The Lost History of Stars

by Dave Boling

  The Tommies closed in around Moeder, who asked, “Where would we see troops and artillery here? All we see are your guards and that fence. There’s nothing else in sight.”

  I came from behind the commandant and snatched the paper. I thought I could eat the paper and swallow it, to destroy any evidence of whatever Willem had been doing.

  The commandant grabbed at me but could reach only my hair. I could feel the roots surrender their hold. As I put the notes up to my mouth, I could see the writing. It was Willem’s math work. I yanked myself from his grasp, leaving the commandant with a thatch of my hair.

  “It’s my brother’s studies . . . arithmetic. . . . That’s the only way he’ll do problems . . . adding and subtracting rifles and troops.”

  I handed it back to him. “Look at the numbers, the writing. . . . It’s a little boy learning math,” I said, turning to Willem. “Tell him, Willem. . . . What portion of twenty is five?”

  I tried to send the answer through my eyes by concentrating so hard on it that it had no choice but to arrive in his mind.

  “Well, boy?” the commandant yelled.

  “Twenty-five percent,” Willem said. “One-fourth.”

  My mother and I let out a cheer and clapped our hands. Willem grinned as if he’d won the war. The commandant looked at the childish markings on the paper and tossed it back to him. He released the guards with a head tilt and stood in front of Moeder. He was no taller than Moeder, but he stood with feet wide and shoulders back.

  “We were told by sources that letters to commandos have been coming from this tent.”

  “What?”

  “Messages to the enemy.”

  “Who?”

  “One of you.”

  “Who was the source?”

  “You don’t think I’ll tell you that, do you?”

  Moeder stared.

  “An informant,” he said.

  “Someone is lying to you,” Moeder said.

  “That has happened with your people before,” he said. “But if you’re up to something, we will catch you, you know?”

  “And do what to us?”

  “Do what?” His shout seemed to push back the tent canvas. “Anything I want to do. We’re at war, have you forgotten?”

  “I am . . . aware,” Moeder said.

  “Good,” the commandant said. “We’re watching you.” He backed up and stepped toward the tent flap, turning cold eyes to me. “And I’m watching you especially.”

  13

  October 1899, Venter Farm

  When the call-up notice arrived for the men, they cheered so hard that Cecelia covered her ears. They were told that each man was responsible for his own mount and weapons and two weeks of supplies. Bina’s husband, Tuma, would attend the men as an “after-rider,” taking care of the horses and cooking.

  The men objected when my mother mentioned that the issue might be resolved without war. “These are white Christians we’re fighting,” Oupa said. “And they’re driven by a hunger for gold. But it shouldn’t take long for them to see that we will not just turn and run. And then it won’t be worth their cost. Can you imagine the expense of sending an army to the other end of the world?”

  My most troubling worries came from an unexpected source: Ouma Wilhelmina, Tante Hannah’s mother. As the men made their final preparations in the barn, I was watching Cee-Cee in the parlor. My mother peeked in and summoned me to the kitchen. “You can pack the things for Schalk to take.”

  “Really?”

  “It will be special for him.”

  It felt like a promotion to adulthood. The kitchen smelled of food and burlap, and a mound of many dozen rusks rose like a kopje in the middle of the table. Dry and crunchy, resistant to spoilage, rusks were perfect for a hunting trip or the like. Moeder also prepared a pouch of necessities for each of the men: extra bootlaces, a tin of salve against sunburn, a few common medicines, a needle and thread.

  Moeder and Tante Hannah, at opposite ends of the table, packed for their husbands. Ouma Wilhelmina prepared Gideon’s things, even though their relationship was only a suspicious sharing of time at family gatherings. I took my place at the middle of the long table and readied to pack for my brother.

  Bina cinched the tops of the rusk sacks once they were filled and piled them near the door. Then she hefted a large sugar bag to the center of the table.

  “Coffee then,” mother said. “Salt, tobacco . . .”

