The Lost History of Stars

by Dave Boling

  When she came to get me in the morning, her hands were still pinched into claws, but she had already made breakfast and we were off to the field again before the sun cleared the horizon.

  16

  March – April 1901, Concentration Camp

  If Moeder caught me slipping out deep in the night, or the newly watchful guards snatched me up, I had an excuse prepared: latrine. Who could argue the timing of nature’s demands? To make my ventures less of a falsehood, I always stopped first at the latrines before I wandered farther. The appalling place was less trafficked in the middle of the night, and I preferred it that way. Many kept buckets outside their tents, since some refused to walk all the way to the pits, especially in the cold or rain. But I never mastered the use of the bucket, which was tricky as well as humiliating.

  The night made it more private, but rarely completely so. Thinking I was alone one night, I jumped when a woman dealing with diarrhea groaned near me. In the way that so many feelings now clustered in surprising combinations, sympathy and disgust collided. I was very sorry for her but delighted it wasn’t me. I pitied her condition while hating her nearness.

  During my daylight walks, I discovered a favorite spot at the most distant edge of the camp, where I could turn my back on all the tents and all the people and all their problems. Except for a few kopjes rising in the distance, the land was featureless for miles. Most of the year it was nothing but lion-pelt colors from tan to brown, unchanging all the way to the indistinct horizon. There was terrain, but it was mostly internal, carved by streams into dongas and spruits that split and converged like wrinkles in old skin.

  The sky, though, was endlessly active, showing white hot to lucid blue, or raging black with storms, or spotted with clouds that gave shape to the shifting winds. At times, the winds pitted your skin with grit, or carried rain and hail in extravagant amounts. But the sunsets that bled in layers across the horizon were God’s reminder that only he could brighten such a desolate pit with infinite beauty.

  Being at the fence line was a freedom by degrees. But even an illusion of freedom was welcomed, and I think that’s why Moeder was patient with my absences. Besides, it wasn’t as if I could wander off and get lost. But every move now carried a risk. Not just to me, but to the rest of the family, too, if the commandant was to be believed.

  There were physical costs, too. I found myself breathing heavily and wearing down when I walked to the edge of the camp. Time seemed thicker, now, as if it had weight. It did not just pass on its own but had to be pushed through, shoved aside, like wading against a current or walking uphill, and all directions now felt uphill.

  It seemed more of an escape in the darkness, when the sky came alive with stars. Sometimes the moon fattened and brightened and drew nearer, always facing the earth, always watching. On those nights when the sky dipped closer, it seemed like the ceiling of a shrinking room. The storms or lightning arrived to set off vibrations I could feel rising up from the ground. Excitement and fear—two other newly inseparable senses—sparked with every splintered bolt, causing me to flinch and gasp and pray for safety, and then pray that another might strike soon.

  On this cold night, vapor rose in a small cloud in front of my face with each breath as I labored toward the far fence. I needed to risk a walk after dark to think about Nicolaas and to pray for his soul. He was the first person I actually knew who had died, and he had been my age. When I told Moeder, she shook her head, squeezed her lips for a moment, and said, “Shame.” What else to say? I knew others were dying. But this was the first one whose face I could still remember, and I was forced to realize that I would never see that face again. I needed quiet time to find a spot for that in my mind.

  The stars helped. Patches of clouds skimmed past, veiling the stars for a moment, but I liked to study them, too, to scan their layers and texture and depth and see in them the shapes of animals or angels or spooks. Between the clouds, the sky was streaked with light. Others called them shooting stars, but Oupa taught me that they were meteors, pieces of broken stars. From the horizon, a comet flared, brighter and larger than all the meteors combined. I’d never seen such a display. It had a split tail . . . a double-tailed comet.

  “Look,” I said, pointing at the comet. It was a reflex. I knew Oupa could see it perfectly from the veld. It would be the first thing I’d ask when this was over: Oupa, did you see the double-tailed comet? It was something I would write in my notebook in the morning. I would describe it precisely so that I could tell my grandchildren about it . . . maybe on a porch some night when I would sneak them out to have coffee and rusks.

  A thought of the future was so rare now that it felt as if I’d been ambushed by it. Surviving from one day to the next took such focus that there was little room for seeing beyond a blank wall of time. But the comet, that brilliant flash of light, made the camp seem so temporary, so small. Finite. I expected that by the time another comet like this passed, this camp would be gone and the ground would have healed up over the memories. It was a reminder that there were things bigger than this camp, things that were bright and natural and gave off light, things that could fly over this insignificant cage in the time it took to blink. I actually felt myself smiling for a moment . . . until I heard sounds that made me certain I was being followed.

  MEMORIES OF NICOLAAS PLAGUED me every time we went to the reservoir, the place where I heard of his death. Would every daily chore for the rest of my life carry attachments to this time? I saw the value in Moeder’s advice to stay as far as possible from the other women. Their conversations produced little truth and less good news, and in their own way, they spread a kind of illness.

  Our laundry became more burdensome, but Moeder and I continued to go even though there was no longer any soap available. We would each hold a basket handle and walk in time like a yoked team. I measured myself against her when she wouldn’t notice. The top of my head had reached the level of her chin. I felt taller, but maybe she did not stand quite as straight anymore, making my growth another illusion.

