“I don’t suppose the fact that none of it was my fault makes any difference,” Caz said.
“I was a child. You came and changed everything. That’s all I could see. Later I hated you because you were smart and pretty and didn’t even appreciate it. Just took it for granted. I struggled at school. You barely opened a book, yet you fared well. By the time you went off to university, I had been working in the bakery for seven years.”
“I got a scholarship,” Caz reminded her.
“After Father’s death,” Tieneke continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “I got rid of the bakery, but I still had to look after Mother.”
Hans’s death shortly after Caz found out she was pregnant had been a shock. Neglected diabetes seemed to be the cause, but at the funeral she realized she was also being blamed for Hans’s death.
“No man ever looked my way,” Tieneke interrupted her thoughts. “At the time of Father’s death you, on the other hand, had been married for a few months to a rich, handsome man and you were pregnant as well.”
“Yes, and of course the marriage had a fairy-tale ending.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth.
Tieneke switched on the kettle that had switched itself off some time ago.
“You had everything a woman could dream of—especially an old maid like me. And you threw it away. Why didn’t you just admit you were raped? They would have come to terms with it.”
Caz breathed deeply to try to remain calm. “And allow them to send away my child? Over my dead body.”
Tieneke gave her a pensive look. “That’s why I hate you most. You gave up a wonderful life in the lap of luxury and the love of a handsome man for a life of hardship with your child. Despite all the foreseeable consequences, you did the ‘right’ thing.”
Caz shook her head. “A mother doesn’t think of right and wrong, of rich and poor. A mother thinks only of what would be best for her child. I couldn’t accept that the best thing for Lilah would be to be sent abroad and raised by strangers.” That had been Andries’s solution. Of course Hentie had agreed. She never found out what Magdel had thought.
Tieneke gave a derisive chuckle. “Are you telling me Ammie Pauwels was thinking of her child’s welfare?”
Caz was silent for a long time. “Maybe she thought she was doing the right thing.”
“But she wasn’t, was she?”
“Evidently not. Goodnight, Tieneke, never mind the tea.” The walk up the stairs to the attic was a long, wearisome journey. Physically and mentally. She had been bartered for a few uncut diamonds. Wow. She supposed it could have been worse. Like being betrayed for thirty pieces of silver.
Ten
Erevu
Ghent
It was the second night he couldn’t sleep. But not because of the hard mattress in this miserable place where he had been staying for a while. The excitement was too much. For so long he had simply kept going. Trusted they would be successful—one day. That Yeshua would show him mercy. That Motetela would look after his descendant. And now it looked as if he was on the brink of success. As if “one day” had finally arrived.
He realized now that he had been a doubting Thomas. No longer.
The nkísi would give him the power he needed. Not only the power the nganga had invested them with, not only the forces activated in them to protect him and make him prosper. The scarification on the nkísi depicted his family tree, provided clear evidence that he was a direct descendant of Motetela.
This proof, together with Yeshua’s order-creating commandments and the purification processes advocated by Alice Auma, would make him the ruler of the Congo and from there his influence would spread to the rest of Africa. And further.
And the spirit of his ancestor, N’Gongo Leteta, would be with him. Gongo, who had been tied up by white people and fired at all day without being injured. It was only when the traitors called in a Luba magician that they could kill him. And only because the man told them to take Gongo’s nkísi from him and shoot him in the ear.
Like Gongo, he would be impervious to bullets, because he would have the power of the nkísi and his ancestors behind him. The blessing of Yeshua. The wisdom of Alice Auma.
He wondered whether the woman he was renting this room from would remember—when his success became known—that for a week or two she had harbored the mightiest African leader in the memory of mankind.
Would she still look at him with such disdain? So clearly consider him her inferior?
Perhaps he should not judge her so harshly. In her presence he played the role of a humble man from Africa.
She’d been reluctant at first to rent him the room. She was suspicious, but only until Jela transferred the money for a full month’s rental. Amazing what people were prepared to do for money.
But she had still put him in the attic, charging him the same rent as for the other two much more comfortable rooms in the tall, narrow house. Even though both rooms were vacant when he arrived. Dove had offered him his room when he moved in this afternoon, but it suited him up here.
Maybe the roof amplified the sounds, for a while ago he had heard movement on the other side of the dividing wall between him and the house next door, where the woman had put her so-called sister.
He wondered if Cassandra Colijn knew her sister owned the neighboring house and rented out the rooms.
To think that only a wall was separating him from the woman who was going to help him assure his future. His own and that of the Congo.
Ammie
Leuven
Today the hours were melting into each other.
She kept dozing off. Her dreams were filled with tropical images.
During her waking moments memories assailed her, taking her back to that dilapidated hovel in the cité indigène.
The morning of her departure she discovered another reason why César would not allow her to live.
