Feast of the Uninvited

Feast of the Uninvited

This book is for Marita

Feast of the Uninvited P. G. du Plessis

Translated by Malcolm Hacksley

First published in Afrikaans as Fees van die ongenooides by Tafelberg Uitgewers 2008 © P G du Plessis.

Translation copyright © Malcolm Hacksley 2022

The moral right of the translator has been asserted.

This translation published by Atelier Books, LLC 2022 All rights reserved Typeset by Atelier Books LLC Cover designed byMalcolm Hacksley Printed and bound by Print On Demand, Cape Town Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form or binding other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-998965-01-4

Feast of the Uninvited

One It is the summer of 1944. A former officer of the British Expeditionary Force, as it was sometimes known in 1899, is once again standing in front of a farm gate in South Africa. He is an old man now, of course, and each time he signs his name he very carefully adds (Rtd). The old gentleman presently at the gate is Major Philip Brooks (Rtd). During the Anglo-Boer War he had been young Captain Brooks. Then he still had full use of both his hands, but the left one, now resting beside the right one on a crossbar of the solid iron gate, is damaged.

Behind him, two young people sitting in a 1936 Plymouth sedan, waiting for the major to make up his mind, are the driver of the hired car and Miss Joey Wessels from the Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein. The major had asked them to allow him to get out alone, saying he would decide at the gate whether he still wished to open it and drive up to the house and his friends. Now, though, he is just standing there.

Evidently a difficult decision.

It is. Because everything around him is at once both familiar and strange.

In 1899 the gate was an ordinary swinging one: in its place now is a pair of ornamental wrought-iron gates, set between neat stone walls. The driveway up to the house had been narrow and treeless: now it is a broad avenue with pine trees on either side. Tall trees. Forty years has been long enough for trees to grow this tall. It is only in memory, the major thinks, 1

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that things shrink. The present driveway is straight and gravelled, the homestead definitely larger, the veranda and the steps leading up to it higher. The former white-painted, probably cast-iron, lacelike railings edging the veranda have gone. Of the outbuildings only the gable on an unfamiliar barn is visible. The garden wall that had been near the house has disappeared: the garden itself has been enlarged and laid out to suit a different taste. Cannas, roses and geraniums are in bloom.

There are two people on the veranda: the man seated, the woman standing close to the front door — both as motionless as himself. At a distance of over three hundred paces from the driveway, the old major’s eyes can no longer distinguish all the details but he thinks he still recognises her from her bearing, though now her hair seems to be snow white. It must be her.

Who were the people that he had encountered here? Joey Drew the photographer, for instance. The gifted spinster. That cantankerous woman who so nearly became a poison murderer. The Van Wyks. The tragic Minters who, as Joey Drew maintained, were so often the victims of Fate. She herself.

And who was he, young Captain Brooks, way back then?

Nowadays the thoughts and gnawing remembrances of an old man have taught him only one thing: that he had only halfknown any of them. He probably had not known himself either. Like now. Perhaps he had never really known anyone.

Perhaps no-one can be known. But where, in such a remote part of the country, had the spinster lady with the piano and the axe received her piano tuition? He did not know. He had not even known Joey Drew, because he had never really known how that odd creature became a photographer.

The major could not know in 1944, because he had not properly interrogated Joey in 1900, 1901, 1902, 1927 or 1934; 2

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and in February 1938 the possibility of enquiring further had fallen away because Joey’s atrophied tubercular lungs had put an end to him.

But in any event, if Joey had responded to such a question, as the old major realised all too well, he would simply have spun a long tale of plausible lies and a chain of half-truths.

Because: *** Joey Drew closed the deal for the camera with a drunk.

Not that Joey himself was completely sober during the onesided negotiations. He was already on his second bout, but there was still half a bottle of hard tack between himself and the oblivion of a real drunkard’s blackout. “Still fully compos mentis,” was the way Joey normally described his condition when, out of the blue, Fate so kindly intervened in his life.

Though actually it was not the liquor in his body that made him buy the camera. It was Hans Bester’s cough.

That was just the way things were in Johannesburg. It was 1899 and almost every mine rat in the town was chasing after some or other way to forget — in the arms of a briefly hired woman, or in bars amid the thunderous enthusiasm of patrons every weekend. For it was no accident that most of the men who loitered about on the streets, before eventually landing in the watering holes anyway, were called “uitlanders”. Far from home, in a foreign country, and surrounded by strangers and strangeness, except in the small circles of expatriates where they huddled together for company. So, feeling alien, most of them had little option but to roam alone through their days, and especially through their nights and idle hours, and their loneliness left them exposed to thoughts and actions that they 3

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would never have dreamt of in a cosy home setting.

Joey Drew was thousands of miles from where his home had been. That morning, bending over the slop bucket, scrubbing only the lead-coloured collar and cuffs of his threadbare shirt with cheap blue soap — the rest of the shirt still smelt acceptable — , he was thinking about the coming afternoon. The thought of a woman’s body did cause a momentary stirring in his loins, but he knew the encounter would be fleeting, the act too hurried, and the urge largely to get it over and done with as soon as possible. The price range within which Joey’s resources permitted him to negotiate did not allow for intimate gossip, confessions or lamentation. That kind of lady was more concerned with output than quality since, with their diminishing attractiveness and rising ages, most of them were on their way down. And one moment of this insufficient release would cost Joey an entire Kruger gold sovereign. Four days later he would probably wake up with a leaky conscience and pissing razor blades. On Saturdays prices, for both black and white, were higher because demand exceeded supply, particularly at the top end of the market, for after yet another week of abstinence the weekly wages of the clientele burned holes in their pockets.

It was not only the loneliness of men far from home that Joey shared with his fellow-uitlanders. Within every heart there stirred the ache of deep disillusionment. All the treasure they had been dreaming of so optimistically as they left hearth and home had transmuted into the desperation of an underground hell of dust and rock and dust and ore and dust and heat, heat and more heat. Yes, that and a weekly wage. The yellow gold dust — almost exactly like the streams of their own sweat in the stopes of the mine — flowed into the pockets of a bunch of soft-handed fat cats who spent their weekends sucking cigars 4

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and sipping whiskey in their gleaming new mansions on the slopes of the ridge above the town. Or where they raced their thoroughbreds — all of them accompanied by young, welldressed and shapely, leisured, perfumed, expensive, all-nightladies. Or in the Club, of course, if they preferred the company of their own kind. They were the ones who could even afford the scarce non-professional women in the town and the peace of mind that came without any need to worry about what else the ladies might be carrying.

These were the bitter thoughts driving Joey even deeper into depression, despite the normally cheering effects of his second drinking bout, when on his way along Eloff Street to The Frenchman’s Eye for some refreshment, he stumbled across the man with the camera.

“And it wasn’t the booze in my belly that made me stumble there, mate,” Joey would say, “it was Fate. Fate! Nothing else.

That’s what Fate does.” Then Joey would give you an interminable exposition on the sense and will of FATE and how it had intervened in his life. Sometimes for good, often for evil, but always unpredictable and relentless.

When Joey got up off the sore knee he had landed on, his first thought was to give his stumbling block a kick in the ribs, but he decided against it: the man with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him in everyone’s way was obviously well over the eight already. Not that Joey didn’t tell him so. He gave him to understand very clearly that he should find a more suitable place to lie around drunk in, for where he now lay his great paws were in everybody’s way and he was going to trip up the passers-by one after another — and not all of them would get up again as graciously or respect his drunkenness as kindly as he, Joey Drew, had.

But the man was not listening, because what focus his eyes 5

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still retained, while somewhat unsteadily, was concentrated fairly directly on Joey’s jacket pocket and the bulge of a brandy bottle. The protruding top of the bottle revealed that it was still more than half full.

“Jus’ a sip, jus’ a lil sip, please-please,” the man pleaded in coherent if slurred English. Now Joey had a soft spot for anyone in this country who could speak a few words of English, so his reprimand to the inebriate was not a barbed one: “Those paws of yours almost made this bottle shatter on the pavement, mate! Not another drop for you.”

That was when the man offered his boots for whatever was left in the bottle. “And they were good shoes, my mate! Laceups and smartly polished. You don’t see many shiny shoes in Johannesburg — not even on Saturdays.”

But no-one in his right mind takes leave of three-quarters of a bottle on a Saturday, a truth that Joey was trying to drum into the brain of the drunk, when the man offered the camera for the bottle and its contents.

The instrument was on a tripod beside its desperate owner.

Draped with a cloth. A black one. When the man went on talking in terms of an exchange, Joey lifted the cloth — a joy to behold! Its brown mahogany case gleamed with carefully applied and burnished shellac and in the afternoon sunlight the eye of the lens sparkled gold and black. It was something to see, this masterpiece of Victorian technology. To Joey it was more beautiful than an amenable woman, even on an idle Saturday in a foreign country. Out of sheer appreciation, he passed the bottle to the man, but had to tear it away hastily from the thirsting lips because the man sucked at it so avidly his Adam’s apple was bouncing up and down.

Joey told the man he was a greedy pig, re-corked his bottle, replaced it carefully in his jacket pocket and walked on.

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At the swing-doors of The Frenchman’s Eye the bottle was a further obstacle. The bouncer at the bar door ordered Joey off.

Whatever was drunk on those particular premises, the man said, had to be bought and consumed right there. The business could not permit people like Joey to bring in their own liquor and sit and booze there when the whole purpose of the enterprise was to provide such drink.

Joey assured the man that he understood the word “enterprise” — and any other bit of posh talk — as well as the best among the social elites because he, Joey Drew, was an educated man from Somerset in England, but that his heart medication, which he always had to have with him just in case, did contain a little alcohol and how would the bouncer feel if he, Joey Drew, were to collapse inside the enterprise and die, and … Joey extended his argument a while longer as he and the man stood fiercely glaring at each other.

To bystanders this mutual glaring would have looked like an unequal struggle. The bull-necked bouncer was looking down from a height of six feet while Joey had to stare up at the man’s eyes from his own skinny five-foot-five. But nobody had ever yet been able to outstare Joey or get him to blink or look away first.

Joey had a squint, so the way he outstared any opponent was extraordinary. His left eye — small, black and as shiny as the tiny lens of that coveted camera — focused on the left eye of his opponent, but the secret lay in the other one, because the right eye was fixed unflinchingly on his opponent’s right ear.

So when the bouncer started rubbing the itch in his right ear, Joey knew the battle was over. As always. He walked into the bar. All the bouncer could say to the bar doors as they swung to behind Joey was, “I’m watching you! One suck at that bottle and you’re out!”

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As he walked in, Joey sensed that the bar was still in its boisterous mood, but he believed firmly that bars got drunk just like people did. They start off in the afternoon laughing uproariously at every silly joke. Then comes the time for bragging and boasting, just after the dinnertime that they all have skipped. A little later the arguing starts. That is the time when differences deteriorate into insults, the insults degenerate into aggressive pushing and shoving, and the first of the evening’s quarrels breaks out into a violent fight. About an hour later melancholy sets in, when every decently inebriated man starts telling about all the pain and misery in his life. After that, self-pity and remorse will well up out of the depths of his soul and sometimes brim over in his eyes. It is only just before closing time that the same bar, that found everything hilariously funny and resounded with bonhomie in the afternoon, drops its voice and starts whispering that now it is time for tears. That is when you kick over your bar-stool and set out to stumble off homewards … and you advance as far along that road as you still can. Perhaps you even make it home. But most often you will only be able to assess the depth of your condition from where you happen to wake up the next morning. That will show you just how much progress you had been capable of making the night before.

“Have you ever seen anything sadder,” Joey would often ask, “than a man who has crumpled up on the pavement and simply lain there? … or an eye trying to stare blindly into the night through dark windows — from behind bars, like a convict?” What Joey was trying to say was that bars did not close, they simply blacked out. Like people.

But a bar meant company. Before joining his friends, Joey nicked a bar-stool from under the bum of a man who had lifted himself up for a moment in order to emphasise a point in his argument.

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Hans Bester was tall, lean almost down to his skeleton, and a Boer. He didn’t know much English and for Joey that was normally a shortcoming which would have precluded any possibility of friendship. But Hans Bester was the owner of a cart and horses and Joey realised that there are times when a man needs transport. You never know. And what are friends for, anyway?

Corky, the Englishman on Joey’s left, was new to the mines, but it was easy to befriend Corky because he went along with everything you said. So Joey could have his say without fear of contradiction: “Now is that so, or it not so? Tell me. Tell me now!”

Joey took turns to fix his beady eyes on the men he was talking to and his squint challenged them to contradict him. He waited for affirmation until Corky came to his aid: “It’s as you say, Joey. Just as you say.”

Joey turned round to Hans Bester and his cross-eyed glance bored into Hans’s left eye and right ear. “Now is that so, Hans?

Don’t just sit there, tell me.”

Hans could not really make out what it was the Englishman wanted from him, but the kind of look that Joey fixed him with clearly meant that some sort of reaction was expected of him.

“Yis,” said Hans, rubbing his right ear as unobtrusively as possible.

Joey turned round and accused the innocent: “Now do you hear that, Corky? Even this Boer agrees. No insult intended, Hans, but you are a kind of Boer, aren’t you? I mean, you do speak their language, don’t you now?”

Even if Hans could have understood exactly what it was the Englishman had in mind, he would never have regarded it as an insult to be called a Boer, but since he could not quite grasp what it was all about anyway, he simply said: “Yis.” 9

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“Do you hear that, Corky? Even this Boer agrees that Paul Kruger is a stupid old bastard. But do I have any rights? Have I, Joey Drew, an educated man from Somerset in England — do I have rights? Do I, the man who labours for hours and hours on end in that hell of dust under the ground, have any rights?

What am I working for? I ask you. What am I working for?”

The squint fixed on them again, one after the other, till Corky tried: “A man’s got to eat …”

Joey’s response was vociferous: “I’m working so that the rich buggers on the ridge can pay bushel bags of gold tax to that same old Kruger. But do I have rights? Can I, Joey Drew, an educated man from Somerset in England … even though I say it myself … Can I, Joey Drew, I who dig out their gold for them, and kick the backsides of their black chums for them, can I choose someone to represent me? NO! says that stupid old bastard of a Boer, Paul Kruger … Pardon me, Hans, no insult intended … I don’t mean anything mean against you … but the truth is the truth … And every stupid Boer that speaks that guttural lingo like Hans here beside me and can hardly read one word, he can vote till the day after forever! I don’t mean to insult you, Hans, my friend, far from it — you’re my friend, my best friend, if Corky doesn’t mind my saying so. I know you can’t help being born into your own people.”

The stream of words was too fast for Hans Bester, so he just agreed: “Yis.” “Well, there you are, chum! There you are!” In that moment of camaraderie Joey expressed the deep affection he felt for Hans by slapping him on the back.

That slap on the back was a rather hard one and just too much for Hans Bester’s frail ribcage and wasted lungs. A coughing fit convulsed him — dry, and loud, and totally uncontrollable. His cough, rising above the sociable hubbub of 10

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the bar, sounded like the clatter of an empty tin, a trunk, a hollow brazier; an all-but-final protest from his damaged lungs, echoing out of the paper-thin tinniness of his ribcage. His first cough silenced the din of the clamour in the bar as the whole room became a hollow of held breaths. In the quiet of suppressed sound, of congealed movement, of affected souls, Hans went on coughing. The quiet in which Hans Bester’s cough resounded was a quiet of sympathy and muted cheerfulness, for everyone knew that Hans was coughing the cough of the disease with many names: miners’ phthisis, silicosis, tuberculosis, fibrosis, galloping consumption, stonelung; and in other mines “black lung disease”. Everyone in the bar knew that Hans was not coughing for himself alone: his coughing was for them, too, making audible the silences of the terrors they could still deny, for now. Every eye was focused on the tall thin man bent double by the paroxysms of coughing which he tried to stifle with a grimy handkerchief already stained brown from the blood of earlier coughing fits.

Once the fit was over, Hans remained bent over for almost another full minute, waiting while his panting lungs fought for the oxygen that seemed to have become so scarce; waiting, too, till the last convulsions still shaking his body had subsided. He stood staring at the floor, embarrassed, immobile, and did not straighten up again before he had half-guiltily managed to wipe his shoe across the two drops of blood on the floor that the handkerchief had not been able to catch.

While Hans was still waiting for his body to calm down, Joey was about to leave but turned round at the door and yelled into Hans’ silence: “We catch miners’ phthisis for them.

Our lungs turn to stone for the bastards, and what do we get?

Not even a vote to pull this place together. We’re dying for them, for God’s sake!”

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Joey stumbled through the swing doors and stopped outside to stare at the bouncer as though that poor man was responsible for the mare’s nest of rage and fear in the pit of his stomach. Then he remembered the camera and walked on.

In the bar Hans Bester had managed to regain the little breath that his TB still allowed him. Corky was pleased to see the eyes of the others round them turning away from Hans and his affliction. Behind the eyes the voices resumed their blathering. Five minutes later the bar was trumpeting its relief — the sound that had so unexpectedly given utterance to their own suppressed terrors had fallen silent.

Soothingly, and slowly enough for Hans to understand, Corky lied: “It’s not too bad yet, but you must stop working underground.” He looked into the Boer’s eyes. They were slightly bloodshot after the coughing fit, but behind their grey there lurked an irrational expectation. Hans Bester’s long thin fingers looked as though they were stroking the hollow cheeks under his full beard, but in fact he was checking that there was no more blood left on his palms. Searching through the few English words that he had scraped together in the mine, he tried to explain to Corky: “I work double shifts. I want to buy things. For a farm.”

“Joey said he would help you get back to your people,” said Corky slowly and again emphatically.

Hans must have understood. “My people ...” he repeated.

Hans needed no Englishman to return him to his people.

His own cart and horses and his having grown up in the country were enough. It was only his will that drove him to go on working double shifts. Perhaps he simply could not gather together sufficient foreign words to say anything more about those two words that he understood all too well. Now he was looking past Corky at the rows of bottles on the shelf, and 12

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perhaps past them to something far beyond — and so also within. Corky thought the Boer’s eyes were still wet from the coughing fit. Bester said nothing more, not even “Yis”.

Every time Joey told anyone how he had gone back and swapped the half-bottle for the camera, the story had a different twist. Sometimes the owner of the camera was fully aware of what he was doing when the transaction took place.

In that version the man clearly indicated his approval by nodding his head when “in terms of the earlier agreement” Joey put the brandy in his hands and took the camera. At other times Joey would assert that the exchange had taken place “in terms of the earlier agreement” that he had concluded with the man while the latter was still clear minded. In both cases Joey constantly emphasised that everything was done legally and properly. In both versions of the tale Joey was at pains to stress that, for his own good, he had dragged the man out of the way and propped him up neatly against the wall. Furthermore, he had assisted the drunk by wedging the bottle, properly corked, between the body and the wall, out of sight, because everyone knows there are dishonest types who will exploit another’s drunkenness instead of decently respecting it. If anyone dared to hint that Joey might have taken a sip or two from the bottle first, Joey would stare at him until the man’s ear began to itch unbearably, because that would have been stealing. Stealing!

He never stole. For instance, take the trunk that was beside the camera. It was clear that that was part of the equipment, because it could have contained nothing but the chemicals and other stuff that went with the camera. “Now tell me,” Joey would demand, “what can you do with chemicals and things if you don’t have a camera? Or with a camera but without such stuff? No, come on, tell me!” When he broke open the trunk at home that evening, there was photographic equipment in it.

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How was he to know that the man kept a fine razor as well as other toiletries in a case where they did not belong? If he, Joey Drew from Somerset in England, ever came cross the man again, he would return his shaving things. Never used them.

Never! That would be stealing. You could say what you liked about Joey Drew but his honesty was above suspicion.

“Never in my entire life have I done a dirty deal. I was not raised to steal or to lie or to cheat.”

So Joey Drew’s lungs were saved by Hans Bester’s cough — and by a clever young chemist who had opened a pharmacy just off the corner of Commissioner and Eloff Streets. The chemist was fresh out of Europe and knew everything about cameras and the mysterious chemical processes that brought forth the images. He taught Joey how the splendid brown box with its black eye worked and what all those little pans and plates and chemicals were there for. He even wanted to buy the camera off Joey, but every time Joey looked at it, a sense of freedom shot through him and made his heart beat faster, and at such times his lungs suddenly breathed more easily. The camera, even at the high sum of profit offered, and taking into account how many bottles might be bought with such a profit, was not for sale. Joey and the chemist experimented together and pretty soon the man from Somerset in England was no longer cutting off sitters’ heads or feet. An educated man learns quickly, even if Joey had to say so himself.

Not quite two weeks later Hans Bester’s cart and horses carried him and Joey into the clean air of the Free State Republic. The new career of the photographer from Somerset in England had begun. Likewise that of his interpreter, driver, guide and possibly later also a shareholder in his photographic enterprise. At first Hans would regard the open-air cure and his food as a kind of payment. The use of the cart and horses 14

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and the care of the animals was initially left out of the account.

But Hans Bester’s lungs were never going to heal.

“That Boer Bester coughed himself to death! Have you ever witnessed anything like that? Coughed himself cold … It is not pretty to see a man dying for want of breath, let me tell you. I reckon he coughed out all the breath that was in him, and then died for lack of it, because he first went red, then white and then blue.

I gave him a decent burial. Beside the road to Harrismith.

Dug the grave myself. In that drought I had to spend almost an entire day searching for a patch of ground soft enough to dig.

Sometimes my conscience troubles me about that Boer. Perhaps his lungs had become so used to the dust he had breathed in during all those double shifts he worked to buy farming equipment, and perhaps he had also got so used to Johannesburg’s coal smoke, as well as the smoke of dung fires, that the fresh air was too much for him. But how was I to know? And how on earth was I to get the cart and horses to his relatives? He had never told me where they lived and, even if he had, I would not have been able to understand him, because all he could speak was that scratchy lingo of the Boers.

But if anyone, and I mean anyone, can prove to me that he is a close relative of Hans Bester’s, he can take the cart and horses and drive away with my compliments. He can have the Bible, too — it is in High Dutch anyway. The money he had on him, I buried with him. There must have been quite a lot of it because he earned far more in the double shifts than he could have drunk up. But I am not someone to go rummaging through or emptying the pockets of a corpse. I am not a scavenger. I did not even take any fair remuneration for the hole I dug for him or for the tribute I pronounced before I filled in the grave. I think he carried his money and his papers in the lining of his 15

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jacket. His savings, that I promise you, went into the grave with him — and I can say that in all honesty.”

And as he described, in all honesty, the death, burial and legacy of Hans Bester, Joey was in the habit of spasmodically tugging at the sleeves of his jacket. The jacket must originally have been made for a much taller man but Joey had shortened the sleeves himself. The body of the jacket, however, was beyond his stitchcraft and so remained too long. The jacket hung on him like on a stranger — a half-coat draped over too small a dummy. But the jacket was made of first-class Dutch cloth and clearly far too valuable to play silly games with. Like burying it, for instance.

Beside Hans Bester’s shallow grave Joey realised that he was adrift, astray — in fact, lost. The landscape round him consisted of bare ranges stretching away to almost every horizon. The hills were treeless, covered only with duncoloured winter grass, their gentle slopes rippling away in every direction before disappearing into the distance. Except in the east where a few flat-topped hills with sandstone crowns rose up in the middle of nowhere, and in the far distance where a mountain range was visible. There the slightly deeper blue of the mountains met the paler blue of the cloudless sky, and in some places the two merged. Snow was visible on those mountains, which was where the wind came from — a dry, cold wind that took no notice of any covering that Joey tried to protect his trembling soul and shivering body with. It was that wind that had frosted his beard and frozen his blankets on the two nights when Hans Bester had not been able to reach the warmth of a farmstead and they had had to sleep out in the open.

It was during the second of those windy nights under the stars that the Boer’s last coughing fit began. He died later that 16

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morning while desperately trying to tell Joey something important. His eyes were wide open, staring wildly, burning as he struggled, with the insufficient air left in what remained of his broken lungs, to utter the last breathless words that his lips were trying to articulate. But too little emerged from his bloodied mouth — too little and too foreign for Joey’s incomprehension. His dying lungs were still trying to squeeze out bleeding words when his mouth suddenly opened wide in the gaping yawn of his death. Only his eyes kept their fervent gleam for a moment longer before they broke and faded.

Joey could not understand a thing that the Boer tried to say.

All he could think as he looked down on the dead man was: He must have loved somebody.

Joey buried him in his dirtiest blanket and, mindful of the cold to come, kept the other one for himself.

“It’s most inconvenient of you to go and leave me like this now, damn it,” Joey said to the heap of soil on the grave, for he knew that at that moment he was adrift in an inhospitable landscape, and that he would have to float away from that island on a sea of incomprehension. For in the homesteads where Hans Bester had accompanied him only that rasping lingo was spoken and Joey was dependent on his guide to explain to the farm folk the itinerants’ intentions and also to convince them of their honesty when advance payments had to be made for services yet to be received — part-payments for photographs that would be delivered sometime in the distant future. Joey derived great satisfaction from the impression made on the farm folk by the examples of his photographic skill. Before leaving Johannesburg he and the chemist had flattered two pretty ladies of the night into coming to the chemist shop and having their photographs taken. Joey had also taken one of the chemist himself. These were the three 17

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photographs in his “portfolio” and it was a constant regret of Joey’s that he could never succeed in properly teaching Hans Bester that word.

Hans had seen to it that they had eaten at tables, slept in beds and washed in hot water. The farmsteads were sometimes many miles apart and disuse had left the two-track roads between them with only an occasional ridge between the wheel ruts. From time to time the deep, dry-baked, rock-hard wagon tracks from the previous rainy season caught the wheels of Hans’ cart and, for fear that his horses would lose their footing, it was necessary to create two fresh rows of tracks beside them.

But the Boer had always succeeded in reaching the next homestead, except on those two occasions when they had had to sleep rough.

Joey decided to bear westwards — away from the cold that the wind brought down from the mountains. He carried on, copying the dead Boer’s actions as well as he could, trying like the late Hans to ensure that the horses had water and rest breaks. After something of a struggle he was able to manage the harnesses. His need to eat taught him how to scrape together a meal in the veld. The landscape itself soon made him realise that it was a mortal sin to pass by anything that would burn without picking it up — even if it was no more than a few lost sticks or a dry cowpat. The precious flames that these little bits of fuel could produce when he fed them into his evening fire[1] , grudgingly like a miser, made the nights a little gentler, the coffee stronger, the porridge less lumpy and the soup less watery. Joey learnt to stop and pick up the dung from his own horses, too, and to dry it in a bag on the back of the cart.

When, more than a month after his companion’s death, Joey and his skeletal horses with their winter pelts drove through 18

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Danie van Wyk’s farm gate, he was a man broken in both body and soul. For too many painful days and weeks he had had to wrestle with the obstacle of the language. He had had to sleep in stables, sheds, animal pens, outbuildings and sometimes under the unfriendly open sky. He had never been invited into a home. Not even once. In all that time, he had taken exactly one photograph and as far as he could make out the family would pay him only when they had received and approved of the picture. Joey sensed that he was not trusted and that the Boers regarded the man from Somerset in England as a worthless vagabond.

So it was with a sense of dejection and bitter foreboding that he approached the Van Wyk homestead.

The Boer homes he had called at on his journeying were all built on hilltops, so wherever Joey appeared, the farm folk were well aware of him long before he arrived. But at the Van Wyks’ the road curved round a low hillock before he and the people in the house could see one another. As he made his way up to the front door, he had to dodge the dogs.

He knocked. Magrieta van Wyk opened the door.

To Joey, Magrieta van Wyk was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, or ever would see in his entire life, and so he believed till the end of his days.

For a Boer woman she was quite slim. At that stage Joey had become fairly used to the rather portly figures of the Boer women on the farms, so Magrieta’s tall slender frame caught him unawares. The self-assurance of her beauty floated round her like a luminous mist. Her bearing was the proud deportment of a young woman fully aware of the splendour of the shining blonde hair that she wore in a roll, of her finely sculpted nose, her soft shapely lips, her wide-set eyes … and a skin as spotless and smooth as a baby’s.

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She addressed him in the guttural lingo: “I am Mrs Van Wyk. Who are you, Sir?” Joey, by that time all too well acquainted with the obstacles that languages could throw up between people, attempted the impossible: “I’m English …”

Magrieta responded in English: “Then say who you are, Sir. I am Mrs Van Wyk.” Afterwards Joey could never tell just why he said what he said at that moment. It must have been because of her magnificent appearance, or maybe it was his relief and gratitude at feeling a few drops of English on lips in the dry desert of that rasping language. It felt as though the words came from the mouth of someone else.

“God is good,” he said.

That is what he said, and the mocking smile playing round the corners of her eyes soon brought home to him the silliness of his remark.

“Is that a form of greeting where you come from, Sir? Or have you come here to preach?”

Suffused with embarrassment he quickly introduced himself, adding “from Somerset in England” to restore a touch of dignity.

“Oh,” she said, and slowly looked him up and down.

Joey knew he was not much to look at, and during the month and more that he had spent battling from one misunderstanding to the next incomprehension, he was so entangled in those difficulties that he had not even thought of rummaging about in the baggage on the horse cart to find the mirror. So it was a very dirty little man now standing in front of Magrieta van Wyk. For more than a month he had slept in his clothes on the ground. As he had slurped his half-boiled barley soup, irresponsible threads of it had dripped down into 20

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his beard, leaving dried morsels lodged in his thin whiskers, in the way only a man lost in thought and all alone could have allowed to happen. The crumpled straw hat that he was nervously twisting round and round in his hands had had to serve, along with his shoes, as a pillow during the nights in the open — and the creases in the hat bore witness to the restlessness of those nights. His own and the late Hans’ socks were then on feet that would surely never in all his life be warm again. His white shirt was a uniform brown. He was wearing two jackets, one on top of the other: the inner one fitted him; the outer was far too big although the sleeves were the right length.

So to Magrieta van Wyk, Joey Drew from Somerset in England was a dirty, bow-legged, evil-smelling little stick of humanity. The impression he made could be read quite clearly in the growing disapproval in her divine eyes. Under his matted hair, his gaze, otherwise so penetrating, became that of a dog hoping for some sign of approval.

As she smelt him, so Joey likewise caught the fragrance of the beautiful Magrieta. It was not the scent of lavender or soap but something else. Afterwards, he explained it to himself (though to no-one else) as: You can grow so dirty and become so inured to your own stench that eventually you can actually distinguish the personal smell of someone else. Particularly if that person is a woman, and especially if the woman is as beautiful as only Magrieta van Wyk could ever be.

“I am not going to invite you in, Mr Drew, you are too filthy.”

“Yes, Mevrou,” Joey agreed.

“And why don’t you take proper care of your horses?”

Joey’s ever-penetrating steely glance disintegrated into pathetic shards of humility and dropped to earth. He had only 21

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just met Magrieta van Wyk but already she had plunged him into a slough of guilt beyond any excusing.

“I am sorry, Mevrou …”

“Sorry will not feed your horses. Take them round to the back and fetch them some hay from the stack. Then you may come round to the back door.”

She closed the door in his face, but then opened it again, like an afterthought. “There is a water trough. First give the poor creatures a drink.”

Joey moved suddenly, rapidly and obediently to do as he had been commanded. In the depths of his soul he knew that he would always do whatever Magrieta van Wyk asked of him.

Without argument or demur.

He saw to the horses and then came round the back. She passed him a mug of coffee and a plate piled high with rusks over the half-door.

Joey thanked her: “I deeply appreciate your friendliness, Mevrou,” adding: “I am actually a professional photographer. I take photographs.”

“You may tell me that once you are clean. Fetch your dirty clothes from the cart and take those ones off. We shall have to boil them. Give the lot to Sarah. You may get undressed in there.” She pointed to an outbuilding and closed the door.

Sarah, a black woman, walked over to the cart with him.

Joey cold not but notice that she kept upwind from him. That, though, was only the first of his humiliations.

Sarah had difficulty getting up onto the cart, but once she was on top, she became efficiency itself. Her eyes lighted immediately on the pile of horse droppings that Joey had so carefully collected for drying: she picked up the sack of drying dung by the four corners and passed it to him, ruefully shaking her head. She pointed a silent finger to where Joey was to 22

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dispose of them. When Joey returned from his mission, she had already bundled up the clothes in the trunks. Joey noticed that the black cloth that he threw over his head when taking photographs had also landed in among the dirty laundry. He tried to take it back but she snatched it out of his hand, glared at him as though he was an irritating child, and unloaded the bundle from the cart.

At the outbuilding that Magrieta had pointed to as the place where he was to undress, Sarah shoved him inside and indicated that he was to hand his clothes to her through the door.

