The Other Side of Silence

by Andre Brink

“Are you all right?” whispers Katja after he has left them.

  Closing her eyes in the dark, Hanna nods. No need to upset the girl; not now. And she cannot use sign language in the dark.

  After a while, from behind the curtain closing off the bedroom, the moaning sounds resume. God is truly being served assiduously tonight.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Three

  She is hiding, as she so often does, knowing she may be punished for it – not just for slipping out of the orphanage, but especially for coming to this ungodly, Catholic, place of worship – in a dark corner off the cathedral nave, to listen to the organist practising. Here she can be alone with the music which reverberates through the dark space of the high building, shuddering in the walls, trembling in the wood, causing the small flames of the votive candles to quiver as if caught in an invisible draught. Sometimes it almost dies down to a whisper, then gathers itself again and swells, increases, grows like a wave rearing up in an ocean without end, and breaks right over her. The whole cathedral loses shape and substance, everything becomes pure sound, a vastness in which she completely loses herself, dissolving into music. And it is not just her ears which hear the sound: through every pore of her body it enters, permeating and transforming everything. All is sound, a booming, thundering roar too great to fathom, a terrible cleansing. And when at last it recedes, she is left shivering against the wall, her face wet with tears even though she never realised she was crying; and between her thighs another wetness she has never felt before, and which must come from the deepest secret places of herself. This, she knows, is the sound of which she can hear only a whisper in the silence of a shell. If this is God, she will believe in him.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Four

  They are taken on a small tour of the mission station. Among other things, it clears up the mystery of the wall. It is a monument to Gottlieb Maier’s belief in the redeeming power of work. For thirteen years now, he explains with evident pride, ever since he first arrived to take up his post at the station, the male members of his flock have been devoting all their physical energy – for they are a lazy, stupid, brutal breed in need of discipline – to the construction of this noble enterprise. Almost two metres high, it circles the small settlement and then heads into the desert, due north, dead straight as me narrow road to heaven. For kilometres on end it runs towards a horizon it will never reach, growing ever smaller in the distance, stone balanced upon stone, all of them collected by the labourers – initially, the missionary points out, lugged from the koppies in the immediate vicinity, but from farther and farther away as the work has progressed through the years. Big ones, medium-sized ones, small ones, no stone is left unturned; each finds its place in the large scheme of the thing. Every day a few centimetres are added in height or length; at the end of every week the progress is measured and compared to the achievements of the past. No man is spared, except the very old and sick; and even those are expected to contribute their slow and humble bit to the service of the Lord.

  But why? Hanna asks him, through Katja. What is it for?

  The missionary gives her a puzzled look. “It keeps them busy,” he says.

  I can understand the wall around the settlement… she perseveres.

  “Indeed,” he interrupts approvingly. “We must keep Africa out.”

  …but this…? She gestures into the distance.

  “It is not for us to enquire into the mysterious ways of God,” he says with a touch of admonition.

  But this is not God, she protests. It is you.

  “I am here to do his work,” he says, finality in his tone. “Even more so in dangerous and difficult times like these.”

  What news is there about the war? Hanna makes Katja ask.

  “We are so far away from it all,” he says. “Who can ever be sure? There are so many rumours. Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour, in the words of the prophet Ezekiel. Should you ask me about the end, I will tell you that it is nigh. These are for sure the last days, of which Saint Mark says, For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.”

  “But there must be news, from time to time,” says Katja.

  “There are small military patrols who pass this way and that,” he agrees, “and sometimes they bring us up to date. It seems that since General von Trotha took over the command two years ago from that well-meaning but weak man Leutwein, he destroyed the power of the Hereros in the north.”

  “That much we know,” Katja interrupts.

  But he launches forth as if he hasn’t heard her. “To my everlasting shame I must admit that many of my own brethren, misguided pastors of me Rhenish mission, took up the cause of the Hereros. But God soon showed which side he was really on. And then, as you may also know, the great man, von Trotha, like a scourge of heaven, moved south and broke the back of the Namas. You may have heard of the battles of Naris, and Gochas, and Vaalgras. Ever since that incarnation of Evil, Hendrik Witbooi, was killed last October, we have been making massive progress. Glory be to God. What a pity the uninformed authorities in Berlin decided to recall von Trotha before he could clean it all up. His successor, Dame, is not cut from the same stern cloth. As a result, there are still pockets of resistance and violence keeps flaring up here, there and everywhere; there are still agents of Satan abroad among the Namas, men like Cornelius and Fielding and Morenga. But with the help of God we are on the road to victory. Large parts of the country have already been pacified and more and more of the godless are rounded up in concentration camps.” He sighs. “A sad, sad time, and we must remain vigilant. Did not Saint Luke tell us to watch therefore, and pray always, that we may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man?”

  “The country seemed a wasteland all the way we came,” says Katja. “All the villages have been burnt down.”

  “The army is doing the work of the Lord,” he assures her. “That is not something a girl like you should be concerned about. Here in the desert we are safe.” His eyes rest probingly on her face; but men, as if he has caught himself in an indiscretion, he becomes businesslike, excusing himself in a hurry. “I have to go. Some of the workers over there are malingering. They have to be seen to. The Lord does not brook shoddiness.”