March 1961
Ammie
Katanga
Before daybreak Tabia helped Ammie put the canvas bag she had packed for her on her back. Two big portions of fufu—the doughy dish made of cassava and wrapped in banana leaves—and a bunch of bananas were her rations for the road. What she would live on when they were depleted remained to be seen.
“I did not want to tell you, but you must know. My brother’s child also find this.” Tabia held out a document. “Aron is a clever boy. He can read and write.”
Ammie took the paper and read by the light of the candle. She had to read it three times before she realized what she was holding.
“My death certificate?” She looked at Tabia, mystified.
“The date is day after he try to kill you.”
“I see that. Also that some doctor signed it and said I died of multiple injuries sustained during a riot.” Slowly the implications got through to her.
There would be a copy of the certificate. It would have been submitted to the relevant authorities.
She no longer existed. Not here, nor in Belgium. She was standing here in the early morning darkness, breathing, but she was dead. Born in Antwerp, died in Elisabethville. Rest in peace. Live in hell.
Taking leave of Tabia was not an emotional moment. Fear dominated all other emotions Ammie could possibly feel and Tabia was clearly relieved that her duty as a Samaritan was over. In the end they remained two women from two totally different worlds.
“Go well,” Tabia said.
“You know I’m grateful. Very grateful.”
Tabia nodded.
Ammie hesitated, then asked. “Why? Really.”
“You know.” Tabia looked her in the eye. Challenged her. Rubbed her extended belly pointedly.
The truth dawned on Ammie. It didn’t shock her as much as she would have thought.
“You go well too. I wish you the best.” Even though you are carrying my la
wful husband’s child. Even though the child was obviously fathered before he found out about Elijah and not meant as punishment for me. You were César’s whore, for who knows how long.
That was how Tabia had known where César lived. Tabia had probably lain with him in the house Ammie had considered hers. But how Tabia had found out about the uncut diamonds was a mystery. César would not have told her. Had Tabia or one of her relatives spied on him? Spied on them both? The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
The irony was blatant. César’s whore saved the life of César’s whoring wife. Not for Elijah’s sake after all, but out of hatred for César. Because he had rejected Tabia when she had fallen pregnant and robbed her and her family of an income.
That was the greatest irony. César had tried to kill her, but indirectly he was responsible for the fact that Ammie was still alive. Despite the death certificate issued for her.
Caz
Ghent
Had she done Lilah a disservice by defying Andries Maritz? Caz wondered as she tried to get comfortable in her bed.
Yes, Lilah was a lovely young woman. Yes, she was super successful. But wouldn’t she have been that anyway? Just achieved it more easily?
Possibly. But in the days following the birth, Caz had firmly believed she was doing the right thing for herself and her child. In the midst of her despair, she had known she was choosing a hard road. Just not how hard.
Though she often wondered in those first few months of her marriage whether she had made a mistake, there were good things besides the frustrations.
The Maritzes had been popular people in the district. Andries was a well-respected man and Magdel a queen bee. The farming community had welcomed Caz as the newest member of the Afrikaner elite, even though there were envious looks from a number of young girls. Hentie had been regarded as quite a catch.
For the first time in her life she began to feel she belonged, even though it was as Hentie’s wife, and Andries and Magdel’s daughter-in-law, and not in her own right. She eagerly soaked up the Afrikaner identity that she’d inherited from the Maritzes. Before, she had been neither Belgian nor Dutch, and had not felt herself to be properly South African either.
There was much that she questioned about the Afrikaners, but having to forfeit her opinions in order to belong seemed a small price to pay. Besides, she’d never had very strong opinions. At least not at first.
Andries was a true Afrikaner and until that year he had been a staunch Nationalist. The year 1983 was a year of landmines and car bombs. Arson too, at Pelindaba and elsewhere. Farmers beyond the Soutpansberg drove around in bombproof pick-ups, especially on the road next to the new border fences on the near side of the Limpopo River. In shopping centres countrywide every handbag was inspected, and customers were body-searched for safety reasons.
When Prime Minister P.W. Botha announced he was going to ask the nation for a mandate to institute measures of reform and power sharing, Andries joined the Conservative Party, though he had no time for either of its kingpins. Power sharing was not an option. Whites ruled over everyone who wasn’t white, and that was the end of it.
Yet Andries treated his farm workers well. For those days, anyway. No one went hungry. Staple food was provided, they could grow their own maize and occasionally he shot an impala and shared out the meat. On Sundays there was a church service in an old barn. Andries called at their huts on a regular basis to bully the people into relatively orderly living conditions but also to find out whether they had any problems.
Magdel did a lot for the women. She helped with nearly every childbirth. She nursed the sick, brought them medicine and made sure hygienic standards were kept up.
She taught the women to knit and after a while launched a project providing the children of the district with sweaters. Which was slightly ironic, because in the far north day temperatures below thirty degrees Celsius were rare and considered cool. In winter the temperature could plummet at night, but it seldom went below ten degrees. By that time the children were in bed, snug under blankets provided by Andries and Magdel.