Once inside, he put down his coffee and rusks and undressed. When he started pulling off the inner pair of drawers his embarrassment redoubled. He was wearing two pairs, the late Hans Bester’s over his own. The extra-long legs of Hans’ were wound round his feet and tucked into the socks in his worn-out shoes. Anything to beat the cold. But the streaks and blotches on the inner pair of drawers, as Joey saw clearly by the light shining in through the opening in one wall, bore witness to the fact that the small handfuls of highveld grass had not wiped clean. He was filthy, as the woman would see from his clothes, but the humiliation of that inner undergarment would be just too much. He held back two garments: the top jacket and the inner drawers.

Outside, as he could see through the window opening, Sarah and a brown man were starting a fire of corn cobs under a laundry cauldron. He would have to wait. There was a pile of cobs in the room, so, clad in nothing but his long coat and the disgraceful drawers, he sat down with his coffee and rusks, his back against the pile.

But then the women started laughing. Sitting among the cobs, Joey heard their merriment. He went to the window and 23

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peered out: Sarah was standing outside the kitchen door with one of his socks, pinching it in disgust between the tips of her index finger and thumb for Magrieta to look at. Joey had often darned that sock himself, without paying too much attention to the colour of the darning wool at hand when the potato in his sock became uncomfortably large. The result was a multicoloured article so extensively darned that little of the original was left. Joey saw the beautiful Magrieta cry out as the women passed comments before screeching with laughter. Their words reached his ears in a language he could not understand but their attitudes and facial expressions seemed to Joey’s mortified eyes to swing between mockery, scorn and contempt.

Joey was being ridiculed, he knew it, and one of the mockers was the only woman in all the world that he especially wanted to impress. Aggrieved, Joey sat down again, knowing that he now had no hope of ever gaining the respect of Magrieta van Wyk. He would never, ever, be able to amount to anything, anything at all, in her eyes. Sheer misery took possession of him.

He looked down at his bare feet: narrow, white, blue-veined.

His toenails were far too long and blue-black with dirt. The nail on one big toe had already grown outwards. “This country has made a vagabond of you, Joey Drew. A bloody tramp.”

An hour later a tin bath was carried into the store-room, followed by buckets of steaming water. The black man bringing the water simply stared when Joey greeted him and went on with his work. On his final entrance, the man put down a tray.

Neatly arranged on it were a hand mirror, a cake of soap, a face flannel, a folded towel, a metal comb, a pair of scissors and, almost like a silent comment, a scrubbing brush.

Just as Joey was about to step into his bath, he heard the sound of a horse-drawn trap outside and quickly hurried to the 24

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window to see what was happening. Danie van Wyk and several members of his family had stopped and were getting down. The trap was clean and bright, the harnesses polished, the black horses brushed and shining. Danie van Wyk, wearing the long black coat, the white bowtie and bib of an Elder of the Church, was the first to alight. He helped two well-dressed women off the trap while a small wooden box was brought out to assist an elderly man get down.

Joey returned from the window to his bath, relieved but having drawn the wrong conclusion. “Thank goodness they are English. They probably speak that guttural lingo only to strangers and servants.”

A second trap drew up, but by then he was already in the bath.

The door opened and Danie van Wyk appeared in the doorway: an imposing figure of a man, just into his fifties, with some grey in his neat beard and broad moustache, towering over Joey in the bath. Joey, small, naked and white — and embarrassed by the grey-brown bathwater he was sitting in, liquid the colour of over-used dishwater — looked up, crosslegged and humbly, at the formally dressed man in front of him.

“I’m told your name is Drew,” said Danie van Wyk in good English. “Mine is Van Wyk.” “Please, Sir,” said Joey, almost pleading, “I am not what you are seeing, Sir.” “I suppose that is possible. I wish to tell you, though, Mr Drew, that we are not in the habit of doing strangers’ laundry on Sundays. However, I can see that my daughter-in-law was right: your condition requires urgent attention. I shall instruct them to bring more clean water. If you will climb out of that soup …”

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Joey did not hear what else was said because Danie van Wyk bent over and lifted the filthy long drawers off the floor on the end of the silver-topped riding crop in his hand and disappeared with it through the doorway.

Joey jumped up out of the bath to see what was going to be done with his drawers. Oh please, don’t show them! But Danie van Wyk — albeit in full view of everyone in the farmyard — simply bore the drawers like a dead snake on the end of his riding crop and flung them into the fire under the cauldron of laundry. Sarah was hanging up the clean laundry at the washing line: Joey’s short, Hans Bester’s long. And among the blankets hung his black camera cloth — a passport to respectability, Joey hoped.

Danie van Wyk sent him fresh clean drawers with the first bucket of clean water.

Yet, despite the black cloth, the Van Wyks never developed any real respect for Joey Drew. It was their Christian duty to show hospitality to the stranger within their gates; but further than that they did not go. Joey was given his food at mealtimes and a room to sleep in; but the family maintained a formal distance and detachment, and even in Joey’s presence they continued using that rasping tongue among themselves. A conviction grew within him that he was being discussed even while he was present. Only when addressing him directly did they use English. His horses were cared for, his laundry was washed and ironed, his direct questions were answered, but that was all.

The one question which they did start asking him with increasing regularity, when his stay with them had stretched from weeks into months, was when he intended moving on.

The questioning gradually grew more insistent till it became a very broad hint. He realised he was no longer welcome but 26

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how could he tell them that he was afraid of the wide-open spaces in which he felt so lost? That he was afraid of once more taking to the road on plains where even the sun could not decide where to rise or set? Where, once he had determined that west was in a certain direction, the sun would come up right there, and when he concluded east was that way, the sun would go down just left of the spot. If once he left the farm, nobody would understand him any more and chilling loneliness would descend on him again like the slivers of ice in those freezing nights under the stars and the white frosted winter mornings. He proffered any number of excuses for not leaving — the horses, his health, the weather. Until he ran out them. He passed his time in the patches of sun that he came across. Later, acknowledging that the season was changing, he still stayed on. He had made a mess of the whole business, and he knew well enough just why. It was all because of that first — and only — meal that he had had at the table with the family.

On the Sunday of his arrival he had all but scrubbed the skin off his body in order to get clean. The fresh clothes that Sarah had brought him still smelt of ironing and he felt so human again that he could confidently face the rest of the family.

Everyone present could, and at that time did, speak English in his presence.

Danie van Wyk was the head of the family and his wife, Dorothea, was the unchallenged mistress of the home.

Gertruida van Wyk, Danie’s sister, a spinster well into her fifties already, lived with the family. Joey deduced that her years of virginal abstinence from pleasure and carnal fulfilment had starched her with the same thoroughness that the white cuffs round her wrists were starched, ironed and pressed flat.

All her movements, her sitting down and getting up, her 27

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walking — and possibly even her lying down — were as precise and controlled as the measured statements that emerged from her mouth. It was as though the gum arabic in the narrow lace collars that she wore high under her chin had gradually worked its way into her very being and stiffened deep inside.

The only member of the family who made no attempt to conceal his dislike of Joey was Magrieta’s husband, Daantjie van Wyk: young, conceited, not unattractive. Although he never exchanged another word with the Englishman after that first meal, he could not help suggestively teasing his lovely wife even in Joey’s presence. Joey noticed how shocked Gertruida was when the provocative playfulness of the two young newlyweds clearly began to hint at what was surely going to follow later that night. She would then rise and withdraw from their company, leaving them to ridicule her. In that playfulness there was something almost mischievous in Magrieta’s demeanour — as though she was telling Joey and Gertruida: We have it, you do not. When the parents were not present, they revealed rather more of the sensuality of their young love. From the moment of their first encounter, when Joey had stood before her in rags and exclaimed about the goodness of God, Magrieta had always had a smile for him — even if slightly mockingly, as though he were still filthy and confused by her beauty. “In her eyes I am just an object,” Joey told himself. Not the way he would have wished it to be.

There were another two daughters in the family, Nellie, sixteen, who blushed at the slightest provocation, and Sussie, the youngest, who was quiet and reserved.

The grandfather in the house, Oupa Daniël, had already risen heavily from the table and made his way with the short steps of an old man. He lived in the past, constantly 28

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reproaching the young and praying lengthy prayers to entreat God’s mercy.

This is how Joey had become acquainted with the family.

But it was always superficial because it had to happen at a distance. He got to know them like a stranger who remained a stranger, learning indirectly what was happening more by his own deductions than from any communicated information. On that first afternoon, not yet knowing how things stood, he still believed they were a well-to-do family and, thank God, English.

When he emerged, clean and properly dressed from the corncob store, Dorothea invited him to join them at the table in the dining room for Sunday dinner. Everyone spoke only English, or so till his dying day Joey persisted in believing. If it was not so, why had he heard it like that? What possessed you? he reproached himself, every time the memory of it was squatted on his shoulder. He must surely have been able to hear the old man reciting the grace in Dutch. What could he have been thinking? It was out of common decency that they spoke only English when he was present. Whatever the reason — it might have been his painful journey, or his yearning for a little understanding, or the humiliation of his filthy condition, or the shock of Magrieta’s damnable beauty, or anything else, but whatever the cause, it was done and could not be undone.

Perhaps it was Fate that, at the moment he entered the dining room, caused his eyes to light first on the carafe on the table. A golden liquid glowed in the carafe, and there were promising wine glasses beside the dinner plates. It had been three weeks since Joey had regretfully taken leave of the last drops in the late Hans’ brandy flask.

He found himself in the dining room of a wealthy family.

The dinner service on the table was Delft ware, the cutlery 29

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solid silver. Fourteen high-backed chairs stood round the heavy stinkwood table. The gigantic, matching sideboard had a mirror and carved side-panels and edges. The harmonium was a large one. In dignified frames up against the embossed wallpaper hung the enlarged portraits of stern-faced family members. Those, at least, Joey noticed, too: he was not the first photographer to visit this distant place. But, he promised himself, he would offer a number of enlargements, free of charge, to show how much he appreciated the hospitality he had received. Yes, that is what he would do.

The food brought in and set down on the Sunday table was abundant. Oupa Daniël said grace. Generous helpings were dished up. Joey noticed, however, that nobody touched the carafe. They asked who he was and where he came from.

Nobody poured any wine. He admired aloud the cut crystal of the carafe. Nobody poured from it. Joey steered the conversation in the direction of the use of wine at table. No reaction. Eventually he took a chance and said that a little wine from the carafe would perhaps go rather well with his meal.

Danie explained that what was in the carafe was hanepoot from the Cape, adding that it was very sweet and that they served it only for dessert after the meal. Joey persisted, confessing that he had a weakness for a little sweetness with savoury food.

Danie passed the carafe to him. Joey filled his glass and drained it. A glow rose up from his stomach and spread to the very tips of his extremities. He praised the wine and wondered if he would be ill-thought-of if he were to enjoy another glass with his meal.

That was where everything went wrong, because instead of returning the carafe to the centre of the table he kept it beside his plate. He did not ask permission again, but simply helped 30

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himself. His tongue loosened and, in view of the wonderful hospitality afforded him by such excellent people, he offered to have a series of enlargements of the entire family made for them, free of charge. The offer was accepted. That was when Dorothea asked whether Mr Drew would mind spending the next week with them, since her husband’s brother and his family had indicated that they would be coming for a visit on the Saturday. Would Mr Drew mind taking a photograph of the whole family?

Mr Drew was of course only too happy to agree to entertain the wishes of so gracious and generous a lady.

“With the threat of war now imminent,” Dorothea van Wyk continued, “no-one knows when next we may all be together.”

Joey seized on the topic and, fuelled by the hanepoot, expanded on it. He started by relating how rottenly the socalled republic in the Transvaal was governed by that fat old fool Paul Kruger with his heavy-lidded eyes, and how the old geezer who fancied himself some sort of president was concerned only about himself and his pals, while decent British people were trampled into the mud without even a vote to rein him in with. The way things were going across the Vaal River was a disgrace. He, Joey Drew, thought it was high time the British Empire sent in soldiers to put the bunch of illiterate and savage Boers in their place once and for all.

“That bunch of Boers disgusted me from the time I first arrived here,” said Joey. “Such barbaric people simply do not have either the knowledge or the integrity to rule a country properly.” Joey said more yet. Much more.

He was so carried away by the subject and the benevolent glow of the hanepoot in his belly and his head that he did not notice how his table companions had stiffened. He did not even notice that Daantjie van Wyk had pushed back his chair 31

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and stood up, or that the son was addressing the father in that scratchy tongue. Daantjie asked his father if there would be any objection if he grabbed the bloody little cross-eyed runt of an Englishman by the seat of his pants and threw him out the door to the dogs.

“No, my boy,” Danie said. “Let the filthy little devil talk. I have always wondered how their heads work.”

They allowed Joey to elaborate and go on airing the general opinion of the Johannesburg miners until Danie van Wyk’s flat hand struck the tabletop with an almighty thump.

“Enough!” he said, and in the silence after the thud he spoke in the cold, measured tones of a man who expected to be immediately understood by even the slowest of intellects.

“We are Boere here, Mr Drew, and we shall fight your British Empire to the very end. Your queen and her henchmen have stolen other people’s countries one after another as though the world belongs to you just because you’re English. Whatever pretexts you may invent now, the only truth is that what you are after is the gold of the Witwatersrand and that you intend to steal it just as you stole our diamond fields. Once again your Empire has sniffed money and you will charge after the smell of wealth like a dog after a bitch on heat — as you have always done, without caring who your big feet trample on or whose blood you shed. You want to rob us of our freedom as well as our gold. But you and old Victoria will learn yet how highly we value our freedom. At need we will die for it. This is our country. Nobody invited you here. So far, across the breadth of almost the entire world, you have behaved like nothing but a gang of unwelcome robbers, just as you are doing here.

Nobody invited you! You sniffed gold and came trotting after it with your tongues hanging out. Now get that into your head. … Dorothea, show the man where he can sleep tonight and tell 32

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him to keep out of my way.”

As one, all the chairs scraped back from the table as the Van Wyks rose. Oupa Daniël was helped up out of his chair before everyone else left the room, speaking to one another only in that guttural lingo of theirs.

Joey remained at the table alone. May as well finish off the wine. He had committed a mortal sin. That much he realised.

Dorothea showed him to the room where he was to spend the night. That was where she gave him the choice: she would still very much like a family photograph, and therefore he could stay if he so wished, but he should not expect to dine with the family ever again. After what he had said at the table, the members of the household refused to sit down and eat with him.

Joey stayed.

He wandered across the farm like a leper, getting to know the farmyard on his own: the imposing sandstone homestead with its red-painted iron roof, the enclosed front garden, the wide veranda. As the days passed he looked again and again at everything that there was to be seen — the coach house and stables, the fowl runs, the grove of bluegums behind the house, the bare wintry fruit trees in the orchard, the vegetable garden with nothing in it now but winter onions and cabbages, the haystacks, the windmill beside the reservoir. It was not a pleasant place for a city dweller to be in, particularly when he had nothing to do and nobody to talk to.

Two warm patches of sunlight on the hill above the house were his favourite spots. There he would try to thaw out the cold that all the nights in the open had caused to sink into his very bones. From there, too, he could scan the wide flat plains below. For as he had wandered west and southwards after the late Hans’ death, the hilltops had become flatter and the 33

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landscape levelled out. From his patches of sunlight, he had a fine view of them: those plains that looked endless. He feared the loneliness hanging over their wide-open spaces. He was afraid of the narrow two-track road that he could see trying in vain to make its way across the plain in the distance. All of a sudden, while your eyes were still trying to follow it, that narrow strip of road simply disappeared into the void. It never arrived anywhere, never stopped or halted anywhere, it simply disappeared into a kind of endlessness. Vanishing into that unknown was what frightened Joey most, looking as he still did with the eyes of an outcast. Only later would he learn to see.

So, all that Joey Drew knew of these wealthy Boers was what he could observe when mealtimes came round. He had to arrange his wanderings in such a way as to be within hailing distance of the kitchen door in time for his food. When he had had his dinner alone at the kitchen table, he would try to eavesdrop on the family, creeping as quietly as possible to his room across the creaking wooden floor, past the door of the dining room where Danie would be reading from the great family Bible or Oupa Daniël would be intoning his lengthy evening prayers.

Joey could not have known that among of the old man’s evening supplications his name was mentioned regularly. For Oupa Daniël, mindful of the commandment that one should also pray for one’s enemies, implored his Lord night after night to intervene and in His great mercy and omnipotence to turn away the English from their greed and to lead them in the paths of righteousness. And, more specifically, that the Lord should not turn His face away from the unsightly and repulsive little Englishman within their gates, but that he might be redeemed from his errant ways. And if it be possible, Oupa 34

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Daniël prayed, please teach this family to love their enemies, even though the Almighty in his Omniscience well knew how difficult that was with an Englishman. And if so be that the arrogant little scoundrel had been sent to try them and to remind them of their Christian duty, he prayed that grace might be given them meekly to bear that cross.

After the distant droning of the prayer, Joey’s lonely ears heard the harmonium striking up to whine out a psalm or hymn. All the members of the family joined in the slow singing, each according to their gifts, dragging through all the verses. Then the chair legs scraped back from the table across the wooden floor and Joey heard the sound of off-to-bed-now footsteps thudding and creaking through the spaces of the house. From the kitchen there would still come the sounds of a cooking pot or the dishes in the sink. Two by two, the footsteps wandered through the house to find their ways to their beds.

Soon the rooms would mumble their words through closed doors into the passage. Danie’s shoes thudded onto the floor.

The sound of giggling and sometimes the half-smothered sounds of youthful passion came only from where the beautiful Magrieta and her frisky husband were making love. From Gertruida’s room there was nothing but a scrupulous silence, like an absence. Oupa Daniël snorted in his attempts to clear his throat and nasal passages for a night of uninterrupted snoring. From where he lay like a rat in a cupboard, trying to decipher the movements in the house around him, Joey learnt to recognise the creaking of every bed. He lay wide-eyed in the dark, the acrid smell of the snuffed wax candle in his nostrils.

Dead still. As though something lay in wait to pounce on him out of the dark if he so much as dared to utter a sound or draw a wrong conclusion from the strange noises in the house.

Yet, despite Oupa Daniël’s prayers that they should fulfil 35

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their Christian duty, even towards as unthinkable a neighbour as a repulsive, cross-eyed Englishman, they were soon heartily tired of Joey’s presence. Only in their private bedroom did Daantjie confide to Magrieta: “I just don’t know why Pa won’t let me kick the bastard off the farm. He’s been here for weeks, like a tick in a dog’s arse. He’s either got the hide of a rhinoceros or he’s too thick-headed to catch a hint. If we don’t hound him off, he’s going to hang around here for ever.” *** Certain noteworthy events occurred during the months that Joey Drew spent with the Van Wyks: Gertruida van Wyk’s German piano arrived on the farm, Joey Drew took the family photograph, Veldcornet Willemse brought a report that war had broken out — all men were being called up — and Joey met little Fiena, Fienatjie Minter.

But, so Joey believed, their meeting was not actually an event: it was more a matter of Fate. Whenever he tried to tell people about the wonderment in Fienatjie’s eyes, Joey maintained: “It could only have been Fate.”

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Two Now she has sat down on the veranda. Three chairs between her and the man. Apart. The sun catches her hair: it is white.

The major was trying to recall exactly where he had stood, slightly more than forty years before. It was here. Right here.

The original gateway was not moved when the new gate was hung between newly built walls. It was just here that the one who betrayed them had approached him. This was where he had experienced a further revelation of the Van Wyks’ astonishingly civilised lifestyle, in the pure notes of the spinster sister’s piano playing that night. Her music, following the undreamt of gentility of the dinner table earlier that evening, had made him even more aware of how highly cultured these people were. He absolutely had to have clarity about his precise position, for where he had stood that night was where his life had changed, for ever. It was actually quite a long way from the house, he now saw. How sharp his young ears must have been then to have heard every note so clearly. Every note?

Or had he imagined it? The night must have been very still, very quiet.

The story Joey Drew had told about that spinster lady was seriously distorted. Of that Major Brooks was certain, because he recalled the precision of her playing and also the fury in her eyes as she swung the axe through the light of the lantern in his tent. And he had had to stand by all the while, watching, the barrel of a rifle held against his chest.

Joey Drew probably never realised just how false his image 37

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of the spinster lady was. *** A good number of years before Joey Drew arrived on the farm Gertruida van Wyk had begun to realise that she would never marry. She was deeply withdrawn at the time because she had bidden farewell to something she had always dreamt of: a husband and children. But the hot flushes had grown more severe as she experienced her change of life: her periods occurred first erratically and then ceased. She knew that time had passed her by.

She had agonised then over the reasons why she had never married. She was a Van Wyk, after all, and the Van Wyks were fine-looking people, even if in the eyes of many they seemed rather proud and distant. There had never been any shortage of gentleman callers — young bachelors at first, later unattached older men and widowers. They had tried approaching her with unsubtle expressions and attempted caresses, but the only result of all this was to make her more aloof. When the suitors became persistent, she showed flashes of disgust. Gertruida wanted things differently. She wanted to be like Dorothea was when Danie brought her home, elated with excitement and expectation. Or blushing, like Magrieta when Daantjie started getting frisky. Gertruida was aware that she did have that special something within her, but she had never felt it for a man. Perhaps the right men were put off by the education she had received at the Seminary in the Cape Colony, but time had not waited for her aloofness. And then she was middle-aged.

She thought later that it must have been something like clairvoyance, for that was when she so often found herself paging through her reminiscences and the piano kept coming to mind.

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At the age of seventeen, she was far and away the best piano student at the Seminary. The music teacher, Miss Pearson, said she had a lovely touch and the best ear for music of them all.

Not to disappoint Miss Pearson, she practised and practised whenever she had a free moment. Each time she mastered a new piece, Miss Pearson would take her to the grand piano in the hall and listen to her play. Whenever she lifted her hands off the keyboard and heard Miss Pearson say: “You play beautifully, Gertie, and you are beautiful,” Gertruida’s heart leapt for joy.

On the afternoon before Gertruida was to catch the train for the long journey home for the last time, Miss Pearson had all her piano pupils assemble in the hall to hear Gertruida play.

They were to come and listen to what real talent and hard work could achieve. Half an hour later it was dinner time, but when the rest of the girls left the hall, Miss Pearson asked Gertruida to stay behind. She had to play one more piece — just for Miss Pearson, as a kind of special farewell. Miss Pearson rose from her usual chair and started searching through the sheet music.

Gertruida thought she would want her to play one of their favourites, like a Bach prelude or one of Chopin’s nocturnes, but what Miss Pearson drew out of the pile was the simple “Love’s Sweet Song”. She opened it in front of Gertruida, pulled the solo stool away, pushed the duet stool nearer, sat down beside her and asked her to sit close so that she could page for her for the last time. Their hips and thighs and arms were touching; Gertruida wished the music would never stop.

But soon the notes on the page and under her fingers came to an end. In the sudden silence that followed, when her hands were poised motionless above the keys, Miss Pearson took her hands and kissed them, and just for a moment when she rose from the piano, her lips were moist on Gertruida’s. Then she 39

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hurried out of the hall, stumbling like someone blinded by tears. Gertruida looked at the wetness on her hands and gently kissed away the salty traces. A wave of untold happiness suffused her loins and breast.

When she herself said goodbye the next day, she wept, too.

Everyone thought she was crying just because she was leaving her friends and because her Seminary days were over, but that was not true. She was weeping for Miss Pearson and for that moment when an amazing wave of joy had overwhelmed her.

And for what the piano had spoken.

Miss Pearson did not come to supper in the dining hall that night. Next day, on the morning before Gertruida left, she missed breakfast as well. Gertruida’s eyes searched for her in vain. But when she climbed into the Seminary’s spider that would take her to the station, the matron handed her a small parcel from Miss Pearson. She did not open it before that night on the train. Under the outer layer of wrapping paper there was an envelope with a note: Dearest Gertie — Forgive me. I do not have the heart to say goodbye to you. Go well, my little one, and may life be kinder to you than it has been to me. I weep for another talent swallowed up by the maleness of our world and the darkness of this continent, but, mostly, I cry for you. I’ll say your name in the night.

— Anne Pearson.

She had no name for what she felt then, for the pain and the happiness were overwhelming and intertwined. She read the note over and over, wondering why Miss Pearson had not said anything about the piano, but when she opened the package, it contained two red spiral candles — piano candles.

In the almost thirty years that had passed since then, 40

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Gertruida had never heard from Miss Pearson again, and her upbringing prevented her from being so forward as to attempt to initiate a correspondence herself. She posted her thank-you letter for the candles and her lessons, but waited in vain for an answer.

But, so many years later, just a month before Joey Drew’s appearance on the farm, a letter arrived from the Seminary. The writer apologised for having to address the letter to Gertruida’s maiden name, but unfortunately the seminary did not know her married name. Miss Pearson, the letter went on to state, had retired and decided to spend her last years in England. She wished to devote the time that remained to her to the God whom she so faithfully served. She had already left, but had asked that her piano be donated to Gertruida van Wyk — the best student she had ever taught. Before she left she had personally supervised the crating of the instrument. Would the erstwhile Miss Van Wyk please arrange for the piano to be fetched or sent by train?

Gertruida told Danie of the honour done to her, after first asking Dorothea whether the piano might stand with its back to the inside wall of the dining room, because otherwise pianos easily went out of tune. Dorothea had no objection, so Gertruida made the arrangements and waited.

A month later the station master informed them that a heavy crate had arrived for Gertruida. She wanted to accompany Daantjie and Soldaat when they drove to the station to fetch the piano, but Danie put his foot down: it was undignified for a Van Wyk lady to head off to a station on a mule cart after a piano. Gertruida would simply have to wait.

So she and Magrieta sat and waited on the veranda on the afternoon when the mule cart was expected back. Joey Drew noticed the two them and thought he might relieve the silence 41

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between himself and the family. He went up to them and, after several apologies for his boldness, offered to help the youngest daughter, Sussie, with her English, since it was obvious that she was battling with the language.

For Magrieta it was always a remarkable sight to see her Aunt Gertruida noticeably freezing. Her back straightened up yet another notch — if that was possible — and her voice was icy: “Thank you for the offer, Mr Drew,” she said, “but I do not think we should expose the child to your accent.”

As always, the smile in Magrieta’s eyes made Joey squirm and he walked away with his tail between his legs. Was there nowhere one could get away from the snottiness of class distinction? Just how far across the globe did that attitude reach?

Magrieta almost ran to meet the mule cart and Gertruida herself had hurried a considerable distance towards the farm gate before she realised that such haste did not befit her dignity. And the manner in which the high-spirited Magrieta leapt up onto the cart and clung to Daantjie in front of everybody was unseemly. Definitely improper.

“It’s all in one piece, Aunt Gertruida!” shouted Daantjie as he passed. “But heavy! Boy, is it heavy!”

That was what Miss Pearson had always said. The heavier a piano is, even if it is an upright and not a grand piano, the thicker was the cast-iron behind the strings and the better it would stay in tune. Gertruida remembered those long-silent words so clearly that it was almost as if she was hearing them again.

“We’re going to need help with this lump of lead,” said Daantjie at the front gate, and sent Sussie to call the Minter men.

The Minters lived in a flat-roofed cottage a good half-mile 42

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from the Van Wyk homestead. Jakop Minter was a poor-white tenant farmer who had arrived on the farm ten years previously with his family, had been accepted there and had remained.

Jakop was a big man. His bushy eyebrows, moustache and his unruly beard were flecked with grey, just like his landlord’s.

His years of tenant-farming and lowly subjection had given rise to a mannerism in his eyes: he no longer ever looked anyone in the eye, not even his own wife and children. No matter who he was talking to, he would fix his glance on the left breast and armpit of his companion. Jakop never looked up into the face or eyes. Anyone speaking to him kept getting the feeling that there was something wrong with his clothes or that perhaps there was an insect crawling on his chest. Women speaking to Jakop sometimes turned away, uncomfortable with what they saw as impertinent, nasty admiration. Young girls blushed.

Jakop’s only son, Petrus Minter, was twenty, tall, lean and clean-shaven. He did not want to be like his father. He knew that people mocked his father behind his back for not being able to look people in the eye. They ridiculed his father’s manner of speaking and laughed about it. For Jakop Minter spoke with a thunderous voice but almost never bellowed out more than a single word at a time. It was as though the word first welled up inside him and then burst forth at full volume.

Petrus Minter swore that he would always look people straight in the eye and speak with a quiet voice and in full sentences. If people, like Daantjie van Wyk, thought that was a kind of cheek or impertinence in him, well, let them think it. He would not be humiliated like his father. He would not, even if it killed him.

Gertruida fussed irritatingly about the unloading of her 43

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piano, because it certainly was heavy. On top of the mule cart Daantjie, Soldaat, Greeff and Petrus Minter shifted the crate just to the rear edge of the floor of the cart. Jakop Minter was waiting below to steady it till one of the others could hop down and help him. But when the crate started tilting, the mules heard the scraping sound and began to move on. Jakop Minter staggered forward with his huge hands under the crate as it tipped over even more dangerously. Trembling with anxiety, Gertruida was desperately trying to help Jakop: “Don’t let it fall. Please, Lord, don’t let it fall!”

“Come away from there, Aunty! It will crush you!” shouted Daantjie. Then he saw Joey Drew just standing there idle.

“Stop the mules, damn it, Englishman, is your arse paralysed?” he yelled at Joey.

But it was Nellie who caught the mules by their heads and brought them to a halt.

Soldaat jumped down and started helping on the ground.

“Just go slowly, please. Go slowly, it’s a musical instrument.”

“We know it’s an instrument, Aunt Gertruida. Just get out of the way so that we can get the thing unloaded.”

The last three inches of the crate slipped and bored Soldaat’s toe into the ground.

“It’s crushing my toe, Baas Daantjie!”

“Can’t you keep your bloody toe out of the way!” Daantjie’s fuse was pretty short already.

“No bad language, Daantjie!” came Gertruida’s reprimand.

Daantjie took a step back from the toe and the piano: “Just get away, Aunty, right over there, or come and unload the thing yourself!”

“My toe, Baas Daantjie!”

“That will teach you not to shove your stuff underneath 44

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things,” was all Daantjie said to Soldaat when they lifted the crate up off the toe. The blood inside was already darkening the front of the rawhide shoe.

They eventually managed to unload the piano and, with raw leather thongs passed underneath it, they carried it up onto the veranda and broke away the packing crate.

Miss Pearson’s packing had been excessively thorough. Just under the planks of the crate there were real blankets, then a thickly padded cotton quilt to cushion the knocks and bumps, and then, wrapping the polished surface of the piano itself, a covering of green felt.

“This thing’s wrapped up in so much wool,” said Daantjie, “we could just have thrown it off the cart.”

Gertruida searched through all the packing for a letter or a note from Miss Pearson, but there was none. None there and none between the separately packaged wad of sheet music either.

Although the prospect of humiliating himself in front of Gertruida raised a line of sweat on his top lip, still Petrus Minter asked her if he might have the planks and nails from the crate to make himself a bed with. And some of the padding to use as a mattress. Gertruida gave it all to him and added that Jakop should take the blankets and the green felt as well.

Addressing her left breast, Jakop bellowed: “Thank you!”

Inside, they first had to move the harmonium and sweep up the dust and fluff that had collected underneath it before the piano could take its place against the inside wall of Dorothea’s dining room and stand there gleaming at Gertruida.

Dorothea was alarmed. Not on account of the piano, but because she had noticed her daughter Nellie watching the lithe Petrus Minter as he hoisted the first bundle of planks onto his shoulders to carry them down to the tenants’ cottage so that he 45

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could knock together a proper bed for himself.

Gertruida could not keep her hands off the polished brown surfaces of the piano, but she did not want to play it, however insistently little Sussie begged her to. All she did was check that the piano was still in tune, but that called for no more than a couple of scales — scales which she had already practised more than a month before on the harmonium. She had not pumped the pedals to activate the bellows; she had not pulled out a single stop; she had practised in silence when no-one else was present. There was nothing wrong with the sound of the piano. She wondered how many days Miss Pearson must have spent supervising the packing — for her alone, just for her!

Gertruida wanted to wait and meet her piano later, when she was quite alone, with the simple little song lying on the top of the parcel of sheet music when she opened it. She told Sussie she first wanted to practise on the harmonium for a while before she played the piano, but she knew just what she wanted to do. She would wait until she was alone; then she would set the two spiral candles in the virginal brass of the piano’s candle sticks and light them; she would fetch the note out of her Bible and read it once more; and then she would play “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, and weep a little, so that tears could drip onto her hands. For there would be tears ... tears for what she was now realising ever more clearly — all her empty years and why she had never married. When she went to bed that night, she would snuff the candle and lie in the dark for a while, just remembering — and then wihout feeling guilty she would whisper to the night that forbidden name which the piano alone could utter for her.

