Stones for My Father

by Trilby Kent

  Sipho and I were put in charge of essentials: filling the paraffin lamp, pouring milk into skin sacks, secreting what food we could into the folds of our clothes. Duly laden with provisions, we returned to the house to collect my mother and brothers. As we waited in the kitchen, considering all the things that we would have to leave behind, I noticed Sipho staring at the knife my mother used for gutting fish.

  “For protection, kleinnooi.” He picked it up, ran one finger along the mean edge.

  “But we have the rifle.”

  “A rifle is only useful as long as we have bullets.” Sipho reached for the muslin cloth that Ma used for steaming puddings and began to wrap it around the blade, a makeshift sheath. “Just in case. No need to worry, kleinnooi.” His gaze drifted around the kitchen, and for the first time I saw the room through his eyes: the uselessness of my mother’s lace curtains, the crocheted tablecloth, the decorative milk glass plates.

  “Aanjaag,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  The sky was streaked yellow and pink as we guided the carriage off the main road and into the bush. Our mule’s sides heaved like bellows as I urged her on, slapping my bonnet against her bony haunches while Ma tugged at the reins with clenched fists. My brothers and Lindiwe’s little girls balanced atop our piled belongings, wide-eyed and silent, while Lindiwe and Sipho pushed from behind. No one spoke.

  As we walked, I thought about the soldier with the black mustache — the way he had nudged the pile of clothes with one toe, hands on hips, shaking his head as if he’d just discovered the dead body of a beloved dog. Watching him, I hadn’t been frightened. And yet here I was now, trying to read my mother’s expression as she chewed grimly on her pipe, my heart drumming a tattoo through my chest. We had left everything — the sheep, the goat, the chickens — and we were walking into darkness. I pulled my father’s coat more tightly around my shoulders, and gave the donkey another whop with my bonnet.

  Ma seemed to think that the laager had moved on toward Standerton, so we followed the sun west across the platteland, keeping our eyes peeled for wagon tracks. When we had been going for almost two hours, Ma decreed that we should set up camp by some bushes that had a good view of the veld. Lindiwe unloaded the heavy iron pot to prepare a brew of red-bush tea, and Gert set about collecting pieces of dry bracken for a fire. My mother passed me a bucket and told me to fetch water from the stream, which lay about half a mile away. All afternoon we had been traveling parallel to it, just as the laager would.

  “Don’t go as far as Samie’s Kloof,” she said. “The khakis might be using it as a lookout. It will be dark in an hour, so make sure you’re back before then.”

  “I’ll go, too,” volunteered Sipho.

  “No,” said my mother. She pointed to the tarpaulin at the back of the carriage. “You’ll help me to create a shelter, Sipho. Gertie isn’t strong enough to plant the stakes.”

  “Yes, nooi.” Sipho lowered his eyes and scurried around to the back of the carriage. My mother shot me a look, which I pretended to ignore as I slung the bucket over one shoulder.

  I reached the stream in no time at all, and realized that our little party, encumbered by the carriage, supplies, three small children, and a geriatric donkey, had moved far more slowly than if I had walked the same distance alone. It occurred to me that if I hurried, I might make it up to Samie’s Kloof in time to find out if the khakis had reached our house. Casting a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure that no one would see me, I dropped the bucket by some rocks in the shallows and crept upstream. Then, keeping to the tree line, I broke into a sprint. I told myself that I was like the solitary sengi shrew, which depends on its speed for survival and can run almost as soon as it is born.

  When I reached the ridge, it soon became clear that I was not the first to have passed this way in recent days. Carriage tracks followed the rutted trail that skirted the Kloof, and the air buzzed with flies hovering around fresh horse droppings. But whoever had come through here hadn’t pitched camp; the convoy of vehicles and people must have been aiming for the group of farms not two miles from where I stood.

