A Chain of Voices

by Andre Brink

  Nicolaas

  The others never really mattered; they were bystanders. From the beginning it has been between Galant and me and now caught in this timeless moment.

  In the early daylight I see him coming towards me just as Hans Jansen and I prepare to go down to the kraal. There is nothing servile in his attitude; but I’m used to that.

  “Good morning, Galant.”

  He says nothing.

  I prefer not to mention the threshing-floor—it would be asking for trouble so early in the morning—but to my annoyance Jansen broaches it; and in order not to lose face in front of a stranger I turn to Galant to ask: “You finished the floor?”

  He grins. “All ready for the threshing.”

  “But we’re through with threshing!”

  He doesn’t answer. My heart grows leaden. He mustn’t try to humiliate me in front of Jansen: that would leave me no choice but to punish him again. Must we always be driven back to that? Why can’t he accept that it would be in his own interest for us to be on good terms?

  “We’re on our way to the floor now,” I say tersely. “Come on, Hans.” As we walk away, I turn back to Galant: “I’ll see you again later.”

  He shrugs.

  The threshing-floor lies crumbled and exposed as it was last night; as it’s been since the threshing was done. Bare and cracked, worn out by the heavy hooves of the horses that milled round and round to separate chaff from wheat—the clean rich grain winnowed in the wind and scooped into the bags, loaded on the wagon and stacked on the loft, ready for the mill: food for everybody on the farm.

  “Well!” says Jansen beside me, pipe in his mouth, a smug look in his eyes. “Just shows you, man. They’re all the same.”

  I turn away from him, trying to come to terms with the burden of knowing that Galant and I will soon be facing one another again. All that is still to be decided is when and how.

  While we’re still standing at the floor, before we’ve had time properly to inspect the kraal, there is the report of a gunshot from the house. Both of us instinctively start running at the same time. There is a second shot as we reach the gate to the enclosure of the farmyard; I feel a curious jerking in my arm, but only after we’re safely inside the kitchen Jansen says with a shocked voice: “My God, they hit you. Look at your shirt.”

  Soon afterwards, as I try to reason with them at the front door, I suddenly hear Galant shout: “Shoot him, Abel!” Yet another shot. Luckily it only grazes me as I jump back and slam the door.

  Inside the voorhuis I lean against the wall, closing my eyes briefly in a sudden dizziness.

  From the bedroom I hear Cecilia calling. Covered in blood in the crumpled stained sheets she insists that we first sit down with the children to have prayers. “Do you realize what you’re doing?” I feel like shouting at her. “Is this all that matters to you?—to have a decent death, to do everything the right way? Did I ever matter to you? Do you care in the least that I may be shot dead in a few minutes?” But I restrain myself.

  I listen absently to my own voice reading: “—that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

  Long before we have done the hammering on the front door becomes so loud that I cannot continue. Without bothering to say Amen I get up from my knees beside the bed.

  “You cannot leave me here alone, Nicolaas.”

  “I must speak to Galant first.”

  “Your place is with your family!”

  I return to the front door on tiptoe and cautiously draw back the bolt that bars it. He must have been standing there all the time, waiting for me: but I don’t think he was expecting me so suddenly. All the others are there too, but further away, indistinct, a blur, as if my eyes cannot properly focus on them. It’s only he and I, as if we’re alone on the earth, naked as two boys in a dam: my shadow and I.

  I wait for him to speak first. In a minute, in a few seconds, I realize, I shall be dead. Surely, in this extremity, there should at least be something we can say to one another. But I am drained of thought and feeling, unable to think of anything to say.

  This I find the worst of all, this silence preceding death, this act of denudation, this experience of total strangeness in the face of the man who has been my only friend. This inability to touch one another in any way at all. This expanse through which we can do nothing but stare at one another. A savage silence.

  Life against life.

  What, in such a silence, remains of an entire life? How can one grasp its beginning, its course, its end? Bare children in a dam below the swinging nests. A tunnel into an earthen wall caving in. Evenings in a smoky hut. A timeless old woman telling stories. A girl. A horse broken in. A lion: a great predator that appeared miraculously from another world and brought life to the darkness with its roar; an incomprehensible freedom in the deep sound of its breathing, in and out. And when Galant’s shot hit it, life left him with the suggestion of a sigh, something of a groan, as if he almost pitied us who were left behind. In a silence just as complete as this one I stood opposite the lion that day. But I lied to Pa about it. Since then all has turned to lies. And today I finally fall victim to the lion.

  The silence persists, crammed with images. A wedding. A wife. Children on my shoulders. Hester’s wordless resentment. A journey to the Cape. A lost night in the mountains. Sundays at Lagenvlei. Never-ending work: clearing new lands, building walls, digging furrows, planting and sowing, reaping, threshing.

  Earth. Water. Wind. Fire.

  What is there of all of this I can share with you in this final moment? We’ve been in all of it together: nothing remains. Not even a word.

  I here: you there. Master: slave.