  “Biltong?” I asked. I knew they would expect biltong.

  “Oupa will handle that,” Mother said. Oupa guarded his secrets for seasoning and curing the biltong, and he would distribute the dried, spicy meat when he was ready, in portions he deemed appropriate.

  Across the table, Ouma Wilhelmina pulled her pipe from the pocket of her skirt. “I’ve done this before, you know,” she said. “Packed for war.”

  “Moeder,” Tante Hannah tried to interrupt. “We have so much to do . . .”

  “I should be packing for my own man, but this is all that’s left,” Wilhelmina said, raising the pipe in front of her and then toward each of us around the table. “Did you know that, Aletta? This is what I got back after my husband went to fight: his pipe.”

  She slid it back to the corner of her mouth, into the indentation formed by years of smoking.

  “A pipe . . . that’s all,” she said. “I never even learned where they buried him. They wouldn’t tell me where. . . . They were so afraid that I’d go out there and get myself killed. He went with the other men to save us from the thieving devils. We had to fight off the raiders who kept stealing our stock. Had to stop them before they took everything. My Izak killed half a dozen of them himself.”

  Wilhelmina held the pipe out for further examination, fingers on the bowl, pointing with the mouthpiece, which had been gnawed ragged. “Made of a bone from an ostrich foot. He carved it himself . . . not another like it.”

  We rarely saw her without it, and the teeth on that side of her mouth looked rusted.

  “Had it in his mouth when he took wounds from three of the kaffirs’ assegais,” she said. “Three of them. Three. He kept firing when the first spear went through the meat of his side. Another went in his leg . . .”

  “Moeder!” Tante Hannah raised her voice, but Ouma Wilhelmina kept looking at me as she pointed with her pipe to parts of her body to illustrate her Izak’s wounds.

  “The first two spears didn’t stop him. He didn’t even try to pull them out. Just kept shooting. He killed another one before they threw the spear that went right through the front of his throat.”

  She removed the pipe and pointed at the hollow place between the cords rising at the front of her neck.

  “They said it drove him back, and the spear stuck into the ground . . . pinned him there . . . pipe still in his mouth.”

  “Moeder . . .”

  Packing stopped.

  “Nothing but his pipe came home. . . . Think about that.”

  THE FIRST SOUND WAS the stamping of impatient horses, and Oupa’s drumbeat instructions to Tuma. They were leaving for war, and nobody woke me. They’d already had breakfast and coffee, and no one noticed that I wasn’t there? People moved so quickly in the kitchen that they bounced off one another. Tante Hannah carried Cee-Cee on her hip. Bina cleared breakfast as Tuma backed out the door with supply bags in each hand.

  Moeder directed it all from the table, crossing items from her list. Her hair was pinned up and she wore her brooch at the neck of her Sunday dress.

  I had barely cleared my head of night fog when everyone emptied onto the stoep.

  I heard the call of the piet-my-vrou. Oupa mimicked the bird’s three-note call. “Almost time to plant,” he said to Moeder. “If we’re not home soon, put Bina to the plow.”

  The men wore their felt hats and suit coats, ammunition belts across their chests like sashes, the cartridges longer than my fingers, aligned in perfect military order. The four of them were mounted in a line, the stages of man: Oupa with his t
hick gray beard, Vader’s beard brown and waved, Sarel’s beard lighter, and Schalk’s with its wisps descending only at the jawline and invisible above his mouth. The first burst of sunlight caused them all to stand out in silhouette.

  “Every man a hero,” Oom Sarel said.

  “No heroes,” Gideon said. “Just proud Boers.”

  “I mean . . . his divine favor will guide our steps,” Sarel said.

  “Amen,” Vader added.

  I thought of Ouma Wilhelmina’s stories and worried over their leaving.

  “We have been chosen for his purpose,” Oupa said. “Lord, redeem me from the oppression of men that I may obey your precepts.”

  Bina lifted her eyes to Tuma.