  Crouching on all fours, I scrambled up the ridge to the point where the earth evened out and offered a plain view of the valley below. There, just below the horizon, was our whitewashed little house: low-slung and circled by a wire fence, with a line of washing strung out the back and a smattering of wildflowers brightening the parched yard. I lay down, and from here it was possible to make out the movement of several black dots trailing about the porch: Lindiwe’s chickens, almost certainly. And then I realized that what should have been there — the goat that we’d left tethered to its post — wasn’t.

  My thoughts began to race as I noticed more problems with the scene. What had happened to the sheep? Where was the dairy cow we had kept on when Ma sold our herds after Pa died? They should have been in the field, where there was still grazing to be had. I squinted into the distance, wondering if perhaps they had broken rank and fled when they realized that we were not coming back.

  And that was when I saw it: a plume of smoke rising from behind the house like the puff of licorice tobacco that grew out of my mother’s pipe. But this smoke didn’t divide into tendrils, twisting and curling in the breeze; it spread like ink seeping through water, staining the sky black. Seconds later, I smelled something sickly sweet, something rotten: a burning smell, different from wood fire or coal.

  Then I knew what had become of our goat and our sheep and our dairy cow, and my stomach tightened.

  All at once, I felt myself filling up with the desire to yell, to wave my hands and shout at those dumb chickens so that they might make one last, desperate attempt at flight. Go! I wanted to say. Get away from there while you can! Go, Mbaba Mwana. Go and be free!

  But in an instant I realized that the chickens were of little interest to the men who had slaughtered our livestock, the soldiers who even now were dragging our kitchen table through the front door. I watched helplessly as they returned for Ma’s dresser and Pa’s rifle trunk, as well as for all four kitchen chairs, which my father had built himself. Everything went on a pile in the yard. They moved quickly, tossing bags of mealie corn and cured meat through the smashed windows, unscrewing jars of preserves and digging out pieces of fruit with their fingers. One of them came out with an open box that belched clothing, trailing my mother’s stockings and a pair of breeches that belonged to Gert. These they tossed onto the furniture pile. Someone threw my brother’s fiddle at the growing mountain, and I imagined the crack of split wood, the snapping of wire strings.

  Knowing what was to come next, I wanted to turn away — and yet I couldn’t bring myself to move. I watched one of the men light and raise a torch, then set the whole lot on fire. I continued to watch as a second plume of smoke rose higher and higher into the air until it joined with the first one, smearing the sky with the remains of our modest home. I felt myself fill with rage — a fury that made my temples pound and my eyes burn — and still I watched.

  I watched, and I did nothing.

  When I could bear it no longer, I pushed up onto my elbows and began to steer myself back down the ridge — away from the gruesome stench, away from the pitiful destruction and ugly insult to the life my parents had built for us. Don’t look back, I told myself. Remember what happened to Lot’s wife. She looked back, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Don’t look back.

  And then I saw him: a lone figure standing on the periphery of the farm not twenty yards from the edge of the kloof. He must have been supervising the sack of our house without bothering to dirty his own hands. He stood in profile, and I could make out the curve of his mustache, the waxed sweep of black hair.

  Don’t look back.

  It was too late. The soldier turned in my direction and his eyes locked with mine. For a moment we both froze, existing only in each other’s gaze. From where I was, it was just possible to make out the shape of the badge on his jacket — it looked like a leaf — and as I tried to muster the
courage to scream, I focused on that badge, wondering what it meant.

  The soldier squinted up at me, and his mouth opened slightly as if he might have said something to me — not to anyone else, as there was no one near enough to hear him — before steeling his jaw and turning the other way. I waited for him to shout to the others, to raise the alarm — Boer spies on the ridge! Take aim, men! — but he did nothing. For several seconds I waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  And then, the strangest thing of all happened: he looked at me again, and he moved his head as if to say, Go. Go while you can.

  I ran all the way to the campsite, stopping only to fill the bucket, and I didn’t look back once.

  THE GREAT TREK

  Not for the first time, we turned our backs on the world.

