A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  Passively we drove through that innocent landscape, not knowing that already our lives had been decided.

  Rooy

  Galant spoke very little on the way. From time to time the Baas would say something, to which Galant would mumble yes or no. And the little old man, Oubaas D’Alree, just sat there, his wild white hair blown in the wind and his unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth, his watery eyes staring far away as if he couldn’t see anything that was close by. But whenever we stopped and unharnessed on a farm, as the masters went inside to eat or drink, Galant would open up.

  “Come on,” he would say. “Time’s short. We got to talk to the people.”

  Only on the first farm, Baas Du Toil’s, Galant kept his mouth shut. Too risky, he said: this man was Field-cornet and we wouldn’t want one of his slaves to split on us; then we’d have a commando on our backs before a single shot was fired. But at all the other farms we rounded up the people, far and wide.

  I just gaped at them. I’d much rather have scrambled into the veld to look for tortoises or meerkats or birds’ nests. All that talk was too much for me. But he kept me right at his side, and I suppose in a way it made me feel important. And if anybody tried to question me, I’d just say: “You listen to Galant. He’s a great captain and I’m his right hand.” Then they’d look at me with new respect, and draw closer to Galant to listen to what he had to say.

  “How’s things around here?” Galant would ask. “You people heard what was said about Christmas and New Year?”

  “Yes, we heard,” they’d say, some of them sullen, as if they didn’t feel like talking; others more openly. “But New Year’s come and gone again.”

  “We gave them time to give us what they promised,” he would go on. “But it was no use. Now we know a thing like this isn’t given freely: you got to take it for yourself. The weak ones get nothing. Only those who deserve freedom will get it.”

  To which one of the older men might reply: “They’ll kill us in a heap.”

  “That’s why I’m travelling from farm to farm today,” Galant would say. “So that each man can keep his eyes open and make sure he knows where the guns are kept. When the day comes we must get hold of the guns before the masters know what’s going on.”

  “How will we know when the day is there?”

  “You’ll get word from Houd-den-Bek. From there we’ll trek through the whole world and take everybody with us.”

  “How do the others feel about it?”

  “They’re all solidly behind us.”

  “And how far off is that day?”

  “It’s close. Ten days. Perhaps five. Just keep your ears open and be ready. We’ll send the word.”

  “And if they send commandos?”

  “If we work fast enough we’ll be gone before there can be a commando. Perhaps it won’t even be necessary to shoot.” Then he’d give them a while to chew over his words before he added: “This I can tell you: if the Dutch try to resist, there will be shooting. We won’t spill blood if it isn’t necessary. But we’re not afraid of it either.” Another silence. “And you better think about your own blood too. For if anyone tries to stab us in the back, his blood will be shed first. You heard me?”

  “We heard.”

  “When it’s all over I’ll go from one place to the other myself to round up all those who didn’t join. And there won’t be much of them left when I’m through.”

  Every time I heard Galant say that a spider would run down my spine: a fright that had pleasure in it too, like the very first time one takes a girl aside to ask her: ‘How’s it?’; a fright and a pleasure you will never forget again, leaving your throat dry and your chest out of breath and your balls tight, as if they’re being squeezed.

  At each farm Galant appointed one man to act as his eyes and ears, and to get hold of the guns and see to it that all the slaves stood together. When here and there he came across someone who still felt uneasy about the idea he would start telling them about what he’d seen and heard in the Cape that last winter; and then there wouldn’t be any doubts left.

  The night we spent at Baas Joosten’s farm where we picked up the schoolmaster, Galant entertained them for hours with his Cape stories: telling them how we would all go up the Mountain with our guns, and how the gentlemen would have to come before us to lay down their arms, and how we would take over the whole land. The brandy flowed like water that night, for someone had filched a new half-aum from the cellar, and Galant’s tongue was well oiled. The cocks had already begun to crow by the time the people rolled over to sleep. I thought he would be finished too, but he didn’t budge from the fire and the two of us remained there all by ourselves, watching the flames flicker and die away and the red coals slowly fade to grey.

  “You did a good job today,” I said at last to break the silence. “You got the whole Bokkeveld behind you now.”

  He didn’t answer; perhaps he hadn’t even heard.

  “Will there be a gun for me too?” I asked again.

  He suddenly looked at me, his eyes screwed up to see me through the smoke. “How old are you, Rooy?” he said.

  “How must I know?” I said, embarrassed. “I suppose about eighteen or so.”

  He gave me a short dry chuckle. “You’re not a day over fourteen, man.”

  “I been with a girl already.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “I can handle a gun.”

  “I hope so.” He turned his head away. After a while he suddenly said: “No. No, I don’t think I really hope so.”

  “You can rely on me,” I said hastily. “I promise you, I’ll stand by you, better than anyone else. The day you go up that Mountain in Cape Town I’ll be right beside you.”