  “Psalm twenty-five.” Oupa removed his hat and recited the verses from memory.

  “To you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul. . . . Oh my God, let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me.”

  The horses mouthed their bits as if trying to recite the psalm. Cecelia cried. Vader opened his eyes at the sound and nodded to Moeder rather than to me. Moeder took her to her hip and bounced her. She stepped between the horses of Vader and Schalk. Vader reached down to run his hand through the little girl’s woolly hair and put his palm on the side of my mother’s head. She leaned into his leg.

  “God’s grace,” she said.

  She leaned toward Schalk and squeezed his knee.

  The men clucked and the horses backed away. I tried to catch Schalk’s eyes, but his hat was pulled low.

  My throat swelled shut. Moeder squinted into the sun to follow their path. She was already making plans. I loved that she was strong for us, for me and Willem and Cee-Cee. We watched until the dust from the horses faded.

  “Lettie . . . take Cecelia,” she said, turning toward the house. “We have work to do.”

  14

  March 1901, Concentration Camp

  Janetta was so tightly quarantined that I rarely even got responses when I called at the tent door. I used a low voice so as not to disturb Nicolaas in case he was able to rest. I bent near the flap and spoke at intervals with pauses.

  “Janetta . . . it’s Lettie.” Nothing.

  “Can I do anything to help?” Nothing.

  “Can I get you anything?” Nothing.

  It was probably for my own good that they did not invite me in. I pictured her inside, tending her brother, hearing my voice but sitting in silence. I considered just walking in, perhaps taking a bucket of water in for them. I thought of writing a note of warm thoughts and well-wishes for Nicolaas. But I had no idea what was the right thing to do. Was there a book somewhere that told you how to act in these times? I looked at others passing in the row; perhaps they knew the family and could tell me how Nicolaas was doing. No one lifted a head to notice me.

  “It’s Lettie. . . . Can I be of any help?” I tried again.

  “Go away.” It was the voice of a woman, a woman impatient with my questions.

  And that was all. Janetta said nothing. I left and did not go back, hoping that she would reappear one day during my walk and we would be close. I wanted to tell her of the commandant and his threats, and how I now feared we’d been targeted by some informant in camp. Her experiences at the other camp might help us now. But I would have to wait.

  Without my companion, I went back to my pattern of read-walking, idling along the camp perimeter with my face in my book or my dictionary. It was a way to occupy my mind. During my walks, the space beside me felt empty, and sometimes I would start to say something as if Janetta were there. I worried about her as I would my own sister. I suppose that drove me deeper into my books, so much so that I almost never looked up from them when I walked.

  I came across guards a time or two with each trip around the camp. “Away from the fence,” they would say, and I would veer a few steps until I was out of sight. I sometimes saw the guards who stormed through our tent with the commandant. I avoided their eyes but sensed menace in their nearness. I thought of Schalk’s stories of how the animals could sense threats, and I tried to grow alert to those who might be watching or following as I walked. I passed the latrines, the hospital tent, the reservoir, each with its own sounds and smells so that I could identify my position without looking up. It was most quiet along the eastern fence line, especially in the afternoon, so it was there that I felt the safest. Until . . .

  “What have you got there?”

  The pink-faced guard occupied my path.

  “Aletta, right? What’s your book?” The guard knew my name. How? Was he looking through British paperwork? Keeping files on us? Snooping . . . monitoring?

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “Your friend told me, remember?” he said. “You were standing right in front of me. You were so angry you made your face look like a fist. Remember?”

  I hoped it would bother him that I could dismiss the memory of him so quickly. I did not even shake my head in response.

  “Where’s your friend?”

  I tried walking past.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Are books outlawed here?” I adopted the tone Oupa Gideon sometimes used with Tuma.

  “Just curious what you’re reading. . . . Must be good, you almost ran into me.”

  “Who are you?” I asked without looking at his face.

  “Tommy Maples . . . I told you. . . . Let me see.”

  I held it away from him so he could see the title but not touch the book.

