by Andre Brink
Whether they’d hit me or not wasn’t even important. Only the fact of their shooting: a slave firing at his master. That frontier crossed, there was no end to what might yet lie ahead.
This was what I’d feared. Not just that they might kill me or massacre my family: but that a single shot would shatter an entire way of life, a whole world. God’s own established order, God Himself, was now threatened. Everything was at stake; everything could be destroyed: nothing was inviolate to their flames. And it was in the nature of fire not only to burn but to change utterly in the process: wood into ashes.
It was like standing on the slope of a mountain and suddenly finding myself threatened by rocks tumbling down, not one or two, but a whole landslide of them; the mountain itself was subsiding around me, above me, below me, everywhere. What had always been firm earth had suddenly begun to flow like water; and water was turning to fire.
Would that be what it felt like to go mad? Or to die?
It was indeed a form of madness; and a form of death. The death of everything I’d always taken for granted; everything that had made me what I was; everything that had kept me alive and secure.
I left Hester in the house and fled. Not from the danger that threatened me physically; but from the ruins of an entire life crumbling around me. And if that was cowardice, I would accept being a coward.
I fled. Into the mountains behind the house. It wasn’t even necessary to go far. No one could possibly find me there. My bare feet torn and bruised by rocks. Hours of waiting, listening to the din of their destruction below. And Hester? I was expecting at any moment to hear her stumbling towards me, soiled and torn and wounded, at last to acknowledge me. I should have known it was a futile wish. Until long after the noise had died away I kept waiting, but she never came. Did it mean that she was dead? I would deserve no less. But what would then become of me? And the boys? God forgive me, but I only thought of them much later. The future, after all, had already been decided, whether we lived or died.
Everything was very quiet when I descended to the farm in search of my family. The house was in ruins, plundered and smashed to bits. No trace of her or the children. And I didn’t dare to tarry as the murderers might come back at any time. In a deep depression I returned to the mountains for the remaining hours of the night.
Would it have made any difference if the next morning I rode to Frans du Toit first so that he could round up a commando? His farm was the nearest. But on my way there I realized I was still wearing only a nightshirt; how could I, in that humiliating condition, face a man I’d always despised and answer his inevitable questions about my wife and children?
I rode past to old D’Alree’s place. He gave me a pair of trousers, rather tight and much too short, but at least sufficient to cover my shame. He wanted me to proceed directly to Houd-den-Bek where, he said, he’d heard shots just before my arrival. But neither of us was armed and I was shaking so much that he had to help me mount my horse. He accompanied me back to Wagendrift where Frans made me lie down and gave me some essence of life before he set out to call up his commando.
There are moments when I wonder whether Nicolaas wasn’t perhaps more fortunate than I. Surely the three shots they gave him would have killed him very quickly without causing much suffering: and then it was over. Now he’s dead, and he is remembered as a martyr, while I must go on, for the rest of my life, with Hester’s silence beside me.
If only I could have laid hands on Galant afterwards.
But it was too late. I should have got hold of him long before. And Abel. And Klaas. Every one of them. It was because we’d been so soft with them that they dared to do what they did. No. No: now I’m talking like Pa again. It may have been true before; but no longer. It is too late now; it has gone too far. And I have answers to no more questions.
On the surface the world seems peaceful and under control again. Nicolaas’s farm has also fallen to me now that Cecilia has returned to her father. I am the new master of Houd-den-Bek. I affirmed without delay my ownership by doing what I’d long wished to do: ordering the useless old D’Alree to pack up and leave. For him to have witnessed my shame had been the last straw. How could I regain even the semblance of self-respect with him around?
I must confess that in a way his reaction was unnerving. No recriminations, no sentimental pleading. He merely bent his unkempt head and mumbled: “As you wish. I suppose it is no more than I deserve.” He must have reached the age of dotage. But even his going made little difference. Indeed, Houd-den-Bek is now mine, but it can never be the same again. Neither the farm nor being master over it. Once the earth has given way under one it can happen again at any moment. Today. Tomorrow. In a hundred years. I’m here now, and my sons with me. But it is no longer safe; nor will it ever be again.
I have survived. But perhaps it only happened for me to be brought face to face with an even more terrible truth: the death of the world that made me possible; the death of the future in which I believed—in which I had to believe in order to survive.
Could I have prevented it? The question is redundant. Even my flight implied a choice in the consequences of which I am irretrievably caught. Link upon link. Hester. I. Our sons. Living next to each other; but our solitude is absolute. Each can really talk only to himself. And in the silence we are all listening intently for the turbulence to start again.
Hendrik
From the stable I stood watching them as, in the fading of the stars, they went out to take up their positions in the yard, shadows flitting through the first signs of dawn. The youngster Rooy accompanied old Ontong and Achilles to the kraal—more to get them safely out of the way, it seemed to me, than for any reason of strategy; for Galant obviously didn’t trust them very much. Galant himself led Abel and Klaas and Thys (with his sabre!) to the peach trees near the front door. I’d asked to be posted in the stable to bring out the horses should it become necessary. In the back of my mind I’d decided that should anything go wrong I would be the first to get away. And in case of doubt I could always let out the wild mare and explain that I had to go out after her; then no one could possibly pin any blame on me.