  In the meantime, in the church, as she does every day, Gisela Maier teaches the children. It goes on, they learn, all morning, a diankless, near-impossible task, as she tries to inculcate the elements of reading and writing into a hundred swarming, sweating children ranging in age from toddlers to youngsters of eighteen or twenty. The noise is enough to produce a permanent headache in whoever tries to control it. (From time to time the Reverend Maier does, unexpectedly, darken the doorway, randomly hauls out a few pupils, large, medium-sized and small, and thrashes the hell out of them by way of warning. But the ensuing silence seldom lasts long.)

  In the afternoons, this time mercifully assisted by a few helpers who have already assimilated some skills, Gisela gathers the women together under the wide umbrella of a camelthorn tree to teach them some useful industry: crocheting doilies, embroidering cloths, knitting tea-cosies. It is worse than Frauenstein, thinks Hanna. It makes her stomach turn. Katja can barely restrain a fit of giggles, but she composes herself very hurriedly when the missionary appears with the long stiff-legged strides of a gompou.

  “Interesting?” he asks benignly. “My wife has been working very diligently with these uncouth people, teaching them to perform their humble female skills in the service of the Almighty. It may not amount to much, it is of course not directly concerned with the saving of souls, but at least they keep the saved souls occupied. In its own small way, we believe, a woman’s work is honourable in the eyes of the Lord.” Briefly, he puts a long bony hand on the girl’s shoulder in what purports to be a fatherly gesture. Only for a moment i
s it perched there, a large pale spider; then, as if scared by what he sees, he hurriedly drops it, vigorously shaking the fingers as if to rid them of some invisible pollution.

  Hanna is quick to notice. She doesn’t understand what is happening inside her, this welter of suspicions ever since they arrived at the station, a possessiveness about Katja she has not felt before. She tries to persuade herself that the missionary can have no hidden motives, acts purely from altruism, concern and love; that the deviousness and perversity reside in her own mind. Whatever it is, she brusquely takes Katja by the arm and leads her elsewhere.

  “What’s the matter?” asks the girl.

  I want you to be careful of that man.

  “He reminds me of my father,” says Katja simply. “This is so much like the place where I grew up, Hanna. It feels like home.”

  Hanna tries to control the indignation she feels. You don’t understand, she tells her. I’m sure your father was different. You must keep your eyes open. You are so very young, Katja. For heaven’s sake, be careful.

  “I don’t think you’re being fair,” protests the girl.

  Are you with me, or with him?

  “Why must I choose?” asks Katja. There is more rebelliousness in her than Hanna has encountered before; and it scares her. “Of course I’m with you. You were the only one who cared about me when I came to Frauenstein.” She is pleading now. “I ran away into the desert with you, remember. I don’t even know where you’re taking me, but it doesn’t matter, I trust you. But what I feel about this place…Perhaps you cannot understand it, Hanna. Please try. For me first time since my parents and my brothers died, and Gertrud and I…” She stops, trembling. “It really is like coming home again. Almost every single night since the killers came I’ve had nightmares. Blood everywhere. And men shouting and hacking people to pieces. Here I feel I can sleep again.”

  All I’m trying to say… Hanna tries again, aware of a headache beginning to throb in her temples.

  But they are interrupted. It is Gisela Maier. She approaches and sits down, unbidden, on a low pile of chopped wood.

  “Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asks. Her face is wan. Loose strands of hair cling wetly to her cheeks; whether it is from sweat or tears is hard to make out.

  You’ve had a busy day, says Hanna through Katja.

  Gisela doesn’t react.

  “You’re working even harder than we used to,” says Katja of her own accord. “My father’s trading post was also a place where people came for all kinds of help. They kept us busy all the time.”

  Gisela casts a weary look at her. “No wonder you ran away.”

  “I did not run away! He was murdered. They killed all the men.”

  For a moment Gisela does not respond. Then she asks, with flat, tired resentment in her voice, “What possesses people to come to a place like this?”

  “Answering the call of God?” suggests Katja.

  “There is no God,” says Gisela flatly. It sounds, thinks Hanna, like someone saying to a begging child, There is no bread.

  Then what are you doing here? Hanna prompts Katja to ask.

  “Do I have a choice?” She makes an effort to control her voice. Quite unexpectedly a flood of words break out, as if they have been damming inside her for a long time. “Gottlieb was a different kind of man when we first met in Dresden, fifteen years ago. It was only after his family was wiped out…” She pauses. “They were on a boat on the Elbe. He and his parents and his two sisters. There was a storm, a sudden squall. I would have been there too, but my mother was ill and I stayed to look after her. And then the boat capsized and they were all gone. Gottlieb thought he was also going to drown. He started praying. He’d never been a particularly religious person. It was that experience that changed him. You see, he promised God that if he got out of it alive he’d devote the rest of his life to the work of the Lord. I was a teacher before we got married, I taught history, and when he said he would be going to Africa I was excited at first, I thought it could be interesting, I could find out things about the past…” She shakes her head slowly. “But when we came here he didn’t allow me to do anything except keep the house and look after the children. And anyway, the way we live here we’re cut off from history, from everything. All that matters to him is to keep his vow.” A deep sigh. “I suppose I cannot blame him.” She rests her chin on her two hands clenched together, stares into the monochrome distance. “But I hate that God of his. Sometimes I hate him so much I almost think he must be real. But I’m not granted even that small satisfaction.” She takes a deep breath. “For Gottlieb it is no problem. At least he had a choice. I was never given any.”

