A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  That evening Galant came over to bring me some soup he’d asked Pamela to pinch from the kitchen; and he sat there telling me all his wild stories of Cape Town.

  “The Cape must have changed a lot since I knew it as a girl,” I said at last. “I hardly recognize it from your stories.”

  That stung him. “You think it’s lies I’m telling, Ma-Rose?”

  “I never said such a thing. What does one person know about another? I can’t see the inside of your head, can I? All I remember is the way you used to have dreams when you were small, and I had to drive all the bad thoughts away by rubbing your little prick. But when a man is grown it’s not so easy to get the dreams out of him.”

  “You don’t believe me then.”

  “What’s it to you whether I believe or not? As long as you believe it yourself.”

  For a long time he was quiet.

  “You believe in yourself?” I asked him again.

  Without looking at me, his eyes still far away in that distance where the thas-jackal roams, he suddenly said: “I’m not the man I used to be, Ma-Rose.”

  “Is it because of Pamela’s white child?”

  “It got nothing to do with the child!” he burst out.

  “Well, what is it then? They finally broken you in?”

  “No.” He said it very softly. “No. No one can do that.” Then he was quiet again before he went on: “When I left here it was to try and find me a place where I could go to live. In the Cape, or across the Great River, anywhere. All my life I been looking for that place; all my life I been wanting to get away from here. But there’s one thing I found out and that is that one cannot get away from one’s own place. It’s stuck to your footsoles. My place is here. This Bokkeveld. This Houd-den-Bek. Before, I was here because I got no other choice. Now I’m here because I want it. I made up my mind and I chose this place. It’s mine.”

  “So you’re satisfied at last?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He turned to me and stared very hard at me. “How can I ever be satisfied while I’m a slave? But at least I got a place now that is mine. All I got to do now is to get out from under the masters.”

  “Why you talking so mixed-up tonight?”

  “I know what I’m talking about, Ma-Rose. And I’m just biding my time.”

  He had me worried. “What time you biding?” I asked him.

  But he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, he asked, still looking straight at me: “Ma-Rose, you heard the news that we going to be free?”

  “There’s been a lot of stories like that over the years, Galant,” I warned him. “Don’t put your heart on it. It gets you nowhere.”

  “Christmas or New Year,” he said quietly, ignoring me. “That’s the way I heard it. This news comes from right across the sea. The newspaper itself said so.”

  “What do you know about newspapers?”

  “I tell you it’s true!” He was so excited that he grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me till my teeth were chattering. “You hear me?”

  “Of course I hear you. No need to shout at me.”

  Ashamed, he let go of me. “Well, that’s what the newspaper says,” he repeated.

  “Where did you hear it?”

  “Everybody heard it.” Stubbornly, he held on to it, the way I’d known him from childhood, “It’s Christmas, or it’s New Year. Today I know my place; when that day comes my place will know me too.”

  “Christmas and New Year will come and go,” I said. “Like every other year.”

  “Just you wait. I’m biding my time. And New Year is my time. No sooner, no later.”

  At first I thought it was just another of his whims. But I kept my ears open, and it wasn’t long before I heard the same story from Abel.

  “You heard it from Galant?” I asked him.

  “No, why should I? Haven’t seen him for a long time. I heard it straight from Cape Town.”

  Shortly afterwards old Moses repeated the same thing; and then I heard it from people who’d come up from Worcester in search of grazing for their cattle. It gave me a dizzy feeling. There’s so many things one hears all one’s life; and one gets used to going on regardless. Now, all of a sudden, there was this new business. Could it really be true then?

  I discussed it with Bet. After the child with the white hair and blue eyes was born to Pamela, things had changed at the farmhouse again and Bet was brought back into the kitchen while Pamela was moved out, even though I knew the Nooi wasn’t very fond of Bet. The menfolk really give us a hard time. Anyway, Bet was doing the housework again—except Pamela was still called in to help the Nooi with her clothes and her hair and so on—and I told her to keep her ears open for the newspapers, and to find out whatever she could. It was high time we knew where we stood.

  Not that she ever found out much. According to Bet the Nooi wasn’t interested in newspapers herself; preferred to let them lie there. And if she did say anything it would be neither here nor there: “In a land far across the sea they say the slaves must be set free, but the farmers won’t let them.” And when Bet pressed her the Nooi would just tell her to shut up. Then, out of the blue, she would suddenly let fly at Bet again: “I wish we could get rid of all the damned slaves. Why can’t somebody go and get our money from the king and pay us out?—then the lot of them can take their stuff and go.” What on earth could that mean? But Bet knew as little as I did.

  “Do you ever discuss these matters with Galant?” I asked her.

  “If I talk to him he just tells me to keep quiet about it. He’s a difficult man to get on with, ever since little David died. Ma-Rose, I just don’t know what to do any more. I feel rejected by everybody.”

  Then I must go and find out for myself, I decided at last. For it was already harvesting time and the wheat was beginning to fall to the sickles of the reapers and soon it would be Christmas and New Year: I had to make sure before it was too late. Already I could feel it pushing, pushing like a rising wind.