  It was the moment, the irreparable moment, when I changed from your mate into your master that I finally destroyed my own freedom. That was the moment when the stone wall, the high rough mountain, rose between us, so high that we were left with only the illusion of seeing one another. We can no longer hear.

  Is it a matter of choice, then, to become a master—or is that no more than a sign of being a victim of one’s world? Immaterial, now. This is where we are.

  And now that we’ve got as far as this—because we’ve got as far as this—only the most elementary acts can still be committed between us.

  You will kill me. Afterwards, if the law runs its course, you will be killed in turn. That’s the pity of it. Not the killing as such—in this silence one is even beyond fear—but the knowledge that it is too easy: for both of us it is an evasion, a denial of responsibility. We should have learned to live with it.

  This is not a truth, but a final defeat—for both of us. It’s a lie. Like the skin on which I can feel myself falling.

  We’re back at the slaughtering-stone then. And once again my fervent futile wish is not to be here. But I am.

  Rooy

  They all thought I was still wet behind the ears, but I showed them. Thought they could just let me hold the horses and things like that, but I was with them all the time. In the kitchen, when they shot the schoolmaster, the man suddenly gave a snort; he was lying against the wall then, behind a chair. “Come on,” Galant said. “Give him another shot.” Thys was right behind him, but when he heard it he quickly ducked in behind the others. Big mouth he had, but when it came to killing he was scared. So it was I who took the pistol someone gave me, and aiming right on the button I pulled the trigger. The body jerked, and that was that. Easy.

  The way I see it: if we hadn’t decided to break out I’d have had to spend the whole dreary day out in the veld with the sheep again; and that time of the year the sun burns the shit right out of you. So it was a bit of a change.

  Pity it couldn’t go on for longer.

  Martha

  Schoolmaster and all, where did your cleverne
ss land you? Now you’re dead and I must fend for myself. I’d been used to a better life. It was you who insisted we should cross the mountains to start again. You said that once I’d had a taste of real life I’d come to like it.

  It was you who saddled me with a child too soon. I’d still been playing with my dolls when you married me. Then you turned me into your doll. And now there’s the baby.

  Do you really expect me to manage on my own in this place? In the Cape everything seemed so nice and civilized. It took a thing like this to make me see how crude this land really is. A savage wilderness, not fit for whites to live in.

  If this is the life you spoke about I’ll have none of it.

  Helena

  It’s the nicest smell the attic has. Dried fruit and raisins, tobacco leaves, and tea. But only the weekend before Mummy said I was getting too big for games in the attic; a girl ready for school should know her manners. So in a way I was glad we could all come up to the attic again; it was like playing hide-and-seek.

  Of course I knew it wasn’t really a game. But when I lay flat on my stomach to look through the chink in the boards everything seemed so confused down there—the shooting and shouting and breaking of the furniture—that one couldn’t really believe it anyway. I felt far away from it all, looking down from very high up, into a strange world that just made me stare and stare. A grownup world I knew I’d never understand and to which, anyway, I didn’t belong. So it didn’t seem to matter so much really.

  Little Katrien cried from time to time; and Mummy was making funny little noises. I knew if I looked at her dress I’d see the blood again. So I didn’t look. I just lay on my stomach and stared through the chink, knowing that even if I grew very old one day I’d never ever forget it. I still get bad dreams from it at night. But as I was lying there looking at it all it was no different from a dream anyway.

  Sometimes I’m not quite sure, actually. Was I awake then, or am I now? And if it’s only a dream, will I wake up again?

  I’m not sure I want to.

  Pamela

  I would have preferred to stay in the hut with Galant that night, in case something happened. But he was sullen and withdrawn towards me since he came back from fetching the schoolmaster, blaming me for not stealing the guns for him. But how could I? I’d tried, but the woman had stopped me. So I thought: All I could do to prove to him that I was with him would be to sleep in the kitchen that night. If the Baas wanted to have his way with me again, just too bad. At least I would be inside to keep my eyes open and perhaps to open a door for the men if it became necessary. My desire was with Galant; but for his sake I went to the kitchen. And to me that was the worst: not the killing, then and later, but that they’d moved in between Galant and me, for the two of us had been together.

  “Yes, go,” Galant said when I picked up the child in the hut. “I suppose it’s your place now.”

  “Don’t you understand then?” I pleaded.

  “I got work to do,” he said, turning away from me.

  Halfway to the house, when I looked back, I saw him still standing there, staring at me and the baby on my back. I wanted to call out to him: but what could I say? That is how I shall always remember it: I here, he over there, and the silence of the yard between us.

  After I’d done the washing and cleaning for the night I put the child to sleep in the corner by the hearth and then lay down myself. But it was impossible to sleep. I kept listening to the sounds of the house, beyond the small gentle snoring of the baby. A house has a life of its own after dark: beams creaking as if a slow heavy man is walking along them; the bed in the bedroom when someone turns over; a sigh of wind in the chimney; the bolt of a shutter. I pricked my ears for what was happening outside, but it sounded no different from usual. A dog stirring at the kitchen door, or cracking a bone, or licking its balls. The laughter of a jackal or a ghost, very far away. A squeaking of bats. And a small screech-owl once. That was all. And yet I knew the night was filled with men on horseback riding to and fro. Blood welling up in silence. The wind holding its breath before the storm would break loose and white lightning would crack the dark sky.

