton there was a ship ready to sail for the south, which decided matters for me.

  But my arrival was inauspicious to say the least. A terrible wind kept us out of Table Bay for five full days and nearly broke the anchor chains; even when we were finally allowed to go ashore the wind was blowing with such ferocity that it was all one could do to stay upright; and the whole Mountain was hidden under a sullen bank of white cloud.

  A couple of Malay slaves in charge of a small cabinet-making business on the Buitengracht offered me lodging in their shop for a week, in exchange for most of the tobacco and arrack I’d been able to smuggle ashore. Thanks to the efforts and connections of the head carpenter Mustapha I was offered work on a wine farm near Constantia. “Do you have any experience of viticulture?” the farmer, Sias de Wet, asked me, openly suspicious. “I learned all about it in France,” I assured him. “In the Vendée, in Burgundy, in the Medoc, all over.” That was something my late Ome Fons, rest his corrupt soul, had taught me at a very impressionable age: If someone asks you whether yo
u’re qualified for a given job, the answer is always yes. For one can pick up any trick or technique; but if you say no, the opportunity is lost. And I did learn the ropes quite soon. If I botched a job I would soon pacify De Wet by explaining that I’d been doing it the French way but that I was quite prepared to adapt to the methods of this remote colony. In the end we got along very well indeed; but I couldn’t stand it for more than two years. History was still waiting for me. And Mother wasn’t getting any younger either.

  Once again I felt drawn to the army, but it was a mistake. What future was there for a soldier at the Cape? Expeditions against marauding Bushmen and Hottentots; sentry duty in the Cape Town batteries; patrols into the interior. After barely a month or two I deserted. But while I was helping out harvesting on some farms near Piquetberg, the Government caught up with me. I’d never expected them to feel so strongly about desertion in a colony still so uncivilized. Damn them all. A severe flogging in Cape Town, and that in public to make it worse; the worst humiliation of my life.

  At least it meant formal discharge from the army; so I was free to make a fresh start. That was when I met Herr Liebermann who was in the process of loading his three wagons for a trading expedition into the interior.

  “I’m looking for a guide and a huntsman,” he said when I announced myself. “What do you know about the interior?”

  “I know it like the palm of my hand,” I assured him. “And I was just about born with a rifle in my hands.”

  “Well, in that case you can come with me. Provided your price isn’t too high, ja?”

  Once we’d agreed about my remuneration I persuaded him to invest the few hundred rix dollars due to me at the end of the journey in a load of merchandise which we could take with us so that I might sell it at a profit. My chance, it seemed, had finally arrived.

  As we trekked along, over the mountains to the Warm Baths and from there through the wilderness to Swellendam and the outlying district of Graaff-Reinet and the Great Fish River, I would ride ahead on horseback every day to trace a route and then come back to guide Herr Liebermann. To the day of his death the credulous old soul never discovered that I knew as little of the land as he himself. And as we reached the more remote parts of the Colony we began to do good business too. Usually we stayed over on some farm or another; early the next morning we would unpack our merchandise and barter and sell as best we could; and invariably we would be offered food and drink as well. There were many days when old Liebermann was so drunk that I had to tie him up on the wagon to prevent him from rolling out. While he was in that state I could do business to my heart’s content. Having discovered that in those distant parts one could get much higher prices than closer to the Cape, I felt no qualms about pocketing the difference between what Herr Liebermann had expected and the amount I actually received. It was no loss to him; while every rix dollar brought me closer to that liberté—egalité— fraternité which, as I’d now come to look at it, could only be achieved with a substantial amount of cash in one’s back pocket.

  I persuaded the old man to cross the Fish River into Kaffir Land. He had misgivings as it was against the law. But who would ever find out? And once he’d discovered how much ivory could be obtained from the Xhosas in exchange for ludicrous handfuls of beads and ironware and tobacco, his watery eyes opened into a wide stunned gaze and he promptly drank himself into a stupor.

  We only turned back when we ran out of stuff to barter. Herr Liebermann was quite content to go back to Cape Town; but I persuaded him to give it another thought.

  “Just think of it,” I explained. “If we have the right merchandise we can bring home five times as much ivory.”

  “What sort of merchandise?”

  “Brandy. And ammunition.”

  “Aber Joseph, you can’t sell ammunition to the Xhosas. Gott im Himmel, haven’t you heard the Boers talking about the dangers of life on the border?”

  “Herr Liebermann, you can’t tell me anything about war I haven’t been through myself. Before I was ten years old I’d learned that war meant good business.”

  “But the people will all get massacred if the Xhosas are armed.”

  “The best way to preserve the peace is to make sure that both sides are equally strong. Then neither will risk anything against the other.”

  He still seemed very lukewarm about my proposal, but with the aid of the last draught of brandy left in our barrel I persuaded him to drive to Algoa Bay where we sold our ivory and other bartered goods. The profit was so staggering that he promptly drained a bottle of vile Cape Smoke, which laid him out flat for five days, by which time we were well on our way towards the Fish River again, our wagons creaking under the weight of the guns and ammunition, tobacco, brandy and ironware I’d acquired.