  I went over to the farmyard. A blistering day it was, the cicadas screeching in the thin trees fit to burst your skull, all day long from long before sunrise till after sunset. By that time the wind had also died down; not a breath of air stirred, and the world was white with heat. The wheatfields a dark yellow-brown where the reapers stood crouching with their sickles, swishing and moving on, swishing and moving. Galant and Ontong and Achilles, the youngsters Thys and Rooy, the seasonal workers Valentyn and Vlak and others; and old D’Alree’s people, the foreman Campher and the big man Dollie; and even some of old Piet’s farm hands. The old man’s wheat was late that year, so the reaping had started at Houd-den-Bek before they were to move on round the mountain. The clouds were swelling out in large white bundles of washing over the mountain ridges, and it was hard to predict when they might grow heavy with black thunder to threaten the lands.

  Nicolaas was working in the farmyard, adding a new layer of rushes to the thatched roof of the wheat-loft. Pamela and Lydia were helping him; so I assumed that Bet was still in the kitchen.

  The Nooi came out from the shade of the voorhuis when she heard me talking to Bet. The smallest girl was with her, peeping from behind her mother’s skirts; the two older ones I’d seen playing up and down the stone staircase to the attic.

  “Oh it’s you, Rose. What do you want then?”

  “I come to find out if all is well, Nooi.” I gave Bet a quick glance; and she went out into the yard.

  “What makes you think all isn’t well?”

  “One hears so many stories, Nooi.”

  “Really?”

  “What about some snuff, Nooi?”

  She seemed annoyed at the request, but fetched me some from the shelf in the corner to fill up my box; always been an irritable woman, the Nooi.

  “Well, what is it?” she asked.

  As I looked outside into
the whiteness of the yard, I suddenly noticed a dust-devil far away in the wagon-road, whirling towards the yard. Nothing unusual for that time of the year, especially in a summer as dry as this, but I couldn’t help shivering. I knew it was Gaunab, the Dark One, taking on the shape of a whirlwind. In that form his name was sarês, my mother had told me long ago; and it was a bad omen. I could see it coming towards us, swirling up dust and twigs and dry leaves into the air; I’d seen it throw up dead frogs and other evil things before. And I was frightened, for I saw it heading straight for the house.

  “We need water, Nooi!” I shouted. And when she just stood there doing nothing I pushed her out of the way and grabbed the tub of water from the corner by the hearth; stumbling and splashing I lugged it outside to the gate where I threw the water right in the way of sarês. That made the whirlwind hesitate suddenly, and change course, and die down. But I still felt shaky as I went back to the kitchen carrying the empty tub. The little girls had stopped playing and were watching me from the attic staircase. As I entered the kitchen they quickly slipped in after me.

  “Rose, are you out of your mind to do a thing like that?” the Nooi scolded me.

  “You don’t know what you saying, Nooi,” I told her angrily

  “But what are you doing? Bet filled up that tub just now.”

  “That dust-devil means danger, Nooi. If I hadn’t stopped him in time there would have been death on this farm, I tell you. Don’t you know then?”

  “What ungodly stories are you telling again?” she asked, annoyed. “How often have I told you to stop scaring the children with all this heathen nonsense? I won’t have it, do you hear me?”

  “It’s not stories, Nooi,” I said. “It’s the truth. I grew up with it.”

  “God will punish you for your bad ways, Rose.”

  I sighed. “Nooi—”

  “I’ve got a lot of darning to do,” she said, turning her back on me.

  I raised my hand to stop her, but dropped it again. If she was in that temper it would be useless to discuss what I’d come for. With a heavy heart I went outside and down to the shed where Nicolaas was still working on the wheat-loft. Perhaps he would be more approachable.

  “Good day, Ma-Rose.”

  “Good day, Nicolaas.”

  His face was flushed with heat where he stood high up on the ladder; and dark patches of sweat showed up on his shirt. Lydia went on stacking rushes, clucking by herself like a chicken making her nest; and Pamela also kept her head down, as if ashamed to face me. Some distance away, in the shade, lay the child. But it was all covered up, and one couldn’t see the face.

  Nicolaas came down the ladder for another armful of rushes.

  “You’ve come a long way in this heat?” he said.

  “Yes. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “The people are talking a lot about New Year.”

  I watched him very closely, but he didn’t give away anything. “Oh?” he said. “And what might that be?”

  “They say the newspapers talk about it too.”

  “Baas,” said Pamela from the roof, “don’t listen to her.”

  “Everybody is talking about it,” I kept on, for I hadn’t walked all this way for nothing. “Now I want to hear it from your own mouth. They say the slaves are to be freed by New Year.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “Everybody. They all say it comes from the newspapers.”

  “Ma-Rose, you can tell the people who say such things that I’ll shoot the first man who sets foot on my farm to take away my slaves. And if need be I’ll first of all shoot the slaves myself.”

  “That’s a bad thing you saying, Nicolaas.”

  “Then stop bothering me with such nonsense. Whoever has filled your head with these stories is looking for trouble. You better warn them from me. I have enough problems on the farm as it is.”

