by Andre Brink
But at bedtime that evening it was beginning to weigh uncomfortably on my conscience, although I refused to let on. Long after Theo and Gys had gone to sleep I was still lying awake, the blankets pulled over my head. In the end I dozed off too. But when I woke up, somewhere in the hollow of the night, all hell was loose: a commotion in the yard outside, and something sitting on my chest trying to throttle me.
Afterwards it was all explained. A couple of jackals had ventured in among the fowls where the dogs had got hold of them, and the din outside had awakened Gys and Theo. Gys had immediately grasped what had happened, but Theo’s first thought had been that the dead Griqua had come to avenge the desecration of his grave, and seeing that I was making no movement, he’d jumped on me to find out whether I was dead or alive.
Once the confusion had been cleared up, all three of us collapsed in hysterics, which brought Gys’s mother to our room (his father had already gone out with the gun by then). We were all bundled off to the kitchen where she made us coffee with lots of sugar. But I remained shivery until daybreak. And ridiculous as it might seem, I’d borne within me, for many years afterwards, a feeling of awe for all those dark forces lurking in the earth, ready to intervene in the lives of the living without any warning.
When one is eighteen years old, you see, one thinks one is bloody well immortal. It doesn’t matter that you’re in the army and shooting enemies from dawn to dusk and finding corpses behind every bush. You just go on believing it can’t happen to you.
But then it changes. One day it comes so close that you discover it’s possible after all. You can die any moment. You’re not worth a turd. And it makes a difference.
By that time we’d passed Benguela on our way to Novo Redondo. On a stretch of open road one of the trucks struck a mine. Not the front one. In fact, I think two or three had driven over the mine unharmed. Then, all of a sudden, it was just bodies catapulting to all sides. The moment the convoy stopped, the machine guns started. And the grape-shot exploding in the air. And those big Russian RPG 7s. An ambush We dived off the jeeps and trucks and scuttled into the bushes like bloody rats. Ten minutes ago one could still hear the insects humming in the grass, and the birds and monkeys and things in the trees. Now it was like a fucking thunderstorm. The mortars went on the attack while the cannon donkeys tried to get the 88 mms ready. Jesus, they were shooting so fast even the auxiliary charges exploded.
Our crewie decided a few of us had to try and get through to the left to attack the enemy from the side. Old Gouwsie and ten or twelve of us. There was one patch of open veld with no bush or stone in sight. All we could hope for was that the other boys would be distracting the attention of the Commies. Gouwsie was the first to run. He got through. Then two of the others. And then it was my turn, and Ronnie’s. You remember Ronnie, don’t you? Started camp with me. We were together all the time, rowers, blue-arses, old men, all the way. Marvellous ou, not scared of the devil himself.
The moment we moved into that open patch, they started shooting right at us. Must have seen the front ones and waited for us to come out. I never thought I’d make it, but I did. Ronnie wasn’t so lucky. When I looked back from the bushes on the other side I saw him lying there.
Gouwsie and I went to get him. Funny thing is one isn’t afraid when you’re right in it like that. It’s only afterwards you realise what a bloody fool you were. We just ran back and got him. Thought he might still be alive, but he was dead all right. On our way back Gouwsie got a shot in the shoulder. By that time our 88 mms had found their target and drawn the fire off us. Another hour and it was all over. Our little outing had been quite unnecessary. Only Ronnie was dead.
That’s the worst, you know, Dad. There’s no one you can blame for it, no one you can take it out on. It’s “the enemy”. But who’s he? You see his tanks and his jeeps, you blow up his trucks, sometimes you find his dead bodies like that young Cuban. But you know that’s not really the enemy. He’s different, he hasn’t got a name, you can never reach him.