  Walking back with the silence of an ox team, we heard a call from the inner fence.

  “Susanna.”

  “Tante Hannah,” I answered, happy to hear her voice.

  Moeder turned and stood. Silent.

  “Susanna . . . God keep you.”

  Moeder walked slowly, now, directly at Tante Hannah.

  I squeezed the basket handle with both hands.

  “Susanna . . . I’ve prayed every day for you,” she said, frantic to get the words out before Moeder had a chance to start a fight. “I’ve tried to catch you near the fence or send you letters. I know you’re angry, but I—”

  “Go back to your traitor husband.”

  “Ma . . . please.” I just wished to calm her, to take her away from this.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tante Hannah said, palms open, trying to give her apology like a present. “I just wanted to tell you how—”

  “How what? How you can live with that man? How you can live with yourself?”

  Moeder pulled us nearer the fence.

  “You don’t understand,” Hannah said. “He was hurt and needed care. He can hardly move his arm. . . . He can’t sleep . . . night terrors.”

  “He can’t sleep because of his conscience.”

  “He had no choice.”

  “We heard his lies already,” Moeder said. “Did you know that?”

  “No.” Her shoulders dipped.

  “He came to see us . . . to get me to write to Matthys to ask him to surrender in the same cowardly way he did.”

  “He didn’t say. . . . I didn’t know. . . . I’m . . .”

  “You tell him I won’t forget . . . ever . . .”

  “Susanna . . .”

  “No . . . Hannah . . . no . . . what would your father think? Your dead father?”

  “My father would be alive now if he hadn’t gone to war.”

  “See . . . Sarel has infected you.”

  “Sarel wants th
is all to end. . . . If this were over, we’d all go home . . .”

  “Ahhhhh . . .”

  “They all say we can’t win. . . . There’s no chance. . . . What’s the reward if everyone dies?”

  I knew she would not budge Moeder, but I could not interfere.

  “If it lasts another year, we still lose,” Tante said, “and what about the children?”

  Moeder’s jaws ground.

  “You know nothing of children.”

  Tante Hannah was struck by a series of coughs and raised a white handkerchief from her sleeve to her face.

  “Susanna . . . please . . . I had . . . ,” Hannah said, gripped by coughing again. “More reason for us all to cherish the ones . . .”

  “No, you don’t understand. . . . That traitor has infected you. . . . You have caught his cowardice.”

  “He is my husband . . . by God’s Holy Word. . . . Susanna, you know that. I honor the vow. And his heart is . . .”

  Moeder stepped even closer to the fence and whispered. Hannah mirrored her move and leaned in.

  “Don’t try to get in my way if I come after him,” Moeder said with clarity, if not full control.

  She pulled me around again, with the basket handle, and we almost raced toward the tent.

  “Susanna . . . Susanna . . . ,” Tante called after us. “Don’t keep Lettie from me . . . please.”

  “You put yourself over there,” Moeder yelled without turning. I could scarcely keep up, my legs aching from the lengthy strides. She turned sideways so that we could slip into the tent.

  “Ma, can we . . . ohh!” I shouted at the sight of her and dropped my side of the basket. Her face was puffy, and one of her eyes was completely red where it should have been white. She had ruptured vessels in her rage.

  MOEDER APPEARED TO HAVE calmed, but her anger still occupied space in the tent. She understood when I told her I needed to take air. I could not look at her for the dread of seeing that frightening eye. Neither Willem nor Cee-Cee noticed, somehow. I walked the eastern fence line in the afternoon again. It was a Tuesday but it felt like Sunday. So I didn’t even bring a book, just prayed as I walked, and hummed psalms that came to mind. At intervals, I turned quickly to see whether someone was following me.

  “That’s pretty,” the guard said, surprising me just as I turned to look forward once again. He pointed at my pinafore.

  “Just an apron,” I said.

  “Nice . . . new?”

  I did not answer. The garment wasn’t even dry from washing it that morning.

  “How are you?”

  “Me?” It was the first question about my well-being that I’d heard in some time. Certainly the first from a stranger.

  “I haven’t escaped yet,” I said. “But it’s early.”

  “I’ve got something for you.” He leaned his rifle against the fence, fidgeted with a button on his tunic, reached inside, and produced a book.

  “I saw that you like to read,” he said. “I’m finished with this. . . . Thought maybe you’d like to take it on.”

  “Dickens?” I asked, before I could see the cover. What else would a Brit be reading?

  “Dickens . . . right . . . Copperfield.”

  “David Copperfield?”

  “Heard of Dickens?”

  “Yes, but haven’t read any. My tante Hannah . . . my aunt on the Joiner side, has told me of Dickens. She loves him. She told me I should try to write myself.”

  “Have you seen your aunt?” he asked.

  “Just once. . . . She used to teach me. . . . We used to talk . . .”

  “About Dickens?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, he’s my favorite,” he said. “They love him at home. He sold his books bits at a time . . . in the papers. . . . People would queue up all night to be there when the next chapter came out. You can have this.”