  His voice had the sound of fear in it. Perhaps I should have tried to reassure him first, in order to coax from him what I so desperately needed to know; but after the scare sarês had given me I was too upset to be patient.

  “Just tell me: is it in the newspapers or isn’t it?” I said.

  “What difference does it make? You can’t believe any damned newspaper. Even the people in the Cape don’t know their own minds.”

  “How can a newspaper lie?”

  “Ma-Rose.” I could see his patience was running out. “I promise you: if ever the newspaper says something I can believe I’ll tell it to you outright. But you know how readily the slaves swallow the wildest nonsense. What will happen if we allow every evil rumor from outside to destroy our peace of mind? So please try to understand reason!”

  “I understand reason when I hear it, Nicolaas. All I’m asking you is if these stories come from the newspapers or not?”

  “I’ve said what I had to say,” he said. “The rest doesn’t concern you.”

  “I won’t have you talk to me like this, Nicolaas. I suckled you on these paps of mine.”

  “You won’t get any further with me that way.”

  “You trying to cover up the truth now?” I asked him. “Then let me tell you: if it’s true it will come into the open sooner or later.”

  He clenched his teeth. “I have work to do, Rose. This roof must be finished before dark.”

  A whirlwind of anger swept up inside me. “Don’t think your roof will keep out the wind, Nicolaas!” I called. “When the storm comes up it’ll blow all of this right away.”

  He shouted something after me, but I didn’t hear what he said. My ears were ringing, not just from the cicadas. Rose. That was what he’d called me. As if he’d forgotten all about Ma-Rose. He thought he could do without her now. What a pity. How could I ever have known, when I’d suckled him as a baby, that I would be rearing him for this!

  I went on walking and walking through the shimmering afternoon, unmindful of where I went. All I kept on thinking was: What a pity. The people got to be very careful now. They turning this land into a threshing-floor where they themselves are to be threshed. Tsui-Goab will send his wind to sort the grain from the chaff. He won’t allow his people to be humiliated like this. He’s sitting up there in His red sky, seeing everything that happens; and when the time comes He will send his great wind.

  Achilles

  It all happened because they wouldn’t listen to me. I told them, didn’t I, they were asking for trouble. Whenever the man Campher spoke I kept silent, not wanting to set up my word against a white man. Before, when I was young, I tried to do that. But I learned my lesson. All I hoped for now was to end my days in peace, working when I had to and drinking my honey-beer when I could; and dreaming at night, when I was safely out of reach of the others, of the ’mtili-trees of my land, with their tall white trunks and dark crowns. For that was all I had left; and no one could touch that.

  I could never come round to understanding or trusting that man Campher, with his thin white skin that never got brown like that of other white men: it only turned red and scaly; and his unkempt hair and sparse beard. Thin as a beanpole, as if he never got enough to eat; a real scarecrow, all bones, but as tough as a snake. Not that he ever suffered from lack of food. Whenever he was at our place to help out with the work he’d gorge himself like a bloody pig on the thick soup they gave us mornings and evenings, beans and peas in turn; and meat in the afternoons, and the thick slices of bread Galant handed out. And if any of us left over a piece of bread or something Campher would gobble that up too. Real vulture. But he stayed as lean as a stick. And when we teased him about it he’d laugh, baring his bad teeth, asking: “Ever seen a good rooster that wasn’t lean?” He was always joking and talking with us like that as if he was one of us; but it didn’t change his whiteness one bit. It made me uneasy. A man should stick to his own sort, else there’s trouble.

 
; Still, he was a great talker. And when he warmed up even I couldn’t help listening. Once he got started on those countries far across the sea where he used to live, we all listened. He was a great general over there, he told us. He trekked about with his soldiers, one place to the other, to free the people that were slaves. The Breaker of Chains they called him. And as far as he went there were no slaves left behind, and no one was hungry any more, or in need of clothes or stuff, and every man had his own wife; even two or three for those who wanted them, all those good lean roosters, he would say, laughing. And now he’d come from across the sea to find out if there was something he could do for us too. Our time was coming, he said. Just be patient. Wait for the stars to be right. Because he was born with a cowl, so he could see ahead what was coming. And there was a big thing for us.

  “Is that what they mean when they keep talking about New Year?” Galant asked him.

  “Maybe,” said the thin man, looking deep. “The time is getting ripe, just like the wheat.”

  “What do the newspapers say?” asked Galant, who always had a thing about newspapers.

  “The newspapers don’t matter,” said Joseph Campher. “It’s the stars. And I can see them moving into the right position. There’s a great freedom coming. Liberty, equality, fraternity.” The way he said it he made it sound like the Baas reading from the Bible, Wednesdays and Sundays.

  “I still not sure about this man,” I used to say to Ontong and the young ones when we were alone at the hut or with the sheep. “If he really was such a big general how come he’s so hungry that he gobbles up our bread behind our backs?”

  “Perhaps he was fighting so much he didn’t have time to eat,” said little Rooy, always too big for his size.

  “If he was so important why’s he reaping wheat with us now?” I kept on.

  “Because we’re the ones he wants to set free,” said Thys. “Don’t you remember he told us how he always sided with the poor people?”