Only later — and even then it might have been merely surmise — did Gertruida begin to understand why Miss Pearson had never contacted her again. Among all the little 46

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notes that the music teacher had made in pencil on the sheets of music, there was one on the back of one piece, written at a slant, and small, in her own handwriting and evidently for herself alone, a truncated sentence: … can anything as beautiful — really be so sinful?

Gertruida thought she was beginning to understand — and she knew that nothing would ever be as precious in her sight as the piano, the piano which had to express what could not be named.

In the kitchen that evening Dorothea ordered her sixteenyear-old Nellie to sit down at the table. She drew up a chair for herself and sat down heavily opposite her daughter. It was time to reprimand Nellie: “That Petrus boy is a Minter. He is not one of our kind. I saw how you were staring at him. Don’t make me tell Pa about your gawking.”

“But, Ma …”

“I have finished speaking, Nellie! Your constant chatting with him stops now.”

Nellie stormed off to her room.

On the afternoon after the piano arrived, Joey Drew went behind the fowl run and contemplated his latest blunder. Why did those bloody mules have to take it into their thick heads to start walking towards where he was? Thank God Magrieta was nowhere near when Daantjie yelled at him. Well, in any case, when would he, Joey Drew, ever be able to do anything right in this place? Joey walked over to the stump of a bluegum and sat down, his head in his hands.

A skinny little girl who had been watching him wandering around for some days, though only from a distance, came and stood in front of him and waited for him to look up. Joey thought his little visitor would have to be about seven or eight years old. Her long black hair was uncombed; there were 47

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unwashed black winter scabs on her shins and between the toes of her bare feet; going barefoot in the winter frost had caused cracks in her heels. Her hands, legs and face, all were dirty. She was wearing a kind of skirt the colour of the bare wintry ground around them — only in the seams could he make out that the threadbare little dress hanging down to her skinny calves must originally have been blue. The colour had long since been bleached out. Neglect clung to her like the dust on her dress. Joey had noticed children playing around the flatroofed cottage. In the face of such abject poverty, the mother must simply have given up, for the child was obviously uncared for.

But her eyes! Oh, her eyes!

Joey Drew was not a man who could easily think his way through complex thoughts, but it seemed to him, looking into this child’s eyes, as though God must have created them especially and solely for Himself. The Creator must have polished them with extraordinary care, gently moistening them — moved perhaps, maybe even amazed at the beauty in His hand — before setting them ever so carefully in their sockets.

Once He had finished moulding the rest of her.

Her eyes were the colour of washing blue and shiny bright in her dirty little face. And they were as large and wide as eyes that had just seen something miraculous.

She spoke to him and went on speaking in that guttural lingo even though he did not understand a word of what she was saying. He rubbed his ears and shook his head to show his incomprehension, but she just went on talking. Eventually she started gesturing and pointed to her chest with her thumb to teach him her name. He began to repeat the name: it was Fienatjie, Fienatjie Minter.

And that was how it happened that the first word of that 48

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scratchy tongue that Joey Drew learnt to say was the for him almost unspeakable name of Fienatjie. He in turn taught her the name Joey, not Mr Drew. Fienatjie soon mastered it and kept repeating: “Joey, Joey,” because she wanted to go on watching how, when he heard his name, the sad wrinkles round his mouth under his wispy beard turned into smiles — smiles which spread right up to the corners of his squint eyes, almost closing them with pleasure.

When they called him from the back door to come for his food, it was with regret that Joey took leave of his little companion. He was almost moved to see Fienatjie tripping away to the Minters’ tenants’ cottage — and to hear her reciting Joey-Joey-Joey like a little rhyme. She was saying the name exactly as he had taught her — in an accent that would have chilled Gertruida to the marrow.

Down at the flat-roofed cottage Fienatjie told her sisters that she could now speak English. *** Danie’s brother Wynand and his wife Martie arrived on the Saturday. With them was their only child, Driena, a girl about the same age as Sussie.

The women of Danie’s house were constantly amazed at the way Martie was raising Driena. Only the other day Dorothea said to Gertruida in the kitchen: “Mother-love really is a marvel. Take Martie and Driena for instance. I would have expected Martie to try to mould the child in her own strict image, but she is spoiling Driena rotten. I would never have thought Martie could treat anyone so gently. And yet the child does not seem to be overly spoilt.”

“She’s more Wynand’s child than Martie’s. She takes after 49

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her father far more. Wynand has inherited the gentle side of the Van Wyks.” Said Gertruida, thinking of how the piano had reawakened her own sentimental side. Because on the afternoon while all the others went to Fanie van den Berg’s funeral, she had pleaded a headache and had a secret meeting with her piano. She had done all she intended to do, and wept, and her liberation was so great that when she rose to put the candles away before the family returned she decided not to close the lid of the piano again. That evening she played for Sussie for almost an hour.

“Can you imagine,” Dorothea continued in the kitchen, “what would happen when Driena reached her difficult stage if she had inherited her mother’s temper? The ways of the Lord really are marvellous. But she idolises the child and that is a sin.”

“When you have only one of something, it is very precious to you,” Gertruida added pensively, thinking of the uniqueness of her one great joy and of her irreplaceable piano. Dorothea only half understood and had her own thought: “I think it’s probably because she had all those miscarriages before Driena was born.”

There had been five miscarriages. While she was expecting Driena, Martie was almost consumed with anxiety. She promised the Lord everything if only the child would come into the world alive: she would serve Him faithfully and meticulously; she would keep her temper and her tongue under control; she would confront sin in whatever guise she encountered it, whether in herself or anyone else. But please just let the baby not come too soon this time, O Lord! Not again, please not, dear Lord!

Driena served her full nine months precisely and arrived as a well-formed little bundle of humanity. And in that painful 50

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and marvellous moment Martie promised with many, many tears that she would raise the child for the Lord and give her every little bit of love that a mother’s heart was capable of.

Martie’s iron will and her clear-cut conception of what was right and from Above, or wrong and therefore from the Devil, allowed her to keep to the letter her moral alphabet without ever doubting or deviating.

Wynand and Martie arrived already fully dressed on the Saturday morning, but Joey Drew instructed them to wait till midday for that was when the light in front of the house was at its best. At twelve o’clock he tried to dispose them according to height, breadth and gender, but the family wanted their relationships arranged differently and so each one was positioned in his or her most fitting place. Joey then crouched down under the black cloth, moved whoever needed to be moved slightly, enjoined them to immobility, forbade any blinking of eyes, and called out: “… hold it, hold it, ho-o-o-ld …” while they all stared dry-eyed and sternly at the camera.

That was the last photograph of them all together — the only one in which all the Van Wyks, both the living and the dead, heavily framed and held by strong brass wire from the picture rail, would stare down at passers-by, just as they had stared at the cross-eyed little Englishman’s camera.

The photo taken, the family were mounting the veranda steps towards the front door to go in for the midday meal.

Dorothea saw them first: “Oh no, not this, too!”

For the whole Minter family, dressed mainly in green as for an Irish festival, was coming up the path towards the house.

The Van Wyks looked round. It was Martie who first started giggling. The Minters were walking virtually in single file: first Jakop, then his wife, Sannie, behind them the little girls. Only Fienatjie was walking alongside Petrus at the back. The family, 51

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dressed up in whatever was to hand, looked cleaner than usual, even from a distance, but it was the green felt that the piano had been wrapped in that caught their attention. Sannie had used the windfall material as best she could: she and her daughters were all wearing not just short green capes but green bonnets to match.

“How many times have I told them to keep way from us when we have visitors, but every time they come up with some excuse. Please come inside, they know they have to go to the back door.”

Daantjie joked: “They probably want their photo taken — look at how they’re kitted out!”

“And again your father will have to pay for it …”

Danie smiled at his wife’s distress: “Oh, she is sure to offer her five fowls again.”

But while the others were helping Oupa Daniël through the front door, Dorothea drew Danie aside: “You won’t believe me, Danie, see for yourself!”

The attention of everyone was concentrated on the old man, except for Nellie. She kept looking at the Minters and there could be no mistaking that it was Petrus she was staring at: her hard young nipples were obviously taut under her dress.

“Today! You stop this right now, or there are going to be tears aplenty.”

Danie knew that he should intervene, even though he liked the boy who so obviously wanted to be different from his father. Danie tapped Daantjie on the shoulder: “Tell Petrus I want to talk to him behind the stable.”

Before the two of them went inside, Martie whispered to Gertruida: “Has Fienatjie dreamt anything about the war yet?”

“Not that I have heard.”

Dorothea opened the top half of the kitchen door before the 52

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Minters could knock.

Jakop bellowed his single word at his family: “Manners!”

The family greeted Dorothea in unison. Dorothea was relieved to notice that Petrus was no longer among them, because she was aware that Nellie was trying to peep past her.

“Yes?” Her question was more a command than a request.

Jakop stepped forward, addressed her left breast and said: “Portrait.”

Dorothea declined Sannie’s offer of the fowls and told Jakop that Danie would pay for the photograph, but they would have to have it taken in front of their own house. She would send the photographer over.

At a single word from Jakop, they all turned round and went home and Dorothea sent Joey Drew after them.

Petrus Minter would not appear in that photograph. He did not get home till very late that night.

For behind the stable Danie had told Petrus to keep away from his daughter or leave the farm. By then Petrus had long noticed that Nellie would often come and find him where he was working and would chat a little, but he had suppressed the feelings that kept wanting to surface. He knew he was a Minter and Nellie was a Van Wyk. He denied that there was a relationship between them and Danie accepted his word. Daantjie, however, thought his father was too lenient with the young tenant.

He started accusing Petrus: “Do you think we’re blind, Minter? Do you think we can’t see how you’re always trying to get close to her? What about yesterday? … when you spent hours standing at the water trough chatting to her? What about that?”

Petrus looked him calmly in the eye and spoke quietly: “I cannot chase her away and it was not for hours. She came to 53

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ask me help her with the door of the coach house. That’s all.”

“And you went into the coach house with her, didn’t you!”

“You’re mad, Daantjie van Wyk,” Petrus said in his quiet voice, turned on his heel and walked away.

“Who’s mad, Minter? Come back here!”

But Petrus continued walking. Danie saw that things were getting out of hand.

“Daantjie, don’t let things go too far, my boy. Leave it to me to talk to him.” And speaking loudly enough for Petrus to hear, he called after him: “Oom Wynand has brought the government issue of Mausers, Petrus! Come and fetch your father’s guns and yours.”

Petrus went on walking.

“My father’s talking to you, Minter!” Daantjie shouted.

Petrus Minter turned round and walked back. Only once he was within hearing distance of a quiet voice did he speak: “I will come and fetch the guns when Oom Danie says I should.”

He turned his back and started walking away again. Daantjie’s exasperation with the tenant’s self-control burst forth: “But you keep away from my sister, d’you hear? You’re a poor-white and a Minter! On this farm you’d better remember that!”

Danie could not keep his sympathy for the young man out of his voice when he tried again to catch his attention.

“Petrus …?” he asked, because he knew that it was not easy to be told that you are not good enough.

“Are you deaf, Minter?” Daantjie yelled. “Can’t you hear my father talking to you? Are you deaf?”

Petrus turned round one more time and walked back to where his quiet voice would be audible. He stopped and looked Daantjie and Danie in turn straight in the eye before replying, equably and apparently without any bitterness, almost like a casual comment: “I can hear that I am good 54

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enough to shoot. That is all I hear.”

He walked off into the veld, not in the direction of the houses or the outbuildings. Daantjie was not going to see his rage, his humiliation, or the burning tears in his eyes. If only the war would come, the war that Fienatjie had started dreaming about and which she had told only him about — if only he could get Daantjie van Wyk alone, just once — if only he could get a chance to do something that would not drag his family even deeper into destitution.

Danie silenced Daantjie and they walked back to the house together. He did not like what he had just had to do, but he had no doubt about the need for it. *** War was a rumour — a mirage full of distorted and watery images somewhere on the road ahead. A possibility in the future. In the daily activities of the Van Wyks and Minters, however, everybody’s thoughts were soaked in more realistic waters — in the small concerns of peace. Often, though, there was talk of war in the Van Wyks’ houses, as also in the Minters’ cottage where Fienatjie dreamt of it. Fienatjie Minter.

At the dinner table that afternoon Wynand asked Oupa Daniël: “Do you think there is going to be war, Pa?” “If the English want it, my boy, then there will be. They will eventually become so unreasonable that we won’t have any other option. We can never trust them, and only the Lord can help us. We have to trust in Him.” “Will the Lord help us if it comes to war, Pa?” “Not if you ask that question, Wynand. God is faithful, but you must have certainty in your heart. Then the mustard seed will teach you: Be not afraid, for by your faith and with the 55

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help of your God you will be able to move mountains.”

“I don’t think our people have any idea of how huge the mountains are that have to be moved,” Gertruida interjected.

“We have to persevere in prayer, Gertruida. God is a God of righteousness. He will not abandon us in our just endeavours.”

“The English are going to pray just as fervently as us, Pa. A war is not a contest to see who can pray the loudest.”

Martie’s voice cut in sharply: “That’s sacrilege, Gertruida!

What you have just said is heresy!”

“All I am saying is that the English are just as convinced as we are of the justice of their cause. You should have heard that cross-eyed little Englishman the other night! And the Empire has already spread across more than half the globe. There is nothing we can do against odds like that.”

“That is why I am saying we should do all in our power to avoid war.” This was Wynand, and he said it softly.

Daantjie waded forcefully into the conversation: “And just give them everything on a plate? Far too many of our people are proclaiming that gospel of Judas in our midst. These peacemongers are nothing but a bunch of weaklings. Let’s drive the English into the sea and be done with it.”

“Are you calling me a coward, Daantjie?” Wynand was on his feet.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Oom Wynand …”

“Well, let me tell you today, Daantjie van Wyk, I will fight if I have to, but I am not going to shed my blood and the blood of my people in a hopeless cause.”

“I’m prepared to shed mine, Oom Wynand! I’ll fight till I haven’t got a drop of blood left in my veins!”

Daantjie spoke glibly and bragged even more glibly. His possessions, his horse, his beautiful wife — everything of his was nothing but the best, and it had to be made obvious to 56

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everyone. Behind his back they called him Flash Daantjie. And at the family dinner table that afternoon he was happy display his flash patriotism. He spoke with the deepest possible voice, like a demagogue, echoing the slogans of political speakers.

His tirade was full of “Freedom is more precious than life itself” and “This country so dearly bought with … yes, sanctified in the blood of our fathers and watered with the agonised tears of our mothers.” Daantjie could trot out all the stock expressions, yet he did believe what he was saying, because the words had become so rooted in him that eventually he felt surrounded by a consecrated volk in a hallowed fatherland — with himself at the centre. Towards the end of his creed, in a quieter, pained voice, he mourned the spinelessness of some of his compatriots — those who could so easily, so easily give away that which was sacred, without being prepared to make the sacrifice. To make the sacrifice.

“Well, I am not one of them, so you can stop now,” interjected Wynand, his lips white.

Wynand’s Martie was not an imposing woman. She was short and stout, but what she lacked in height she made up for in irascibility. She heartily believed everything Daantjie was saying, and she and Wynand had often had words about his peaceableness, but what Daantjie had insinuated about her husband was going too far. In her eyes even hesitation was disloyalty, and disloyalty was own brother to the greatest conceivable mortal sin: treachery. She simply had to say something: “Dorothea, tell this brat of yours to shut his big mouth about Wynand.”

“Daantjie was not pointing fingers, Martie.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Oom Wynand …” Daantjie tried to back down: the looks his father was giving him weighed heavily.

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A silence brooded over the family table. Oupa Daniël hinted just once in the direction of forgiveness and brotherly love. It did not help. The only sound was the click of cutlery on plates.

It was during this silence that the piano sounded a single note. An incendiary match of a note.

The two little girls, Sussie and Driena, had asked if they could have their play-play meal out on the veranda while the grown-ups were having dinner, but the food was soon finished and they tired of the game. Sussie wanted to show Driena Aunt Gertruida’s piano, so they slipped quietly past the dining room table and up to the instrument. Sussie gently lifted the lid and pulled off the felt covering the keys. All she wanted to do was press one note down slowly without making it sound. But it did make a sound and the note was launched into the tense silence.

Gertruida chided them gently: “Come away from the piano, children.”

“Driena, come away from that thing immediately!” Martie spoke more sharply than she usually did to her daughter.

Sussie realised that there was something awful going on among the grown-ups and tried to shut down the lid softly. But her hand touched the keys and a jarring chord echoed through the room.

Martie turned to her father-in-law and said, loudly, so that the deaf old man would be able to hear: “My poor, late motherin-law is turning in her grave today, Pa. Do you hear me, Pa? I say my poor, late mother-in-law is turning in her grave today, Pa.” “Now why would she be doing a thing like that?”

“Never-never-ever would she have allowed it. Never!”

Oupa Daniël was bewildered: “What never-never-ever would she not have allowed?”

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Wynand knew his wife and tried to stop what might still be stopped: “Martie, leave off now …”

“No, Wynand, I have something to say and I’m going to say it.”

There was vehemence in her voice and she was hell-bent on continuing, but Gertruida interrupted her: “Well then, have your say, but I can tell right now what you are going to say: the piano is an instrument of Satan’s — that is what you want to say. And it is here because I went to school in the Cape Colony among the English, right? And that is why I never found a husband — as you announced to the Bothas behind my back.

And on account of my pretensions, because I think there is noone good enough for me! That is what you want to say!”

“All I can tell you today, Gertruida van Wyk, is that my late mother-in-law would never have allowed that worldly thing in this house!”

“Gertruida plays nothing but uplifting music on the piano, Martie,” Oupa Daniël tried to calm matters.

“Don’t try and tell me that … Pa. And to think that she wasted the precious love-gift that her mother left her on this devilish thing! Nothing but sin and temptation can come of that thing! I’m going to fetch my hat.”

With that Martie left the room. Wynand shook his head: “She gets like that these days. It’s probably just the way the war is churning up everybody’s insides. I have pleaded with the Lord so many times to deliver Martie from this religion business … What are you laughing at, Gertruida?”

Gertruida preferred not to explain the quandary such a contradictory prayer would cause in the mind of the Good Lord, so she said: “Oh nothing,” and held her peace.

So Wynand and family did not stay the night as originally planned but immediately started preparing to leave. They did 59

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not want to get home in the dead of night, was Wynand’s excuse.

Outside, where Greeff was harnessing the horses, Danie in turn referred apologetically to the words uttered that afternoon: “As a father, Wynand, I am proud of Daantjie’s warm feelings for our people. He is still young and impulsive …”

“A big mouth is not going to get him anywhere.” With these words, Wynand quite unnecessarily walked round the cart to the other side of the horses and pulled at a buckle. Danie understood that there were many things that his brother was saying simultaneously, so he just stood aside until the cart was ready.

Before they left, though, Martie wanted to hear what Fienatjie Minter had dreamt about the war. She found the child behind the fowl run playing some kind of game with the crosseyed photographer.

The child could tell her nothing, however, for when she asked Fienatjie what she had been dreaming about recently, the child told her she had dreamt of ants, lots and lots of ants, and she dreamt that the ants made the children sing. She always cried when she dreamt about the ants, Fienatjie added, because she dreamt that she was singing along with the other children.

An adult could not take any notice of such nonsense. The child seemed to be losing the talent that having been born with a caul had lent her. Martie left Fienatjie behind the fowl run with the enemy envoy and clambered up onto the cart to wait for Wynand to say his goodbyes so they could get going. ***

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Joey Drew knew quite well enough that, in the eyes of other people, the games he and Fienatjie played behind the fowl run would seem strange.

Sometimes he and Fienatjie agreed that they would pretend that they understood each other. Not that it could really be called an agreement since they did not yet have enough words between them to speak about anything as abstract as an agreement. They simply agreed to pretend they understood each other.

At such times Joey would tell her about all his misadventures, all the towns he had been to, the places where he grew up, the people he had known, the mine, and how he and Hans Bester had travelled into the Orange Free State. And Fienatjie could tell him that what she dreamt always came true, and what she was dreaming these days and why she woke up screaming, and why she cried because of the children singing.

Once she tried to sing him the song the children sang but got only halfway. When she sang her eyes filled with tears and Joey could not endure tears in the miracle of her eyes. He stopped her, comforted her, and for the first time in years hugged another human being. Even if she was just a little scrap of humanity.

Sometimes they sat and chatted like two old people who were far too deaf to understand each other — where each simply went on with the conversation, talking just for the fun of it. Play-play, with gestures and laughter and questions.

At other times they taught each other words. They were dependent on objects in their immediate environment, so became bilingual about things like stone, stick, wall, tree, and chicken droppings. No more than that. Till Fienatjie discovered that you can act out the verbs. That was fun.

Joey brought her a steel comb for her hair, but when he 61

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noticed that suddenly all the Minters were looking tidier, he grew slightly jealous and gave her a small tin trunk that had been Hans Bester’s. They hid the little trunk under a stone on the hillside. All the treasures he brought her were kept safe in it: buttons, a needle, a handkerchief, a brass buckle, two coins, and other valuable objects. It was the richest time in Fienatjie’s life, and the happiest in Joey’s.

Only on one occasion did she not come to the fowl run on her own. She had needed an interpreter and begged Gertruida please to come and tell the Englishman what she was dreaming about him. Out of curiosity, Gertruida walked along with her and acted as her translator.

Fienatjie, Joey was told, had dreamt that he would photograph Aunty Magrieta many, many times, and her, Fienatjie, twice and then almost a third time.

Joey did photograph Magrieta again and again, because she was so beautiful, and Fienatjie because of the wonder in her eyes. Joey asked Magrieta the very next day if he might please take her photograph — free of charge, just because of her beauty. She spoke to Daantjie about the proposal. He immediately pretended that the photography had actually been his idea and insisted on paying for it. Joey led Magrieta to the best possible light and photographed her five times.

Fienatjie he could photograph just once, because he had only one plate left. It was while taking those photographs that Joey Drew changed and became a photographer of the unusual. He always maintained it must have been Fate, because that was when he learned to look with new eyes and see that only the unusual was worth photographing, not the commonplace — this was far better than having one family group after another fossilised in staring groups.

Gertruida heard that Joey had taken only one photograph of 62

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Fienatjie, so she was sure that they would see Joey again, since Fienatjie had dreamt that he would photograph her twice and after that almost a third time as well. They would definitely see him again.

For what Fienatjie Minter dreamt was never wrong.

Never.

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Three The war started in October.

Among disinterested circles in faraway Britain the announcement of another minor skirmish did not raise much excitement. Of course, those with an interest in the affairs of the Empire could see clearly enough how the press was denigrating the enemy and sweeping up emotion, and how politicians with well-chosen half-truths — one eye on a career and the other on a search for pretexts — would bend and break any attempt at fair play that did not suit their purposes. A mighty ideal could be fabricated on the flimsiest grounds, and fabrication was, after all, their bread-and-butter. While sheltering behind their parades and shining buttons, the top brass in the army who read the signs correctly were confidently plotting and scheming about senior appointments.

Capital investors weighed up in their minds the influence of war on financial markets and the stock exchange, lending a hand here and there to help matters on a little. Fortunately there were enough troublemakers in South Africa to make their task easier.

So everything was normal, as everything always was normal with minor skirmishes with the natives, the lesser breeds, the uncultured, the uncivilised, savages ... The Boers were no better than other such races and tribes — you only need to read the newspapers — but it was all simply part of the onward march of civilisation and spreading the light: the 64

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doctrine of Christian love, sound administration, Victorian manners and morality; and decently profitable self-enrichment from other people’s raw materials. After 200 trivial “small wars” one grows accustomed to it, although this time the bait happened to be the largest goldfield in the world — these things do cost money — not just yet another piece of red earth that had to keep the sun from setting somewhere on the Empire.

The falling leaves of late autumn in England showed that the year was dying, but what people were looking at was not that — it was the calendar with the figures announcing that an old century was making way for a new one.

On the wide plains of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal ploughs stood ready to rip up the ground in preparation for the first harvest of the new century. The early thunderstorms of a fresh season were pouring their blessings on the veld and the fields. Blossom time was almost over in the orchards round the houses where the young fruits were budding on the fruiting stems. The winter lambs had learnt the taste of new green, and the cattle had staggered out of their lean winter into the fatness of a new summer.

That spring was made for peace and for farming, not for warfaring absences. What the Boers did was farm: the seasons were their very existence, their life’s journey, their entire concern. It was an inconvenient time to go to war.

Veldkornet Willemse arrived with the message that war had been declared and that every able-bodied man was to join his commando — armed, mounted, and with provisions for eight days.

Immediately Danie ordered Joey to be gone: by the next morning and not a moment later.

Before dinner that evening Gertruida led him into the dining 65

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room, took a map from the massive sideboard and showed him how to get to Bloemfontein or Kimberley. Joey was amazed at how far west and south he had travelled after the death of Hans Bester: Hans’ grave must be hundreds of miles away.

By early morning his horses had been harnessed to the cart and his goods packed onto it. In the kitchen Dorothea let him have one last breakfast, gave him some biltong and rusks for the journey, greeted him stiffly and withdrew into the house.

Then Joey Drew left. A small figure waved to him from the tenants’ cottage. A short distance from the farm gate, he reined in the horses, stood upright on the cart and waved back with both arms. That parting he found very hard. If only he had a means of photographing Fienatjie in that position — just like that, completely caught up in the leavetaking, her delicate frame filled with delight, both arms waving, just for him … .

He decided on the road to Kimberley: “Bloemfontein” sounded too much like that rasping language.

Later, as Gertruida had predicted, he reached the main road and on it bands of Boers on their way south to the front. Every group stopped him, searched his stuff, interrogated him through interpreters of varying ability, but then let him proceed.

It gradually dawned on Joey that the camera and his extremely businesslike professional attitude were a kind of passport. Most of the commandoes, when they learnt what his profession was, wanted their historic moment immortalised on his mysterious black plates — and when they refrained from asking him to photograph them themselves, Joey volunteered.

Orders for prints were taken, the small deposit paid in advance, delivery would happen at the chemist shop in Kimberley after the war. Joey arranged the groups with great care, had a good deal to say about the available light, and then 66

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called out with real conviction: “Hold it, hold it, hold it, h-o-oold!” before photographing his subjects with an empty camera.

When there were too many requests for photographs, Joey would refuse — because, he explained, the costs attendant on such requests were so high, and because with the coming of war there was so much uncertainty about the availability of photographic materials: this might be the very last set of photographs that he would be able to take. The man from Somerset in England also had a practical side: while he was doing these men a favour, he would hint about being hungry and about when last he had a spot of liquor down his throat.

With the desired effect.

“A camera is a mysterious thing,” Joey would say. “It’s like remembering and like living. Things hide in your head and nobody sees them unless you yourself take them out and show them. But a camera is still better. When you duck down under that black cloth, nobody knows what you’re seeing, far less what will emerge from it. During the war nobody knew whether they would ever encounter such things again.”

But the greatest asset in owning a camera was human vanity: when once people’s images are caught in the innards of your instrument, they are dependent on your good faith, for you are the only one able to see to it that they will eventually receive their desired images. People like that will never steal your camera or make life difficult for you.

A camera was a passport and also, in the hands of a master, a provider of food and drink.

Yet it was not the camera that helped Joey pass through the Boers besieging Kimberley. He glided into the town on what might be termed the wings of a military grin. Despite the cleanwashed exterior that he had tried so assiduously to maintain since meeting Magrieta van Wyk, a Boer at the blockade 67

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recognised Joey as the filthy little Englishman who had called at their farm and could babble away in English only. They had simply chased him away. The veldkornet looked Joey over: the little runt did not look as if he could be the bearer of much information. Pitiful Englishman — with eyes like that he would be no danger behind a rifle; looks harmless enough; takes pictures for a living; shit-scared — just watch his trousers tremble every time a cannon goes pop! Not worth the bother of keeping him, so: give the people in the town another mouth to feed. Let him through.

As Joey drove away from the besiegers and was approaching the town, the De Beers tower stood out clearly.

The buildings and mine dumps were rising up out of the flat distance when he heard cannon volleys resounding in the town. Joey imagined he could smell the explosives. One time he could swear he saw the bricks and roof-beams of a building being blown sky high — with sheets of roof iron flying about like pieces of cardboard.

There had been one day at the mine when he had seen what explosives could do to people and the blasting area. He had been sent down the shaft that day to help retrieve multiple scraps of human remains after an untimely explosion. It seemed that there had been misfired sticks of dynamite in the rockface when a construction crew was already preparing to install supports in the tunnel. Someone must have tampered with the blowhole and the explosion would have gone off right in their faces. Joey had had to help gather up whatever remained of three men — the rest of the dead were whole enough to be taken out intact. They really had to search for the human fragments — in among stones and rocks and splintered roof struts — working in a thick cloud of dust, dust, and more dust, dust that would not settle but swirled up again at the 68

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slightest movement. In the yellow light of their lamps, the tunnel looked like Hell. That memory had stuck in Joey’s mind — the scraps of flesh, the strands of sinew, the splinters of shattered bones, half a skull, dismembered limbs … everything seen by lamplight in a haze of dust, dust and more dust. The stench would keep returning to Joey like nausea: the stench of dynamite, of dust, of a slaughterhouse, of a shithouse — all intertwined and shoved up your nose. It was the smell of dynamite-pulverised rock, death and all the soft organs and tissues that, in the living, still keep bubbling and rising and falling.

So Joey rethought his fear of the wide open spaces. At least out there it was still quiet and safe. He hesitated. Heavy artillery was thundering behind him and in front the explosions within the town rumbled in return. Things could only be better away from the siege.

He turned his cart round and drove back to where he had come from. The Boers watched his dilemma from afar. When he reached them they asked him where he thought he was going now. Did he not realise there was a war on and the town was under siege?

Like a rat in a trap, Joey thought.

On that, Joey and Boers were agreed. *** They joined the commando on the very next day after receiving their call-up.

Oupa Daniël said the farewell prayer while they all stood together at the small garden gate. The women wiped away tears. The men stood with their eyes closed, their hats in their hands. Although they were gathered together “trembling 69

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before the throne of Almighty God”, as Oupa Daniël put it, they were not one single group but three, each one’s place determined by his status. They were gathered according to the rights, privileges, prejudices and relationships still in force in that pre-war moment. It could not have been otherwise. They were not even aware that they were doing so. At that moment all the conventions of peacetime were still in place. No-one realised what inconceivable directions their futures would soon fan out into.

Nor could they have known that this would be the last time the whole family would be together, as they were in Joey Drew’s family portrait, because they had not yet experienced the turmoil that violence gives rise to. Perhaps Fienatjie might have dreamt something like it, but who would have wanted to listen to such a dark and complex dream about how far or how close people were to one another at shared moments? Perhaps she had simply dreamt how they would be standing during that prayer: the Van Wyks on one side, Dorothea beside Danie, Gertruida next to them, Sussie holding her father’s hand, Daantjie and Magrieta nearby but on their own with Daantjie’s cupped hand, a proprietary hand, on Magrieta’s firm round buttock; Nellie alone, with her eyes open and fixed on Petrus Minter. The Minters formed a separate group, keeping a respectful distance. Three respectful paces farther stood two black men: Soldaat who would accompany them and Greeff who would stay behind but was just there holding the horses.

So they said their farewells and rode away. With their horses and their pack horses. Except for Petrus Minter, who was mounted bareback on a mule, because Soldaat had a horse of his own and all the other horses were needed for work on the farm.

Even their clothes proclaimed the distinctions between 70

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them. Daantjie was wearing the wide-brimmed hat that he had taken down from the wardrobe the night before. Magrieta had pinned up one side with the patriotic brooch he had given her earlier. Round his neck was a red scarf; his shirt, jacket and wide riding breeches all matched; his knee-high riding boots and gaiters were polished to a sheen. His spurs shining and chained, his horse curry-combed and rubbed down, his saddle and bridle oiled and buffed, Daantjie intended to look like a man of means going to war, and he did. Once the procession had passed through the lowest farm gate, Daantjie spurred on his horse, galloped up to the top of the hill, turned sideways on, rose in his stirrups and, hat in hand, with one broad, dramatic wave, took farewell of the small group still watching them from the front veranda.

Petrus Minter, at the back on his mule, unfolded and read the little sheet of paper that Nellie had put in his hand as she said good-bye. She did not want to seem forward, she wrote, but her love would go with him. He could not suppress the hammering in his chest. He allowed himself to think differently about Nellie: about her eyes, her young mouth, her body.

Soldaat was trying to forget the pain in the toe that the piano had fallen on, but the throbbing infection made that impossible.

Danie was wondering what he might have forgotten to tell the folk left behind about how to manage the farming operations while the men were away.