And yet old Ronnie was dead. I’d helped to carry back his body. Nothing special about it, like a roll of blankets, you don’t feel it. But you know Ronnie’s dead. Old Ronnie who could take the mickey out of the PFs. Old Ronnie who nearly trod on a snake last night, taking his shower under the mango tree. Old Ronnie who used to brag about all the women he’d had. Good old windbag Ronnie, who always shared his biltong with you. Who showed you the letters from his girl and told you what her tits looked like. Old Ronnie who sawed through the latrine seat on the shit trench just before the sergeant-major took his spade for a walk, that night outside Pereira d’Eca. Old Ronnie is dead all right.
I knew they would send his body back. He would get a hero’s funeral and the top cunts would be moaning about wasting their time again. The papers would splash all about him and perhaps his mother would be offered a medal – his father had died a long time ago. I knew how they would announce the news. They’d say he’d been killed in the “operational area”. “On the border.” No one would be told he’d been here. Officially we weren’t here. We counted for nothing. He was as expendable as the whole fucking rest of us. They’d lie the same about all of us. And that killed Ronnie for me, good and for all.
I hadn’t been aware of him following me. The first I noticed was when I saw his vague figure entering the aloe enclosure.
Coming up to me he stood watching the digging for some time. The picks were still hitting the earth with their dull thuds, going deeper inch by inch; but it would be many hours before the grave was deep enough. Their digging was accompanied by a rhythmic, monotonous chant with hypnotic effect, maintained without a moment’s rest:
“Ndiboleken’ inipeki ndigaule.
Nobaselitshisa ndigaule.
Goduka kwedini.
Goduka kwedini.
Goduka!”
“That’s why there’s no one at work today,” I said to Louis.
“I suppose they had no choice.”
“The whole thing was unnecessary, right from the beginning.”
“Isn’t anything that happens unnecessary?” he asked dully, with the total rejection characteristic of his adolescence.
“It could have been avoided. If Mandisi hadn’t been such a savage, if he’d had a grain of civilisation in him.”
“What has civilisation got to do with it?” he asked, a new tone of rebellion in his voice: not vague and general any more, but specific, directed against me.
“Everything,” I said laconically. “For three centuries we’ve been trying to civilise this land, and all the time these people are still gnawing at the roots.”
“I suppose we also tried to civilise Angola,” he said. “With our cannons and mortars and things.”
“Those Angolans had been exterminating each other long before you ever got there,” I said. And without giving him a chance to reply I went on the attack: “Say what you want, Louis, but our country has always been the most stable in Africa. One of very few in the world still ruled by law and order.”
“You call this stable?” he asked, looking me in the eyes: “What I’d like to know is how you manage to go on living so peacefully as if nothing had happened.”
“I think we can still control what’s happening here.” (Would I have said the same the next Tuesday or Wednesday? But then, of course, it was still Sunday.) “In spite of the balls-up we made in Angola we’re still all right. There’s a lot to be done, I grant you that, but it will all come in due course.”
“We’ve been waiting too long as it is.”
“You’re oversimplifying, Louis. You’re just against everything.”
“There isn’t much in this country one can be for, is there?”
“Are you sure? If you had to work in the sweat of your brow you would have thought twice before speaking. Things are too easy for you, that’s what. Now that we’ve tamed the land for you —”
“What do you call ‘tamed’?” he asked in sudden rage. I could see his eyes burning. �
��You grew rich out of the land, you’re just taking from it all the time. Have you ever tried to give anything in return?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. I couldn’t help smiling, knowing he’d chosen the wrong territory for his attack: I’d found the answers long before he’d even dreamed up the first question. “What I possess today, I’ve achieved in a system of Free Enterprise because I’ve been prepared to take risks. And now I can offer all my capital and my experience and my know-how in return. I never stop ploughing back. Our whole system depends on individuals prepared to create job opportunities and training for others, and accepting responsibility for them. Where do you think the capital for development would come from if people like me weren’t prepared to furnish it?”
“And on whose labour do you base it all?”
“What would their labour have been worth without my capital and my guidance?”