There seemed to be no end to the waiting. The cocks were crowing their heads off. In the cowshed one could hear the cows moving about and mooing softly. In the stable where I stood the horses were sniffing and snorting, stretching up their necks, straining at their thongs, eager to be brought out. Down by the furrow the muscovy ducks were hissing and fighting. At last I saw Thys fetching the milk-pails, probably just to keep himself occupied and steady his nerves. There was an uneasy silence in the early dawn as if the day was holding its breath.
Just as the sun came out at last the kitchen door was opened and I saw the two men emerging together, my Baas Hans and Baas Van der Merwe. They stopped in the yard to look up at the sky, stretching arms and legs; then leisurely walked across to piss against the wall of the outhouse where the wagons were kept. The kitchen door was left open.
It gave me quite a shock to see Galant coming out from behind the trees and walking casually over towards them. But of course it wouldn’t strike them as unusual. What did they know about what was going to happen? I saw Van der Merwe talking briefly to Galant. There was no sign of a quarrel.
Very slowly the two men strolled away from him in the direction of the kraal. To them it must have seemed a day like any other. Skirting the kraal they went on towards the threshing-floor just beyond.
I saw the men emerging from their hiding places among the peach trees and running swiftly round to the back door. They took off their hats before they went inside.
Nothing would stop them now.
Cecilia
If only there had been thunder in the night; or lightning. It was my habit at the first sign of a storm to wake up the household and cover the mirrors and gather the family round the dining-table for prayers until the violence outside had subsided. I’d been brought up
to mind the weather. And had that happened we might have been warned. But it was another kind of lightning, dark and secret, that struck our farm that night.
The humiliation of it. To have to struggle bodily with slaves for the possession of the guns they’d taken from the shelf above my bed; to be pushed and pulled this way and that by men smelling like animals. Hadn’t I always warned Nicolaas, God rest his soul, about Galant?
My familiar nightmare seemed suddenly and terrifyingly to come to life. The black hands grabbing me. The sweat-streaked faces. The whites of their eyes. The grunts coming from their throats as they struggled and panted. Animals. I fought like someone possessed. Not this, dear God. Not this most terrible of abominations that could be perpetrated on a white woman.
When the gun went off I didn’t feel pain immediately. In fact, I only realized what had happened when I felt the sticky warmth and looked down and saw the blood. For a moment I almost laughed and cried at the same time, in a shock of relief: because he’d shot me rather than commit the horrible thing of my dream.
Only much later did I realize that what he’d done was, if possible, worse: to have despised me so profoundly that he had no desire even to inflict on me that other shame. He’d had no wish to kill me. This wound had been deliberate, aimed right there, down there, the most degrading humiliation of all.
Was this his answer to the sin Nicolaas had been committing for so long? But why take it out on me? Hadn’t I always lived a devout and Christian life? Why avenge the flesh on me in such a way?
My nightdress was covered in blood, like my wedding dress so many years ago. Already on that far-off day, soiled by the blood of the dead ox, I’d known that something terrible would yet result from it. Blood unto blood, one chain from beginning to end.
Wounding me was still not the end. The humiliation continued in my efforts to drag myself somewhere to hide from them, only to be torn from one shelter after the other like a bundle of bloodied rags—shot from the baking oven in which I’d ludicrously tried to conceal myself; picking myself up from among the broken plaster and rubble, to hide in the hearth; under the dining-table; at last, crawling up the stone stairs outside to the attic above, leaving a trail of blood behind. God, how disgusting. And afterwards I had to lie back and allow the slave women to wash and bind my wound; no end to the degradations.
For the sake of my children I bore the suffering in the face of God. For their sake I pleaded with the murderers: not for mine. To cringe before a slave and ask for mercy!
Nicolaas dead on the lion-skin in the voorhuis, arms and legs spread out, the boots torn from his feet. Bodies and blood in the kitchen. Verlee’s bedraggled young wife clinging dumbly to me in the attic, too shocked even to cry, smothering her baby against a barely nubile breast. Degrading. Humiliating. Unworthy. How could a white woman be forced to suffer thus in front of the eyes of blacks?
I still cannot understand it. How could they so bite the hand that fed them? We’d cared for them and taught them the commandments and decrees of God; every Wednesday and Sunday we read the Bible to them, and prayed with them, and sang with them. Food and clothing we gave them according to their needs. When they were ill we looked after them. When they had problems we solved them. They had neither want nor worry. There was no need for them even to be concerned about the morrow: we’d take care of everything.
Then this. Our adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walking about, seeking whom he may devour.
Give me the strength, Lord, to survive this ordeal. To be an example to my children. Never to bend or yield. So that I may triumph over these tribulations to the greater glory of God. I have been tried with pain and suffering, but I am not broken. It is hard, God knows it’s hard; but I know He is on my side and will give me strength. From the suffering of His martyrs His name is glorified. And in His fire are we purified.