  Then I heard Nicolaas coming to me on his bare feet. I tensed up but didn’t move.

  “Pamela? You sleeping?”

  I tried to breathe deeply and evenly, hoping he would give up.

  His hand on my bare shoulder. I still didn’t move.

  You starting again, I thought. Isn’t it enough for you to know that child is sleeping right here beside me? And the man I want is outside. But what does he know about me? What does anyone know about anyone?

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” I suddenly asked. “Don’t you know what you’re doing?”

  “I want to talk to you, Pamela.”

  “There’s enough time to talk in the day. I’m sleeping.”

  “There’s no one I can talk to.”

  “Talk to your own sort. Let me be. I’m a slave.”

  “You listened before.”

  “Because I had no right to say no.”

  He was silent for a while. Then he said: “Pamela, what’s got into Galant?”

  It shook me. Before I could stop myself I sat upright next to him. In the dark one couldn’t see anything; the coals in the hearth had turned grey.

  “Galant has changed,” he said.

  “Why ask me?” I said fiercely. “It’s between you and him.”

  “He doesn’t talk to me. And you’re his wife.”

  “One wouldn’t think so, the way you lie with me.”

  “I said a bad thing to him tonight.”

  I didn’t answer. But I waited very tensely.

  “I told him to make sure the threshing-floor was ready in the morning. It was because of Baas Jansen I lost my temper.”

  “It’s your business, not mine.”

  Why should it have upset him so? He was the master: he could do as he wished; there was no need for him to feel sorry or guilty about anything. However, he suddenly got up from beside me and went to the back door.

  “It’s bothering me,” he said. “Perhaps I should go and talk to him.”

  On hands and knees I crawled after him, shedding my blanket on the way, trying to stop him.

  “He’s sleeping now,” I whispered urgently. “There will be time enough tomorrow.”

  He hesitated, his hand already on the bolt.

  I put my arms round his legs.

  “What’s the matter with you now, Pamela?”

  “Stay here.” I moved my hands to reach under his shift. He moved in my cupped palms. Then he bent over.

  Take me, I thought. Take me any way you wish. It’s the last time. Tomorrow I’ll join them when they kill you. If you call for help I’ll laugh in your face. I’ll bury my heel in the place where I’m holding you now. I’ll spit on you and your brood.

  It was for Galant I did it. But the next day when they all came streaming from the house in the high white sun, from the rubble and the bodies and the blood, across the yard where I sat waiting for him with the child at my breast, he didn’t know me. With the sun in his eyes he stared at me as if I wasn’t there.

  “Galant, I must talk to you.”

  “We’re past talking.”

  “I helped you.”

  “You kept out of it all the time. I don’t need you any more. Look at the thing you holding to your breast.”

  “Is it my fault then?”

  He suddenly got so angry he couldn’t speak. Grabbing his gun by the barrel he let fly at me with the butt. I tried to stop him, but the child’s head got in the way.

  Long after they’d gone, but before the commando arrived on their horses—I watched them from a distance—I came down for a crust of bread from the mess in the kitchen, and fled back to the mountains again with the child: deep into the tumbled Skurweberge where they’d never fi
nd me.

  Towards nightfall the child died. I buried her myself. The earth was too hard to dig a grave, however shallow; but I covered her under a mound of stones to protect her from the vultures. The child who’d looked at me with the eyes of the Baas as she sucked my nipples. Yet she’d been mine too; how could I deny my own?

  There were no tears in me, not even while I was stacking the heavy stones: and after that it was too late. The emptiness was too big.

  In a terrible way I also felt relieved; cleansed. If Galant were to come to me now, I’d go to him, my breasts heavy with milk, and say: “Look, my arms are empty again.”

  But he never came. The bread was soon finished. I began to wander aimlessly, driven by hunger, my breasts aching. In the end I had to go down and give myself over.

  So the masters had won after all. They’d separated Galant and me for good. He would never come back now. I’d been wrong thinking the child’s death would change anything. Even in death it tied me to something I couldn’t help but in which I’d had a part and for which I had to bear the guilt. I don’t know why. I don’t understand any more. But that’s how it happened. What had been ours only had got out of hand and was now common to everybody.

  They even refused to hang me with him. Even that they denied me. Yet we had been man and wife.

  Achilles

  Bleeding, and in agony, the Nooi promised Ontong and me that if we helped her she’d plead with the gentlemen in Cape Town to make sure we would be looked after till the day of our death; and after the others had left on their horses we helped Ma-Rose to care for her. Later, when the wagon came, we rode with her to Buffelsfontein, her father’s place. For that she gave us each a shirt and trousers of the Baas. But when the commando found the clothes with us afterwards they accused us of having taken part in the murders and we were put in chains with the others. The Nooi didn’t stop them. Perhaps she was too ill; perhaps they never told her. But I know white people forget easily anyway.