  This time business was like a raging veld fire; and thanks to a couple of interpreters I’d hired in Algoa Bay transactions were speeded up considerably. When the iron pots were all sold out I got the idea of selling birdshot to the eager customers. “Hot seed,” I explained to the Xhosas. “Just plant one of these seeds and water it for a month, then a pot will start growing: and as soon as it’s reached the size you need you can pick it.” Incredible to see the enthusiasm with which the people bought the stuff, paying half the price of a full pot for every seed. The wagons could hardly move for all the ivory when at last we turned back. In order not to alert the militia in the border area—fortunately I’d been warned in time by one of our interpreters about a patrol in the neighborhood—I left Herr Liebermann with the wagons outside Algoa Bay and went ahead to make sure the coast was clear.

  Right there fortune turned against me again. On my return to the wagons all I found was one of the drivers who’d managed to hide in the bush when the patrol had surprised them.

  I went back to farm work, first in the Suurveld of the Eastern Cape, but after the war of ’19, when the Xhosas crossed the frontier in their thousands, plundering and destroying everything in their way, I returned to safer parts; and at last I landed in the district of Worcester. By that time I’d saved a small amount of money, but the farmers were either downright stingy or unable to afford a liveable wage; more often than not one was promised part of the harvest—and when it was a bad year, which happened to me three times in a row, one was left with barely a rag to cover one’s backside.

  Far, far away, across the seas, Mother would still be waiting and pining. Perhaps she’d already gone blind. Perhaps she was dead. And all I had to show for my life was that I was still a laborer on one farm after another. The wonderful words of long ago were beginning to fade in my memory, as if those bright rags had been dislodged from the hedge again to be blown away by the wind. Had it really all been in vain then? The great slogans of the Revolution. Napoleon. All of it. In vain?

  At the humble place of the raving old shoemaker of Houd-den-Bek I rediscovered a small measure of hope. For it was a good summer. Dry, but good. The wheat was billowing in the wind. I was asked to give a hand with the harvesting, not only at old D’Alree’s place, but on several other farms in the neighborhood. There was a prospect of earning enough soon to equip another wagon and take the road into the interior again, where the ivory was.

  For the first time I’d acquired a touch of prestige too. Not with old D’Alree or the Van der Merwes, who looked down on me as a common laborer, but among the slaves. Amazing how avidly they could gather round me to listen to whatever I chose to tell them. More, more, more, they would encourage me. In their eyes I’d become an extraordinary man. And perhaps, I thought, it was not yet too late. Half my life still lay ahead. Perhaps the cowl would yet show its magic powers; perhaps Mother hadn’t been waiting entirely in vain for so long.

  All these thoughts were constantly in my mind during those summer days. And especially on the wagon-trip with Nicolaas to the Cape, that late October; and the day in December when we were harvesting the wheat. And again that afternoon on the threshing-
floor, just after New Year. For that, I believe, was where everything was finally decided.

  Galant

  White. The child was white.

  Nicolaas

  It was almost a relief in the uncompromising glare of the early November light to approach from the Rear-Witzenberg, trekking through the tumbled rock formations of the Skurweberge and reaching the summer wind of our highland again, the wagon almost jolted to pieces as usual by the long journey to and from the Cape. I was sitting on the driver’s seat with Campher beside me, while old Moses wielded the long whip alongside and little Rooy led the oxen. Relief, since one could never be sure any more about what was happening in one’s absence (at least there was a prospect of more certainty by Christmas or New Year); and because it had been a depressing and lonely trip, what with Campher so wholly withdrawn into himself, mumbling from time to time words in strange languages as if possessed by the Holy Ghost. At the same time a familiar oppressiveness closed in on me again. All the way from the Cape I’d had the curious feeling of recapitulating the motion of my ancestors: this was the same road the first Van der Merwe had taken from Cape Town, leading to Roodezand and the valley of Waveren; and after his quarrel with the Landdrost my Great-grandfather and his companions had trekked up the backbreaking Witzenberg and into the Bokkeveld, among the first ever to cross those unconscionable mountains; here he measured off, galloping for a whole day at full speed on horseback, the great farm which after the fight with the messenger of the East India Company he baptized Houd-den-Bek, Shut-Your-Trap; and fifty years after the family had moved on to Swellendam, Pa returned to repossess Houd-den-Bek and Elandsfontein and Lagenvlei. Now I was following these tracks of my own history once again, with a feeling both of fulfillment and of apprehension. For I was not simply the result of my history but also the victim of it. I had no choice to deviate or follow my own inclination: not only because the Government in the Cape was doing its utmost to determine the confines and direction of my life but because this long valley, and these wild mountains, and the people living among them, and my own family, all combined to circumscribe my existence. I was returning to this place, and to my wife and waiting children, because I had no liberty to do otherwise: the prisoner of a land apparently open and exposed but crushing one in its hard grip.