  “Rooy.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure you really know what you letting yourself in for.”

  “Of course I know. I been listening to you all the time. I’ll shoot anything that comes in my way.”

  “You’re not a slave. You’re a Hottentot.”

  “But I heard you tell Thys there’s no difference. We all under the yoke.”

  “Still, you can stay out of it if you really want to.”

  “I don’t. I want to hold a gun in my hands, a brand new gun. And I want to trek to the Cape so I can see for myself what it looks like.”

  “It’s not a game, Rooy. It’s life and death.”

  “I’ll shoot them so you’ll just see blood everywhere, and brains, all over the place.”

  “I don’t want any shooting unless it can’t be helped, Rooy.”

  “I’ll do just what you say.”

  “I wish I could trust all the others like this,” he said. “But Rooy, you still a child. And children—” He almost sounded cross. “It’s because of the children a thing like this must happen. But I don’t want to see you destroyed too.”

  “Nobody going to destroy me. You said yourself we’ll be going from one farm to the other and take everybody with us. You think I can have one of the two new guns the Baas bought in Cape Town?”

  He got up before I’d even finished; wandering off into the night. After a while he came back, stopping in the darkness opposite the dying coals. This time he spoke very softly, I could hardly hear him.

  “One goes about for a long time carrying something in your heart,” he said. “One doesn’t want to look at it straight. One keeps hoping it won’t really be necessary. Then one day you see there’s no other way. Nothing at all you can do to stay out of it. So you go ahead. Yet all the time you keep wishing—” His voice died away. “You just wish it wasn’t really necessary.”

  “That’s not the way you spoke to the other people today,” I said, surprised.

  “To them I got to say the things that will make them come with me, Rooy. But no one knows what’s in me. Only I.” Once again he turned as if to go; but he sto
pped. “And it could have been different, Rooy,” he said. “I gave him a chance. It got to have been different.” He bent over to pick up the tattered old jacket he’d brought with him against the cool of the night. “But this is how it’s turned out. And I’ll be a coward if I don’t do what I got to do.”

  “You just tired,” I said, still uneasy. “You had a rough day. Tomorrow you’ll feel all right again.”

  “I’ll never feel all right again, Rooy.” He sighed and turned to look me in the face. “Rooy, whatever happens, I want you to remember this: I had no choice.”

  My eyes were so heavy I couldn’t keep them open, so I don’t know if he went on talking after that. I dropped off right there, dreaming for the rest of the night about a great war in which we were charging wildly ahead on horseback, shooting and killing everything in our way.

  The following night we stayed over at Oubaas Jan du Plessis’s place; the people there—old Adonis and Jochem and the rest—we’d known for a long time, so it wasn’t difficult for Galant to talk them over. Only Adonis, shifty old baboon-spider that he was, gave us trouble, piling up one excuse on the other. It surprised me to see how patiently Galant kept working on the old man. Oubaas Jan, Galant said, had in his shed a bullet mold, that all the neighbors used to borrow when someone needed to make ammunition: and Galant wanted Adonis to bring him the mold. Some of the others offered to fetch it, especially Jochem who mostly worked with it. But Galant held them back: he wanted old Adonis to hand it over himself. At first I thought it was just to flatter the old man, or to pull his leg; but afterwards, when the mold lay safely hidden under some old bags and the tattered jacket on the carriage, Galant explained to me:

  “It’s because I can’t trust the old bastard.”

  “Then why didn’t you just keep him out of it? Suppose he splits on us?”

  “That bullet mold will keep his mouth shut for him. You see, whether he wants to or not, he’s right in it with us now. Only way to keep him quiet.”

  I grinned. “You’ll get them all right in your hand.”

  He sighed again. “We got a long way to go still, Rooy.”

  “You said it was only a few more days?”

  “Each day is as long as a lifetime.”

  “What about all the other farms and places?” I suddenly asked. “We been to a lot of them now, but what about all the others that don’t know about our plans yet?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll join the moment the thing is under way. It’s like a veld fire: once it’s started it burns all by itself. As long as the wind is right.” Then he was silent again, in his customary way—and in the roof of the hut where we sat a grasshopper chirped—and after a long time he said again, more softly this time, and more to himself than to me: “So long as the wind is right.”

  Pamela

  He was very quiet the night before they went to fetch the schoolmaster. The wildness that had been in him since the birth of the child at last seemed to have left him. I was particularly aware of it, as it was the last night we ever spent together. When they returned on Sunday evening Abel was there and they sat talking all night; the Monday night he rode out on the Baas’s horse and only came back at dawn; and on Tuesday I went to sleep in the kitchen so that I could keep watch inside. And so that night was our last.

  But he didn’t want my body. Not that he lacked the desire. It was something else. He said: “Just let me lie beside you and hold you. I want to feel your heart beating in my hands.”