Jakop Minter, accustomed to facing whatever happened as it came his way and nothing more, kept his eyes on his horse’s ears and neck, and rode on. ***

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Afterwards, they referred to what happened to Daantjie at the battle of Tweeriviere as “that business”. Even among themselves they were unwilling to give it a name. When they got back to camp that night after the battle, Danie called Petrus, Jakop and Daantjie together and told them he did not want “that business” spoken about.

The three men in front of him — the Minters embarrassed, Daantjie downcast — listened to Danie in silence and did not mention it again, except when it became necessary. And then only amongst themselves.

“That business” happened to Daantjie just at the junction of the Riet and Modder Rivers. These are young rivers. The mighty erosions of millions of years had filled in the empty valleys of the Karoo. Whatever had washed down and been carried away, by inconceivable floods and sometimes also winds, had thundered down and filtered down and washed down and sifted down into the low-lying areas and created flood plains, and then even greater flood plains, until the flat level areas of the Karoo and the southern Orange Free State found themselves adjacent to one another. As the seasons gradually changed when the continents drifted, the rains decreased, dust storms multiplied, vegetation dwindled until low shrubs and prickly grass were all that was left between the sparse and scattered bushes and trees. Of those only the very toughest survived — the deep-rooted, narrow-leaved, thornbearing ones. Except on the riverbanks.

On the horizons of this landscape lay ranges of ridges, like the scaly backs of prehistoric monsters. Coloured blue by distance, they encircled every plain. Close-up, the ridges were rough. Only the faintest memory of their former existence as islands still adhered to them, but their resistance to erosion stood inscribed in stubborn stone: in the bare, clean-washed, 72

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black baked rocks of the ridges.

It was the ridges of these hills that lay between the British forces and Kimberley.

And the rivers. They were late-comers, these rivers, because at the start they had had to gnaw their way across the plains as they first helped to silt up the shallow depressions and lakes and then linked them from outflow to inflow to outflow, until they became streams and cleared their paths to the great Orange River. It took a long time for them to carve their meandering way across the flat plains. Indeed, they would never be done, because their waters were still brown from their exertions.

The railway from the Cape to the treasures of the hinterland reached a bridge just below the juncture of the Modder and Riet rivers. British logistics needed the railway — for troops, limbers, supplies, mounts and draught animals, field guns, munitions and everything required by an army on the move.

The six hundred miles from Cape Town to Kimberley was a long way. They crossed the Orange on an undamaged bridge, even though they did encounter resistance at Belmont and Graspan. The next surprise attack by the Boer forces was at the Modder River.

The commando of Van Wyks and Minters joined the Boer forces just one day before that battle, because they had had to stop farther to the east for a while, waiting for an attack which never materialised. That afternoon in the camp behind the lines they heard from those who had been involved in the first two battles about the dead and wounded, about those who had run away too soon, about the taste of lead from the Lee-Enfields and Lee-Metfords — and of the Maxims and naval guns. Life on the stony ridges is hell, said the burgher who had been there, for that is where the English direct their heavy artillery.

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Those who manage to survive are half-deafened by the lyddite explosions. Stones and shell fragments smack and ricochet dangerously off all that hard stone. Yellow lyddite powder is left clinging to the rocks. After the blast of an explosion debris rains down. The sulphur yellow powder sifts down over the craters, for all the world — one man explained — like a shower of finely ground baboon shit. And the stuff gives you a headache beyond your imagining.

Daantjie van Wyk knew that he had now landed in the place where he was meant to be: at the front; where the action was.

The exhilarating feeling of being a hero suffused his being, just like his castles in the air. This was where he would perform great deeds of heroism, receive great accolades and bask in the adoration of his beautiful Magrieta.

In the camp he lost no time expressing his opinions. Why, he asked, do we not take a commando and cut off the railway line behind the English? Running away and retreating had to stop immediately — that was nothing but cowardice in men who were not prepared for sacrifice. Nothing else.

The weary group he was spouting forth at listened to him in silence till one of them had had enough: “It looks as though we have a new general here, boys! Swallow some lead first, Van Wyk, before you come telling us what to do. In that glossy outfit of yours, you don’t look like you’re made for war anyway.”

“What do you mean? That I will turn tail and run like you?”

Danie removed his son from the company. “You’re perfectly right,” he said to the man, “we have not yet had that experience.”

Later, after a good meal and evening prayers, Danie took his son to task: “You don’t talk to the men like that, my boy. Rather let your actions speak for you. You are a leader, but it doesn’t 74

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help to make yourself unpopular before the election of the next veldkornet. Just be yourself, but see that you earn the respect of the men. Harsh words won’t gain you respect.”

Danie van Wyk expected a great deal from his son. He was proud of him. He believed Daantjie had a strong personality, he spoke very well in public, and he was handsome, too. From his rather ruddy complexion, his neat appearance and his proud bearing, the fatherly eye could clearly see that his son was destined for greater things. Danie had thanked the Lord many, many times for giving the Van Wyks a bearer of the family name who had such great potential. The only concern that Daantjie had ever caused Danie was that in his bachelor days his son had spent too much time flirting with the girls. Though fathers and sons do not discuss this kind of thing, Danie did warn Daantjie to be careful not to let happen to him what happened to Dirk de Jager.

“When you go too far with a girl, my boy, you’re like clay in her hands. If an unmarried woman will sleep with one man, she might sleep with more than one, and if anything happens she could point a finger at any of them. And she will point her finger at the most eligible. Look what happened to Dirk: today he’s stuck with the daughter of a poor-white tenant farmer.

He’s too ashamed to introduce her in company, because he bears the embarrassment of a lie. That baby has red hair! You are the most eligible man around, Daantjie. Don’t let yourself be caught. Marry your own class.”

That is what Danie said, even though he did not altogether condemn his son’s flirtations. A son is a man, after all, and no father wants an ox for a son. But Daantjie was a Van Wyk and the Van Wyks had never been involved in any scandals of this nature. Daantjie had to take care not to be trapped by some easy, lower-class girl. Danie was intensely grateful for the 75

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arrival of the beautiful Magrieta, because he knew that with a wife like that no man would look at anyone else again.

They were led down to the river in the dark hours of the night. They could leave their horses safe behind the steep riverbanks where they dismounted and quickly walk down to their designated positions. It was easy to carry the spades and cases of ammunition to where they would lie in ambush — on the southern bank of the river.

Digging the shallow trench was not difficult: the sandy soil was still moist after rain the previous week. They were soon done and then simply lay waiting for the morning and the enemy.

There were six of them in their section of a trench that curved round to join the trench occupied by burghers to the right of them. On their left was a short open space between them and the trench with the rest of their commando. Their six were the Van Wyks, the Minters and a neighbour, Gerhardus van As. Behind them, under the riverbank in among the reeds sat Soldaat. He had had difficulty accompanying them; but it was he and Petrus Minter who had dug the major portion of the trench and had carried the ammunition. Soldaat struggled because his painful toe would not heal. Daantjie grew impatient with his hobbling and said the thing should now rot away and be done with it. But sitting under the riverbank Soldaat could rest up and endure the pain, however restless he felt as he realised that the infection in his toe was starting to affect his head. His thoughts were confused; he was sweating, feeling cold and then hot, and seemed at times not to know what was happening around him. But fortunately they sent him away from the trench because, said Daantjie, this was a white man’s war and up there Soldaat would not be involved in the shooting.

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Danie would remember for ever everything that happened that night. It was the last time he had any peace in his soul. He would recall almost every moment.

Behind them the river went its silent way in the dark bed between its steep banks. On their left, more than half a mile farther, a light was flickering in the dark: the Modder River station light, near the blown-up bridge across the river. A beacon for both friend and foe.

For the most part, the men lay or sprawled in the trench, sometimes listening for any sound from the south from where the enemy would come. No morning breeze moved or rustled in the reeds behind them. To Danie it felt as though the reeds and the open veld round them were all holding their breath, like him, before the advent of the unknown. It was the 28th November and summer. The coming day would light up the fresh young shoots and stems of summer grass that were already pushing up through the winter stubble. There were new leaves and blossoms on the bushes and shrubs. The thorn trees had fresh foliage on their shining twigs. The landscape would be showing its summer softness by now and behind them the sharp new spears of the reeds were breaking through last year’s dry stems, as though hurrying because they had only a single season in which to get all their growing done.

Some of the weavers that they had disturbed earlier that evening had nevertheless slept in the reeds, clinging to the stems as near as possible to their half-finished masterpiece nests. On the plains in front of them other birds would be sleeping: the noisy black korhaans, the quails and pipits in their cosy hollows in the ground. There would be turtle doves in the thorn trees and taaibos, with a fiscal shrike sleeping near them. A jackal would be trotting past somewhere, a lynx, a polecat, a Cape hare. Puffadders and cobras and lizards, 77

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geckoes and koggelmanders would be waiting stiffly for the sun to warm their reptile blood so they could move more easily.

And there would be small buck on delicate legs — duikers, tiny steenbuck, springboks. Animals know things: were they waiting too?

Never again would Danie feel as close to the land, to the country, as he did in the stillness of that night watch.

A country — that was what he was thinking.

Later, he recalled how an anxiety, almost as irrational and accurate as an animal’s, had come over him at that time.

Recalling it in after years, he always wondered whether he might have had some kind of premonition that night, a vision, of the loss, the losses, that he would suffer — though he could have no inkling of all the directions his hurts would come from.

The heavy rumbling of a train in the distance made the ground beneath them tremble as the rhythm of the steam engine came throbbing through the morning. The first glimmerings of daylight in the east were just visible in the thin, fleecy clouds.

“It’s going to be a hot day,” Danie predicted.

“Not as hot as it’s going to be for the English, Pa.” “We must remember to adjust our sights for the mirage, Jakop,” Danie reminded everyone.

There was nothing to do except wait. The enemy would come that day. There would be an armoured train carrying heavy artillery; the infantry would form up in a long line across the front; the light artillery would be positioned just out of range of small-arms fire; there would be a machine gun that would hot things up. So they had been told. And remember: you have all gone hunting on the veld, you know what effect heat and mirages can have on your aim and how you direct 78

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your bullets. It’s like shooting a fish through water. Remember, too, each of you will be able to see only part of the battle — only the general will know what is happening all along the line. Please listen to commands and don’t try to be clever and heroic on your own. Obey orders.

On the flat horizon, even flatter than the men lying on the ground, a faint strip had appeared in the first light: was that steam or smoke on the right? Must be the train. They’re coming, as we were told, just like at Graspan and Belmont.

The strip on the horizon unravelled and became dots, the dots changed into exclamation marks, and the exclamation marks turned into soldiers on the march. Their orders were not to fire before the signal, but when the enemy was a thousand yards away a sudden shot rang out. A little prematurely, too much for someone’s endurance perhaps, but now the shooting had started. They were shooting across flat terrain and every man standing upright was a good target. Much better than firing down from the heights, because from up there those who were down below were almost better targets. How much ammunition had they wasted like that, shooting the already dead?

All along the line came the unending crackle of Mausers, now joined by the pom-pom’s dull hiccup. And soon answered. At first, in the fait predawn light, a tiny line of flickers was just visible — sparks from the mouths of LeeMetfords. The Maxims were searching for range. So was the naval gun. Waves of explosions vibrated like deep thunder through the earth beneath the burghers. All hell broke loose: the only thing you could do was to take aim as rapidly as possible and then fire. Keep protecting your ears from the din, ignore the shells tearing through the reeds, the whine of the ricocheting bullets, the dust kicked up by a piece of hot lead 79

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that this time, thank God, has not gone through you.

Later, they had very little to tell about those hours. They could only talk about things which their hearers would be able to grasp. Like the heat that day — that other folk could understand. How the sun blazed down on their backs and the backs of their legs for every hour of daylight on that 28th November. But the language of a battle, as told by guns and heavy artillery, that you could not explain to outsiders. Just as you could not describe the near presence of death. Or the stress that takes possession of you until exhaustion takes over and you stop caring. So keep it to yourself: the things that stood out above all else that day will sound petty and insignificant. Who would be interested in how hot a rifle could get? Or how high the pile of spent cartridges beside you could grow? Or your consuming thirst only ten yards from a river? Perhaps one could not describe it as ten hours of sun, because actually it was also the story of the early morning silence shattered, of an entire day of sun with the blue waters of mirages shimmering in your sights, until there was some merciful relief late in the afternoon. It was the story of heat-distorted apparitions that filled your crosshairs like gods walking on mirrored waters, and sometimes falling into them … can you still remember them yourself? And even the silence, that heavenly, exhausted silence afterwards, is too vast to be described, even to yourself, because you can never really hear it again — not unless you have lain for a whole day amidst the thunder of man-made death.

The one thing that the Van Wyks and the Minters would have been able to tell was what they had sworn not to: “that business” that happened to Daantjie.

Daantjie and Gerhard van As lay in the same trench, the two of them keeping up shot for shot. It happened to Daantjie when 80

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the light wind dropped and the very worst heat of the day was grilling them. The outlines of the landscape were already blurring and dancing. The open veld had become a stove plate.

Objects in the distance began to merge and melt. At eight hundred yards the mirages were drawing faint blue lines. A few of the enemy advanced to a slight hollow some three or four hundred yards away. Daantjie and Gerhard knew they were there, but could not see them from so low down and did not know how much closer they could creep under cover of the hollow.

Gerhard van As lifted his head and shoulders to see if he could spot them.

As Daantjie was asking: “Can you see them?”, the LeeMetford bullet struck Van As’s left jawbone, carved open his cheek, shattered his teeth, slashed through the sinews in his neck and tore open his jugular.

Daantjie was watching Van As when the bullet struck. The sound of it, even in that deafening racket, was one he would have recognised from any distance — like when a bullet smacked into the shoulder of an antelope, or when a slaughtered ox’s legs gave way under him and he collapsed.

But Gerhard van As’s head jerked sideways towards the still taut undamaged rear sinew of the neck, opening the wound in his shattered left jaw. Suddenly a second mouth opened, with in it fragments of teeth and jawbone, and a tongue. Blood spurted out of both mouths. The artery spouted a thin stream of red with each pulse of the heart. Van As’s eyes were wild and white like someone being throttled. Perhaps he was trying to scream, but he had too many mouths for his tongue to control and all his throat could expel was the red stream. With what air was left in his lungs, he could no longer even cry out — his blood-soaked vocal cords could do no more than gargle.

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For almost two seconds he tried to lift himself, as though wanting to stand up. Then he fell back. A casualty of war.

In those two seconds an image of what death means was stamped indelibly somewhere in the centre of Daantjie van Wyk’s brain. Like an antelope that gives up the struggle and goes limp in the teeth and claws of inescapable death, Daantjie sank away into a cool, painlessly neutral pool of unconsciousness. Its gentle waters enfolded him and quite swamped his senses. He no longer heard the thunder of the battle, he no longer felt the heat of the day, he no longer tried to outface his fear with bravado, he no longer wondered anxiously what it must feel like.

Danie was not aware that something had gone wrong with Daantjie until Petrus Minter crept past behind him towards the fallen Van As. Petrus tried to stanch the bleeding with his hand, but blood was bubbling up and spouting out in too many places at once. It was only a few moments before the pulsating became erratic, grew faint and then ceased completely.

But Danie was more concerned about his son who was lying among the spent cartridges and the blood in the bottom of the trench. He crept closer to Daantjie, continually asking Petrus: “Where’s he been shot? Where has Daantjie been shot?”

He turned Daantjie on his back and searched for a wound: there was no wound — the blood was Van As’s. But all Daantjie’s muscles had gone slack, his body and limbs were inert. Danie pressed his ear against his son’s chest and detected a faint heartbeat — more by sensing rather than by hearing it, given the thunder of battle. He licked his hand and held it in front of Daantjie’s mouth: he felt the coolness of Daantjie’s breathing. Daantjie’s ribcage was moving.

Then Danie saw it: a wet patch between Daantjie’s legs was trickling down one leg and spreading outwards. Danie stared 82

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at the ever-widening dark patch with eyes that would not believe what they were seeing.

“He’s wet himself,” Danie said. As the truth dawned on him, he repeated: “He’s pissing himself!”

Danie van Wyk stood up, open and exposed in the trench, ignoring the bullets buzzing down like bees on such an easy target.

“My son is pissing himself!” he bellowed. Not at anyone … simply to tell God how grievously distressed he was. Then for the first time in his life he kicked his son, looking down on the inert frame with eyes half blinded by tears. He kicked the body lying there and yelled: “Wake up and fight, you bastard! You’re a Van Wyk, now fight!” It was as though he was trying to kick Daantjie back into the man he wanted him to be, the son he thought he had, the man that he longed for him to become.

Danie stayed on his feet and went on kicking, as though wishing the stream of lead would bear him away, pour through him and erase his distress and the loss of his son. No bullet granted him that mercy. The bloodied hands of Petrus Minter reached up and forcibly dragged Danie back into the trench.

“Get down, Oom Danie, they’re going to shoot you. They’re trying to break through here on the left where the bomb hit the ditch. We’ve got to stop them now!”

His tenant’s son unceremoniously pushed Danie back into his place and shoved his rifle into his hand. “We need every gun we’ve got, Oom Danie. Can Soldaat shoot?”

Danie did not know whether Soldaat could shoot or not. His trembling fingers inserted a full magazine, pressed home the lock above the topmost cartridge and steadied the barrel across the ridge of the trench. His eyes were now dry enough to aim.

Van As’s lacerated face was too hideous to look at and already the first flies were buzzing in from God-knows-where.

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Petrus covered Gerhard’s face with his hat. Then he almost dragged Soldaat up the bank, made him kneel in Daantjie’s place, and re-set the sights on the rifle. He noticed that while the enemy had advanced another two hundred yards, Daantjie had not adjusted the sights. So Daantjie was a coward! The discovery gave him pause. There was a kind of satisfaction in the thought. Flash Daantjie, Big-mouth Daantjie, Daantjie-thebully, Show-off Daantjie who had so often abused him, ordered him around, Mintered him, had no guts.

Soldaat knelt in the ditch, holding his foot in such a way that it was less painful. Then he joined in the white man’s war.

It was Daantjie who had secretly taught him to shoot, so Soldaat thought it fitting that he should now do Daantjie’s work for him.

He realised what had happened to Daantjie: he could see Daantjie was not dead and that his trousers were wet. Soldaat knew that Daantjie van Wyk had had an encounter with himself that day, and that for ever afterwards, with everything that he had thought he was and had in him, he would hate this stranger whom he had met.

Late in the afternoon the battle began to peter out. The heat had pinned down the enemy for most of the day. How much ammunition could a foot soldier carry? The Boers did not know that the Khakis were concerned not about their ammunition but about the risk to their water tenders if the Boers came too close. They began a gradual retreat from their forward positions. Their gunfire and volleys of shot became sporadic, less frequent and then stopped altogether. The battle was over.

The sound of a bugle must have been a kind of signal to them.

The sun was sinking, its heat abating as the source declined.

That strange mutual realisation that the battle was over descended on friend and foe alike. The Boer line had held, 84

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except at one spot, but there the breakthrough was short-lived.

The attackers had withdrawn to their original positions and the threat was over. They would not try again that day. Their armoured train was starting to build up steam.

The order came down the line to the burghers: they were to leave the trenches and head back to camp, bringing with them everything of value. Arrangements would be made for the dead. Everyone was to assist the wounded.

Daantjie was no longer out cold, but still lay curled up like a hedgehog. Trembling. Why was he shivering when it was so hot? Bending over him, Petrus Minter and Soldaat guessed that it might have been that he was afraid of his father. Perhaps he was aware that his father had kicked him. But in fact that was not what he was afraid of. Only Soldaat sensed that this paralysing anxiety had nothing to do with your heart or your head, but that, involuntarily, whether in man or animal, it could simply take possession of your mind. Soldaat had seen a little steenbok, unwounded, simply give up and die. He had watched a trapped rinkhals try to escape alive by playing dead: its mouth twisted open in feigned rigor mortis, belly-up and defenceless — disarming further proof of its mortality. But, wondered Soldaat in his muddled wits, could a snake really faint?

He offered: “I’ll help him back,” for Danie had stepped over the bodies of his son and Van As and walked on as though they did not exist. Jakop Minter wanted to know what was going on, but Danie brusquely silenced him.

“Get up, it’s over,” Petrus told Daantjie. No response. Petrus lifted Daantjie, carried him the three yards to the riverbank and tossed him down the steep slope. Daantjie rolled down into the shallow water in among the nearest reeds.

“Maybe that will wake him up!”

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Wet and ashamed, Daantjie stood up in the muddy water and then started struggling along beside the reeds to where the horses were tethered. He did not even try to take anything with him: it was Soldaat who picked up his rifle and the widebrimmed hat pinned up with Magrieta’s patriotic brooch, and carried them behind him, along with the spades, plates and mugs. Petrus was collecting unused cartridges.

When they reached the horses, Danie and Jakop had already saddled up and ridden away. “You go with him, Soldaat. I want to see where I can help with the wounded.”

Soldaat could hear a different tone in Petrus Minter’s voice now. He saddled their horses. Daantjie mounted his. They rode back in silence. Soldaat’s fever was now beginning to cloud his mind severely. It was only with difficulty that he stayed in the saddle. His toe was no longer painful, except when the stirrup or the horse’s flank touched it and sent all hell shooting through his toe, his leg and his hip. Yet his head was still clear enough for him to realise that Daantjie was quietly crying, weeping like a man who has suddenly encountered an abhorrent stranger within himself — or so Soldaat would have thought if he had still been capable of doing so.

Back in camp, Danie pulled off his boots and lit his pipe.

“That business” had hurt him more grievously than anything he had ever before experienced. He had lost his son. The courageous death of a son killed in battle would have been preferable to “that business”. And he, Danie van Wyk, had been helped by the son of a tenant, a man who did not even own a horse to ride to the war. A black man, his faithful servant for years and years, had fought side by side with him in the place where his son should have stood. Danie knew that during the battle something had given way. Their relationships had changed already and would never again be the same.

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Later — it was dusk by now — Danie saw Petrus Minter standing bare-chested bent over a basin of water, washing his hands, his arms and chest clean of Van As’s dried blood and the fresher red blood of the wounded whom he had helped.

And washing the blood out of his shirt, too.

“Petrus …” Danie hesitated. Petrus realised that the older man clearly did not know what to say, and both of them knew why: “that business”.

As always, Petrus spoke concisely and in a soft voice. He did not start before he had looked Danie straight in the eye.

“Oom Danie, I found Soldaat early this evening wrapped in his blankets, but his mind was rambling. So I asked the medical people that I had helped with the wounded please to take a look at Soldaat’s toe — the one that Aunt Gertruida’s piano fell on that time.”

“Is it that bad?”

“They reckon he’s got gangrene in the toe and if it isn’t amputated straightaway, the infection is going to spread right up his leg and kill him. Or else he’s going to lose his foot. But they can’t help him because there are so many of the wounded to attend to.”

“Are you sure?”

“You can take a look at the toe yourself, Oom Danie. Soldaat is lying over there. The toe is pitch black and rotting. You can smell it. I think I could see white bone sticking out of the swollen flesh. The medical people said we should cut above the hindmost joint and see if that will help … and if there is any healthy skin still bleeding red, we should loosen some of it and stretch it over the stump and stitch it on.”

Danie went over to the tent he shared wth Daantjie and returned with a bottle of brandy.

“Get him as drunk as you can, Petrus, but keep a little 87

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brandy to cleanse the stump with. I’ll fetch salt and some ointment. … and another lantern.” As he walked away, Danie muttered something. Petrus knew the words were not just about Soldaat but also about Daantjie, perhaps even about himself too: “That man fought alongside us today.”

Petrus got Soldaat to drink the brandy quite willingly at first, but later almost had to force him to swallow more, without telling him that they were going to cut off his toe. The already half-drunk man drank till he could not take any more.

“Drink up, Soldaat, it will help for the pain. Drink up!”

Soldaat, now even more confused with fever and brandy, drank until a nauseous hiccup seemed about to choke him and Petrus was scared he might start vomiting up the precious liquid.

Danie brought Daantjie back with him. He knelt beside Soldaat, turned back the blanket and opened his pocketknife.

He held out the knife to Daantjie: “I’ve whetted it properly.

Now cut off that toe.”

Daantjie took the knife, dutifully enough, but almost like someone who was present but actually absent. Danie was looking harder at Daantjie than at the toe. “At the top joint!”

Daantjie began to tremble again. He lowered the knife towards the toe but did not cut.

“Cut!” came his father’s command. “It’s the start of gangrene. Wet gangrene. If you don’t cut it off, he will lose the toe, and later his foot and then his leg. If it reaches his groin, he’ll be dead. Now cut!”

Daantjie pressed the knife against the toe and looked away.

“Look where you’re cutting!” Danie insisted, his eyes locked grimly on his son.

Daantjie made a last attempt to get out of doing it: “But it’s just a Black, Pa!” 88

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Danie was so overwhelmed with rage he hit his son in the mouth with his fist — putting all his disappointment and fury behind the blow. Daantjie’s head jerked back. He fell over backwards off his haunches and lay still. “He’s a man, this, d’you hear? He was fighting while you pissed yourself and shat your pants. He’s a man and you will bloody well respect him!”

Danie picked up the knife and told Petrus to keep Soldaat’s chest flat. He sat on Soldaat’s legs, pinning them down under his weight, and drew the lanterns closer. He cut off the toe at the top joint, rinsed the open wound with brandy, salted it and applied some ointment. Over the stump he then drew some healthy-looking skin that still bled red and with needle and thread sewed it up like a seam. Soldaat screamed only once but then lay quiet.

When he had finished, Danie got up and unceremoniously ripped a strip off Daantjie’s shirt.

“That’s all my son is worth in a war — a walking bandage pole!” Utter contempt in the tone of his voice. And the bitterness of grievous disappointment.

He bandaged Soldaat’s foot with the strip of shirt.

Daantjie got up and stumbled off. The front tooth which his father had knocked out lay behind him on the ground where he had lain. From that moment on, the gap in his front teeth would tell his mirror, his tongue, his biting and his chewing, the story of his humiliation and rejection.

After Petrus had buried the toe and they had tried to wash the smell off their hands, Danie called them together: Petrus and Jakop Minter, and Daantjie too, and told them that “that business’ that had happened to Daantjie that day was not to be spoken about.

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the knuckle on his right hand back into position so that he could bandage it with his left.

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Four Joey Drew survived the siege of Kimberley. And even if it was not exactly a pleasure, he could still look back on it as a time of great professional advancement. There were concerns, of course — Joey’s greatest fear initially was that starving people in the town would slaughter and eat the horses that he had so honourably inherited from the late Hans Bester.

Nothing, Joey found, broadens one’s range of tastes like a siege. One’s ability to determine the edibility of both moving and immovable objects becomes acute. Fussiness is soon thrown out the back door. Hunger brings with it a tolerance about what you put in your mouth. Foodstuffs that you would never look at in times of plenty actually agree quite well with your insides. Joey noticed how soon the townsfolk began to agree that the horses and donkeys, draft animals though they were, could be cut up into edible portions of stewing meat. He observed with what eagle eyes people looked at rats in a new light. He was convinced that within a month those who had set traps all over town, first to catch Kimberley’s rock pigeons and tame doves, had adjusted their snares to trap small nocturnal creatures, too. No koggelmander could be sure of its life any longer. For years after the siege there were no snakes in Kimberley. Pet numbers declined drastically. No possibly edible creature escaped consideration.

Joey was determined not to surrender his horses to the rumbling stomachs of strangers. After Kimberley the real 91

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sound of the siege, according to Joey, was not the thunder and whine of cannon shells and grapeshot, but the rumbling of thousands of stomachs. Later, when telling the tale of his four months under siege, Joey always insisted that hunger not only ate away the fat on your body, it also consumed any objections to what you might put in your mouth and whatever conscience you may have had about other people’s edible possessions.

Like his horses. Joey guarded them with very great care.

There was a second threat to his horses and Joey always quietly congratulated himself on the way he handled it.

By coincidence — or was it Fate? — a widow Bester lived two houses away from him. Fortunately she was not related to the late Hans. She could not have been a relative of the Hans Bester who so kindly bequeathed his earthly goods to his friend and colleague, Joey Drew — admittedly only orally, though it was his dying wish. For by this time Joey could tell a very pretty tale of how that late colleague and partner — deeply moved by the fact that his friend, Joey, had undertaken to dig his grave himself, personally and free of charge, and also to conduct the funeral service without compensation of any kind — as a parting gesture, while calmly and peacefully he gently breathed his last, entrusted his worldly goods to the aforesaid Joey. Joey learned that Mrs Bester’s late husband had been a very tall, lean man, like all his brothers. To safeguard his inheritance, Joey gave Mrs Bester to understand that the Hans Bester (May he rest in peace) who was with him, was a man of normal height and definitely not lean — perhaps even slightly chubby. Joey felt it necessary to shorten by a few inches the dead Hans (May he find the rest he has earned) and to add a few pounds to his lifeless body — for honourable reasons, of course: he was not keen to enter into arguments about his cart and horses, and in any case how, should any dispute arise, 92

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would he be able to verify the widow’s statements while they were both dying of starvation in a besieged town surrounded

by Boers? And anyway, why would she want to go driving around in a horse-drawn cart?

But after considering matters such as verification and other legal aspects of his inheritance, Joey took out of his trunk the only article of clothing that had escaped the laundering hands of the Van Wyks: the long jacket with the shortened sleeves.

The dead are called to rest, he told himself, not to unleash legal disputes. He removed the documents and papers from the lining of the jacket — could make no sense of the content, words or the red wax seals on them — and consigned them to oblivion in the flames of his stove.

But for the rest, all went well. He had the camera and the egos of the people to work with — and the chemist at Kimberley Apothecary was able not only to develop his photographic plates really well, but also understood the art of enlarging and colouring photographs. When Fienatjie Minter’s little face emerged out of the chemicals, Joey could not wait to paint her eyes with the very best blue tint. Joey could play to his heart’s content with the redness of Magrieta van Wyk’s lips and the rose pink of her cheeks. At his first attempt he made her lips and cheeks a little too red and left Magrieta looking like a particularly beautiful tart. That wouldn’t do: it was too much at variance with Joey’s admiration of and reverence for that beautiful lady. It was Magrieta’s lovely face that taught Joey to work more lightly with pigments. In his third attempt she was almost as lovely as she was in life and Joey could admire her image for hours on end — hours in which the smiles around her eyes could not reduce him to a worm. Hours of blessedness.

To the accompaniment of the sound of the bugle whose 93

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strident G announced that another wisp of smoke from the Boer cannon had been observed and that the explosion could be expected in the town in nine seconds’ time, and other similar distractions, an artist was emerging from the depths of Joey Drew’s soul.

He rented a house in a part of the town that the Boers apparently did not aim at. When he was obliged to go into the centre of the town, he would tell anyone who would listen that “a man with luck on his side” had little to fear. It was true that those bombs were falling like Fate on the town, and like Fate they kicked up a hell of a racket and a whole lot of dust wherever they fell, but actually they were a Fate spread sparsely over a wide area. You just have to trust your luck, that’s all. If death has to come now in this way, well, that is only right, because you do owe one life to eternity anyway, and it is up to Fate to decide when your debt will be called in. And if eternity chooses to call you in in this way, well, that could actually be a good thing, because the bits and pieces of your body flying around all over the place would not even know that they belonged to a soul that had just started on its upward flight. So Joey said, though he was careful to duck and dodge wherever he walked, and he planned his route in such a way that he was always within easy reach of one of the shelters — ever with one ear cocked for the bugle’s G announcing the imminent arrival of another dose of Fate. He simply could not banish from his mind and imagination the memories of that day down the mine. At night when the night-soil cart with its clattering and scraping buckets spread its stench through his bedroom window, he would dream of the day in the tunnel of the mine and wake up sweating. Strong smells awoke only one memory in Joey.

Joey never knew whether he had volunteered for the Town 94

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Guard, whether he had been called up for military service instead, or whether it was all a misunderstanding.

A man had arrived at his place. Aged about sixty and dressed in a uniform that Joey could not identify. He introduced himself as Sergeant Jackson and had a sheaf of papers with him. When Joey invited him in, he first placed the papers on the table before sitting down. He was on some kind of multipurpose mission which he could not fully explain.

Joey eventually made out that the man was a sergeant in the Town Guard and that this was a joint civil-military organisation whose purpose was to defend the town, at the cost of great sacrifice and heroism, to defend it street by street if the Boers were to break in. Etcetera, etcetera and so on. Joey tried to the best of his ability to follow what the man was saying. Every man was needed to guard the town: the old, like the sergeant himself, the young, the sick, the halt and the lame.

Even those with obvious and serious shortcomings and complaints. At the conclusion of his speech he looked long and hard at Joey. There is a place for everyone, he continued, as though making the greatest concession imaginable. It was the sacred duty of every patriot to do his bit. That is what it boiled down to.

