The Other Side of Silence

by Andre Brink

  Not only sounds does she recall. Smells too. The smells of the orphanage – sauerkraut, leeks, potatoes, fish heads steaming in a pot. So much later, the smells of the sea, of Lotte’s hair, of Lotte’s love. The tobacco and stale sweat in the office at Swakopmund. The cellary smells of Frauenstein, of mustiness and ghosts and dry rot, of women menstruating. And then the smells of Africa, its dryness and its acrid shrubs, its bitter aloes, its veldfire smoke, the sudden generosity of its rain, Tookwi’s rain, the good god Tsui-Goab’s rain, sometimes female and gentle, sometimes fierce and devastating and male.

  And tastes. Carrots stolen from the orphanage garden, small gritty lumps of mud still clinging to them. Stew in Fraulein Braunschweig’s cosy kitchen. Kassler ribs with Opa and Oma. Salted pork on the ship, and the tang of sea-spray on the equator. The bitter, healing concoctions of the wise old woman Taras. The thin broth of the parsonage at the mission station. The taste of rain, of an ostrich egg, of a strip of roasted springbok meat, a locust.

  Yes, and textures. The polished wood of the desk in the Herrenzimmer. The pockmarked column against which she presses her face when she hides in the cathedral to listen to the organ. The smoothness of a chess piece, ebony or ivory, between her fingers. The stone bannisters in Frauenstein. The eroded surface of the rock formation in the shape of a woman forever trying to look back. The coarseness of desert sand, the silkiness of an aloe leaf. The powdery dust of a skin shed by a snake.

  Sight, then. The beads of perspiration on Pastor Ulrich’s upper lip. Frau Agathe’s sewed-on button eyes. Frau Knesebeck’s fowl-arse mouth. Cobblestones in Bremen glistening in the rain. A bleeding sunset. The pale wash of the squat little church at the mission. The hat perched on Kahapa’s head. The skinny girls of the missionary. A fort erupting spectacularly in flames. The slow, unstoppable progress of a tortoise in the veld. The smooth porcelain of a chipped figurine – a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster – displayed on a crude matchbox dresser at the church Messe.

  All the memories subsumed in her many deaths. The vaguely remembered blackness from which she first awoke in me Hutfilterstrasse, knowing there must have been something before it, without ever retrieving more than ragged ends trailing off, back into the dark. The peat-cellar below the orphanage. The bitter pills she took after old Opa’s quiet death. Lotte changing places with herself. The night on the train, watching the buckled belts come off. Her fall – her jump? – from the wagon on the road to Frauenstein. Succumbing to exposure in the desert. Hurling herself from the wall of the fort. Followed every time by a return to life, because there was still unfinished business to assume.

  Her years in the Little Children of Jesus: wetting her bed, caught out on lies or her many ‘stories’, running back to her imaginary friends, to the moon or the place where the wind comes from; beatings, beatings, beatings. Her first bleeding, I think you’re growing into a woman, says Fraulein Braunschweig who gives her cloths and books. Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Her years in service: Herr Dieter depositing the small pile of coins on the corner of his desk, the list of sins in Frau Hildegarde’s spidery handwriting. Herr Ludwig’s face in the light of the lamp. Opa’s fabulous instrument that makes no sound. Frau Sprandel behind the long table with the dusty light from behind: As long as you don’t expect too much of your palm trees. And the sea voyage with the silvery flying fishes and the phosphorescent water and the swell sighing in its equatorial sleep, and Lotte’s breathing in her ear, her body wrapped in canvas and tipped into the black waves. The man to whom she is assigned in the drab office at Swakopmund, his narrow head, his broad hands, his rasping voice: All it takes is a little firmness. There are ways and means. Then the men with the knives and the belts and the rough wedge of wood. The swaying and jolting of the wagon. Waking up among the Namas with their herbs and stories. A whole land, a whole continent of stories. The beautiful vain woman Xurisib, the Milky Way of Tsui-Goab. The omumborumbonga tree from which the first man and the first woman emerged. Frauenstein with its hidden fountain where a body lies buried, restored to bone by now. Frauenstein with its ribbed dunes of sand invading the lower rooms, its mottled mirrors and dark empty spaces, its barren women. Her attempts to write her story for Frau Knesebeck, to find someone who will read it, going up in flames. So much has gone up in flames these last months. And then that night after the clamour and cavorting of the military men had died down, the thud-thud-thud of a head dragged down the stone stairs, Katja cowering naked in a corner. The truth of her own face, her body, for the first time in years, in the mirror, by candlelight. This once she must look and not avoid anything. Then out towards the emptiness outside, and the voice behind her saying, Where are you going? Oh God, little Katja. Could you ever have suspected what would happen? Those early days, living on tsammas and tortoises and roots and sometimes honey. The vultures circling over the anthill with Kahapa’s mutilated body. The German way. The rage of Albert Gruber, the unmarked grave enclosing the bones of a woman who once played the piano. The pitiful little oasis of the mission station, the prayers in the church, the stifling nights in the parsonage, the tiny coffin deposited in the much-too-shallow grave. She reviews her troops. The mighty Kahapa who feared no man and held her in his arms and then was flayed alive. Himba the wounded warrior who stormed a fort on his own and drew all the fire on himself. Kamma who dispensed life and death with her potions. The sad monkey T’Kamkhab and his smouldering wife, playthings of an occupying army. Tookwi who brought rain when they needed it, a merciful rain-cow followed by the mad rage of a rain-bull. The woman of death, Koo, who never found the bones of her child and did not even leave her own behind. And Gisela with her beaked face, her dead eyes, briefly thriving on violence before it all became too much for her.