  Ma said we were no different from the women and children who had endured the trials of the Great Trek in my grandparents’ day, living by their wits off the earth that God had given them. Like those women and children, we depended on African knowledge to survive. Lindiwe knew which bushes grew leaves that could be stripped and boiled for broth, and which ones were better suited for kindling. Sipho knew how to trace the curve of the Vaal River simply by judging the contours of the yellow sandstone hills. With their knowledge, we could have continued roaming like that for weeks. Ma knew this as well as I, but that didn’t make her grateful: she was far too proud to admit that we would surely have died without their help.

  I once made the mistake of asking Ma if it was true that an African tribe in the Transkei could trace its descent to a white woman. I remembered one of Pa’s friends telling us that European sailors shipwrecked off the Cape centuries ago found they had no choice but to join local clans in order to survive. That’s why sometimes you would hear of Afrikaner children being born the wrong color — throwbacks, they were called — because black blood could be held in store for many generations.

  “Does that mean I could have black blood?” I asked Ma hopefully. “Does that make me properly African, like Sipho?”

  My mother didn’t answer yes or no: she only smacked me for my impudence, and told me to see that Hansie didn’t need changing.

  We’d heard stories of Boer women who had tried to talk their husbands into surrendering, because laager life in wartime was just too hard. “How long did they think we could outlast the khakis?” those women would ask. “The khakis, with their guns and their horses and their endless stream of supplies brought in from all corners of the mighty British Empire?” But in a strange way, my mother seemed to enjoy hardship. She thrived off it. The only story I had ever heard her tell with any pleasure was of the time that old Karel Snyman returned home after becoming separated from his commando in a skirmish. His wife, a battle-ax known to us children as de Bul, had opened the door, taken one look at her husband with an expression of pure disgust, and said, “Back to the front, you coward … and don’t come home without our country’s freedom!”

  Ma would break into howls of laughter at this, but I knew she would have said the same to Pa if he had shirked his duty. Ma took to heart the expected responsibilities of a Boer woman: raising her children in the true faith and staunchly enduring whatever was demanded of her by the men who led us. She was like a mother cheetah, an animal that raises her cubs single-handedly, without any help from a pack. My mother didn’t ask questions, and she expected me to do the same.

  On the third morning, Lindiwe told Ma that we had finished the last of the meat and morogo leaves. The night before, Ma had made potjiekos with some poached chicken that wasn’t going to last another day. The beef wors and biltong were also gone. All that was left was a knot of giblets, a few spices, some mealie flour, and a jar of peaches.

  “We’ll make do,” said Ma. “We’ll have porridge and tea tonight. We’ll catch up with the laager by tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow came and went, and still there was no sign of the laager.

  By the sixth day, we had traveled almost as far as Standerton. Our mule’s distended belly heaved against its rib cage with long, rattling sighs that reminded us of our own hunger. We were all growing tired of the porridge, which seemed to grow thinner at each meal, so when Ma suggested sending Sipho on ahead to barter for supplies in the town, my friend leaped to his feet as fast as a blesbok.

  “Yes, nooi!”

  “Let me go, too,” I said, watching him stalk off.

  “Don’t be silly,” said my mother. Tiny beads of sweat dotted her upper lip, which had tightened into a thin line. “Do you want to give us away? No one will notice a kaffir alone, but if he’s spotted walking into town with a white girl the khakis will seek us out faster than you can blink.” She withdrew a couple of wire hooks from the folds of her skirt and passed them to me. “While Sipho’s gone, you can take your boetie down to the river and catch something for dinner. Collect groundnuts if the fish aren’t biting.”

  “I’m too hot,” said Gert irritably.

  “We can swim in the river,” I told him.

  “You will do no such thing,” Ma snapped. “No dawdling, no games. Either you come back with food for this evening, or you don’t come back at all.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  The land here was greener than the desolate veld we had left behind us. Tiny sugarbirds buzzed over the clusters of pink heather that grew between the rocks on gently sloping koppies. Somewhere in the distance, a lourie bird cried out to its mate.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to pick wild nuts,” mused Gert, concentrating on the ground as he walked a few paces in front of me. The back of his neck had turned brown in the sun, offsetting the fine golden hairs on his nape. “Ma always said we’d get a beating if she found out we’d eaten from the bush. Optelgoed is jakkalspiepie.”