If only He’d chosen to leave His mark on my forehead rather than in this wounded flesh, branded in my very womanhood.
We must relinquish the flesh in order to live more purely in the spirit, in this land the Lord has given unto us, to us and our children, for ever and ever.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I dare fear no evil.
Abel
I regret nothing. Except that we weren’t able to carry it right through. But that’s just too bad. Better try and make a mess of it than not try at all. All one’s life one treads so softly, sniffing about like a dog happy with whatever food he’s given, taking one’s safe little chances as they come: but once in a lifetime one got to have the guts to put everything at stake and break out. Once, even if it’s only once, you got to do something just because you know its time has come and fuck the rest. If it breaks you, you die. A bit sooner or later makes no difference anyway. As long as you know, when your time’s up, that you took that chance when it came. I regret nothing.
I’ve lost the fiddle for ever. It would have been good to take it up again and bring the bow to it, to hear that wail of woman and catch the smell of resin. But what’s done is done. At least I tried.
All my life I lied to them, about everything: the wood I was supposed to chop, the axe that got lost, the horses that had to be watered, the empty half-aum. I had no choice. The lies were the only thing I could hide behind so they couldn’t touch me. All I had was theirs: body, hands, work, days, nights: bought and paid for. Except they never had me. Behind my lies I always escaped from them. The only problem is that one begins to lie to oneself too. It’s a habit hard to shake off. You start convincing yourself that life isn’t really so bad. That’s when you get all tangled up. That’s when, one day, you just realize: Now I got to break out. Even if it doesn’t last. At least it gives you the courage to look the world in the face when they tie the noose around your neck.
In a sense you might say it was like a wedding. Right in the beginning it gave one the bitter taste of aloes to see Baas Barend get away, though that bare-assed trot of his made me laugh so much I missed the next shot. Run, I thought, run, you bastard. Soon we’ll see all the white masters running like that, like a herd of baboons scared by a leopard and scattered in all directions, leaving their yellow shit on all the rocks.
But the real fun only came at Houd-den-Bek. When Galant and I came from the bedroom that morning in a tug-of-war over the guns with the woman it almost felt like dancing. If I’d had my fiddle I’d have tuned it up right there. Bang on the cunt when he shot her. Real wedding feast.
We should have kept the Dutchmen outside; that would have rounded it all off much sooner. We should never have given them a chance to get back into the house and shut the doors; but that shot had warned them. Didn’t take long to get Nicolaas though. I fired first, soon’s he poked his head through the door. Next shot was Galant’s. That finished him off neatly. But the man Jansen bloody nearly got away. It really was a close thing. If Ma-Rose hadn’t called out from the nearest shed as he galloped off, we would have lost him. As it happened, we’d posted Hendrik in the stable, so the horses were ready and Thys and I went in pursuit. A proper race, just like I saw in the Cape; we headed him off from old D’Alree’s place before he could raise the alarm, and pushed him down towards the thickets of the dry riverbed. When he saw he was cornered, he plucked his horse round and galloped back, right into the house, horse and all. Fit to split one’s sides laughing.
Then it was cat and mouse with the people indoors. The schoolmaster and his pale wife also slipped in through the back door. Galant wanted to set fire to the roof to smoke them out, the way one does with snakes, but Ontong stopped him, the old spoilsport. At last little Rooy peered through the small high window in the kitchen that had no shutters, and he said the Nooi was crawling into the oven. We all started firing into the oven from behind, and Galant began to break down the kitchen door with a crowbar from the shed. We were just in time to see the woman rolling from the oven in a pile of muck and rubbish. From then on it was jus
t shooting and breaking and shouting all the way. Both men, Jansen and Verlee, shot to bits. One of them, I think it was Verlee, still tried to crawl away, but someone shouted: “Hey, the shit’s still moving!” And it was Rooy who gave him the last shot, right on the button of his waistcoat. No sign of fear in that little fellow. Fought like an old soldier; and if we hadn’t stopped him he’d probably have tackled the women and children too.
That was the real joy of it. The way we all did everything together. Not one man doing something over here, another over there: but the whole lot of us together. And afterwards we brought out the brandy and made merry till the walls were shaking, what with all the shouting and laughing and battering and breaking that went on and throwing target at the bodies and scaring the children—in the end the schoolmaster’s little wife, Martha Verlee, just flopped down flat on her backside on a patch of grass, staring away as if she was seeing ghosts in broad daylight—not even crying, just sitting there like she felt tired so early in the morning—and hunting for ammunition, and tearing up the bedding and turning over the tables and stuff. I hadn’t had such fun in these parts for years. When we were too tired to think up anything new, we started kicking the two bodies in the kitchen: Take this, for that hiding you gave me. Take that, for the bad food. And that, for the way you shouted at me. No matter we didn’t even know those two—after all, who the hell was this Jansen? who was Verlee?—they took the place of many others, over many years. Kick them right into the dust. Take this; and that; and that. And have another sopie!