  Leaving only Katja with her. Katja who was smitten with her beautiful Werner and made love to him with her shoes on, and killed him, and now bears his child. Oh my Katja, my little girl, my resurrected Lotte, my own young long-haired self. “How far do we go on? Until what happens?” Until we know what is on the other side. “Suppose it never ends?” Then at least we’ll know the desert.

  All of it, all this life, written on her body, in her blood, all of it gathered around a hate that is perhaps no longer adequate, reduced to – what? Her silent self sitting here on the corner of a wide stoep deserted of people, a stoep across which generations of women have passed towards their own versions of palm trees in the sun. Who will ever know about them? Who knows about her? One woman against the whole German Reich, against the world. Katja, Katja. Will you ever understand? Will I ever understand? To be mad in this place is the only sanity.

  ∨ The Other Side of Silence ∧

  Seventy-One

  She is still sitting there when Katja returns in the late afternoon.

  “We must go and find something to eat,” says the young woman. “You must be exhausted.”

  She just shakes her head. The grimace of her slashed mouth shows that she is smiling.

  Did you find out something?

  Katja is silent. Hanna knows what the answer will be: The man returned to Germany years ago. Or perhaps: No one remembers him any more. When I ask about Hauptmann Heinrich Bohlke they just shake their heads.

  But that is not what Katja says. She sits down next to Hanna and takes one of her hands in both of hers, and says, “Yes. I found him. I spoke to him. He will see you tomorrow.”

  How in God’s name did you do that?

  Katja shrugs. “I spoke to some soldiers. They sent me to others, to higher officers. In the end I was taken to the military headquarters. I told them I’m the daughter of Hauptmann Bohlke’s sister, I’ve just arrived from Hamburg, I have a message for him.”

  But how come they believed you?

  “Men are so gullible, especially I think in a dry land,” Katja says simply. And then tosses her long hair back, and smiles. In spite of the paleness of her face, her hollow cheeks, there is a radiance about her which hits Hanna like a stab. She has seen it before, she has lived w
ith this young person for so long now, they have shared so much; and yet she continues to be surprised by her.

  And you say tomorrow…?

  “In the morning. At ten o’clock. I told him I’d bring someone with me. A woman he hasn’t seen for years and who has travelled a very long way to see him. You can’t imagine how intrigued he was.”

  As Katja puts out her hands to pull Hanna up from the stoep a man approaches. He is pushing a rickety wheelbarrow piled high with dried animal skins. A small vervet monkey with an ancient wizened black face is perched on top. When the man notices the women he stops to raise a jaunty little Tyrolean hat from his unkempt grey hair, an incongruous sight in the late dusty glare of the African sun.

  “Guten Tag, meine Damen.”

  Katja gives a diffident nod; Hanna does not respond. She just takes Katja’s arm and prepares to stalk off.

  “You must have been walking a long way,” he remarks, wiping sweat from his face with a cuff. His face looks tired, his clothes tidy but worn – wide moleskin trousers, corduroy jacket – but in contrast with his hangdog appearance his brown boots are immaculately polished, and there is an almost boyish twinkle in the eyes set deeply under the very bushy eyebrows.

  Hanna tugs at Katja, but the young woman, clearly intrigued by the man’s appearance, stops to challenge him: “What makes you think we’ve been walking far?”

  Replacing his merry little hat, he points: “Your shoes. They look terrible.”

  “You’re very observant,” says Katja.

  “It’s my job. I’m a shoemaker. The best in Windhoek.”

  “You seem very sure of yourself.”

  “It’s because I’m the only one around, that’s why.” He takes off his hat again and makes a bow before them. “Siggi Fischer,” he says, “at your ladies’ service.”

  Hanna rapidly conveys something to Katja, who translates, “Thank you, Herr Fischer, but we have to go.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?” he asks.

  “No, but…” begins Katja, but Hanna pulls her away.

  “You both look tired, if I may say so,” interposes Siggi Fischer. “Why don’t you come to my house? You are no doubt used to more comfort, but it is clean and you can have a comfortable bed. I often put up people who have nowhere else to go. And it’s very close.” An almost impish grin. “Of course, in Windhoek everything is close. We have only four streets.”

  We have a busy day tomorrow, Hanna curtly conveys through Katja. We have an appointment with an important person at ten o’ clock. And we still have to get back to our horses. They have been tied up all day.

  “Where are your horses?”

  Up there on the ridge, among the trees.