“But you’re not prepared to share!”
“Good Heavens, Louis,” I said, “are you really expecting me to give up the race so that the loser may win?” I couldn’t help feeling contempt for his argument: it was so superficial. “You want a race where everybody can reach the winning-post at the same time. Balls!” (His language was proving contagious.) “The day you deny a man the chance of being rewarded for his effort, you can dig a grave for our civilisation. And achievement is based on competition. That’s all there is to it.”
“Survival of the fittest?” he asked furiously.
“No. I didn’t get here at the expense of others. I use my position and my capital to teach them to be self-sufficient themselves.”
“There are many ways of buying a conscience,” he said fiercely.
“Do you regard prosperity as a disgrace?!”
Throughout our argument the rhythmic chant accompanying the picks and spades went its droning way.
“Don’t you feel afraid sometimes?” he asked unexpectedly: it came like a blow below the belt.
“Afraid? Of what?”
“Of everything suddenly coming to an end. Exploding.”
“They’ll lose much more than we would, if they tried. They know only too well that they depend on us for their economic development. And if you take a look at what my companies are already doing for them —”
“It didn’t sound very peaceful at Westonaria.”
“We’ve already settled those riots.”
“But for how long, Dad? When will the next ones break out? And where? Doesn’t that scare you? You and your whole generation, Jesus, Dad: you organised everything so neatly, made a law for everything. But surely you know it’s only a temporary arrangement. One murder like last night’s threatens the whole edifice. You can’t understand it. You feel scared. And the more scared one gets the more power you need to keep it nicely covered up. Until one gets addicted to it.”
I controlled myself as well as I could. “You’re young,” I said. “You’ve got nothing to lose yet. So it’s easy for you to criticise and attack.”
“And you’ve got everything to lose, so you’re scared. Is that it? So you’d rather cling to what you’ve got, no matter how bloody sordid it is. And no matter in what sort of a mess you leave the place to us.”
“What do you think will happen if we just let go? Don’t you think it’s the very function of civilisation to keep pruning and checking and controlling the world? I mean, look at nature: it looks beautiful enough when it’s wild and primitive and innocent or whatever you might like to call it. But if you don’t control it properly it becomes a menace.”
“Don’t you think law and order can also get out of hand? If it stops acting as a means to become an end in itself?”
“Ag, Louis.” I sighed. “Really, you can be so terribly naive.”
“I’m not trying to make you mad. I’m asking you. If I don’t say anything, you think I’m sulking. But the moment I start asking questions you refuse to answer.” He looked at me in silence for a moment: not defiant, but with a curious new assurance in his attitude. “Today I won’t be quiet,” he said. “Today I want some answers, because I’ve got to know.”
“I appreciate it. Provided you are constructive in your approach.”
“Do you really not understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Not if you come out with such sweeping statements.”
“You mean what I said about law and order? But I’m not making it up, Dad. I see it every day. What do you think you’re doing to Ilse and me? All these years we had to be first in our class every term. I had to choose a career that flattered you, no matter what I wanted. Ilse has got to take ballet and piano and speech training and God knows what else. What for?”
“For your own benefit, of course. To develop your talents.”
“Oh no. Just because it’s achievement. No other reason. Not to get anywhere. Just achievement for achievement’s sake.”
“Well, if you don’t try hard, you sink back. How long do you think it took our people to find their feet in the cities? It’s a full-time job to maintain our position. All around us are English and Jews just waiting to push us aside again. They’ve never forgiven us yet for beating them at their own game.”
“Why do you always talk in terms of ‘our people’, our little tribe?”
“Because this land itself makes it impossible to think in any other terms.”
Suddenly, like the previous morning when I’d recited the prayer, I could hear Dad’s voice in my own, saying: “Martin, we Afrikaners have had to put up with a lot in our lives. There’s still people looking down on us just because we’re Afrikaners. But we must show them. Every day of our lives we’ve got to show them. Until they learn to respect us.”