So far, it was all fine, but then the man began to talk about sacrifices and pushed the first sheet of paper across the table right up to Joey. It was a disturbing document because it was a kind of undertaking that could be signed by people who had enough civic duty in them to sell their horses to be slaughtered in order to feed the hungry and the needy — at that stage, some three-quarters of the town. Delivery took place every Tuesday and Friday at the Washington Market. Remuneration at ruling prices.

Oh, so that’s what they want to do, thought Joey. At first 95

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they are going to pretend that they want to buy your animals, but eventually they are just going to take and eat them. Could the man smell the stable at the back of the yard? Joey tried to play for time: “What else is there to sign?”

He paged most attentively through the sheaf of papers and slipped the document about the horses in underneath the rest on the pile.

The sergeant leant over, drew the papers across towards himself and quickly paged through them. He found his document, retrieved a small bottle of ink from his pocket and uncorked it, inserted a nib in the pen he had with him, dipped the nib in the ink, passed it to Joey and said: “Sign here. I have to produce proof that the Town Guard was here.”

That’s what the bugger said! That’s what Fate said, or so Joey would believe for the rest of his life. Proof that he had been there! People are such liars!

Joey signed. The sergeant left the rest of the papers on the table just like that, so Joey could react to them however he wished. But he stood there, in his hand the paper that Joey had signed and the bloody ink bottle and the bloody pen, and ordered Joey: “Report at eight o’clock!”

So Joey went, found the headquarters of the Town Guard and reported for duty. There they issued him with rifle, uniform, boots too large for him, ammunition and his first orders: Clean the gun, buff the shoes and belt properly, polish the buttons and buckles, make sure the uniform fits — here’s the thread — report to the parade ground at seven o’clock tomorrow morning in uniform and with your weapon. Seven o’clock means seven o’clock! All new recruits will fall in at eight o’clock for weapons training. Eight o’clock!

Joey spent the night with shoe brush, polishing cloth, and needle and thread. He reported at the parade ground on time.

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After his busy night, Joey was surprised to see that he was one of the few men in uniform. He learnt later that the only uniforms left were either extra-large or very, very small. All the medium-sized ones were taken.

On the parade ground his performance was not altogether to the taste of the drill-sergeant. But he managed by meticulously copying, in the time allowed, everything the man in front of him did. Though that meant he was slightly late in his movements after the orders were barked out, things did gradually improve. He arrived at the shooting range at eight o’clock with a shiny-bright new Lee-Metford.

Whoever Messrs Lee and Metford happened to be — Joey often wondered later — and why Mr Enfield should have left the factory to make way for Mr Metford (or vice-versa) Joey did not know and did not care, but about their packaging department he had plenty to say. When he unwrapped his new Lee-Metford the previous night and unrolled the strips of cloth round it, he found that the entire thing was packed in grease.

Yellow grease. Plastered with the stuff. That gun could spend a lifetime at sea and never rust. But since ever Rhodes had imported it for the Jameson debacle, the gun must have lain in its grease in the heat of the stores, and that grease had now hardened and become a kind of soapstone. Joey had had to wipe and rub and scrape for three whole hours. Eventually, and with his last few drops of paraffin, he did manage to get adequate movement in the lock-section. By two o’clock in the morning only the barrel remained to clean but the thing was as blocked as a solidified snotty nose. The ramrod simply bent whenever Joey tried to shove it through, whether from front or back. It was late and Joey had already spent many hours polishing belts, buttons, shoes and buckles, and taking in an entire uniform with needle and thread. So he took a three-inch 97

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nail and scraped out the grease in the mouth of the barrel, in such a way that no-one would notice it from the outside. He used the same nail to dig out enough grease behind the lock for him to be able to slip in a cartridge. As for the solid grease in the middle, well, Fate would have to take care of that.

The corporal at the shooting range looked the new recruit Drew up and down. He was particularly concerned about where and how the man was focusing.

“Are you right-handed?” he asked.

Joey nodded affirmatively.

“How do you shoot?”

“No insult intended, Corporal, but what do you mean?”

“Left or right?”

“I don’t know …”

“Let’s try left … that’s the eye you look with, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know …”

The corporal made Joey lie down and bent over him. He slotted a cartridge into the barrel and carefully slid the bolt. He placed the butt against Joey’s shoulder, showed him how to focus and aim, explained how the safety mechanism worked and told him to aim at the target and pull the trigger as he had been shown.

Joey pulled the trigger.

Messrs Lee and Metford would have clapped their hands together.

The rifle exploded in a very odd fashion — halfway down the barrel. The explosion would have made the best firework maker in China go green with envy. The corporal extracted a sliver of metal and several splinters of wood from his welloiled uniform jacket and looked as though he himself were about to explode. Deathly pale, mumbling about courts martial and people in danger of losing their eyes, he rushed off to the 98

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lieutenant. The lieutenant reported to the captain who, together with the whole command structure under him, came personally to see what was going on.

“What is happening here, soldier?” he asked Joey.

Joey himself was wondering what had gone wrong. After all, he had done exactly what the man had said he should. He knew he was supposed to rise to his feet in the presence of so much high authority all gathered round him — like round a grave — but he couldn’t. His knees refused. The noise had deafened him and he could not hear clearly what they were saying. Lying where he was and looking up, he kept his hand cupped behind his ear — to indicate that he really wanted to hear what they were saying.

“What happened?” the captain shouted at the deaf man.

“A factory error …?” Joey tried.

The gout of grease in the mouth of the barrel and the smear on the corporal’s uniform testified against Joey. The captain looked down at him. Trembling with fear, the cross-eyed little figure looked up at and simultaneously past him. The captain’s stern military exterior softened.

“What can you do?” he asked, as if to someone hard of hearing.

“Take photographs ..,” The captain relaxed. The little runt might be of some use yet.

“Lieutenant, here we have our regimental photographer.” And although it was something of an exaggeration to speak of the Kimberley Town Guard as a regiment, the rest of the captain’s orders were detailed and precise. (He was a bookkeeper in civilian life.) “Register him as such and keep him well away from weaponry and the parade ground. We need to protect our good military name. Issue him with civilian documents and a ration card, but take back his uniform and what remains of his 99

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weapon. Make a list of all photographs to be taken and the costs attendant thereupon and have it on my desk before parade tomorrow morning. Fill in requisition forms for any necessary materials and attach same for my authorisation. He reports to you, so be sure to check the quality of his work.

Report in writing. And, Lieutenant, amend the procedure for marksmanship practice to ensure that all gun-barrels are declared free of obstruction before the commencement of any exercise. Have it on my desk before parade tomorrow morning.

All barrels first to be inspected before this exercise continues.

Pronto!”

So Joey’s contribution to military procedures was immediately put into operation: first as an order emanating from the officers’ command structure, then all the way down the line to the volunteers still waiting for a chance to take their first shots. In time it became a standard instruction for the training of junior officers.

“All barrels!” the bark sounded above the yapping, and the required response: “All barrels inspected and free of obstruction!”

All were warned that if this procedure was not followed, they should expect an explosion “à la Private Drew” and severe punishment in consequence.

In this way Fate contributed to both military procedure and the quality of Joey’s life during the siege of Kimberley.

Every morning, obedient to “regimental orders”, Joey went to work. To the lieutenant, that meant photographing military personnel. Walrus moustaches, handlebar moustaches, pencil moustaches, mustachios. Joey photographed them all: officers in rows stiffly; troops stock-still among the sandbags, in the trenches, standing beside the guns; unbending civilians on parade; mounted men sitting rigid on their horses — which 100

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would not keep their heads and tails still for the camera. Fuzzy horse-heads and tails appeared on all the photographs, which led to the cavalry order: “All tails to be plaited!” Even the military men were drawn into the matter of keeping the heads still because the animals were more valuable alive. The Kimberley Town Guard had to learn that a horse will only allow itself to be militarised so far and no further.

Later on, once the military had been thoroughly documented, Joey had to photograph all the important persons in the De Beers company. More walrus moustaches, handlebar moustaches, pencil moustaches, mustachios. After that he was ordered to take photographs of the ladies of the women’s movements. That Joey found more interesting because they were not uniformly dressed and their moustaches were considerably more subtle. Then came the sports teams, and so on.

In the afternoons, Joey had to immortalise “the effect of the siege and civil resistance”. It was in the afternoons that the artist in Joey budded, blossomed and began to bear fruit.

He worked as hard as the available light and the energy of his friend the chemist permitted. With new sources of photographic material from army stocks as well as the De Beers store, things were going well. Joey made friends with a certain Mr Owen who occasionally worked as a part-time photographer for De Beers. Fortunately, the man was usually drunk and not a good caretaker of photographic supplies. It was Mr Owen, in one of his rare intervals of sobriety, who introduced Joey to the latest techniques and materials. Joey realised that his mahogany case with its shining eye was seriously antiquated. But De Beers had a camera that could arrest a horse’s moving tail for all eternity, not to mention its head. For all practical purposes, Joey had free access to De 101

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Beers’ material, especially since he and his chemist friend worked on the “use one, take two” principle. As employees do, in order to bypass the stock book.

Joey used every afternoon, and Sundays in particular: after six days of thundering, on the seventh day the Boer guns strictly observed the Sabbath and kept their mouths shut. That was when the Kimberley-ites worked like the possessed as they sawed and hammered and tried with frenetic industry to repair their shelters. In fact, the townspeople spent six days avoiding activity and worked strenuously every Sunday. But during the week, too, Joey and his camera were everywhere. Even while the Boers’ huge Long Tom was firing into the town and flailing the whole area with tremendous explosions and wailing shrapnel and sowing Fate over an ever-widening area, Joey went on working. And merciful providence so decreed that Mr Owen was drunk for the whole week when the great De Beersbuilt cannon retaliated and fired its first volleys. Joey was there, with his camera.

It was at this time that a particular idea took hold in Joey’s head: he was the bookkeeper, the one who preserved images, who immortalised people and their affairs, their activities and the consequences of their deeds. Which was a way of getting away from the mine and making a new life, and it developed into an obsession. A troublesome, nagging question arose in Joey’s mind and it was the most important question that would ever arise to challenge him.

When he watched the townsfolk, shell-shocked but driven by hunger to queue up in front of the Food Supply Department for a helping of flour or horseflesh, clutching their sweatstained ration cards, Joey asked: “Why?” This, while the bugle could sound its shrill “G!” at any moment and Fate could come whistling down upon you. Or when he saw them standing in 102

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another queue with every imaginable hollow container in their hands, waiting to receive the soup which Mr Rhodes’ people distributed so generously and lovingly to those who had the right vouchers.

“Why,” he asked, “do some people still look so well fed while others are so emaciated?”

When a chance encounter gave him the answer, his obsession became a vocation. Once the answer to that question dawned on him, he suddenly realised that he was more than just a cross-eyed worm with the bandy legs of an earwig. For that was what the smile in Magrieta van Wyk’s divine eyes had transformed him into. Now he was more than just Joey Drew, the man who always had to add “from Somerset in England” to make himself feel like something. Now he was a man with a higher mission — a man destined for more than merely to survive this shambles. He was not the hands or feet of the community — he was their memory, and they had only the one memory — Joey Drew. And his type of memory was true, because it would eventually show how things really were. All the distorted stories, with all their embellishments, that people will try to tell themselves after the event, the lies to justify themselves, the lies to plead their innocence, would be corrected by the truth of his pictures. For Joey believed that his camera, unlike himself and everyone he knew, did not lie. To prevent the thing from starting to remember selectively, like people did, Joey worked even harder. He realised that it was not the world’s biggest man-made hole in the town’s backyard that needed to be photographed — instead it was life on the other side of the tracks, and the hunger which some people always had to suffer — even during a siege.

To celebrate his new-found sense of self-worth, Joey dug deep into the lining of the long tailcoat and had a tailor make 103

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him a suit. He took up the German-made razor that was in the chest that he got along with the camera, stropped it on the leather strop that was also in the chest, whipped up a good thick foam with the shaving brush that had originally been in the chest as well, and shaved off his beard. After considering its potential for a moment or two, he decided his moustache was promising enough to be kept. Next day he bought a little tin of perfumed wax and stiffened the upturned ends of his moustache. From there he went to the barber to have a proper haircut. He so wished Magrieta could see him in his shiny new shoes, with socks that had not been darned even once. Oh, if only Fienatjie could have seen him now! Fienatjie Minter! Like a puppy, her whole frame would show her delight, and she would crow: “Joey, Joey!”, and her eyes would be filled with even more wonder.

Joey Drew laid to rest his past and the origins of his possessions. You first have to forget, he maintained, before you can have a proper memory.

From that day onwards, he styled himself Mr Drew, Photographer, and signed his products “J.F.Drew, Esq.” Only when he was asked directly did he tell people in all honesty that the goods were paid for in blood-money earned by a hardworking Johannesburg miner who had slaved for many, many double shifts to buy them. If people assumed that he was that miner, well, that was fine. Only when expressly asked did he explain about the De Beers camera that was shattered during an explosion when quite by chance it happened to be in Joey’s possession and strangely enough was exactly the same model as the one Joey was currently using. Coincidences of that nature, he would say, could only be attributed to Fate. And as everyone knows you don’t confront Fate attired in whys and wherefores — and especially not when it is spat out by a Boer 104

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cannon and comes whistling down on you out of the air.

It was barely a week after the “Why?” hit Joey that he first went to the food queue for black people.

It was a different queue, in a different town, a different siege, another world. The eyes of the people waiting there were dull with a different hunger. They spoke languages Joey had never heard before. They wore clothes that Joey had often seen but never noticed. The other photographs that Joey took came back to him: images of well dressed, smartly pressed, moustachioed gentlemen whose sole concern was how their poses would look, whether their quiffs were neatly combed, whether there might be a stray wrinkle in their clothes, all wanting to show their best side to the camera. And of ladies already on the stout side who arranged their clothes and their vanities in just the way they wished to be immortalised, all of them with round, smooth cheeks. Small wonder then that people joked that the only person who increased in size and put on weight during the siege was Mr Rhodes.

Joey noticed the row of permits in the black hands and asked if he might see one. The girl he approached could not understand a word of his strange language but did not resist when he took the document from her, dog-eared and limp as it was from daily handling. She could not have had a clue about what the scribbles on the piece of paper might signify, but Joey could see immediately how different her permit was from the one he had. Her permit was for half of what he got, and for maize meal alone, for three persons. He realised that this was something that people would choose to forget when, later, they told the story of the siege of Kimberley. As he looked along the row of famished folk, he undertook to himself that he would remember it on their behalf, for he knew that these people would be forgotten in the storytelling, if indeed they had not 105

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already been forgotten, consciously or unconsciously, with or without a sense of guilt.

He was screwing his camera onto the tripod when one of the volunteer officers at the ration table rushed up to him. “What are you doing?”

“I want to photograph you.”

“Why do you need to read the food permits for that?”

“I have orders to photograph the consequences of the siege … to photograph the people of the town.”

“We’ve been warned about people like you. If you want to photograph the food queues, go and do it at the white queue.

Unless you want your camera confiscated.”

The officer turned on his heel and returned to his table, but with many a backward glance at Joey.

While Joey was loading his camera onto the cart, a woman came up to him. He could not guess her age but she could not have been older than twenty. She was thin, possibly of mixed blood, but the high cheekbones and the heart-shaped face of the people of the region were unmistakeable.

“I heard what you were talking,” she said in comprehensible English. “If you really want to see what goes on, you can come with me.”

She walked away and beckoned to him to follow. He drove behind her on the cart. One block later she stopped and waited for him to catch up so she could talk to him: “This is Barkly Road,” she said. “Follow it till you get to a tall bluegum tree on the left of the road. There you will see the location. I’ll wait for you there.”

As she turned to walk on, Joey asked her why she didn’t simply ride on the cart with him. “You don’t want to be seen in the light of day with a black woman, Englishman. White men only offer us rides at night. Wait half an hour before you come 106

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and I’ll meet you there.”

Joey dawdled for the half-hour, then drove on. She was waiting for him at the turn-off from the two-track path to the location. When he stopped, she climbed up without hesitation and told him to drive on.

As they were driving over the bumps and potholes to the slum, he asked her who she was and how she could speak English. Her answer was naïve, like a child’s.

White people, she said, called her Elizabeth, but that was not her real name. She was something of an outcast. She had worked since she was hardly more than a child for one of the very few early diggers who had brought his wife and children with him to the diggings at Colesberg Koppie, which is now Kimberley’s open mine. She spent several years working for them but left when she became involved with a white digger and moved in with him. The other diggers would not admit in daylight what they themselves did at night and started throwing stones at the tin shack where she and her lover lived — especially on Saturday nights when they were on their own and burning with jealous lust. When her lover wanted her to “help a friend of his out” in the same way, she ran away from him.

“I open my legs for only one man at a time.” There was such an innocence in the way she stated the unmentionable that Joey was more intrigued than shocked, though he had never heard such expressions from even the wildest ladies in Johannesburg.

Her own family would not have her back because of her superior attitude when she lived with white people and learnt their language and wore their clothes. “Go and stuff yourself with your white meat,” they snarled and chased her away. The white family she had first worked for would not take her back either, because they said their two sons were growing up and 107

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they did not want a Koranna girl with a taste for white meat in their house.

“I went back there twice, and each time I took one of the sons into the bush. That’s how I got my own back. I never went there again. Those two boys will hunger after me for years.

Every time they think of that thing, they’ll think of me. They’ll never forget the thrill. I fucked their brains out.” She laughed.

Her teeth were even, and white.

They drove through a stench. Elizabeth explained: “They’ve dragged another dead donkey along here.”

The horses made slow progress on the path between the huts and shacks. There was no actual road. The furrows and gullies from earlier rainy seasons running along the path had been gouged deeper by the wheels of carts. In some places there were potholes which in winter were dust bowls, in summer they became mud holes. Some footpaths ran parallel, others criss-crossed the track.

The horse cart driven by the white man made no impression on the folk in the tin shacks or mud huts. The ones squatting on their haunches, or flat on the shining hardness of the ground, or leaning against the walls, or lying in the shade, took no notice of the horse cart struggling along in front of them. In their bearing was the apathy of the starving, listlessness in their every movement. Whenever one did move, it happened slowly, with an almost ghostly economy of motion. It seemed as though the least effort had to be essential before it could be undertaken — very sparingly, so as not to use up what little energy remained. So sparingly that each movement looked like a final one. “I thought they would beg … as they do in the town,” was all that Joey could think of to say.

“They know it won’t help.”

But he realised it was more than just that. These people were 108

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past caring, they were beyond the stage of wanting to try to drag their lives back from the edge of the abyss.

“Those that still can, look for food in the town,” Elizabeth explained. “These here are the worst cases.”

From time to time the reek of dung fires, of tainted donkey flesh cooking, of the watery faeces of the starving, blew across them, but for once Joey was not thinking of the mine explosion: this was worse because it was so agonisingly slow.

In front of one shack, Elizabeth told him to stop. “The people here have not come out for two days. The mother is probably in town trying to whore for food, but she won’t get any — she’s too skinny. Nobody will pay to bed a skeleton.

Come.”

Joey got down and followed Elizabeth into the hut. He came upright in a stinking hollow. One room. Three people, a father and two children. The man and one child were lying prostrate — small, crumpled heaps under dirty blankets. The other child crouched in a corner. Only their eyes moved as they followed Joey and Elizabeth’s entrance. They said nothing. Not a single limb moved.

Elizabeth had to take Joey by the arm to draw his attention away from the misery around him: “Photograph them. That’s what you said you wanted to do.”

“There’s not enough light in here …”

“Set your camera on its feet outside, I’ll carry them out into the sun. They are light as feathers.”

Joey set up the camera and Elizabeth, half-carrying, halfdragging them, brought the man and the children outside. The location folk did not form a curious crowd round the strange apparition in their midst. Not one came closer to take a look.

All curiosity and interest had died in them. It was as though Joey and Elizabeth were not there — or else in a place where 109

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only absent folk foregathered. The two of them were simply not present in the lives and senses of the people leaning against the walls. They were not present because these people were already in a different reality, in another place, unapproachable and remote.

While, with Elizabeth’s help and by dragging, halting and supporting them, he was arranging the three people in front of his camera, enduring their silence and trying not to see vacancy in their eyes, Joey tried to suppress the pity within him. This was not the appropriate time to see all this with your heart.

But through the camera lens he could not do otherwise.

The man’s clothes were in tatters, the children were naked.

The skin had long since shrunk back over their skeletons.

Every remaining scrap of skin or flesh not supported by bone was a hollow: their cheeks, their temples, their eye sockets, their necks, their collar bones, the space between their ribs and their hips. Their skeletal legs stretched down from jutting hip bones as thin as knife blades, past folds of skin that had once been thighs, bent at the enlarged knobs of their knees, and ended in dusty bony feet. Wasted lips, grinning mouths stiff, thin, and joyless — the grimace of the famished. The children’s teeth looked almost unnaturally white against their half-open lips; the man’s mouth was hollow, with bleeding gums as though his teeth had recently fallen out.

Joey had the feeling he was photographing piles of bones in a loose bag of black skin — exhausted little piles of humanity with useless mouths whose openings were nothing but places for flies. Above each small heap, two brown eyes staring unseeing into nothingness — like fragments of a remaining soul still clinging desperately to what had once been a living body.

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trickled or dropped down onto her chest. It was not vomit but something like runny maize porridge. The smears were evidence that someone had tried to feed her but had given up without taking the trouble to wipe away the evidence of the attempt.

Elizabeth commented: “Only the flies are fat here.” The flies, lazy and contented, swarmed everywhere, settled on everything. They clustered round the eyes, mouths and nostrils of the faces of the three people in front of Joey’s camera. Not one tried to wave them away. Perhaps any movement was simply too demanding.

A strange feeling overcame Joey. There were no words for what was happening within him, but it felt as though he was photographing more than just three people dying of starvation.

He was photographing sadness itself — the sadness of three black people dying, the sadness of the siege, the sadness of all sieges, of a continent, and of the heartache of the defenceless.

Elizabeth drove back with him to where the location track joined Barkly Road. They did not talk much. As she got down from the cart, she asked: “Well, did you feel sorry for them?”

“Yes.” “Why did you want to photograph them?”

“To make people remember. To make sure they don‘t forget.

So they won’t be able to lie about what they did.”

“Do you sometimes lie?”

“Yes.” “Then I’ll see you again. You’re alone.”

What she said must have made some sort of sense to her, because she stated it as a fact and then turned round and walked back to the location without any further explanation.

Joey watched her go and though he was still feeling overwhelmed by what he had just experienced, he could not 111

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help noticing the swing of her hips.

At ten o’clock that night Joey was still standing outside on the dark veranda. The silence of the curfew and its prohibitions had long since descended on the besieged town. The guns were silent. Kimberley’s searchlights were criss-crossing the landscape, the mine dumps and the houses. In the distance, towards the south, Joey could see other searchlights playing in the night clouds, signalling messages to the occupied town.

These were the lights of the relief forces, so he was told, but only the colonel and his officers would understand what the shining on the clouds could possibly signify. This business had been going on for weeks and nothing had happened. Joey could hear his horses moving and stamping their hooves in the stable behind the house. Thank God he still had them. Joey thought of all the many rumours heard in the town: of other sieges and many battles won and lost. How the stories reached the town, he did not know — and even less how much truth there might have been in them. One thing he did know that night: the siege had got to him that morning. He could not face food. The memories of those starved grimaces, the flies, the stench, were still too powerful. While on the trip back that day, sitting on the cart — a cart drawn by so many pounds of edible horseflesh — the round cheeks of some of the passers-by revolted him more than the stench earlier.

“Open the back door and don’t put on the light,” Elizabeth whispered out of the darkness.

He opened the back door in the dark. “How did you find me?”

“There’s always someone who knows you.”

“How did you get through the curfew?”

Elizabeth didn’t think it worth responding to stupid questions. She pushed past him and walked down the narrow 112

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passage to where a lamp was burning in the front room with black-out blankets in front of the windows. He locked the back door and followed her. She picked up the lamp in the front room and carried it into the bedroom. There was no bedside cabinet, so she put the lamp on the only chair in the room and started undressing. When she was quite naked the curves of her body gleamed like bronze in the lamplight. She had the high buttocks and pointed breasts of her people. Elizabeth remained standing beside the lamp and slowly turned to face him. She wanted him to see her like that.

“You’ll have to teach me,” Joey said, “… I don’t really know how.”

“But you’re nearly forty!”

“I’ve never been with a real woman … Only with whores.”

For a moment she thought about what he had said, then smiled suddenly and came to him. “Then tonight I’ll be a woman for you,” she said softly, while her fingers started undoing the buttons on his shirt.

She slipped away before first light. They had spent almost the whole night talking. That was because he liked her, Elizabeth said. Men and women don’t talk until afterwards, she believed. Beforehand they all just talk a lot of rubbish till they can get at each other’s bodies. But if a man talks to you afterwards, that means he likes you.

Joey did like her.

The relief force arrived the next day, riding into the town on a pile of dusty horseflesh.

The smooth-cheeked ones suddenly delved deep into their secret pantries and prepared a feast for their liberators, which they were able to demolish pretty rapidly before going on again. Joey photographed some of them — unwillingly, but this was also something the camera had to see and remember.

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The town had thus been relieved and Joey, too, was now freed. It always seemed to him almost right that it had taken such a vast hunger to de-worm him.

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Five Magersfontein 12 December 1899 My Most Dearly Beloved Wife Oh, how precious you are to me! Thinking of your beloved Face is all that sustains me in this Hour of crushing Tribulation. Your Presence, my Beloved, is all that I would beg of God at this Time! Oh, black Hour of Loneliness! Oh bitter Fate! What Yearnings have overpowered me at this Hour! One Opportunity to see you again, my precious Magrieta! Just one Opportunity is the cry of my overwhelmed Heart. Please do not ever reject me, my beloved Wife.

Daantjie continued in this fashion for three more pages, till he eventually ended with: Overwhelmed with Pain and Longing, Your Husband, Daniël van Wyk. This was his second letter and very different from its predecessor. His first one, written on the day before the battle of Twee Riviere, was full of his opinions about how wrong the Boers’ plan of attack had been, about the craven cowardice of some of the burghers, and about what ought to be done to rectify matters. Magrieta read his second letter through her tears for she could see that her husband, even though he was not fully in control of his words, had been quite overwhelmed and had written from the heart. Yet the difference between the two letters was striking. Maybe his yearning really had so 115

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overwhelmed his heart that even the war was forgotten. Or so her heart wanted to believe. The only actual news the second letter contained was that he had fallen off his horse and lost a front tooth. She thought that that might have been what had made him so depressed: she knew how vain he was about his appearance.

Dorothea, too, noted the difference between the first and second letters that she received from her husband. Where Danie’s first letter had been full of instructions about what absolutely had to be done on the farm without delay and what could safely be neglected or postponed till spring merged into summer, the second was almost crudely factual: Under the protecting hand of God they had survived two battles, but Gerhardus van As had been killed at Modder River — if his family had not yet heard, she should let them know. For the rest he hoped all was well on the farm. No instructions about the farm work? No concern about the livestock?

She had to hear about Daantjie’s front tooth from Magrieta.

Every post brought a letter for Nellie. The handwriting on the envelope was unusually precise, a hand Dorothea did not recognise. It could only have come from Petrus Minter. Could he have gone to a proper school before the Minters appeared on the farm? But as a precaution against any such effrontery on the part of the Minter boy, and also because she wanted to be the first to know if there was ever any bad news from the war front, she ordered Greeff always to bring whatever mail he fetched from the town directly to her. Nellie was forever asking if there wasn’t any post for her too, but Dorothea only said: “I will tell you what is in Pa’s letters and you can ask Magrieta what Daantjie has to say.” Nellie was disappointed but said nothing. Dorothea felt too uncomfortable about actually burning Petrus’ letters, so she simply kept them: she would 116

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return them unopened to the Minter boy when he returned — and so put paid to his effrontery.

Whenever Greeff brought the post, Gertruida followed Dorothea like a shadow. There was no way of evading her without giving offence, so Dorothea would read the letters in Gertruida’s presence — at the dining room table, for instance.

Occasionally as she was reading the first letter, she looked up and told her sister-in-law things like: “Everything is fine. He says we should please not forget to drive that dappled cow out to pasture a month before she calves — that’s this month! — because other feed will make the calf too big and she’s already struggling.”

With the second letter, however, there was virtually nothing to summarise, except that Gerhardus van As had been killed, so Dorothea handed the letter to Gertruida to read for herself.

“Here, you read it, Sister, and tell me if you also get the impression that there is something going on that he does not want to tell us…”

Gertruida read it, “This does not sound like my brother. Do you think all the warfaring is affecting him? The Van Wyks do have a gentle side.”

“I am uneasy, Sister. Won’t you go and find out whether Fienatjie Minter has had any more dreams? One never knows.”

“It seems to me that the child is starting to outgrow her caul, Sister. Only yesterday I asked her what she dreams about nowadays but all she could talk about was ants. Sannie says she sometimes wakes up screaming terribly. And every time she is drenched with sweat in sheer terror. But, yes, I will go.”

However, Fienatjie, who had never dreamt a mistake, was so preoccupied with the ants and the little children singing that she could not dream news from the battlefront as well. Sannie Minter was quietly hoping that perhaps the caul was at last 117

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letting her child alone. That would be such a mercy, because you never knew if all the truths that she was forever dreaming might not come from the devil himself. Sannie removed the dry, crumpled membrane — the one that covered Fienatjie’s head when she was born — from the tin she had kept it in.

Could it be sinful to keep this sort of thing? Perhaps the fact that she had kept back this piece of herself when the rest of the afterbirth was buried was the very reason why the child suffered so terribly in her dreams. The midwife who had helped her at Fienatjie’s birth said she had never seen a caul as big or thick before, and that Sannie should salt it and keep it safe, because people said it would bring you luck. Looking at the austerity all round her, Sannie Minter saw no sign of luck at all. So she called Fienatjie and showed her the caul.

“This is the skin that you had over your head when you were born, Fiena. Maybe that is what makes you dream so. Go and bury the thing.”

Fienatjie took the skin just as it was, wrapped in the piece of pickling muslin that still showed white patches of saltpetre, just as her mother had bound it after the birth, and placed it in her little trunk — beside the treasures that Joey Drew had brought her. She put everything away again carefully — in their secret place on the hill — to keep for the day when her friend Joey would come back, wearing the new clothes that she had dreamt about. At night she still dreamt about ants, and little children singing. *** Some of the burghers present when Petrus Minter and Pollie Sevenster had words on the second night after the battle of Magersfontein thought Sevenster was just having some fun 118

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taking the mickey out of Jakop Minter. In any case, maybe it was just the kind of silliness that sometimes affects young men’s nerves after a battle: sheer relief that it was over and that for one more time they had managed to survive unscathed.

When bullets are flying, nobody can claim he is not afraid or that he does not have a knot in the pit of his stomach. Some tried to bluff themselves that they were brave, pretending it was nothing, but nobody actually believed them. After a battle, or even a skirmish, almost everyone could laugh more freely from sheer elation and relief. Particularly the young ones.

Jakop had come to fetch his food where it was being dished up. He bellowed out his “Thank you!” at the left breast of the woman with the large dipper who was ladling out the stew and potatoes onto the tin plates. Sevenster, who was standing beside Jakop, grinned and winked at his mates. When it was his turn, he copied Jakop exactly, first concentrating with exaggerated attention on the woman’s left breast and then, when she had dished up his food, he bellowed “Thank You!” The young men round him burst out laughing. Petrus, standing in among them, was very pale when he grabbed Sevenster by the shoulder and jerked him round, forcing him to look Petrus straight in the eye. In the sudden silence, everyone heard Petrus say in his quiet voice: “That is my father you are mocking. I don‘t know who raised you, but if you won’t respect him, at least respect his age. Now shut your face or I’ll punch it in for you.”

Sevenster could not just slink away with his tail between his legs in front of everyone. “It takes two to punch, Minter! And leave my upbringing out of this or I’ll smash your face in.”

One word led to another till the others had to intervene.

They kept the two apart, but Sevenster then dared to cast a gross insult at Petrus: “Who do you think you are, Minter?

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Riding a mule, and bare-back at that — without even proper shoes on your poor-white feet! Your trousers you outgrew ten years ago! You and your old dad are no more than the rich Van Wyks’ farmhands. Labourers, that’s what you are! Since when do I have to respect that? Take a look at your own upbringing before you talk about other people’s. Let me go, so I can put him his place right now!”

He said a whole lot more while half-heartedly trying to break free of the men restraining him. But what he said needled Petrus: for long years, words like these had been festering inside him. All Pollie Sevenster had done was to scratch off the scabs. The words began to suppurate and bleed and sting all over again.