  Not one of us has had much choice, Hanna reminds her through Katja. Not me, not Katja either.

  “But now you are free to go as you wish.”

  I am not yet free, Hanna conveys to her.

  “What do you mean?”

  Hanna just shakes her head.

  “When are you leaving?” Gisela presses her.

  As soon as we have rested.

  “If only I could go away with you.” She shakes her head; the ends of her straggly hair swing past her chin. “But what do I do with the children? If they stay with Gottlieb, God knows what will happen to them.”

  “I’m sure he is a good father,” says Katja impulsively.

  “What do you know?” Gisela says with listless reproach. “If only they were not all girls. This is no land for women.”

  It does not mean we can let the men have their way, Hanna makes Katja say. A difficult sentence to convey; but by now Katja knows how to round off with canny intuition the gaps of grammar.

  “Anything must be better than staying here,” Gisela insists with a kind of numb stubbornness.

  If you knew what we’re going to do… Hanna shakes her head. If we ourselves could tell… She looks straight at Gisela, her fingers digging into Katja’s arm with urgency. For all we know there may be no end to the bloodshed. There is the hint of a grim little smile around her misshapen mouth. But at least no one will stop us.

  A long shadow falls over them; the pastor approaches with the sun directly behind him. They all look up, Hanna grimly, Katja with an energy of expectation, Gisela with apprehension.

  “What are the ladies engaged in? Woman talk?” asks the Reverend Maier with as much dour lightness as he can muster. “Well, enough of frivolity. Let our minds not wander too far from the things of the Lord. It is time for the service. Shall we go and set an example to the poor heathens?”

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Forty-Five

  Once again Hanna slips outside into the night to escape the oppressive closeness of the narrow house. This time, as a precaution, and suspecting that Katja is also lying awake, she takes the girl with her, mindful not to disturb any of the sleeping children. It is another night ablaze with stars. And again Kahapa looms up from the blackness; perhaps, it occurs to Hanna, he stays close to the house all the time to keep an eye on them. The thought is singularly reassuring.

  “What are you doing here?” asks Katja, surprised.

  “I wait for you.”

  Hanna moves her fingers on Katja’s forearm: He thinks this is a bad place.

  “It is a good place!” Katja objects.

  “You are white. For black people it is not good.” He adds with a vehemence he has not showed before: “This land is a good place before the white people is come. Then we live everywhere, with all our cattle.”

  “You said once your people also came from a far country,” Katja reminds him. “And not all white people are the same, you know.”

  He utters a guttural sound of contempt. Ignoring everything they have said so far, and with an eloquence he has seldom demonstrated before, he launches into a story. Long, long ago, he recalls, in the time when there were no people in the world, there was only the omumborumbonga tree in the middle of the world, at Okahandja. Then the god of the heavens, Njambi Karunga, came to the omumborumbonga
tree and he called the first man and the first woman from the hollow of the tree. The man was Mukuru and the woman was Kamungundu. The cattle also came from that tree. Mukuru and Kamungundu slept together and they slept together, and all the Herero people came from them, the god’s elect. And when their children grew up, they sacrificed an ox to the god. One of the women took the black liver of the ox for her family and from it came the other black people, the Ovambo and the Ovatyaona. And another woman took the blood of that ox, and from it came the Red People, the Nama. But the sheep and goats the god Njambi Karunga called from underneath a big flat rock. There was a bad Herero girl who ran away from her people and lay down on the flat rock to copulate with it, and from her cunt came the baboons and the Damaras.

  Through the shimmering darkness Kahapa looks at them. “So you see, there is no place for white people here. They come from another place and just make trouble for everybody.”

  “This is not the same story you told us last time, about how your people came here,” Katja reminds him. “About the two brothers at the big tree.”

  Kahapa shrugs in the dark. “We have many stories,” he says, unfazed. “And they are all true. You must learn to listen right. What I tell you this time is about the trouble the white people bring. Even among themselves. Look what they do to Hanna. Look at that Albert Gruber. Look at the white people of this place.”

  “There is nothing wrong with these people,” Katja protests.

  “A father who only touch his children to beat them is a bad father,” he says calmly.

  “Kahapa!” cries Katja, flustered and angry. “How can you say a thing like that?”

  “You do not see how unhappy his whole family is?”

  Katja turns to Hanna: “Tell him it isn’t his fault, Hanna.”

  I’m afraid I believe Kahapa, Hanna signals against the skin of her arm.

  “You, Hanna,” says Kahapa. “I understand what you must do in this land. You do what I do to the man that kill my woman. I walk with you. But when it is done you must go back to your home.”