  “Have it?”

  “I’ve read it. . . . You can keep it. . . . Just taking up space in my tent.”

  “This is for me?”

  It was my second book. Third, counting the dictionary. It was three times as long as my other book. I held it with both hands and felt the heft of it.

  “Ample,” I said. Then I immediately thought myself a fool for abusing my newest English words. “I mean . . . it’s long.”

  “You probably have time to read, though, eh?”

  I opened the book and skimmed the first sentence. I could not imagine anything so completely capturing my thoughts. I read the sentence aloud as if it could make the fences fall and the war subside: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . . these pages must show.”

  “I wondered the same thing when I was young,” the guard said. “Where will it all take me? Will it be ordinary or something more? It’s already been something . . . being in Africa. You’ll see. . . . Little David gets by in hard times. . . . Inspiring, I thought.”

  That one sentence, written decades earlier, somehow created the same response when read by a British soldier as it did when read by a young woman in Africa. That’s what Tante Hannah talked about and I hadn’t been able to understand. I wanted to race away and bury myself in the story. It would be a good way for me to learn about England and British culture. I might want to travel there someday, so this was educational. Tante Hannah would be proud of me. If Moeder ever let me speak to her again. Oh . . . Moeder . . .

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Yes, it’s yours now.”

  “No, take your book. I can’t have it.”

  “I’m finished with it.”

  “No.” I shoved it back toward him, but he balled up his hands in his pockets.

  “No one has to know.”

  “I’ll know. I can’t even be talking to you. You might tell the commandant.”

  “I probably dislike the commandant more than you do,” he said. “How’s this: you can borrow it to read. . . . It won’t be a gift from the enemy that way.”

  That made sense. But not enough to those who might ask questions.

  “No.” But I couldn’t help starting to read again. It was glorious. It was Dickens.

  I started walking again; I needed to be away from the guard. But he kept talking, anyway.

  “I worked in a mill until I got sacked, so I joined to serve . . . steady work . . . improve my station. Thought it would be an adventure.”

  “Adventure?”

  “Nobody said much about it being a war . . . not like the Crimea or such,” he said. “A month cruise and then a few months seeing Africa, and it would all be over. Came as a surprise your folks had much of an army. Been interesting, though, and beautiful . . . from the first day. Steamed into Table Bay at night and there were dozens of ships at anchor waiting to off-load troops and cargo. . . . The sight of all their lights reflecting off the water . . . I’ll never forget.”

  “You were in Cape Town?”

  “Two days. . . . Rode the electric trams, went up to that big, flat mountain,” he said. “Most amazing city I’ve ever seen. Truly. Every kind of people in that city.”

  I was jealous. This British soldier had seen more of my country than I had.

  “I’m a man of the world now,” he said, tipping his hat like a proper gentleman. “I hadn’t even been on a train until I joined. I’ve been on too many of them now . . . mostly hopin’ they didn’t get blown up.”

  I turned, but he followed me again.

  “Saw the giant smoking chimneys of the gold mines on the Rand,” he said. “You should see them at night. Like lit-up castles. The Golden Reef, they called it. Beautiful. The whole country, really, so bright, so vivid.”

  I had not yet worked that far back in the dictionary, so I would skip ahead to vivid that afternoon. I finally broke away from him and was eight pages into the Dickens book by the time I entered our tent.

  “Where did you get that?” Moeder asked.

  “Janetta . . . she gave it to me before she left.” The lie came so easily.

  �
��Wash your hands after you read it,” she warned. “You don’t want it to infect you.”

  17

  Mid-December 1899, Venter Farm

  Schalk often told stories of my father’s uncanny horsemanship. But Vader never put on showy displays in front of us. It left me stunned, then, when the men came home from war the first time and Vader dismounted at a gallop and hit the ground like a springboard that thrust him onto the stoep for an embrace with Moeder. It was so speedy that it took several moments for the dust from his horse to arrive and envelop them in a cloud of privacy.

  The men all wore the same clothes as they had the day they left, and they were cloaked in filth. Vader released Moeder and tossed his hat to the hovering Willem, who replaced his own with our father’s and could hardly see from beneath the brim. When Vader reached down to lift Cecelia, his jacket stretched tight across his back. He looked strong. Lean, but well. War suited him.

  He reached me, then, and lifted me as he had when I was smaller. It was something he had not done in several years. He smelled of leather and dried sweat and things I couldn’t know.

  “Missed you, Pa,” I said, sorry then to be placed back on my own feet and have to occupy any space that wasn’t in his arms.

  “Have you been good for your mother?”

  Ja.

  Schalk applied a hug, the first I could recall that was not accompanied by teasing or wrestling. His neck and throat were sunburned, but his face was still pale where it had been sheltered by the protective brim of his hat. I expected him to look older, even though it had been only a few months, but he was like the same boy straining to grow whiskers. He smelled of campfire and tobacco.

  “You smell,” I said.

  “And you’ve grown.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ve gotten shorter . . . must be from all that ducking behind rocks.” He pulled his shoulders up toward his ears like a frightened tortoise.