Petrus walked past the food queue without another word, picked up his rifle, fetched his mule from among the horses, put on the bridle, undid the fetter, mounted and rode off. After the trouble at the queue Danie came to see what was going on.

Walking alongside Petrus’ mule, he asked: “What happened, Petrus?”

“Nothing that I can’t sort out, Oom Danie.”

“You can’t just ride away from the war, Petrus …”

“I’ll be back in a day or two. I hear the English are patrolling up here along the river. If I don’t come back, Oom Danie, please take care of my folks.”

So Petrus Minter rode away into the dark. It was two days before he returned. At night. With two English horses, with their saddles and bridles, two small tarpaulins, four good water bottles, two Lee-Metfords — and a huge British service pistol in a button-down holster on a shining belt. He was wearing a new pair of khaki trousers — and English leather boots. The Lee-Metfords he gave to Danie: “I thought you would like to see what it is they shoot with, Oom Danie. The 120

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rest I threw into the river.”

“Did you kill them, Petrus?”

Petrus just smiled, and Danie tried to recall whether this was the first smile he had ever seen on the young man’s face: “Just stole them, Oom Danie. Call it spoils of war. I see that Sevenster is alone up there. They tell me he’s saying I ran away from him. I’m going to have a few words with him.”

“No fighting, Petrus …”

“Won’t be necessary, Oom Danie. If he’s on his own, he’ll shit his pants before I say a word.”

Petrus Minter said nothing about how he came by the horses or the rest of the stuff, except once when he told his father that he had tried six but not one had boots big enough for Jakop Minter’s feet. Only Nellie would ever know what happened in those two nights, but that was not before she eventually got Petrus’ letters which her mother had secretly hidden.

No one ever knew what Petrus said to Sevenster on the night he got back, but it did not escape anyone’s notice that on the next evening Sevenster himself took Jakop Minter’s plate and fetched his food for him from the supper queue.

Never again did anyone mock Jakop Minter’s manner of looking or speaking. Not in front of Petrus and not behind his back either. *** They kept silent about “that business” that had happened to Daantjie on the banks of the Modder River. But then it happened a second time, in the trench at Magersfontein, and several times more when they were pinned down in their camp at Paardeberg. “That business” did not disappear, and 121

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whenever it happened, Soldaat simply stood in and took up Daantjie’s rifle. Soldaat was a different person now. Certainly, there was a hollow in his shoe where his big toe had been, but the stump had healed quickly before the infection could spread.

With Daantjie, on the other hand, things were totally different. He spoke very little, and then always with his hand in front of his mouth to hide the gap in his front teeth. He never laughed at all any more. When there was nothing to do, he went off moping on his own. Comrades that tried to chat to him walked away again after a few minutes of his long silences and curt answers. Some said: “He’s brooding — quite frankly, he’s no company at all.” One who had seen Magrieta at church thought he understood the reason: “Having to be separated from the most beautiful woman in the land can’t help but affect a man, even if you are Flash Daantjie van Wyk!” So after a day or two Daantjie was left in peace to go his own way and torment himself to his heart’s content. Only Soldaat had any contact with him.

After lying dead drunk for two days after his operation, Soldaat hopped along smartly on one leg to where Daantjie was sitting. Soldaat was the one person Daantjie would talk to and it was to Soldaat that Daantjie told his first lies. That was perhaps the start of the vast lie that Daantjie was to become; the first of a chain of untruths that he would link together in an attempt to re-gain respectability in the eyes of others. Perhaps that was where it started growing in him.

“You need to shave,” Soldaat told him on the very first day.

“Why?” “You don’t want people to think there’s something wrong with you, do you? In the eyes of other people you have to remain Flash Daantjie.”

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“How many people know about this thing, Soldaat?”

“Only us. Seeing that I know how to shoot, your dad made sure that we lay apart from the rest — where the veldkornet would not pass by.”

“Does Petrus Minter know?”

“He was there every time — how could he not know? He went and got himself two very fine horses from the English.

And shoes, too.”

“My dad thinks very highly of him now.”

“Sure.”

Daantjie fell silent.

It was only much later that Soldaat asked: “Was it Petrus Minter who cut off my toe?”

Like an inspiration, like the first gleam of a little self-worth, like a lifeline, the lie just bubbled up out of Daantjie’s muddled thoughts: “No, I did. You would have died if I hadn’t. Dad and Petrus Minter said it was a waste of time to save a black, but I could see you were going to snuff it if I didn’t get on and do it myself. I even had to tear a strip off my shirt to bandage the thing, because it suddenly started bleeding quite heavily.”

“I remember Petrus making me drink the brandy.”

“I told him to, because that would save you suffering. If I hadn’t taken charge, you would’ve been dead today.”

And because Soldaat did not need to enquire any further, the lie remained between the two of them. For a lie, it was remarkably consistent — it lasted forty years — and its coils bound and entwined and linked many things between Soldaat and Daantjie — and even the fair Magrieta — and troubled them for a lifetime. This was Daantjie’s first dark lie — a black lie without even a hint of the innocence of a little white lie. This one had a calculated darkness in it — it was no pale grey fib like the one about losing his tooth. In that incident he fell off 123

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his horse and hit his mouth on a rock: why would Soldaat not believe him?

But in a trench, the body does not practise deceit. A man locked into a foetal crouch holding his head in both hands between his upstretched knees tells only one story. Wet trousers speak their own truth and proclaim their own humiliation — as does the expression in his father’s eyes, and his father’s tone of voice whenever he speaks to him — these do not lie. They do not lie at all. Contempt and rejection in a father’s eyes do not lie.

In the nights of waiting after Magersfontein and before moving on to Paardeberg, Soldaat spent many hours with Daantjie. Well behind the camp, with the horses. During the wordless silences between the two men the horses would be snorting and moving about and stamping their hooves.

Occasionally they would hear a distant veld noise, like a jackal howling somewhere, or the alarmed distress of a plover as some night creature stumbled across her nest. Even in the blackness of night, Daantjie was aware of Petrus Minter’s two gleaming English horses with their braided tails and clipped manes, standing like an accusation in among the Boer horses.

And the mule as well. When Daantjie was wallowing in selfpity Soldaat tried to explain what happened when a rinkhals played dead, and how it simply could not stop itself sinking into a feigned death. But all Daantjie said was: “I can’t help it!

It comes over me before I know it’s coming. Not even God wants to help me! I prayed myself hoarse before this battle … just to stay on my feet. They may as well just shoot me.”

Then, in the middle of it all, just then and there — like a terror constantly gnawing at his thoughts and refusing to let up — he would repeat again and again: “Magrieta must never know about this! Do you hear me, Soldaat?” And again: “My 124

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wife must never ever hear about “that business”! Never!”

And then Soldaat would have to explain over and over again that Magrieta would only know about it if one of them told her, and not one would, because on more than one occasion Danie had sworn them to secrecy on the matter.

Soldaat also added the caution, several times, that it would be better if Daantjie were to start treating Petrus Minter like a human being, for by now everyone had realised that Petrus was not afraid of anything or anyone. As long as nobody made Petrus so angry that he would eventually come out with it, there was no way the thing would reach Magrieta’s ears.

Soldaat recognised that merely keeping mum about “that business” was already the start of a lie, and that sharing in the lie left you exposed to all who knew the truth. So Daantjie should start by acknowledging that he was now in the hollow of Petrus Minter’s hand. In his mind’s eye Soldaat saw that the vision of himself that Daantjie now had in his head must have been overlaid with something pus-filled and inflamed, like smallpox: the poor man had walked into a mirror that refused to lie to him; he was jealous that the serving man that he used to shove around at will had proved to be so fearless; he had been struck dumb by his father’s disgust; he was frightened to appear diminished in the eyes of his divinely beautiful wife — her contempt would be something he could not endure. Too many things were eating away at his mind all at the same time, but if Daantjie were to start avenging those things on Petrus Minter, he might find himself facing more truths than would be good for him.

They spent what felt like weeks and weeks kicking their heels at Magersfontein. What was going on the heads of the high-ups they did not know, but it was clear that the English were repairing the railway bridge across the Modder River, and 125

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also that they were strengthening their forces. They would not risk another battle here on the open veld because from out of their fine trenches the Boers had given them a resounding beating. But rumours were beginning to surface that the English were going to circumvent the railway line and take a roundabout route to Kimberley.

The Boers left Magersfontein by night — a slow clumsy column of hundreds of wagons and carts and pack-animals and women and children.

For part of the way that night, Petrus rode beside Danie.

Towards midnight he made a strange observation: “This looks more like a tribal migration than an army on the move …”

Now where, Danie wondered, would someone like Petrus Minter have come by an expression like that?

But the words set him pondering about where the young man might have been to school. He started asking Petrus about things he should have enquired about a long time ago — like: where the Minters had made their living before they arrived on the farm without a sixpence to scratch themselves with. Jakop’s monosyllables when they arrived on the farm had offered very little by way of explanation — almost as though Jakop was unwilling to tell where they had come from. At that time Danie had left it at that and never really thought about the matter again, because Jakop worked like an ox and proved himself worth his salt in every possible way.

In the dark, Petrus’ soft voice told him that Jakop Minter had fled to escape debt, because he had stood surety for a brother who had boozed away everything he had attempted.

They had lost their farm and everything on it to the bank, but before the final auction his father had taken the mule cart, the draught animals and a few of their most essential possession and fled north. The stuff he took had already been listed in the 126

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bankrupt estate — it was no longer his to take. And Petrus added that from the time of that hasty flight, his dad had never been the same again, having to ask hat-in-hand for somewhere to stay, pleading for assistance, constantly having to sell off their remaining possessions to buy food. It was as though the capacity for caring had died within him. In the days when he farmed his own land, he had been a well-groomed, proud man and could look people in the eye, but when his pride was broken, everything else within him broke too.

Just for a moment, as he was relating all this, Petrus could understand Daantjie’s shattered pride, but because Daantjie had deliberately humiliated him so often while he was growing up, he supressed that sympathetic thought, adding with some bitterness: “I never saw the inside of a school again after that. I wasn’t stupid, Oom Danie. I was one of the brightest in the school.”

He kept silent for a while, wondering whether what he had just said did not sound boastful.

Looking for an excuse, he said: “I’d just like to go and see whether I can help with driving the stock down at the rear,” and spurred his horse forwards.

They had to drive the oxen with the crack of the whiplash but not by whipping them; they were not to shout at the animals either. The black column moved across the night veld with a strange kind of rustling sound: the grating of the iron felloes and the creaking of the wagon shafts merged with the shuffle of animal hooves in a continuous reverberation — almost like a hissing, or like the wind. Even a snort or cough from an ox with too tight a thong somewhere, or a wagon wheel clicking on a stone, added their little noises. Danie heard the sound of his saddle creaking underneath him. We’re not on the march, he thought, we’re crawling. It was a very strange 127

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journey, a defenceless expedition, for they formed one long flank on either side. If the English were to realise just how they were moving, they could be shot to pieces in moments. They had altogether too much baggage. Petrus Minter was right.

With so much baggage they would never be able to slip away — and full-scape flight was even less probable. Their circumstances made escape impossible.

Danie had begun to learn certain things about war: it disrupted everything, and what had value in peace time, was of little importance here. Just think of Daantjie and Soldaat and Petrus Minter. War opens up another eye in your head, and once you have looked through that, you will see everything and everyone differently for evermore. He thought about the farm where nothing was likely to have changed, and wondered what it would be like when they got back, and Petrus Minter was just a farm labourer again and Daantjie the heir apparent.

Could he blame Daantjie for the war, or deny Petrus the respect that he had already earned? And this was only the beginning — God knows where this kind of thing would end. So Jakop Minter had been a landowner in his day … Had he been unfairly dismissive about Jakop all this time, and not appreciated the value of the man? Does peace have its eyes closed? Does the everyday blind you to what is happening?

They pushed on as fast as they could, but the English caught up and surrounded them like a thunderstorm. They had intended to cross at the Vendusie ford, near Paardeberg, but the Modder River was coming down, rising right up to its banks and justifying its name: its waters were dark and full of silt, the swells sluggish with all the mud they were carrying. At the edges where the reeds were bent double by the heavy flow of muddy water. Fishes were coming up for air. By next morning the waters had subsided slightly and the column was 128

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preparing to risk crossing the ford when the first bombs started falling among them. Untethered animals took fright and started milling around and running off. Suddenly all was confusion. For over an hour hell’s own chaos swept through them. Everyone was trying to stop the animals while keeping out of harm’s way. They managed to calm the animals that had not run away. They formed a lager and started digging foxholes and ditches along the riverside while the bombardment continued without a break, and even intensified.

Later the English stupidly launched an attack or two across the open veld, but the burghers’ fire repulsed them with ease.

However, the lager was out in the open, in a trap, and as the days passed they had to watch the English closing off the opposite side of the river as well. The flat ground where they found themselves lay open to increasing bombardment by the growing number of cannons. Systematically, their draught animals, their ammunition wagons, their riding horses and they themselves were shot to pieces and there was nothing they could do about it. Then the bridge which in their desperation they had tried to build was blown sky-high.

On the very first day of the bombardment Soldaat came across Daantjie down near the river with “that business” upon him. That night he fetched Daantjie and laid him down in the foxhole that he had dug for the two of them.

On the seventh night Petrus came to Danie and Jakop Minter in the trench where they were trying to sleep.

“I’m going to try and make a break for it, Oom Danie,” he said.

“Nobody can get out of here, my boy. We’re stuck.”

“We can’t stay here. I’ve just been to the lager — there’s virtually nothing left and the stench there is even worse than here. They’re stuck with a whole lot of wounded people, and 129

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corpses, and dead animals. Almost all their food and medicines and ammunition have been blown up. All they’re doing now is arguing about surrendering. I’ve just come tell you, Oom Danie, that I’m not prepared to let myself be captured. Better to let them catch me while I’m trying to do something, rather than be trapped like a sheep in a pen. I’m leaving tonight. I’ve been down to our horses in the trench: they are all still fine. I’m going to ride because here we’re either going to croak bravely or else be caught.”

Danie listened to him in silence. “How do you think you’re going to get out?”

“The opposite way — downstream. The water is rising again. They won’t expect anyone to try to escape through the lion’s mouth. The river is flowing strongly enough for a horse to float down if necessary.”

They left everything and followed Petrus Minter.

Once the decision had been made, Danie said: “Daantjie had better stay behind — let them catch him and be done with it.

I’m tired of having to hide him every time a gun goes off.” He spoke in front of Daantjie as though he was not there. Petrus, too, took no notice of whether Daantjie heard or not. “We’ll give him the choice, Oom, but if we come under fire and “that business” comes over him, we’ll leave him to the English. If it happens in the river, he’ll just have to drown.”

They saddled the horses in the trench and loaded the mule with the bare essentials. Then they swam the animals through the river and moved down along the opposite bank towards the English side. Daantjie went with them.

It was a strange, silent progress, the half-mile downstream along the river. The animals struggled in the mud, and the reeds were another hindrance. In some places the riverbanks were steep right down to the water’s edge which forced them 130

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to swim for short distances, which the horses found easier than ploughing through the mud and reeds. Dead horses and oxen lay washed up and bloated, half in, half out of the water. The stench of death and corruption was overwhelming. Catfish swarmed in the slime around the carrion. Twice Petrus who was in the lead, threading his way through the washed up carcases, called out: “Watch out — there’s a body here!” The catfish were busy around the bodies, too. One was floating in a gully, so Petrus shoved it out into midstream so it could drift down river and perhaps be buried somewhere, but the other one was too far up the bank and they did not have the time to struggle with it. The group kept together, speaking softly. At a gully where dead animals had almost formed a dam across the channel, Petrus veered upwards onto the bank.

When he had reconnoitred the scene and returned to fetch them, he whispered to Danie: “No sentry is going to stick it out for long in a stench like this.”

All through the small hours, guided by the stars, first south, then eastwards, they had to lead their horses — the mud had quite exhausted the animals. The morning sun found them in the second range of hills south of the river. There they could take cover and rest — and watch from a great distance how the explosions were systematically annihilating the trapped lager as the English swarmed in, drawing the noose ever tighter. All day long they heard the distant rumble of cannon fire, like a continuing thunderstorm a long way away.

Four days later they joined up with the Boer forces and heard that the lager with all its thousands of able-bodied men had surrendered. ***

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In March that year “that business” came over Daantjie van Wyk for the last time.

The war was then heading for Bloemfontein. It happened after the battle of Poplar Grove and while the skirmishes round Abraham’s Kraal and Driefontein were raging — Bloemfontein was about to fall.

They were positioned on a gently sloping hill on one side of the depleted Boer lager that was trying to resist the onslaught of tens of thousands. To their right all the grimness of the battle of Driefontein was raging. The British numbers were overwhelming — the plain below was crawling with them — but they did not attack the hill where the Boers lay before two o’clock in the afternoon. Danie and his unit lay shooting from behind their hastily packed redoubt of rocks on the hillside and came under heavy fire, but the English had little very shelter out on the plain, so their losses were substantial. The Boers realised they would not be able to hold out very long for, one by one, the burghers were falling in amongst the rocks.

Fortunately they had to face the attention of only two cannons which in any case were more concerned with the pom-pom diagonally behind them than with the hill itself. The rest of the thunderous heavy artillery was driving their attention towards Abraham’s Kraal, in the direction of Driefontein. By afternoon the sun was in their eyes and the English were rapidly gaining ground.

Danie took the shot at about five in the afternoon and, he always maintained, it was his own fault, because he tried to turn to the right in the cramped shelter behind the rock where he was lying. The bullet went through the hip and emerged above his right buttock. He was still able to shoot, but the wound was bleeding heavily and he would not be able to move much at all.

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The burghers were already starting to retreat over the crown of the hill when Petrus Minter came down it, dodging the bullets and lay down next to Danie.

“We’re falling back. Come, Oom.” “You go, I won’t be able to. My side is lame.”

“I’ll help you over to the horses, Oom.” “They’ll pick us off too easily on the slope. Just you go, you can run.”

“There are plenty of unoccupied earthworks. Come, Oom. I’ll help you up past them one at a time.”

So, with Danie leaning heavily on Petrus’s side, they made their way up the slope in a hail of bullets, from breastwork to rampart to barricade. In one of the breastworks Soldaat was still desperately trying to rouse Daantjie to join the retreat.

“Leave him, Soldaat. Fetch his rifle and cartridges. Let them capture him and be done with it.” Danie had difficulty speaking because of the pain of the wound and because he was already weak from loss of blood. Soldaat obeyed. They left Daantjie.

When they reached the horses behind the hill, Petrus had to lay Danie sideways across the horse. Sitting would have been impossible.

They were in a hurry to get away but Danie absolutely insisted on first saying something bright and clear and immediate. So it was in this uncomfortable position, lying with his stomach across the horse’s back, groaning more than speaking, that Danie had Soldaat and Petrus stand beside him: “You are my witness, Soldaat. I don’t know what my wound looks like, but it’s bleeding. If I don’t make it, I’m telling you now, if Nellie wants to marry Petrus, I have no objection. Tell them, Soldaat, if I’m no longer there. D’ye hear?”

“I hear.”

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“It’s painful, Petrus — please don‘t let the horse trot. And keep me upright. Fetch Daantjie’s horse.”

Behind them the last of the burghers were coming over the brow of the hill. The pom-pom was retreating. They went with the flow.

Dumbfounded, Petrus Minter (Nellie! Nellie!) was scarcely aware of the retreat, but kept his head and as far as possible prevented the horse from breaking into a trot. Not before he saw that Danie was unconscious did he push onwards — in an attempt to get him to people who might know how to staunch the bleeding.

The Brits were able to take the hill without any resistance.

They climbed slowly, because they had come a long way across the plain in the heat, and they were cautious, for they had heard rumours about how the Boers could suddenly form a battle line where least expected.

They were too exhausted and too cautious to take any notice of the crouching body behind the rocks in one of the earthworks. They walked over Daantjie without either party being aware of the other. *** It was one the last times that anything like this happened because by that stage the war, like a divorce, had already begun to shrug off the pretence of being a civilised business and had metamorphosed into ruthlessness and mindless aggression.

Whereas before Magersfontein they had been able to give their dead a decent burial, and sometimes after a battle even to help the English lay their dead in the earth, such negotiated agreements came to a halt at Paardeberg. No longer was there

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that particular understanding about a white flag under which each side could safely gather up and inter their dead.

Yet on that distant left flank of the battle of Driefontein, it did happen just once more. At the other fields of that battle which stretched over so many miles it was only the English that were buried with proper ceremony. The Boer corpses were simply gathered up, laid in shallow graves, covered with piles of stones, and left to wait for eighteen years before they would be decently buried.

Who it was that negotiated this with the Brits, Petrus did not know, but he was shaken awake in his blanket early one morning and asked whether he would be one of the volunteers to go out and bury the Boer bodies.

The agreement with the English was that ten men would be permitted to go out and that those ten had to do everything and be quick about it. If any more than that tried to attend the interments, the commander would regard that as an act of aggression and act accordingly. The ten men were to appear under a large white flag, with only one wagon, and as soon as everything had been done, the truce would be over and hostilities would recommence.

Petrus and Soldaat took up picks and shovels and drove the mule-cart up the hill to the site of the previous day’s battle.

The wounded had all gone, but there were fourteen Boer bodies on the hillside. One by one these were carried down onto the plain where the mule cart with its white flag was waiting. The volunteers had found some softer ground behind the hill and a couple of men and the minister started digging a communal grave. On the plain itself the English, too, were gathering up their dead — a good many of them, the few Boers observed — but the two groups did not speak to each other, not even at the foot of the hill where corpses from both sides lay in a tangle.

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Daantjie was awake when Petrus and Soldaat came across him.

“It’s all over, Daantjie!”

Daantjie got to his feet.

“Can we go?”

“No, you can’t,” said Petrus immediately. “We have an agreement with the English: only ten men. Let your body lie limp so that we can carry you down. Then you can travel with the bodies to the grave behind the hill. At that distance they won’t be able to count any more.”

They carried Daantjie down and in the sight of the nearest Brits they laid him in among the other bodies.

After all the bodies and what was left of the victims of the bombs had been loaded up, Petrus told the few other burghers who had been helping with the gathering up to walk straight back over the hill while he and Soldaat took the cart round the hill to the grave. Nobody would want to ride alongside a load like that if they could help it. The burghers were only too glad to get away from the horror. In among the corpses were body fragments of bomb victims.

In the course of the journey round the hill, Daantjie wished for the first time, that “that business” would come over him then and there, for all the broken bodies, already rigid in rigor mortis, had the stench of death upon them. Tumbling among with them as the cart bumped its way round the hill, he almost choked on the vomit rising in his gorge as he saw their dead eyes and rigid limbs and the first pus from their wounds.

Blowflies and bluebottles, buzzing dementedly amidst the glut now presented to them, massed in black clusters round every open wound on the corpses.

Petrus and Soldaat were now the only two up on the mule cart. Before they were in sight of the grave, with the outlier of 136

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the hill between them and the Brits, they made Daantjie get down.

They buried the fallen. The minister offered a heart-rending prayer. They filled in the grave and covered the mound with rocks. By then all the bodies had been identified, all their pockets had been emptied for the sake of their nearest. As best he could, the minister made a list all the names, rolled the piece of paper tightly and slipped it into a narrow-necked bottle. He screwed the bottle cap on firmly and set it upright on the mound. So that those who came by later should at least know who lay there.

Because the floorboards of the cart would first have to be scrubbed to get rid of the stench of death and the ooze, few of the others chose to ride the three miles back to the camp on the mule cart. With their carrion all buried, the blowflies and bluebottles followed the mule cart in a small cloud. There were still tiny scraps of human flesh left on the cart, for not all who had been transported on it had been killed by neat Lee-Metford bullets. Some died as a result of bombs and shrapnel — and by being blown to pieces in violent explosions. As they were walking back, Daantjie started talking to Petrus.

“I can’t go on any more,” he said.

“Well, there are the English, go and surrender and it will all be over.”

“My dad would know … and Magrieta would hear about it.

Other burghers who have been captured or wounded would see me if I just pitched up there. They would talk …”

“Go home — what are you doing here anyway?”

“I’ll die before I surrender … because Magrieta would hear about it.”

Petrus could hardly believe how servile Daantjie was in speaking to him.

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“You’ve got to help me, Petrus. Help me and I’ll see to it that you get Nellie.”

“Since when is Nellie yours to trade with?”

They walked on. To the right of them was a rocky outlier with a patch of taaibos and one or two thorn trees.

“If I walk away from the war, will you tell my dad I died bravely in the battle?”

“Your father is lying grievously wounded in the hospital tent. I’m not going to lie to him.”

Just for a moment Daantjie was caught between relief and a sense of loss.

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know.”

They returned to their own thoughts.

“Well, please will you just say you didn’t find me?”

Petrus stopped.

“I won’t lie to your father.”

But the dejected Daantjie now walking along beside him was no longer Flash Daantjie van Wyk but a grovelling wretch with a three-day growth of beard on his chin and a tooth knocked out by his own father. Petrus sensed in the new Daantjie something of his own father and of Jakop Minter’s humiliating surrender of all his property and his headlong plunge into subservience. Inside, the man must feel like hell — Petrus’s own father’s hell when his pride was destroyed.

Daantjie pleaded: “God knows, Petrus, I can’t go on. It would be better if my dad thought I was dead.” Daantjie, pleading with a Minter…

In the end Petrus gave in to the entreaty, from an odd kind of pity and without thinking it through: he would tell Oom Danie they had not found Daantjie, he must have been taken prisoner. Petrus gave the pleading man his word that he would 138

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not tell. And that Magrieta would never hear of “that business”.

It was not before Daantjie and Soldaat had disappeared in among the taaibos trees that Petrus realised that he had been dragged into a lie — a lie that would have to be sustained even when the war was over and the heir to the farm reappeared, returned from the dead or captivity.

But he told Danie, lying in the hospital tent, that he had not seen Daantjie among the fallen. Probably captured.

Late that afternoon Soldaat arrived at the hospital tent bearing Daantjie’s knife and a letter for Magrieta. There was dried blood on both. Convincing blood, even though it came from a cut in the neck of Soldaat’s horse.

He told a different story: Daantjie had been among the dead.

Many of the bodies had been badly shot to pieces, that must be why Petrus hadn’t spotted Daantjie’s clothes on one of the corpses that was unrecognisably disfigured. But he, Soldaat, had brought Danie the things that had been in Daantjie’s pockets: here is his pocket-knife, and here is a letter.

Danie recognised the knife with the dried blood on it, and the letter was for Magrieta. One corner of the letter was stained with what could only be blood.

His son was dead.

Soldaat then told how Daantjie had come round after they had left him there and that one of the last burghers left there had continued shooting with another man’s rifle till they came upon him. It was Daantjie who held them all at bay so the rest could get away more easily. He would bring the burgher who had seen it all to Danie the next day. Then Danie could hear for himself how bravely Daantjie had fallen. He, Soldaat, had given Daantjie’s name to the man who was placing all the names in a bottle to record them. Danie could go and see for 139

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himself.

Danie never found out who the burgher was who saw Daantjie firing his last shots, for next morning Soldaat was gone with both his own and Daantjie’s horses, and with Daantjie’s rifle and ammunition. By that stage the minister who would have known was already miles away burying more of the fallen.

However, Daantjie’s name was on the list of the fallen because Daantjie had unscrewed the cap of the bottle that night himself and added Daniël Egbert van Wyk at the bottom of the list.

When Danie asked Petrus whether he had heard anything about Daantjie’s death, Petrus replied that he had heard nothing, but the knife was Daantjie’s and the letter was Magrieta’s, and there were corpses that could only be identified by their clothes and possessions.

Soldaat must just have gone home, taking Daantjie’s horse and rifle with him since, with the man he had grown up with now dead, there was nothing left for him in the war. That was what Danie concluded and what he told Petrus when he brought Danie the news of Soldaat’s sudden disappearance. He hoped Soldaat would break the news of Daantjie’s death to the women at home gently.

Petrus left the tent wondering why Daantjie had not pretended to have been captured instead — lying his way back to life after so convincing a death would be so much more difficult — and the war could not last for ever, and: where had the blood on the knife and the letter come from? From his thumb? ***

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After the fall of Bloemfontein the Boer Supreme Command announced that burghers would be permitted to return home for a brief period to set their affairs in order. After that, at a set time, those who still really wanted to fight could return to their commandos. The burghers understood why they had been granted the interruption, this leave break: they had seen the stream of their fellow burghers who had left their comrades and gone home, either without a word or sometimes with altogether too many words. There were many reasons for the desertion. People who are away from home always have things gnawing at them. Many of these things had been brought into the war with them: concerns and longings, about illness, or farming, or other fears about domestic affairs. But there were other reasons too: despondency, irritation at having to obey orders in everything they did, and plain laziness. Many, too, recoiled before the hardships of fighting now that the reality of commando life had hit home. And then there was fear, too, but that was something everyone experienced.

The stream of deserters had started at Belmont and Graspan.

It ran through Magersfontein, Paardeberg, Poplar Grove and Driefontein. But the most compelling reason of all was the dawning perception among many of them of the overwhelming size of the forces ranged against them. This was especially true of those who had doubted the necessity of the war right from the start. They remained unimpressed by big words about fatherland and nation and freedom. The same applied to those who had little or nothing to lose.

Danie felt that, just like the wound in his hip was draining his strength, the life was bleeding out of the resistance in the Boer forces. Yet somewhere in his people there must still be a vein of resistance to the injustice. A hard, strong vein. He had not sacrificed his own son for freedom in vain.

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Petrus managed to borrow a Cape cart and two trained horses from a burgher who lived fifteen miles from them. In return, they lent him Danie’s horse so he could push through home on horseback, rather than having to find passable cart tracks. They could switch back once they had all reached home.

Before returning,though, Danie wanted to visit the grave of the fallen. The English had already advanced to Bloemfontein and probably just made a temporary stop at Abrahamskraal — miles from where the fourteen men had fallen.

It was still dark when Petrus woke him and helped him dress. Petrus and Jakop lifted him onto the cart and drove to the grave. There was no path through the dark. It was the start of a very painful journey.

At the pile of rocks on the grave they helped Danie down and supported him. Petrus took up the bottle and passed it to him. If Soldaat was to be believed, Daantjie’s name would be there, but Petrus wondered. When Danie unrolled the list and struck a match to read the grey pencil script, the name was there: Daniël Egbert van Wyk, the last name on the list.

Danie asked Jakop to allow him to use his back so that he could add something. Petrus had to keep striking matches so Danie could see. He wrote: Sacrificed for freedom — rest in peace.

He asked them to help him kneel, he wanted to say a prayer.

With his hat beside him and his hands gripping the bottle of names, and for that moment unconscious of the pain in his hip, Danie prayed.

Petrus Minter would remember everything with the utmost clarity: his index finger that was still stinging from holding on too long to the burning matches so Danie could write; the words that broke from Danie as they stood beside him in the pre-dawn dark. How deeply moved Oom Danie was as he laid 142

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open before the Lord his remorse for the manner in which he had treated his son and confessed his shortsightedness as a father. How he thanked the Lord that his son had died a hero’s death — a death worthy of his people and his proud name. But there was pleading, too, which Petrus was only just beginning to understand: Danie first confessed that for generations they might have been too proud of the name Daniël Egbert van Wyk. If that was the reason — so Danie prayed — why the Lord had cut off the line of Daniël Egberts when He took away the bearer of the name, he pleaded with the Lord, on his own behalf and on behalf of his fathers before him, for God’s forgiveness. Daantjie’s was the fifth generation where the eldest son was named after his father and his grandfather: in their human shortsightedness they had thought that a name like that which ran all through the bloodline would be able to continue for ever.

That part of the prayer taught Petrus Minter that he could never be a Van Wyk. But worse, far worse, was his realisation of how deep the lie could cut — an evil which he had allowed himself to become part of. The agony in Oom Danie’s voice cried out against the revolting truth. He poured out his heartache for the death of a hero without realising that what he was mourning was nothing more than an accursed son who had turned tail and fled the field. He did not know. What does the Lord God do when faced with so much profound and genuine pain caused by what He must know is a lie? In Danie’s raw words about the loss of his son Petrus heard how mad he had been to give in to Daantjie’s entreaties. For a moment he considered simply revealing the truth, but if Oom Danie then came to know of his part in the lie, he would lose Nellie. Then, too, there were the folk at home, and Magrieta. Magrieta! We’ll drown in this lie yet, he 143

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thought. He had not thought past the length of his nose when he agreed to keep his mouth shut. Daantjie, in his desperation, probably hadn’t either, unless he was morbidly enjoying a typical young man’s thoughts of suicide — thinking of nothing except everyone standing round his grave and feeling sorry.