  “Poor beasts.” He closes one eye and displaces his hat to scratch his head. “May I make a proposal? You can come to my house and rest there while I bring down your horses. After that I can make you some supper – nothing special, I should warn you, I’m not a rich man – and tonight while you sleep I can repair your shoes. They really are in a sorry state.”

  “We have no money to pay you,” says Katja quickly, but she evidently finds it hard to suppress the sudden desire for some basic comfort he has stirred up in her.

  “Have I asked you for money?” he counters with a show of indignation.

  Why should you go to so much trouble? asks Hanna through Katja. You don’t even know us.

  “That is why,” says Siggi Fischer raising his hands in a theatrical gesture. “We see so few new people here. Except the military, of course, who come and go, but they mostly keep to themselves. And just as well, if you ask me.”

  He is too talkative, Hanna signals to Katja. We need our rest tonight.

  “It will be a very long night if it’s just the two of us,” the young woman answers in a low voice.

  “Is she ill?” asks the shoemaker, gesturing towards Hanna. “Why doesn’t she speak?”

  “She’s had an accident,” says Katja. “She lost her tongue.”

  “Tsk, tsk.” He shakes his head. Then he resumes in a matter-of-fact tone: “I’ll tell you what. You can have a bath at my house while I fetch the horses. And when I come back you tell me if you want to stay or not.”

  At that moment the little monkey leaves his perch on the wheelbarrow and jumps on Katja’s shoulder. For a moment, uttering a small cry, she contracts in fright, then realises that it is hugging her, uttering small baby sounds.

  “You see, Bismarck likes you,” says Siggi.

  That appears to settle the matter. Hanna is still not placated at all, but she grudgingly agrees to stay behind in the small sheet-iron house on the outskirts of the town while the shoemaker goes off to find their horses. Katja stokes the copper geyser in the kitchen and prepares a bath. There is a tin tub on the kitchen floor. Hanna goes first, while Katja makes coffee. It is the first time, she realises, that she has seen Hanna naked and it is shocking. Not the ancient disfigurements and cuts and sutures so much, however atrocious they are – the lines and ridges across her belly and breasts, the scar tissue where her nipples used to be – as the skeletal appearance of her body, the way the skin clings to the bones, the patterns of her ribcage and her hips, the protuberance of her matted sex. Hanna makes no attempt to cover up. As she washes with the coarse soap Siggi has put out for them, she appears almost deliberately to display herself – See, see, this is me – and then remains standing for Katja to sluice clean hot water over her. She stands with her eyes closed, head thrown back, feet apart, to let it run over her body, an immersion and a cleansing, the closest perhaps she has come to a feeling of voluptuousness in years.

  Then, still naked, she takes her turn to wash Katja. The girlish body has begun to fill out, anticipating a more matronly heaviness around the hips, her breasts are fuller than they were, the areolae large and dark, the belly showing the early swelling of pregnancy.

  For a moment she instinctively, self-consciously covers her breasts with her hands. “I’ve changed a lot,” she says, her face flushed. “I no longer look the way I used to.”

  You are beautiful.

  “No, I am not beautiful,” says Katja. “I’m just a woman.”

  Hanna pursues the bathing ritual, the rites of cleansing, a careful and almost loving long caress. They are mother and child, they are woman and woman, each acknowledging in the other the mortality of the self. In a way it is a lingering leavetaking, because beyond tomorrow there is only the darkness of the unknown. They have come so far; there is only a short last lap to complete, and this is their preparation for it.

  They are so clean, so new and liquid, that it is almost a pity to put on their dusty and crumpled old clothes again. But they remain barefoot, feeling guilty about the shoes after what the shoemaker has said about them.

  Together they clean up the kitchen and mop up the floor, then set about exploring the house. It is indeed very small. Apart from the kitchen there is only a long narrow room which clearly serves as sitting room and dining room and work room combined; and, at the far end, a tiny bedroom. The front room is cluttered with the signs of their host’s trade: lasts and anvils, hammers, awls and other tools of many shapes and sizes, a large work bench much the worse for wear, which shows evidence of also serving as a dining table, shelves with finished and half-finished shoes, hooks on the wall from which harnesses and saddles and bridles are suspended, piles and bundles of skins and hides on the floor, everything pervaded with the smell of leather and linseed oil and wax.

  Most of the bedroom is occupied by the huge bedstead of dark polished wood. The curtain around the canopy is dusty, but the bedclodies look surprisingly crisp; and the mattress must be stuffed with feathers as it bulges so hugely. Next to the bed is a small cradle, stacked with books and newspapers. On the wall opposite hangs a single picture, a foxed engraving of what looks like the Alps. On the bedside table is a yellowed photograph in a too-heavy wooden frame, showing the face of a woman, her features faded into a blur.

  It is all so ordinary
. But it is the very ordinariness of it that shocks them. It is too unreal, too ludicrous, too preposterous in its ordinariness, belonging to a world that must have gone its own way while their lives have been unwinding in another dimension altogether. The same thought may strike them: That this is the first time in God knows how many months that they find themselves in a space where they will not have to plot the death of their host.