  “What is my heart to you then?”

  “It’s so alive. It goes on and on.”

  “Galant, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Just lie still.”

  For a long time we lay like that; and he fell asleep with his hands still on my breasts. I was the one who stayed awake.

  But deep in the night I couldn’t bear the loneliness any longer; in his sleep I felt abandoned by him. I touched him, and called softly: “Galant.”

  He woke up, confused with sleep, moaning lightly, and chewing as if he could still taste his dreams; and said: “Is it time to get up then?”

  “No. But you going away tomorrow.”

  “It won’t be for long. You heard what Nicolaas said: we’ll be back on Sunday.”

  “And then?”

  “You know what then.”

  “You sure you want to go through with it?”

  “I got to.” Suddenly he asked: “Pamela, you remember the first night I was with you? You asked me something I couldn’t answer then.”

  “What was it?”

  “You said: ‘Galant, who are you?’”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. Don’t you remember? I been going about with that question in my head ever since.”

  “What makes you think of it now?”

  “Because I want you to know that for the first time I’m getting closer to an answer.”

  “What is the answer?”

  “Don’t ask me yet. Only a free man can answer that. But it won’t be long now.”

  “Don’t say it’s I who forced you on to this road.”

  “No one forced me. My eyes are open.”

  “What can you see? It’s so dark.”

  “You must stay with me, Pamela. I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. No one can know that. But you must stay with me.”

  “There was a time I almost left you,” I said softly.

  He grew tense against me; I could hear him holding his breath. “What made you do that?”

  “After I had the baby,” I whispered, “there were many days I just couldn’t bear it.” The darkness made it easier to confess, but it still wasn’t easy.

  Gently his hand caressed my nipple. I shut my eyes and pressed my head against his shoulder.

  “The other day,” I said, “when the Nooi’s father came to visit her, I asked him to take me back. Because I’m still only on loan to Nooi Cecilia.”

  “What did you say to him?” His breath was on my face.

  “I said they were not using me well, I wanted to go back.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He spoke like the Bible. ‘You’ve been christened and everything, Pamela,’ he said. ‘Why are you so small of faith then? Don’t you know we will be rewarded in Heaven? The best that can happen to us in this world is to suffer. The Lord Himself set us an example.’”

  “Why didn’t you tell him about Nicolaas?”

  “Because that wasn’t the reason I wanted to go back.” I could barely say the words; but the dark made it possible.

  “Why was it then?”

  “Because of you.”

  “You wanted to go away from me? Do I use you badly then?”

  “No. It’s different. All I can bring you is misery.”

  He didn’t answer straight away. I thought it was from anger; I was waiting for him to take it out on my body again, but he made no move. At last he said: “It’s because we’re still this side, Pamela. We can’t see properly because we got the eyes of slaves. But once we reach the other side we’ll know for sure. There will be a sun rising. Then I’ll tell you who I am. For the first time we’ll really know each other.”

  “I don’t understand what you saying about this side and the Other side. You talking just like Oubaas Jan now.”

  “No, it’s something else I’m talking about. We’re still chained to the rock, like that woman I told you about. Just a few more days and we’ll be free. We’ll cross that Great River that keeps us from the other side. Our eyes will see properly then. Everything will be different.” And after a silence he added: “I need your help, Pamela.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “We going away tomorrow. The house will be open. I want you to get hold of the guns and hide them for us.”

  “It’ll cause bloodshed, Galant.”
/>   “It’s to avoid bloodshed I want you to steal the guns. Hide them away.”

  I was afraid. It was one thing lying there in the dark talking; stealing the guns was different. A gun is a dangerous thing, and all it brings is death.

  I put out my hand and touched him. “Come,” I whispered. “The night is almost over.”

  He grew stiff in my hand, but I felt him shaking his head against me. “Not tonight, Pamela,” he whispered. “I want you. But there’s too many other things. When I come into you again I want to be a free man. Otherwise it’ll just be the same again.”

  At sunrise they left in the carriage; the horses were prancing as if they knew it was Galant who held the reins; they always did their best for him.

  That first night I had the guns in my hand. I took both of them from the shelf above the bed where Nooi Cecilia lay sleeping, and I stroked the smooth wood and the heavy brasswork, the cold hardness of the barrels. Then the smallest child moaned in her sleep. Without waiting I thrust the guns back on the shelf. Not because I was scared the Nooi would wake up; but because of the child.

  The second night, after everybody had gone to bed, I wandered through the dark house like a ghost. I knew it so well I could move about without bumping into anything in the pitch dark behind the closed shutters. But I just couldn’t get past the doorway into the bedroom. At last, when the cocks began to crow I realized time was running out. I just had to get those guns, or the chance would be lost for good. Cautiously I drew away the bolts of the kitchen door so that I could slip out quickly and unnoticed. Then the Nooi spoke behind me.