They settled Danie as comfortably as they could on the back seat of the cart. Four days later — four days which each spent in his own fears of their homecoming — they stopped in front of the homestead.

The women had seen the Cape cart coming round the hill and were waiting. Not before they recognised Petrus and Jakop on the unfamiliar cart, with the pack-mule behind it, did they realise that something was wrong. They rushed down to the cart, with Dorothea in the lead, and saw Danie lying at the back up against the hood.

“Jakop, what has happened to my husband? Where is Daantjie?”

Danie forced himself upright. “My wound is nothing, Dorothea; where is Magrieta?”

“Daantjie?” Then Dorothea knew.

“Yes, my dear, our son,” Danie said. “Our son … At Driefontein.”

That was how they heard.

Drained of all colour, the beautiful Magrieta said nothing, but turned away and started walking down the farm road to the gate. First walking, then jogging, running. At the gate she clenched her hands round the topmost bar and shook it, and went on shaking it until she could no longer. She did not want to know how it had happened, she did not want to hear. She shook the gate backwards and forwards without any idea of why she was doing so. It was though she was trying to shake it into submission and force a truth out of it, a truth she would 144

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not be able to bear hearing about. She did not want to hear that Daantjie was dead. She did not.

They let her be, for Gertruida had to support Dorothea back into the house. Petrus and Jakop helped Danie up onto the veranda, into the house and to a bedroom. Nellie hurried ahead to prepare a bed, as Petrus had asked.

Sannie Minter and the little girls came hurrying up to hear what was happening. When Fienatjie saw Magrieta stumbling down the road, she ran towards her: “It isn’t so, Tant Magrieta!” she shouted, running to the deranged woman. “I dreamt that’s not true!”

Sannie caught up with the child and grabbed her by the arm. “Fiena, leave the people alone!”

“But Oom Daantjie’s not dead, Ma! I dreamt he’s not. I did!”

Sannie had now had enough. She turned Fienatjie round and smacked her.

“I’ll teach you to go sticking your nose into other people’s affairs with your endless dreaming!” Fienatjie stopped protesting and began to sob. Her mother’s flat hand had not been gentle.

When Sannie let go of Fienatjie, her breath was racing from the exertion: “You leave that woman alone, do you hear? Now go home before I smack you again!”

Fienatjie went home, and Sannie marched after her down to the cottage. She did not believe Fienatjie, but nor did she try to explain why she knew, long before she reached the house, that Daantjie was not dead.

In the bedroom, the two men laid Danie down because Dorothea was too overcome about Daantjie to be able to help.

Nellie was there, so Petrus sent her to fetch hot water so he could bathe and cleanse the wound, and to bring a sheet to be torn up for new bandages. They were the two who nursed 145

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Danie — Nellie and Petrus, and both felt guilty that their togetherness in the midst of the agony surrounding them had awakened in them so much irrational joy. Only Nellie noticed that Petrus had changed. Not only his different clothes but also the way in which he took control and how he handled her father with a self-confidence which she had never seen before.

Magrieta stayed at the farm gate till nearly sundown.

Fienatjie watched her from the cottage, because the night before she had dreamt Magrieta’s hurt — and more, for she had dreamt that the lovely woman would suffer even more painfully three times and then many more times almost as painfully. But these were dreams she would not tell about, or else her mother would beat her again.

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Six During the first night of her widowhood Magrieta did not sleep at all. Did not get undressed. Did not lie down. In the early hours of the morning the candle in the blue candlestick beside her bed began to flicker. The end of the wick toppled over in the melted oil and shot out a tiny bubble of wax. The little flame shrank and drowned. When the first red glow of morning glimmered through the curtains, she was still sitting in the dark. Oblivious of both the candle and the dawn.

Earlier in the evening, after Sannie Minter had been down to the gate and brought her back to the homestead, everyone had tried to be helpful. One after another. Gertruida, her eyes red with weeping, couched her expressions of sympathy in the formal words of the period; little Sussie did not know what to say, so just stood around till she was led away; Oupa Daniël came in and prayed long and mournfully, lamenting a name that had now been cut off and, by way of an afterthought, prayed also for her; Petrus Minter, unsure of himself in the unfamiliar room, offered any help that he might be able to give; Dorothea — cocooned in the tangles of her own loss — sobbed out her own pain in her daughter-in-law’s arms, recalling again and again her joy when little Daniël Egbert was born. Everyone came to be with her, even Pa Danie, supported by Petrus Minter. He wanted to show her Daantjie’s pocketknife, but she simply shook her head. She did not want to see it. She took the envelope with the bloodstain on one corner and placed it on 147

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the bedside cabinet. Unopened. Unread.

Pa Danie spoke of a hero, of the unfathomable mystery of God’s will, of a sacrifice. Magrieta just looked at him, even as he prayed for the Almighty Father’s strength and comfort on the young widow.

Sarah knelt at her feet, took her hands in hers, simply repeating: “Nonnie, Nonnie.”

Later that night, when everyone else had left and the candle was still burning, she would sometimes look at the room around her: the brown wardrobe, the wash stand with its floral ceramic basin and water pitcher, the trousseau chest covered by the large crocheted cloth, the shining brass knobs on the black bedposts, the patchwork bedspread she had made before her marriage, the springbok skins on the wooden floor, the two chairs, the pillows with their embroidered pillowslips, the cabinets on either side of the double bed, the two flower paintings on the wall, the unmoving curtains, the candle burning down into darkness. Each object looked alien, unrelated to the others, isolated and alone. Each one was deathly still, as though all expectation had died away.

She fought against the memories in the room: of Daantjie hurriedly stripping and surreptitiously watching her as she undressed. Of how she slowly undid her hair and shook it loose, delaying her own undressing until he could not contain his lust any longer and seized her; his joking when they lay cross-wise across the bed so it would creak less loudly; the way his body jerked as he gripped her when she had to press her mouth into his shoulder so as not to cry out too loudly in the quiet house; and afterwards the smell of his seed on her stomach, that she would spread rather than wipe away, and secretly sniff like a naughty afterthought and as a sacred promise. For Daantjie always pulled out in time: he wanted to 148

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keep her maiden’s body that he was so passionate about for one more year, he always said. Just one more year of her slim body, her firm breasts and buttocks and thighs, and her smooth, unwrinkled belly without stretch marks or maternal fat — babies could come afterwards and then all who kept enquiring about her condition would be welcome to see for themselves what the little Van Wyks looked like. Including his father and grandfather. There would certainly be a Daniël Egbert among them.

As soon as she suppressed one memory, another would emerge in its place.

Daantjie and Soldaat had arrived at the mission station in the smart black spider drawn by four lightly harnessed black horses. They were young men driving to Cape Town to see the sea and, so Daantjie assured Soldaat, to bed as many girls as possible on the way. They asked for leave to halt for a while at the mission station. Magrieta was then seventeen. HalfGerman, her surname was Bunge. Her father had been a member of the Berlin Missionary Society while her mother was of Boer ancestry. Her father, dead for three years already when Daantjie arrived, had been old when he married her mother — just one month after his first wife had died. Her mother had been a Miss Pelser, Naomi Pelser, and had been part of the household long before the first wife’s death, assisting in caring for the bed-ridden woman, helping with the housework and seeing to the four adolescent children still at home.

Magrieta, born in the first year of the marriage between the young woman and the old man of nearly seventy, was named for her maternal grandmother: Margaretha Janetta Bunge. By the time she was growing up, her step-brothers and sisters were all adults.

Her youngest step-brother, Horst, had taken over from his 149

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father as the missionary in charge two years before Daantjie and Soldaat arrived. He was tall, blonde, pale and intense. He had returned from completing his theological training in Germany, inspired about fulfilling his calling, strict and thorough and zealous. Since his return he had started looking rather keenly at his step-sister. Too keenly and too sharply and too often. She had never been able to tell whether he — like who was it in the Bible? — was actually in love with his halfsister. It was just the way he looked at her that made her uneasy and the way his eyes burned when he thought she did not see him watching. Horst controlled her too closely and too strictly, keeping her away from everybody and making her spend long afternoons and evenings sitting opposite him at the table, struggling to drill her mother’s poor German out of her, to get her every declension and conjugation in precisely correct official Kanzleisprache.

He made her learn English as well, from a pernickety old spinster. The language she and her mother spoke, he disparaged.

She complained to her mother in confidence about his bullying and his spying on her, but was told she need not take any notice, because with her looks men would forever be staring at her and trying to herd her into their own flock. Yet there were times when her mother said certain things which left her wondering, even about the years she had spent as a servant in the house before she married the old missionary.

Things like: “The more piety in their faces, the faster they loosen their braces.” She said this one afternoon when the news came that Friedrich-the-Holy — as her mother called her eldest step-son — had broken the seventh commandment. Her mother added: “A pretty woman always has to bear the cross of constant temptation.” Almost as though she knew, for she 150

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herself was very attractive, though not as beautiful as her German-blonde daughter. And other things, too: “These holy joes can use the Bible to justify any sin, even when the thoughts arise inside their trousers and not under their hats.” Her mother saw to it that she kept her body covered against ogling eyes, that she wore her bonnet against the sun and that she was never alone with her step-brother for long or without good cause. Horst saw to the rest of her protection. The beauty whom Daantjie met was spotlessly pure and under double guard.

Seeing that Daantjie was well bred, nicely dressed and had good manners, her mother freely afforded the young man the hospitality of her home. Horst had not been able to prevent her because when Daantjie knocked at the front door he was in the dining room, giving Magrieta instruction. By the time the lesson was over, Daantjie’s horses had already been stabled, Soldaat was with the strange Cape-Coloured folk, Daantjie himself had been invited to dinner and was already washing his face in the guest room off the veranda.

Daantjie was introduced to Magrieta at dinner — with the light of the hanging lamp above the dining room table on her golden hair. In Daantjie’s eyes the girl’s skin was caressed by everything that touched it. Even the yellow light of the lamp.

Horst pronounced a grim-faced grace at table and spoke only German. His disapproval of Daantjie and his presence among them might as well have been written on his forehead.

While Daantjie spoke about the Orange Free State where he came from and described his family, and could not keep his eyes off Magrieta, and while Magrieta blushed and went on blushing, and while Horst choked on his food, her mother foresaw what the outcome would be.

Halfway through the meal, out of the blue and in front of 151

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everybody, Daantjie asked whether Mrs Bunge would mind if he and her daughter might get to know each other better before he went on his way. She had no objection. Horst did. He told her mother in German that she was making her daughter a foreigner’s whore and left the table in a rage.

Daantjie stayed a week, declared his love on the second day, received his answer on the fifth, asked her mother’s permission on the sixth, and started making wedding plans. Horst attacked Magrieta and her mother in terms very far from pious.

He argued forcefully, citing Daantjie’s foreignness, the extreme backwardness of the Free State, the unseemly haste of the whole business — and with whatever other arguments his seething jealousy could produce. He pleaded and shouted, calling everything he possibly could to witness: his late father, God and His law, Luther’s doctrines, their German blood …

While Daantjie and Magrieta were keeping each other company after dinner each night, he strode back and forth about the house like a lost soul, or wandered off into the garden and spent his nights in prayer, wrestling with God. On the sixth night, straight after she had given her consent to the marriage, Naomi Bunge lost her temper and walked straight out to Horst where he was wearing out his knees in prayer. She told him straight that he was to stop his nonsense, for even if he were to wear down his knees to the bone crawling before God, he could not bluff the One who saw all.

Even the ordinary folk at the mission station — who by now had been mocking their pastor’s lovelorn behaviour for months — could see the incestuous love in his heart, though they did not know what to do about it. So it would not help spending his time on his knees before God and trying to lie to the AllHighest about his intentions. He, Horst, had looked upon his own half-sister and lusted after her and he should not think the 152

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Lord had not seen him.

Horst got to his feet and strode away. They did not see him again before they left to return to the Free State.

Her mother accompanied them in the spider on the fourhundred-mile journey back to the farm, even though Daantjie had offered to pay for her and Magrieta to travel by train.

However, Naomi felt the two love-birds needed more time to get to know each other better and she intended to keep an eye on the courtship.

On the farm Naomi was received with the respect due to a missionary’s wife and Magrieta was met with obvious approval. She was received into the Boer church, the banns were duly published, and a month later she and Daantjie were wed.

On the evening after the wedding, Daantjie brought Magrieta to the very room where so many silences were now wrapping her round in her widowhood. They were so starved for love of each other that they did not sleep at all that night.

As dawn was breaking Daantjie had pressed her close and told her that for a virgin she was remarkably obliging. She had not been able to stop giggling about that.

Next morning, Sarah held the wedding sheet up to the light and secretly showed it to Dorothea before she put fresh linen on the bed and went to wash the sheet. Later she told Magrieta that her mother-in-law had been almost moved at seeing the sheet, and that Dorothea had said: “She is a pure woman and my son is a man.” All was well. Very, very well. Thoroughly decent and proper.

But now the room she had shared with Daantjie stood motionless and bewildered.

She was nineteen and a childless widow. How, with all that was in her heart and round about her, could she know what to 153

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do or think?

Next morning Sarah fetched the young widow’s mourning black from the wardrobe to press it for her, telling her it was time for her to weep now because the salt one tasted in tears was the inner sadness that was being released. Only tears could draw out the grief. That is what tasted so salty.

Yet Magrieta was not able to weep. The salt remained within her. *** On the second day after the men had returned, Dorothea told Petrus Minter that he no longer need help care for Mr Van Wyk, the women were strong enough to turn him themselves and they would help him up so he could do his business in private. In fact, her tone of voice made it clear that he had no part in the family’s intimate affairs. This she told him in the passage outside the sickroom. He said nothing, turned round, went out through the front door, down the veranda steps, and headed back to his father’s cottage. Beyond the war, he was no more than a Minter, and no matter what her husband said, in her eyes he would remain a Minter. Such were Petrus’ thoughts as he strode away.

Dorothea informed Danie that she had told Petrus that his help was no longer required. She also warned her husband that he, as the father of a daughter who was rapidly maturing, had to do something about the audacity of the son of a mere tenant — for he had even had the cheek to write to Nellie from the field. That was completely unacceptable, for which reason she had withheld the letters in order to return them to him later unopened. It was high time that Petrus Minter be taught to stop his nonsense. He should not be allowed to think he had 154

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suddenly become someone, just because he had managed to steal a pair of horses from the English.

The wounded man looked at his wife for a long time. She did not know. She could not know — about bullets, about exploding shells, about fragments of hot lead, steel and castiron whistling down on you — or about how death and its fears play the ground bass in the thundering drone of a battle.

She did not know what it meant to help a wounded man to struggle up over the rocks of a hillside — a hillside whistling with the high-pitched whine of ricocheting bullets in tiny, contorted screams. She had no idea of the steel that a man needed inside him to be able to despise death at times for the sake of someone else. But Dorothea was still in shock at the death of her darling son, so for the moment he would refrain from telling her about the other thing the war had taught him: a different way of viewing people, and how he had seen for himself how the barricades behind which people live in peacetime crumpled in wartime. Surrounded by peace, you come to regard as reality the fences which you erect around yourself and your nearest and dearest. It is only in violent conflicts that your eyes are able to learn this new way of looking. So he said: “Give me the letters. I’ll talk to Nellie.”

When Nellie came to ask why he had sent for her, he gave her her letters and told her how impressive Petrus had proved to be in the field. He also described the background of the Minters: everything, so that she should know it all. He then told her how Petrus had led him out under the rain of bullets and how he, Danie, had given his permission for the boy to come courting her — a promise that he would keep, come what may.

Halfway through his story, sheer relief and joy had Nellie weeping, continually repeating “Thank you, Pa. Thank you,” 155

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though she was not sure why she had chosen those words. Just once she added that she loved Petrus and that she could not help it. She loved him and was even prepared to elope with him, she said.

“The choice is yours and Petrus’, my child. All that I as your father would say to you, is that I have no objection whatever.

Your mother will struggle to understand, but don’t be too harsh on her. She wants only the best for you and she has not seen and experienced what I have seen and experienced. Just give her time to get over Daantjie’s death before you tell Petrus he is welcome to come calling.”

But Nellie’s passionate heart brooked no further delay. She sent a message to Petrus that he should come on Saturday. Her father had said he might.

So that was how Petrus Minter happened to be standing at the front door that Saturday evening when Dorothea opened it to his knock. For a moment neither of them said anything — they simply looked at each other, knowing what was coming.

Dorothea could see that Petrus had quite obviously come courting. The seams of his English trousers were sharply pressed, his boots were gleaming, his jacket and shirt, though rather worn, were newly washed and ironed. His hair was combed back from the white band left by a hat on his forehead above the tanned face. His shining cows-lick lay to the side.

“Yes, Petrus?” Dorothea shaped the habitual oh-what doyou-want-now?-question that she used to the tenants. She preferred not to ask what he meant by daring to come to the front door.

Quietly, Petrus answered: “I have come to visit Nellie, Tante.”

Dorothea managed to control herself. “With whose permission, Petrus?”

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“Oom Danie said he would have no objection.”

Nellie came up to the door behind Dorothea.

Dorothea was still exclaiming: “That simply isn’t true!” when Nellie butted in from behind her: “Yes, it is, Ma! Pa said he could!”

“Where on earth did you get that from?” Dorothea rushed down the passage, with Nellie hard behind. Gertruida was listening at the inner door of the kitchen, and when mother and daughter raced past her to the sickroom, she was inquisitive enough to ask: “And now, Sister?”

“That Petrus Minter wants to come courting Nellie! The cheek of it! And the two of them are now pretending that Danie has given his blessing! Your father is not that sick, my girl!”

On the veranda, Petrus heard what they were saying. He turned and walked off into the evening.

Dorothea headed straight down the passage to the room where Danie lay. For a moment Nellie hesitated, torn between Petrus outside and what was going to happen in the bedroom.

Gertruida seized the moment to add her tuppence-worth: “You are going to be the death of your poor mother, Nellie! He’s a Minter!”

Nellie was young and in love, and beside herself with distress about what was going to happen. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her chest that if she had listened she could have heard it. She was agitated about Petrus and the possibility that he might be driven away from her forever. She was angry that the man she loved had had to swallow yet another insult. A grudge against her mother and all who refused to see anything but the Minter in Petrus boiled up within her. She was past caring and she knew she could really hurt her aunt — one of those who so despised Petrus. Nellie leant over close to Gertruida and with calculated emphasis 157

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hissed at her accusing eyes the most stinging slight she could think of: “My name is Nellie van Wyk, not Gertruida van Wyk, Aunt Gertruida! And I have no intention of sitting proudly on the shelf and rotting like you. I want Petrus Minter and I don’t care what you all do, I’m going to have him. Why don’t you go and find out for yourself that there is something called love that doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Gertruida stood transfixed, momentarily bewildered at this unexpected and always so studiously avoided insult. Any door for her to disappear through would have served, but the one to the dining-room was closest and that was the door she closed behind her. The reflection of the hanging lamp above the table gleamed in the silent glow of the piano. She walked over to the instrument and leant her face against the cool, shining varnish.

But first, speaking fiercely to herself and piano, she said: “It was not pride. God knows it was not pride!”

She lifted the lid, swept the felt cover off the keys in a single rapid movement, and while running her hand over the black and white keys too lightly to make a sound, voiced a different doubt: “And perhaps God also knows that it was not a sin.”

For she knew that in among the sheet music, written in pencil on the back of a Bach prelude in Miss Pearson’s tiny, hesitant hand, were the words: … can something as beautiful — be so sinful? …

Then she sat down at the table and heard, though faintly through the inner door, her sister-in-law’s distraught voice. But she was not listening, because Nellie’s words had stung her to the quick. Not the ones about being proud or on the shelf — that she had long known — but those about a love that wouldn’t take no for an answer and then left a limitless saltpan where nothing joyful would ever grow again, and which went on growing wider, year after year, to where you supposed 158

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your end would be — even though because of the mirages shimmering above the barrenness of your salt-white, neverending, day-to-day existence, you could not determine clearly either the nature or the time of that end. All you knew about that end was that it would come at a snail’s pace because you had to face it alone.

In the sick man’s room, with Nellie at the passage door, Dorothea started telling Danie about Petrus Minter ’s presumption: “And there he stood, Mister Nobody — cleaner than I have ever seen any Minter — and announced bold as brass that he had come to visit Nellie, because you had given your permission … and Nellie corroborated his lies …”

“No, my dear,” said Danie gently, “they are not lying.” He knew his wife would find it very hard to take this second blow.

Things then just became too much for Dorothea. She flew into a rage and shouted at her husband in a way she had never done before. The words came tumbling out of her mouth like sheep released from their pen after the winter. “First the war takes my only son from me and now you go abandoning my daughter to the wretched fate of the lowest of all the lowest!

What do you think is going to happen, Danie van Wyk? Nellie is besotted with the rat. Only mention his name and you see her nipples stiffen. Do you think I want to catch Minter-brats and raise them in this house? Do you expect me to gather up the bits of her that are left when she opens her eyes one day and sees she has married scum? I say no, and I am still her mother. What do you think Daantjie would do if he were here tonight? He would have kicked his poor-white backside for him and hounded him off the farm, that’s what Daantjie would have done. How could you do this?”

“I gave my word and my word stands. Petrus is worthy of any woman. If Nellie wants him, she won’t be marrying his 159

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family. Nellie, come away from the door and go and tell Petrus to come some other evening.”

Dorothea had a great deal more to say. She cried, she pleaded, but Nellie did not hear any of it. In the kitchen she could not light the lantern quickly enough, so simply put the candle in a brown-paper bag to shield it from the evening breeze. With the small patch of light illuminating her anxious face and shedding a very faint light on her hesitant feet she headed off through the dark towards the Minters’ cottage — torn between her haste to walk faster and her fear that the candle in the packet could blow out.

From where he stood in his own darkness, it seemed to Petrus that Nellie was a shining apparition, disembodied and unconnected to anything, as though she was simply something divinely beautiful suspended in the night, floating free and calling his name. For she was calling his name — continually, urgently, into the darkness. Never again would Petrus see or hear anything as beautiful.

But in the bedroom her mother was screaming at the wounded Danie: “Can’t you hear your daughter howling like a bitch on heat for the bastard? Have you gone deaf? Oh, where is my son tonight? Where, where is my son!”

Then she fell silent and stopped crying about the war that had robbed her of two of her children.

Out in the open, Petrus approached the patch of light. Nellie blew out the candle, seized hold of him, panting for breath, and compelled by the urging of her body and her lips, unashamedly declared her love and yearning.

But they could not stand in this embrace for too long. Petrus said she should rather go home first, for they had to do everything correctly so as to avoid as much difficulty as possible. She need not worry about the wedding: Fienatjie had 160

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already dreamt it.

Nellie had to tear herself away from him and run home fast in the dark, because she had never before experienced so passionately the things her body was now so insistently and clearly calling for. Once she reached the veranda, she stopped for a while to catch her breath and button up her blouse.

There was still a lamp burning in the dining room. It must be Aunt Gertruida. Nellie pushed open the door and stood still for a moment, because Gertruida’s head, in her pool of light under the hanging lamp, was pressed against the tabletop. Two bunches of her grey hair were clenched in her knobbly white hands. With the memory of the intimate wonder of Petrus still tingling in her, how the closeness of his body and his breath and his lips had made her sparkle, she felt a deep pity for the old woman who had never known such things. So she drew closer and gently tried to apologise: “I’m sorry, Aunt Gertruida.

I really didn’t mean to be unkind. But I won’t ever apologise for Petrus Minter.”

Gertruida took her fingers out of her hair, looked up, and reached out her so much older hand to the young woman. The bloom of her earlier excitement still glowed on Nellie’s cheeks, some of her hair had tumbled down and the little buttons on her blouse were unevenly fastened. Her lips were still swollen and slightly bruised after the first passionate kisses she and Petrus had shared.

“Do up your buttons properly before your mother sees you.”

Nellie looked down and with something like pride fastened the buttons properly between her young breasts. She was amazed that her unbending old aunt had shown no disapproval; that there was even a glimmer of kindly teasing in Aunt Gertruida’s eyes; that her words that followed contained 161

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no condemnation, but only a kind of understanding, a kind of acceptance: “I have just been standing here beside the piano and thinking: your life is your own, Nellie, and for better or for worse, I would like to give you something. Come with me.”

Gertruida lowered the hanging lamp, turned down the wick and blew out the flame into her cupped hand. They re-lit Nellie’s candle and set it in a candlestick in the kitchen before going to Gertruida’s bedroom.

There, Gertruida removed the small cloth covering and unlocked her trousseau chest. The smell of mothballs wafted upwards. “These things are no longer of any use to me. You take them all. Except this little package, this I will keep.”

From the top of the things in the chest, she lifted the two piano candlesticks, still wrapped in the same paper that Miss Pearson had rolled round them, and put them away in a drawer of her dressing-table before continuing: “I hope these things have not deteriorated from lying here unused for all these years … but I do remember that originally I rolled, rather than folded them, to keep them from creasing.

Let’s take a look. I can’t even remember everything I collected at the time.”

And so, until late that night, they sat unpacking the chest.

One piece after another. And bonding.

Once, Nellie asked: “Aunty, why are you giving all this to me?”

Gertruida searched long and carefully for her next words, looking straight into Nellie’s bright young eyes before she responded: “Because I heard how you called his name — over and above everything in your way, and past all the obstacles.

Because you called his name into the dark. That’s why.”

Naturally enough, Nellie could not understand, and of course Gertruida could not explain either. The note which Miss 162

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Pearson had sent with the piano candlesticks, and the name which Gertruida’s arid regret and yearning had so often uttered into the night, these remained her very own, hers alone.

They would have to find the note in her Bible one day when she had crossed the salt pan. They would never understand it anyway. They would not ever understand. No, never.

She quietly helped Nellie carry the gifts to her own chest, which was still pretty empty because Nellie was still so young.

Once everything had been carried across to Nellie’s room and she was alone with her new-found treasures and her maiden’s dreams, Gertruida returned to her room. Alone as always. For a long while she looked at the still-open, empty chest, then took the candles out of the drawer and placed them upright in the middle of the floor of the chest.

“So that is what I have then,” she told herself as she shut down the lid of the chest and locked it again.

“That, and a note in my Bible, and a message about what might have been on the back of a Bach prelude which remained nothing more than a prelude. And the piano, of course. The piano. And too many bygone years.” *** After he and Kimberley had been relieved, Joey Drew decided to remain for a while longer. Not that he had much to do there.

The demand for photographs, which had almost bordered on a kind of frenzy for immortality during the uncertainty of the siege, had decreased. Like conversion, immortality had suddenly become something that could be postponed. His rent had been paid in advance, so he had a roof over his head, there was enough in the lining of the long coat to keep a fire burning on the hearth and to buy food for the cupboard. Two things 163

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kept him there: the first was the uncertainty about what might happen to a defenceless man out on the open road, for the war was still raging. After all the shooting, Joey could not know what the Boers might do to a lone Englishman if they came across him, for peace had not yet been established, even though the Empire had already taken control of Bloemfontein and was on its way to Johannesburg.

But the second and real reason why Joey was unwilling to set off again was the restlessness that Elizabeth’s body had awakened in him. That memory, with all its thrilling features, was sitting astride his thoughts, crouched naked and passionate on top of him, and refusing to dismount.

At first he would wait for her, but later he went searching through the town. Since the thunder of the guns and their random fatalities had fallen silent, the noise now was different, a kind of relief. For everything that had been shot to pieces had to be repaired, craters filled in, unsafe walls knocked down and rebuilt, broken glass replaced, the roofs and fences and streets restored. Because their nest had been so violently disturbed, all the ants needed to scurry about for a while before any real calm could return. In the days, evenings and nights just after the siege was lifted, everyone celebrated their new-found freedom in their own ways: the religious celebrated in church services with thanksgiving and hymns of praise; the others gathered in a variety of get-togethers. Like, among others, patriotic gatherings where the Kimberley Town Guard sang its own praises, applauding the garrison, their liberation and the Empire. Many simply went on the binge because the enemy was now far enough away to allow them to enjoy fighting among themselves again. And then there were the secret celebrations which other folk knew nothing about at the time, but it emerged nine months later that more babies per capita 164

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were conceived in the first few days after the siege than in any other era in human memory. In isolated cases these little bundles of future hope probably were deliberate affirmations of a new faith, but the majority were the results of the exuberance of liberation that had flashed into even the sourest bedrooms.

Perhaps it was just such a celebration that was throbbing in Joey’s loins as his search for Elizabeth drove him through street after street, enquiring everywhere, even to the spot where the starving had gathered. The people there whose bellies were now sufficiently full for them to surround his cart demanded to know what the white man wanted there. Labourers to help with rebuilding, perhaps? But as to who Elizabeth was, Joey could not explain, and where she was nobody else could tell him. Yet eventually the truth emerged in terms that Joey would never forget.

He was sitting on his cart. Round him were the hovels, the tin shacks, the shelters made of sacking to keep out the wind, the cooking fires in the lean-tos. Round him the people formed a dark, grumbling pool, with the whites of pairs of eyes and rows of teeth floating like semi-circular leaves above it. The sky above him was clear and clean but an open sewer still trickled its stinking way between the wheels of his cart towards a hole some fifty yards farther down the street. Steam rose from laundry water that smelt of cheap yellow soap, together with a misty cloud of invisible vapours rising off turds from slopbuckets floating along on the murky stream. The pairs of eyes of the inquisitive little crowd looked up at him questioningly.

Language was a problem, for only one or two of them could understand his English. They interpreted for the others what the cross-eyed little Englishman wanted to know.

Joey mentioned the name Elizabeth. The interpreters 165

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consulted. No, they shook their heads, they knew no such person.

“It’s a woman,” Joey tried.

More consultation. Everyone in the group was talking at once. “How old? What does she look like? How tall? What colour is she?”

Joey tried to describe her as best he could, and each explanation led to another discussion. In the end came the question: “Is it a woman you want?”

Joey nodded. Two women approached him. No, that’s not what he wanted. Well, what did he want then? One particular woman — that’s who he wanted. Suddenly a light dawned.

They laughed and told one another: “This wretched cross-eyed Englishman is after Betjie-the-whore, that’s all.”

“It’s Betjie you’re looking for!” said one of the interpreters.

“What’s that?”

The interpreter explained it was not a what but a who. He was not the first white man to come looking for her.

Gradually and bit by bit the truth dawned on Joey: that the Elizabeth he was searching for in fact had to be Betjie-thewhore. He tried to protest: “She’s not a whore. She didn’t charge me a penny.” His response was relayed to the crowd who burst out laughing.

“Then it’s Betjie all right,” the interpreter explained. “She doesn’t ask for money the first time, but she fucks you so wonderfully that she can charge you as much as she likes the second time. The first time she always says she just wants to be a woman to you. That’s what Betjie always says when she comes back, laughing about how she gets the whites back.”

The truth filtered down into every crack and hollow in Joey’s soul, sank in and soaked into his fabric. He did not notice how the group round his cart fell silent at the way his 166

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mouth twisted in bewilderment. When he tugged at the reins to get the horses moving again, one man silently took hold of the horses’ heads and helped him turn them round in the narrow track where the road was supposed to be. As he drove away, Joey did not see the group sympathetically shaking their heads behind him, nor did he hear their tongues clicking in pity as they watched him go. Something else was happening to him. His neat, tailored suit had gradually worn threadbare on him and become too big. Dirty stripes — flat brown worms — had crept round the folds and edges of his collar and cuffs; creases had appeared in his neatly pressed clothes, like in paper held too near a flame; there were “potatoes” in his new socks, the coarsely darned holes in them looking like multicoloured fungi; the shine on his shoes had dulled as the stitching split and the laces unravelled. A new blockade like the smell of old sweat clung to his body and besieged him right down to the skin under his tatters. And the all-seeing dome of the sky above him was as blue-grey and mocking as Magrieta van Wyk’s eyes.

Under his ragged clothes, his liberator, Elizabeth, who was no more than Betjie-the-whore, ripped Joey’s insides apart. For the first time after all these months, a different pair of grey eyes arose out of the shallow grave of his memory: he had buried Hans Bester with his eyes open. He had wanted to forget those eyes, and he thought he had, but now the image was there again: Hans Bester in his shallow grave, without his jacket — a long, thin body which Joey had tried to roll in the dirtiest of the blankets after dragging him to the grave in that same blanket.

Hans Bester had been lying on his back when he died and had stiffened in that position while Joey, cursing and swearing, hour after hour bit into the defiant loam with the edge of the spade, eventually with broken blisters on his hands. The Boer’s 167

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mouth had gaped as he gasped for his final breaths, his eyes wide open. The blanket in which Joey had clumsily tried to wrap him, fell open and fell to one side as he rolled him into the grave. Joey did not want to climb back into the grave again and he felt too squeamish to pour soil onto the open eyes and mouth, so he started filling the grave from the feet upwards.