  I allowed myself to smile. How many times had she told us that picked-up things were no better than jackal’s pee? But that had been before we’d become homeless, before foraging had become a way of life. Lindiwe had shown us which plants were poisonous and which ones were safe. Anything we didn’t recognize, we wouldn’t eat.

  We continued in silence, pausing only to watch a goshawk slice between the treetops on its afternoon death-cruise. When we reached the riverbank, I tore off a thread from the hem of my dress and showed Gert how to tie it onto a fishhook. We gathered sticks for rods, and used bright protea leaves for bait. Then we slipped our dry-soled feet into the sparkling water and waited, trying to ignore our growling stomachs.

  “Tell me the story about the sea serpent,” said Gert after a while.

  I thought hard, studying the rippling stream as it tripped and gurgled over the rocks. Neither of us had ever seen the sea. Ma had read to us about the Sea of Galilee in the Bible, and Tant Minna had taught us to color the ocean blue in the maps we drew for geography lessons. Sometimes I would dream that I was standing on a beach, listening to the soft rush of frothing waves, feeling the fresh breeze blow through my hair and the crunch of the salty air between my teeth. Once I had boasted to Gert that I intended to run away and become a lady pirate. He had only laughed, but I knew better; after all, the ocean was wild and free, abounding with possibilities.

  “Not long ago,” I began, “some fishermen discovered a carcass washed up on the shore. They could tell that it had been there for quite a long time, because the bones had bleached in the sun, and most of the skin —”

  “What color was the skin?”

  “Shiny, black-green skin, with whiskers as coarse as elephant hair.” I smiled. “Most of it had dried up completely. One of the men thought it might have been a whale, but they had seen whales before and this wasn’t the right shape. Another man said it might have been a large python, but no one had seen a python of this size before. Then a little boy — the youngest son of one of the fishermen — noticed something very strange …”

  I stared off into the undergrowth on the opposite bank, trying to decide what the little boy could have noticed about the creature. A golden tooth? The remains of some other animal deep inside its be
lly? Something else rising out of the water? And then, just as I had decided on the perfect twist, I saw him.

  The black-haired man.

  He was dragging something through the bush, breathing heavily from the exertion. Noticing my silence, Gert turned to look at me and then followed my gaze. We both watched, too frightened to move, as the soldier lumbered toward us.

  There would have been time to run — the man was on the other side of the riverbank, after all — but the sound of something so heavy being pulled across the ground made a hundred gruesome thoughts rush into my head. Perhaps it was a body — the dead body of a Boer woman whose house had been gutted by the khakis. Or perhaps it was one of our men, a commando who had fallen in battle or been murdered in his sleep. Perhaps the soldier was going to hide the body, or throw it in the river, or worse —

  “Look, Corlie!”

  When the deadweight shape came into view, I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from making any noise.

  It was a springbok — male, judging by the short, thick antlers, but quite young. Its golden tan coat was glossy and smooth, but its white belly was stained with blood. It was difficult to see where the gaping tear ended and the dark brown stripe of fur began, but it was clear that the animal was long dead. The soldier was hauling it by the legs, so the animal’s silky neck lolled to one side. For a brief moment, it seemed to stare at me with one wide, black eye.

  “Come on, Gert,” I whispered. “Be very quiet. Get up, slowly, and follow me …”

  It was too late. As soon as the rustling ceased, I knew that the soldier had seen us. For an instant, the black-haired man looked almost as scared as we felt. Then he smiled, and pointed to the dead springbok.

  “Lions got him,” he said. “He must have been heading down to the river for a drink — just like I was — when they attacked him.” Although I couldn’t understand his words, I knew that he was speaking English.