All was well in Andries’s kingdom. And when Hentie, after they had paid a secret visit to the gynaecologist in Louis Trichardt, announced that their honeymoon had yielded a profit, everyone was overjoyed.
An heir was on its way. A boy would be first prize, but a girl was also good. Time was on their side, after all. Sandra was young and had good hips and full breasts that could provide for many children. She was indeed an excellent incubator.
When Magdel thawed out in the joy of the moment and confessed to Caz that now she could at last stop feeling guilty for having given Andries only one son, Caz understood why Hentie had had to take a wife whose fertility seemed beyond question.
Andries arranged an ox braai and just about everyone in the Soutpansberg district was invited. Whites only, of course. Caz didn’t have much part in the celebration. The aroma of barbecuing meat confined her to the bathroom.
But for the first time in her life she had made someone proud. Andries was even prouder than Hentie.
Caz realized she would have to think wider than herself and Hentie and the marriage she had dreamed of for them. She would have to close her eyes to Hentie’s inability to stand up to his father and her own growing anxiety about what being an Afrikaner might ask of her. She had to consider her child’s future. As a Maritz, it was bound to be a bright one.
Hans’s unexpected death when she was five months pregnant came as a shock. Hentie took her to Pretoria, where they stayed at a hotel. Every morning Hentie dropped her at the Meyerspark house. In the evenings he fetched her without being invited in. Fien’s insinuation that the tension caused by Caz and her in-laws had contributed to Hans’s premature death was hurtful. But she would shake it off, once she was back at Liefenleed. Life went on.
Back in the north, Caz settled in and gradually began to feel more at home. Once the baby arrived, she thought, the last few irritations would disappear. As a mother, she would be too busy to pay attention to Andries’s quirks, Hentie’s servile attitude towards his father and Magdel’s silences. She would also have more bargaining power, especially if the baby was a boy. Maybe she could even convince Andries that she and Hentie should have their own home. A baby would complicate their present living arrangements.
Rain was scarce in the remote bushveld, but on the afternoon of October the eighth there was a heavy thunderstorm. A cloudburst. Within minutes the dirt roads were impassable. The storm blew over, but the rain kept pouring down.
At seven that evening Caz’s waters broke. By that time the Nzhelele River was in flood and so were the tributaries that were usually nothing but sandy riverbeds. The farm was cut off from the outside world. There was no other way; the baby would have to be born on the farm.
Caz wasn’t worried about where the birth would take place—Magdel was an experienced midwife, after all. But she was afraid of giving birth. It seemed impossible for a child to be squeezed all the way through her pelvis—good hips or not.
But the hips proved to be good after all. The labor went as smoothly as was possible with a first delivery. Just before twelve the baby slipped out, wet and miserable-looking, at the very moment the rain stopped rattling on the tin roof.
The silence was deafening. Magdel looked at her grandchild, horror-struck. She thrust her into Caz’s arms and fled the room. Exhausted as she was, Caz was the one who had to help the baby take its first breath.
The muscles in Caz’s chest contracted as always happened when she remembered that night. A night that should have brought a double blessing. Good rains and the birth of a first grandchild at Liefenleed.
But the rain did huge damage when a dam wall broke in the early hours, and the heir was not only unwanted, but an abomination in the eyes of her grandfather. She saw that in Hentie’s eyes, she was guilty of the worst betrayal a woman could commit. Especially an Afri
kaner woman.
Ammie
Leuven
Ammie wasn’t sure whether she had woken up and remembered or whether she’d been dreaming. She was no longer in her dark bedroom in the early hours of morning. Neither was she in Katanga. She was back in that awful suburban house in Pretoria, with its smell of boiled cabbage and burned rice, the night her waters broke.
She had been dreading the birth, but she also felt relieved that the time had come. At last she would know whether she would love or hate the child.
During her flight she had endured a lot. She and Aron had lived in permanent fear. They’d had to trust complete strangers. Mostly it had worked out, but sometimes not. The shelter they could find was mostly in appalling locations. Hunger and thirst were their constant companions. It was a miracle that she hadn’t lost the child during their journey.
She didn’t remember the details. One day merged into the next. By the time she arrived at the Colijns, the journey was shrouded in a haze of suffering.
What she did remember about those terrifying days was the inner conflict she endured. On a physical level she had fled so that César could not get hold of her. On an emotional level she hovered between fear that she wouldn’t survive and fear that she would, only to find out that César was the baby’s father.
That night she realized that the moment of truth had arrived.
Fien handed her the prepacked suitcase and Hans took her to hospital.
The night was endless. It was a difficult delivery. Much more difficult than the first one. Probably because of internal injuries caused by César—as Tabia had predicted. At last the doctors decided on an emergency Caesarian section, followed by a hysterectomy.
The pain and discomfort when at last she regained consciousness after the operation, the utter exhaustion and empty feeling faded before her eagerness to see the child.
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