Louis stood looking right past me as if he’d lost all interest.
“It took us three hundred years before we received any recognition in our own country,” I told him. “No one can expect us to give it all up without resisting.”
“Do you think it’s still a question of ‘giving it up’?” he asked aggressively. “Or is it just a matter of time before it’s simply taken from us – unless we learn to share?”
“Let them try to take it. We’ll see who gets blown into the sea!”
“Oh Jesus, Dad!” he said. “Who’s being naïve now?”
“What you need is some ordinary old-fashioned respect for your elders!” I said, momentarily losing my temper. “What you’re saying here today is exactly what Bernard has been saying all these years. And what good did it do him?”
“For everyone like Bernard who’s silenced there are ten others to take his place,” he said, defiant.
“I hope you’re not toying with the idea of becoming one of them!” I said. “I thought you had more common sense than that.”
“What Bernard said didn’t sound so senseless to me.”
“For God’s sake think of what you’re saying!” I warned him. “I never thought I’d live to see my own children turning against me.”
There was no end to his impertinence: “I’m only being a good Afrikaner, Dad,” he said. “Haven’t we always turned against our authorities in the past?”
“Not against our own kind. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And I get the impression that you don’t know what you’re trying to defend, Dad.”
For a while we stood opposite one another, balanced on the unpredictable see-saw of our argument. Only the picks went on thudding into the stubborn red earth, accompanied by that monotonous chant:
“Goduka kwedini.
Goduka! —
Go home, boy.
Go home!”
I became conscious of a pressure in my chest. I had to be careful, it was becoming a vicious circle: because I’d had the coronary I got upset much more easily; and because I got upset it affected my heart.
“Louis,” I said at last, making an effort to control myself. “Surely you’re not suggesting that you approve of what Bernard did?”
“I can’t find any fault with what he r
epresented either.”
“You were in court yourself. You heard the shocking indictments against him. And he didn’t deny anything. He was guilty. He was as guilty as any murderer.”
He merely shrugged, turning away from me. Without answering he walked off. In sudden anguish I saw him grow dimmer before my eyes. I’d thought I’d done with Bernard.
As if supervising the work, I stood beside the gravediggers watching them attack the earth in dull, thudding blow after blow.
4
MA WAS SITTING all by herself beside the large bare table in the dining-room, the transistor radio in front of her, with the aerial pulled out to its full length. She had straightened her hair again, I noticed, and was wearing her black hat and a Sunday dress, navy blue with a small white pattern.
“Are you expecting visitors then?” I asked.
“No, I just got ready for the service.” She nodded towards the radio. There was choral music playing.
“Where’s Louis?” I asked.
“Gone in to town for the Sunday papers.”
“In the Mercedes?” I was on the attack immediately.
“No, in the van.” She smiled patiently. “Come and sit with me. There’s enough time for a cup of tea. Kristina!”
For a while we sat drinking our tea in silence in the muted light of the dining-room. Turned low in the background, the choir went on singing.
Behind her on the wall I could make out the shadowy outlines of two pictures. At that distance I couldn’t distinguish any details, but I knew them well enough. The Broad and Narrow Way hung on the left. Without seeing it I was aware of the presence of the staring, all-seeing Eye in the centre at the top. To its right was the bluish, yellowish amateur oil painting of aloes at sunset. The Women’s Society in our village had given it to Ma as a farewell present years ago when she and Dad had left for the farm.
For the moment the events of the night were stowed away and I could forget about the persistent chant on the hillside. I didn’t even wish to bring up the farm for the time being: there would be time for it again, later. For these few minutes the two of us were left in peace together, like so many other times in my life, a scene repeated endlessly, reassuringly. In the comforting familiarity and predictability of our togetherness I relaxed again, feeling the dull pressure in my chest subside. One had to learn to live with it. It was no more than an occupational risk, like ulcers.