  “Chambers’s Dictionary,” he said.

  “You can read,” I said, acting surprised.

  “Yes, the queen taught me.”

  I kept my focus on the pages, skimming for a full definition of the word fence.

  “Fence, noun, a wall or hedge for enclosing animals or for protecting land,” I read, and then I said, “Enclosing animals . . . yes . . . the proper use for a fence. It doesn’t say anything about enclosing humans.”

  He ignored my comment. “Do you have any books to help me find gold or diamonds?”

  “You haven’t taken enough?”

  “Haven’t found any. . . . Recruiters promised us we’d be trippin’ over nuggets and gems,” he said. “Have you ever found any?”

  I turned around to get away from him, but he continued beside me.

  “You should have seen the men when we’d set up a camp, they’d start pawin’ at the dirt,” he said. “They told us about a gent who just bent over and picked up a diamond that was one hundred seventy-five carats.”

  I had no idea how big that was. I turned again, but he stubbornly followed.

  “Something like that had to be the size of a cricket ball,” he said. “Men find more snakes than nuggets. Nobody told us about the black mambas that rear up and drop you with one bite. They’ll crawl into your bedding at night to stay warm and then you roll over on them and wake up dead. Scare the life out of me.”

  I had dealt with snakes all my life and had not been bitten . . . thanks to Bina. I considered telling him that story but clamped my jaws. Who was he to come into our country and then complain about our snakes? But his fears seemed a strategic opening. Who knows how I might disrupt the British plans if I started a rumor that spread to their troops in the field?

  “We have spent years training our snakes to kill you British in your sleep,” I said. “Thousands of them, at our command: they’re coming for you. An army of them. Crawling into your bedding. No fence can stop them, you know.” I pointed to the fence and made a wiggling motion with my hand, showing how a serpent could slither through.

  “You’ve taught them well, then,” he said, adding a shiver. “They’re everywhere. . . . Hate the bleeders.”

  It was worth a try; if it kept some of them awake at night, they might be sluggish in battle. But he was not as simple as I had hoped.

  “You should go home, then.” I pointed to the north.

  “Right . . . yes, I’m all in favor of that. I asked about that very thing, but it turns out they won’
t let me. I still have more than four years to go. I thought it might be a few months here and then some soft duty somewhere else.”

  I sneered.

  “They had some bad times before I got here, I guess, Spion Kop and the like. But when we marched into Pretoria, everybody had a big party, and they stood up there and told us that the war was over. Major said exactly that . . . said we’d accomplished our mission in South Africa.”

  He bobbed his head so that it caused his helmet to slide down on his brow.

  “Did you know that I saw you before I met you with your friend . . . that day with all the crazy women at the fence? I didn’t want to go near them.”

  I stopped walking to make a point: “You had to protect your dirty helpers on the other side.”

  “We hate them the most,” he said. “If they turn on their own, they’ll surely turn on us. That’s the first thing the officers told us; they could be spies working against us from the inside. If we see anything out of line at all, we’re under orders to shoot ’em down. Or put together a firing squad.”

  “My oom Sarel is on the other side.” I pointed to the far side of camp. “He’s a traitor, but I miss my tante Hannah . . . his wife.”

  “Members of your own family?”

  “A traitor’s heart cannot be trusted,” I said. It was one of Moeder’s opinions.

  “True, but they may end up benefiting,” he said.

  “Did Judas benefit?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “For a very short time,” I said.

  “Well . . . maybe that’s the case with them,” he said. “At least your uncle is safe. He won’t be anybody’s favorite, but he’ll be alive and able to start over.”

  “Not after we win.”

  The guard tilted his head. “Could happen.”

  “You don’t know my father and grandfather,” I said, pointing a finger at his chest. “They’ll never quit.”

  “Bitter-Enders?”

  “To the finish.”

  “Wish them well,” he said. “Just hope we can all go home soon.”

  “Keep your wishes and take them home with you,” I said.