Eventually the dead man — his dull wide-open eyes staring up at the firmament above him — was left lying with the soil up to his chin. Joey knew he had to shovel soil onto the face but could not bear to look; yet he must have looked, because it all now came back to him sitting on the cart — exactly how the sandy soil had flowed into the open mouth and rasped into the open eyes. Was it because he himself was squint that it was always the eyes that he saw and remembered? Has every bloody fucking damned Boer got grey eyes? But meaningless curses were no use. The wide eye of the sky stared down at him from on high, and from below, from the very ground itself, the agonising image of Hans Bester’s dull stare kept rising up in his throat like bile, like the reek of mine explosions, like the stench of the starving.

As he rattled on — sitting on the late Hans Bester’s cart, drawn by the thin, dead Boer’s horses, under the now suddenly bleak, accusing sky hanging over him, and feeling himself crumpling up under the mocking, clear, grey-blue eyes of Magrieta — he realised that there were only two little bits of blue left for him to cling to. For nothing — not even the blue dome of heaven staring down at him, nor yet those eyes of Magrieta’s, would ever be as blue as Fienatjie Minter’s eyes.

No, thank God, never that blue. Never, never, that blue! From the brown emptiness of his disappointment he longed for the only eyes that he would ever be able to trust — the eyes which he was sure that God had created while He was concentrating 168

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on truth and innocence. He must have got so excited about beauty that He couldn’t stop before He had made Fienatjie’s eyes the loveliest of all created things.

He simply had to go back to her, whatever the dangers on the roads might be. Straightaway. He would leave tomorrow morning. He would mount the last outstanding enlargements and deliver them this afternoon. But he already knew that when it came to signing his name, it would no longer be J.F Drew, Esq. but just plain Joey Drew — no Esq. *** Petrus Minter’s courtship of Nellie hung heavily over the household. Dorothea was withdrawn, refused to speak to anybody, not even Gertruida, after she heard that she had given the entire contents of her trousseau chest to Nellie.

Which she heard about indirectly, via Sarah. When confronted by her sister-in-law’s red, swollen but still imperious eyes, Gertruida — as always painfully conscious of her perpetual guest status in the household — tried to mollify Dorothea by saying that she had long intended to give the stuff to Nellie.

“But why now?” Dorothea demanded. “Why now, of all times? You surely realised that it would only exacerbate the girl’s licentiousness! Or is that what you intended?”

Gertruida did feel guilty, so she decided not to follow through on her earlier resolve to speak to Dorothea about the young people. Anything she might now say would look like interference — something she could not afford.

The 25th March, when the burghers were due to return to their commandos, was fast approaching. Nellie’s impatience was threatening to boil over because Petrus said it was his duty to go back, and her father had no doubt that the Minters would 169

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go. Danie himself was waiting only till he had recovered, before taking up arms again. But Nellie was not prepared to wait that long. She almost forced Petrus to ask her parents for her hand. She started by preparing her father: “Pa, Petrus wants to know when he can come and ask for your permission.

We want to get engaged and married before he has to go back to war.”

“Must you be in such a hurry? You can see how all this is upsetting your mother. There’s not much more than week left before he has to go back.”

“Pa, please just let us get married. Soon we might have to.”

“Oh, heavens above, Nellie! You can’t say things like that in front of your parents!”

“I’ve been skirting round the truth for long enough, Pa. Would you prefer me to stand here and lie to you? Petrus wants us to wait, but I don’t. He says he hasn’t got any money, but I’ve told him I’ve got the twenty-five sovereigns I inherited from Ouma and my own savings. That’s enough for us to start off with.”

Danie had always respected his daughter’s forthrightness. It was true that she did not skirt round the truth and he admired her for her determination in the face of opposition. But he found this might-have-to-marry business disturbing: “Is that what you and Petrus get up to when you are alone?” ”Yes, Pa. It’s not Petrus, it’s me. Please don’t let the temptation become too much for Petrus too, Pa. It’s just that we love each other too much.”

Danie realised that the uncomfortable position they were now facing would not be resolved by delay. Not with this daughter of his.

“Tell Petrus to come, I’ll try and talk to Ma.” But Dorothea refused to talk to them. If he wanted to throw 170

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his daughter to the dogs, he could do so, but she who had brought the child into the world and was thinking of the girl’s future would not be party to allowing a child of hers to suffer such an injustice.

Petrus came and stood right beside Danie’s bed, with Nellie too close to his side and tried to put his question. He started by apologising: “Oom Danie, you know I don’t own anything …” ”I know that, Petrus. But you are worth more than you think. I can never compensate you for the way you helped us out of mortal danger at Vendusiedrif, when all was lost, and nor can I repay you for the way you rescued me in that hail of bullets. So, don’t come to me with your owning nothing. I could have been a prisoner of war now: how much do you think my freedom is worth to me in terms of pounds?”

“That’s not what I meant, Oom Danie. Nellie and I …”

“Yes, you want to get married, I know. And you have my blessing, but not my wife’s, because she wasn’t there with us in the war. She doesn’t understand. I’ll help you get on your feet.

If you feel too sensitive about taking my help, I’ll lend you enough — you can work it off later.”

So Petrus agreed to ask for a loan and now Dorothea could no longer avoid being part of the conversation. Nellie went to call her. She came in and sat down, but before she conceded anything, she had her say: “You know I am against this marriage, Petrus. I don’t understand what all this sudden haste is about… I hope I am not mistaken …”

Nellie sprang into attack: “Don’t insinuate, Ma! I’m not expecting a little bastard, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nellie! What’s got into you? I never raised you to talk like this! I am telling you: if Daantjie were here, this sort of thing would never have happened in this family. Where do you think you are going to live? Are you going to move into one of the henhouses?”

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The knuckles showed white on Petrus’ clenched fists.

Daantjie! Where was Daantjie? Maybe he should just tell her and have done with it. But then, what about Oom Danie? So he held his tongue, but Nellie was a tigress: “If we’re not good enough for your house, Ma, we’ll leave. Getting away would be a whole lot better than all this unpleasantness. But if you want to drive us out to live in a chicken coop, tell us which one we can have. The one with the most tampans?”

Danie tried to placate her, telling the two young people to come back later, after he had talked to Dorothea. Again and again, he told his wife about Paardeberg, the river, the carcases and corpses and catfish; and about Driefontein and the flying bullets. But he wanted to spare her the pain of hearing about “that business” that had first happened to Daantjie at Tweeriviere, and then repeatedly ever since. So she did not understand. Yet if he left her in the dark about that too, he would never be able to explain clearly the turmoil within him in those days and how it had so radically changed his outlook on people. Though Danie could not have known it, this halftruth now lay snugly up against the great lie.

Since there was no stopping them, Nellie and Petrus Minter did get married, after short banns and in the vestry. It was wartime, after all; and Danie’s influence was considerable, given his substantial contributions to church funds; and even the church was rather more lenient in such unsettled times when so many things could drastically affect the lives of young people.

The young couple would have the back bedroom and eat at the family table. That was the arrangement.

However, it was important to Danie that Petrus should not embarrass him. So he sent for Jakop, shoved a handful of sovereigns into his hand, and sent the whole family of Minters 172

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to town on the mule wagon to buy themselves clothes for the wedding.

The excitement in the Minter home was huge. Only Fienatjie said she did not want to go because she was getting a new blue dress in any case. Sannie threatened to beat her, so she did go.

The dress material that her mother bought was green — to match the green felt that had been wrapped round the piano — and not blue, like the shop dress she had dreamt about. That one was on its way to her in the chest on Joey’s cart.

Fienatjie always knew important things like this in advance.

She also knew that Joey would dismount and rest his horses at the stream a mile of two from the farm; have a proper wash and shave and put on his new clothes. He would not arrive dirty on the farm a second time and feel disgraced in front of Tannie Magrieta. But most particularly, he wanted to show off his new outfit to her, Fienatjie.

Early that morning she hurried down the road to wait for Joey at the bend behind the hill, but when she saw him coming, she could not wait any longer and ran to meet him. He reined in the horses, she clambered up onto the cart and threw her arms round his neck.

After the hug, she sat down beside him. Wherever possible, everyone on the farm had had to teach her five new English words every day. Fortunately, the one she wanted now was among them. She pointed to Joey’s eyes and said: “Tears, Joey.”

Joey’s eyes were filled with tears. There was something so beautiful in her delight at seeing him again that he could not help feeling deeply touched. He looked up at the clear blue sky above them, drew her thin little frame closer to him, looked away and wept a little as the horses started moving again.

Fienatjie let him cry: she had already dreamt of his pain, although it was unclear quite what caused it: the woman 173

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without clothes on and the shacks and things. She realised that even if she had had enough English to try and hear about the bare lady in her dream, it would be better not to ask — not while he was sobbing and wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his new jacket.

After a while he smiled down at her, looked into the blue of her eyes, and uttered his word: “Fienatjie.”

When they reached the gate, Fienatjie hopped down and opened it, let him drive through and then closed it again. She hesitated a little before climbing back up onto the cart. For the first time, she felt a little shy, because she had decided to say the words that Petrus and Nellie had had to teach her for the occasion: “Where is my new dress, Joey?”

Joey Drew’s smile wrinkled up from his mouth right up to the corners of his eyes when he got up to open the wagon chest underneath him. He lifted the parcel lying on the top and handed it down to her. She climbed up and her expectant expression made Joey think the miracle of her eyes was even greater. Her hands shook as she struggled with the string, so Joey took out Han Bester’s pocketknife and cut open the package. Fienatjie first checked that her hands were clean enough before she unfolded the wrapping paper and saw the blue. She lifted the dress and thanked him in specially rehearsed words. Then she kissed Joey on the lips. Once again, he had to look away.

Fienatjie picked up the dress by the shoulders and held it above her outstretched arms so that it fluttered behind her like a blue banner as she ran home.

“Look what I got!” she shouted, “Look what I got!” In front of the cottage, though, she turned and waved to Joey.

As he shook the reins and drove up to the homestead, the heart within his chest could have burst for joy. Which was a 174

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good thing, because after the affair with Elizabeth-the-Betjie it had been Hans Bester’s empty eyes that had filled his chest.

For far too long his heart had seemed full of nothing but emptiness and hollows. *** For Dorothea the wedding could not be quiet enough. But when the two families travelled in to the still unoccupied town to be witnesses of the marriage that was being solemnised, she did accompany them. During the ceremony, with everyone crammed into the vestry, all she did was weep. Danie reached out to take her hand with the hand not holding the cane supporting him, but she jerked away and held her hand to her mouth.

Back on the farm, Joey Drew arranged the two families in front of his camera, the Minters on Petrus’ side, the Van Wyks on Nellie’s. Wynand, Martie and Drienatjie had driven over for the wedding breakfast but had not attended the ceremony because Dorothea had sent word that she did not consider it necessary. They understood. Wynand, Martie and their daughter stood centre-rear for the photograph. The gap of Daantjie’s absence was filled by Gertruida, supporting Magrieta.

Later, Joey Drew was to look long and carefully at the two families: at their black mourning garb on Nellie’s side of the group, the lighter colours of the Minters; Oupa Daniël and Danie seated; Magrieta, the widow, now also alone, beside the starched maiden aunt. Already, he had detected signs of the war in the photograph — Daantjie gone, Danie wounded, and Dorothea grieving. With her husband dead Magrieta’s eyes were so much more subdued. When they met there was no 175

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teasing mockery in her greeting. Everyone except for Fienatjie had greeted his arrival with stiff formality.

Yet despite his close observation through the camera lens, there was still much that Joey saw and did not understand. For, once the photograph had been taken and the parties had gone up the stairs onto the veranda, Jakop and Sannie Minter made an attempt at amity that was altogether too familiar to Dorothea’s taste. Jakop took Danie’s hand, stared at his shoulder and bellowed: “Blessings!” Before Danie had fully reciprocated this warm gesture, Jakop had already kissed Dorothea and immediately moved aside, like one who had suddenly realised that he had behaved too familiarly on hostile ground.

Sannie, too, had come forward to kiss Dorothea, warmly calling her “Sister!” while she did so. Dorothea hurried angrily up the steps but before she could cross the threshhold she had to pass Martie, who with an unkind smile pointedly echoed Sannie’s “Sister!” Fury and humiliation drowned Dorothea’s grief. She entered the house in a rage, realising that this time Martie had got what she had always wanted: to see Dorothea knocked off her pedestal. Danie, the bearer of the family names, had inherited the family farm and lived in the family homestead. Wynand had had to be content with the other farm, with nothing on it. Danie was admittedly a better farmer than the slightly absent-minded Wynand. It is never easy when the other family is so much better off. The disparity had always rankled with Martie. Dorothea was not stupid: a spiteful word here and there from her sister-in-law revealed Martie’s resentment and its cause. Well, now she was stuck with Petrus, but the rest of the Minters had to go back where they belonged.

That se would see to straightaway.

The wedding breakfast round the long table in the dining 176

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room was a sombre affair. Oupa Daniël prayed so long about the family’s loss of the son of the house that he almost forgot to ask the Lord’s blessing on the marriage. Danie welcomed Petrus into the family, sweetening his speech by praising Petrus’ heroism in the war, adding that in these times when a people went through deep waters and great sacrifices were required, the little things that folk in peace-time got so agitated about were less important. Only he truly understood what he was saying.

Petrus thanked him quietly but said not a word about Daantjie.

When the servants came to clear the table after the meal, Sannie Minter freely helped them carry out the dishes. When everything was back in the kitchen, she wanted to help with the washing up. Dorothea sent Sarah and the other servants out of the room and told Sannie that she wanted to make one thing clear once and for all.

“There are several things that you need to understand perfectly clearly, Sannie. I shall have to accept your Petrus, whether I want to or not, but the war is only in Danie’s head, not mine. I want you to know and to understand clearly: I do not regard you and your people as family. There is a back door to this house: that is your place. And we will not exchange any more kisses in greeting. You may go home now: there are servants enough to do the dishes.”

Sannie Minter did not go straight home. She did not know what to feel, standing there behind the bluegum trees in the new dress which she had sat up all night behind the sewing machine to finish in time and with such high expectations.

What should she feel, apart from humiliation and disappointment, and the seeping away of her unrealistic hope that things might again return to what they had been before 177

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Jakop lost his farm and they had to flee from the bank — to the days when they, too, were something? She did not even notice that Fienatjie was standing beside her. Not till the child put her little arms round her. She hardly heard what the child was saying either: “Don’t worry, Ma,” as Fienatjie tried to comfort her from the strange world of her dreams, “when the little children stop singing, everything will be over, even if you don’t really understand, Ma.” Sannie Minter did not understand. She took Fienatjie’s hand and said: “Come, Fiena. We must get home. To our own place.”

Then it was Fienatjie who did not understand. *** Joey Drew could not quite work out why the folk on the farm had changed their attitude towards him. They all greeted him politely, speaking only English — sometimes even among themselves — when he was present. He was invited to take his meals at the table with the family. It seemed that his outburst on the day of the hanepoot wine had somehow been erased by the pain of Daantjie’s death, or, if not quite forgotten, at least forgiven. When he arrived he acted as if he had come simply to deliver the photographs and to ask for a bed for the night.

Dorothea, who had scarcely deigned to say goodbye to him when he left, met him at the front door with the news of her son’s death. She invited him in and took him to the sickroom to pay his respects to Danie. In the passage they met Magrieta who merely listened to his expressions of sympathy. Her eyes were elsewhere, as though the life behind them had evaporated. Yet they seemed even more striking than when they had sparkled with mockery and the joy of life. Her beauty was paler, quieter. To Joey it seemed as though she was 178

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wrapped round in something sacred — as though her shining blonde hair was like a halo. He still could not look straight at her when they were talking, for fear that he might end up tongue-tied.

It was Danie who asked him to stay and take the wedding photograph and Dorothea who showed him to the guest room off the veranda because the young couple had the back bedroom. When he set out the family photographs on the dining room table, they aroused some interest but little joy.

Dorothea became distraught over every photograph with Daantjie’s face in it. Magrieta glanced at the tinted photograph of herself and expressed indifferent thanks.

After that Joey took the Minters’ photographs down to their cottage. There the excitement was palpable — particularly Fienatjie’s, when she saw her own photograph with the face tinted. Her sisters were jealous and said it was unfair that Fienatjie was always the favoured one, and anyway, why was her little green cape, the one made from the piano wrapping, now suddenly coloured blue?

Joey was allowed to stay, and he was happy to do so. On the very first afternoon, Fienatjie drilled him in all the new words he had to learn and took him to see her treasures, including the caul she was born with that made her dream things. He had brought her some new things, and these she carefully put away with the others.

If you had asked Joey Drew how he felt, sitting there with Fienatjie at the secret hiding place of their treasures, he would have said: “Happy, almost as happy as when I still believed in Elizabeth. But now my happiness is pure, and that’s very different.” For on the afternoon that Elizabeth’s naked body turned into Betjie, she slid off the small pile of his thoughts.

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and Hans Bester’s eyes.

Danie was recovering. On the evening after the wedding, when the newly-weds had gone to bed, Magrieta and Gertruida were alone in their rooms, Dorothea was grieving somewhere and the old man had also retired for the night, Danie asked Joey to stay behind in the dining room.

He asked an astonished Joey to unlock the sideboard and bring one of the bottles of brandy and two glasses to the table.

Joey went to the kitchen to fetch water and Danie poured for them. “Not again,” Joey promised himself. “I’m not going to get drunk again.”

They talked for a long, long time. Later, when each of them thought back to that night — it was the night when Wynand came galloping up, so it was a night to remember — they felt a kind of mutual appreciation: “Who else could I have told what I dared to say there?” Who else but a cross-eyed Englishman from nowhere? Who else but a forbidding Boer with suffering in his eyes?

Danie poured out everything about his regret and his dead son, even about “that business” — everything, even the way Daantjie had wet himself, Soldaat’s toe, the way he hit his son and knocked his tooth out. And Joey told Danie about the siege, about the hunger, the sadness, the barrage that Fate had sent hissing down on them, and about his Elizabeth who was just Betjie-the-whore, and about how the vision of that shovelful of sandy loam in Hans Bester’s open mouth and eyes kept haunting him. And both of them talked about war, and what it did to one — and to people.

That was when Joey fetched the photographs of famished people with their hideous grinning expressions, and spread them out on the table. He explained how he had come to the realisation that he was a type of memory, one that had to keep 180

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alive the knowledge of what people did to one another, so that afterwards they would never be able to lie their way out of admitting the terrible wrongs they had committed. He was telling Danie about the injustice that was so clearly readable on their cheeks when they heard the hoofbeats of a horse. Joey looked up and said: “There’s only one rider.”

The sound of the rapidly approaching galloping suddenly brought the immediacy of war into their midst. Danie quickly blew out the lamp and shuffled lamely down the dark passage to fetch his rifle. But when Wynand knocked on the door and Danie asked: “Who’s there?” Petrus Minter answered from outside: “It’s only Oom Wynand, Pa.” When Danie lit a candle and unlocked the door, Petrus was already on the veranda with Wynand, asking only if he should attend to the horse. Wynand said that was not necessary since the animal had drunk from the stream shortly before and he wanted to be off again soon because Martie and the child were on their own at home. He wanted to talk to his brother, nothing more. Those who had come out to hear what was happening, went back to bed. Petrus crept back into his Nellie’s warm arms. Wynand wanted to speak to his brother alone. Joey Drew left as quickly as he could, leaving his photographs on the table.

While Danie re-lit the lamp, Wynand stood at the table, looking at Joey Drew’s grimacing photographs staring up at him. “That is what the siege of Kimberley looked like from the inside,” said Danie, “but you haven’t come here in the dark of the night to look at pictures. What is going on?”

“I don’t know how to tell you …”

“Is Martie’s religion keeping you out of her bed again?”

Wynand’s problem was bigger than that. “What would you do if your wife said she was going to poison or shoot you?”

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“Why did she say that?”

“I wanted to discuss with her this amnesty the English are offering …”

“You mean you are actually considering it? Then I’ll shoot you myself!”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand. Not even now.”

Rage and fury just burst out of Danie. “I understand quite enough, damn it! You haven’t got enough backbone above your yellow arse to stand up to an injustice that cries out to heaven and say enough is now bloody well enough. I’m telling you now, and you’d better listen: I won’t allow a brother of mine to run away with his tail between his legs like a scared bitch dripping piss and trying to escape through the first hole it finds in the fence. Even considering their cunning trickery marks you out as a coward!”

Danie continued till Wynand yelled into the stream of words: “I fought as hard as any man!”

“Don’t you call yourself a man.”

“So when all your blessed heroes fled from the battle at Elandsfontein with their jackets flapping wide in the wind, who went on fighting? I did. And others like me.”

“And now you want to become as rotten as them! You know it was the rabble that ran — the tenants, the bunch that our volk is burdened with, dragging on us like a dead donkey …

We are Van Wyks, not rootless scum.”

This was a quarrel between brothers. Old grudges, engrained attitudes, bare-foot squabbles, adolescent feuds whose toxic after-effects would always course through their veins, all lined up behind the brothers’ hard words and probed like daggers into the tender places deep within.

“You’ve always thought you’re so much better than anyone else, but let me tell you this now: if we are the wonderful Van 182

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Wyks and the tenants are scum, how come your daughter has married one? And in a hell of a hurry, too.”

“Go and count my daughter’s months yourself, you and all your kind! My son-in-law was the one who dragged me out of hell itself. I am proud of him.”

“Oh? And where was your proud Van Wyk blood when you lay wounded with the bullets flying round you? Why didn’t your Daniël Egbert van Wyk, the one with the clan name and the family inheritance — why didn’t he come and haul you out? Why? Because was shitting himself with fright again, that’s why! Do you think the commando couldn’t recognise wet pants when they saw them?”

Danie turned round without another word and walked over to the sideboard, unlocked one of the small side-drawers and taking out Daantjie’s knife with the dried blood still black on the blade, he placed it gently on the table in among the horribly grinning photographs.

“This is my son’s knife and that is my son’s blood. If you want to belittle things that are sacred to me, if you going to disparage my greatest loss, get on your horse right now and ride out of my life. Because then you cannot be my brother any more. To me this is blood of my blood, the blood of a man who overcame his fear and died for others. This is the most precious thing I know. So be off. If ever I find you among the English, I’ll shoot you. God hears me, my sacrifice has been too great for me to do anything less.”

Danie had been speaking softly. Then he stopped, and in the silence they both regretted their words. Joey Drew’s photographs stared up at them from the table top. In among the helpless eyes, shining with nothing but misery, lay Daantjie’s knife like a blade used for blood sacrifice.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to help me to my room, brother — I 183

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think the wound has opened up again.” *** The men returned to the fragmented war. First the Minters, and later, when Danie was well enough, he and Wynand together.

Danie insisted that his brother wait for him because he did not altogether trust Wynand’s sympathies. Also, he would need Wynand’s help if his wound caused him too much pain on horseback. They had to search to find their way back to their own commando, because the divisions between the forces were no longer as clear as before. They soon realised that they were now actually far behind the English advance towards the north and that the enemy had left small mopping-up units behind that had to be avoided. Numbers of former combatants who had lost the will to fight were back on their farms. Danie was not prepared to enquire from any of them about the movements of the commandos. A new mistrust had crept in between Boers with diverse views and perceptions. He did not trust them and he knew that the commandos, too, would avoid them; but he did risk enquiring from the women whose menfolk had taken up arms again. After a week, Danie and Wynand were reunited with their commando, for although they had not found the commando for themselves, a reconnaissance patrol had found them.

A different kind of silence had settled on the women back on the farm, the silence of estrangement. While they were still on the farm, the men had tried to do all they could. The male lambs and young bullocks were castrated, and before they left, Petrus and Jakop managed to sow a patch of wheat in the small field beside the windmill, even though it was still altogether too early. Once the men had gone, the women carried on from 184

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day to day, but relations between them were strained: Sannie Minter would not set foot anywhere near the homestead, not even to ask for the loan of half a cup of sugar, or a little coffee, or a couple of handfuls of flour. Absolutely not. She forbade her daughters, too, to go anywhere near the big house. So Fienatjie gave Joey Drew to understand.

Inside the house, Dorothea was cool towards Gertruida and Nellie. Magrieta was withdrawn.

Magrieta did not know whether the postal service was still operating, but she thought she should eventually tell her mother about her loss. And since none of them knew whether the town was now in English hands or not, or whether one dared entrust a letter to the English post, they asked Joey Drew to go into town and find out what was going on, to post her letter, and to buy what they most needed. Sannie took out some of Danie’s clothing money and asked Joey to buy her a bag of maize meal and a little coffee.

This was the first time that food had crept into the relationship. Gertruida did not find out for weeks that Greeff was no longer giving Sannie and her children any milk, simply because the children no longer came to fetch any at milking time.

First, she accosted Nelle: “When did you last visit your mother-in-law?”

“Yesterday. Didn’t you notice how Ma walked around all day with her lips pursed?”

“What do they have to eat?” Nellie did not quite understand. “What are your mother-in-law and her children living on?”

“Why do you ask?”

“But, good Lord, woman! Your mother-in-law has not been given any milk now for weeks on end, and at the last 185

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slaughtering your mother gave all the offal to Greeff!”

“She did kill a hen the other day.”

“And how many hens do you think she has? Just how long can four people live off five or six chickens? Because you have never in all your life had to go bed hungry — because you grew up as an over-fed Van Wyk — you don‘t even know about such things!”

Gertruida gave Nellie a thorough dressing-down and then, going quite against her own fixed custom, she confronted her sister-in-law head-on and boldly took her to task: “There are children in that house, Dorothea! What are the little creatures supposed to eat? Did they get the offal and the sheep’s head when last you slaughtered? No! The onions in the shed are sprouting already … The potatoes are rotting and the pumpkins are going mouldy, but you give them nothing! Not even milk! What do you think Danie will say about that when gets back?”

Dorothea’s initial reaction was to stiffen her back and tell Gertruida in no uncertain terms who was in charge on the farm, but she then realised that she had gone too far. She took to sending food across to the cottage: meat from the slaughtering, and some of the vegetables. She also allowed Nellie to take Sannie a few of her own hens and some shelled maize from the store-room, so at least she would have eggs in the house again. And when Joey Drew drove to town with Greeff, she had an additional sack of meal ground at the mill for the Minters. So Sannie received two sacks of meal from town that day: one sack of shop meal and one from the mill.

Next morning, Sannie came to the kitchen door and spoke to Dorothea through the open top half: “I have just come to say thank you for the food. I’m accepting it because I don’t have any option.” She then turned round and walked back to her 186

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place. Dorothea watched her go. On her shoulders were the last vestiges of pride and resistance, but draped over it all was the cloak of humiliation. Sannie had put on her best dress, the one she had made for the wedding. Dorothea wondered if that was intended to signify something.

One thing Dorothea would never forgive Nellie for: that the first person she told that she had missed a period and that she might be pregnant was her mother-in-law, and that it was to Gertruida that she first complained that her breasts were painful when she was fairly sure there was a baby on the way.

Nellie and her mother were at odds again about the food now regularly being sent to Sannie Minter when Nellie said: “I’m not going to let Petrus’ people starve, Ma! My mother-inlaw will be just as much a grandmother to my child as you.”

“What? Are you expecting?”

“Yes.” “Are you sure?”

“Yes. My mother-in-law says all the signs are clear.”

“You spoke to her … not me?”

“Well, what do you expect, Ma? You cut me off because of Petrus. The only people I can talk to are my mother-in-law and Aunt Gertruida …”

“So does your Aunt Gertruida also know?”

“She has known for more than a week.”

“And neither of you said anything to me!”

“You don’t have to live with you, Ma! But you can’t trample on me and insult me and feel sorry for yourself, and in return expect trust from the child you rejected. I am going to have a little Minter and I know you don‘t like it. I don’t even know if you will want a grandchild like that. So why should I suddenly pretend that you are still a mother to me?”

Dorothea was hurt, but still she asked: “What has Sannie 187

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Minter been saying to you about me?”

“All she said was that she won’t come back to this house because you forbade her the front door and refused to greet her with a kiss. That’s enough, isn’t it? Or do you see things differently? I tell you that you are going to be a grandmother and look how you behave: you’re not pleased, you just want to fight. So what am I supposed to think?” Nellie turned her back on her mother and went to her room.

Dorothea realised she had lost the battle. Unbidden, a gladness about the little one that was on the way came bubbling up from deep within her — but she could not show it, she could not suddenly and without any excuse do a turnaround and start playing Granny. Sannie Minter would be her grandchild’s grandmother; Gertruida was closer to her own child than she was. She would have to change and compensate, because she had let things go too far. She was not prepared to lose her grandchild as well.

She went to Nellie’s room and there she came as close to pleading as her nature and her position in the household would permit: “Oh, Nellie, love. I never rejected you … It’s just that … it’s my grieving for Daantjie, and … yes, I am guilty, my child … But before the little one comes, please let me make peace with you …”

Nellie’s womanhood had reached fulfilment, but the hurtful insults of her battle to have Petrus still rankled. Her response was like a teenager’s: “I will make peace with you the day my mother-in-law can walk in freely through the front door of your house.”

Next day, and for the very first time, Dorothea walked down to the tenants’ cottage, fetched Sannie Minter, and brought her in through the front door to sit and have coffee with them all round the dining room table. Sannnie was ill at ease in her 188

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dusty, threadbare day dress because she felt the whole thing was contrived. She kept twisting her fingers in her lap, shuffling her feet and not knowing what to say or where to look. Dorothea spoke at length about how much they all needed one another now since the men were all away, but there were still too many matters left unsaid hanging over them, so the conversation round the table remained stilted, however hard everyone, particularly Nellie, tried to make Sannie feel at home. Dorothea undertook to help find enough dress material for Sannie and the girls. And enough toilet and laundry soap, too, though this time she would let all this happen through Nellie as the go-between. She added the rider that Sannie’s help on the farm was now indispensable.

Like her son-in-law and her husband, like Jakop Minter and her dead son who, unbeknownst to her, was at that moment trying to work out how to stage his return, Dorothea was learning that, actually, people only stumble and fall when they are deprived of their pride — when they shrink so far in their own estimation that they begin to accept contempt and insults as their due and no longer expect anything else. There may have been no more than a single fading ember of self-respect left in Sannie Minter, but deep within her it still glowed, and that was something beyond price.

As Sannie left through the front door to return home, she and Dorothea leant towards each other as if to exchange kisses in greeting, but the uncertainty on both sides was still too severe. Afterwards Nellie came to say thank-you, and for that Dorothea was grateful. Left alone together, she told Gertruida: “To swallow one’s pride as I had to do today, Sister, is probably good for the humility of one’s soul, but easy it certainly is not.

However needful it may be, it’s still bitter.”

In the cottage a tiny flame flickered up on the last glowing 189

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ember of Sannie Minter’s self-respect as she scolded her daughters: “You’re not going to bed dirty again tonight. This piggishness of yours has got to stop. Tonight! And tomorrow we’re going to put everything in the wash tub and give the house a proper cleaning. I nearly died of shame when Mrs Van Wyk came in here this afternoon.” *** While the homestead was not directly in the path of the war, the women suspected that beyond their horizons ominous things were happening. The grey blanket of the first winter of the war still lay across the hinterland, but as August drew to its end, white frosts were less frequent in the mornings. It had been a struggle to see the stock through with the scarce fodder left after the winter. That was when the women realised what was really happening.

A horseman on a scouting expedition to the south stopped on the farm for a night. He was a Van der Merwe and brought the news that Petrus had told him to ask them for accommodation because with them he would be safe from the eyes of traitors. He was to report back to Petrus how they were doing. He brought letters from Danie and Petrus, and spoke of Petrus as Veldkornet Minter. Petrus, he said, was now the leader of a reconnaissance corps and his father-in-law was with them, too, even though the older man was struggling to keep up. The women sat up all night writing letters for the man to take with him. Early the next morning he was on his way again. That was how Petrus Minter heard that there was a baby on the way. In Petrus’ letter to Nellie, he wrote that he had not asked to be elected the leader of his corps, even though the proposal had come from higher up when the corps was 190

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established. He had at first resisted the idea, since he had never before heard of a tenant’s son being given rank, but her father had taken him aside and severely reprimanded him for his diffidence.

What Danie actually said to Petrus on the day that the tenant’s son became a veldkornet was: “Right here and now, you stop regarding yourself as a workhand. You say you’ve got nothing, but I’m telling you you’re worth plenty. And as our eyes are proving to us day after day, the way the English are carrying on, soon we’ll all have nothing. This war is making equals of us all. Afterwards who is high and who low will have to be decided afresh. So just quit your stubbornness. When your people need you so badly, you just do it.”

Nellie was fit to burst with pride at the news and even Dorothea’s heart began to melt. Perhaps her husband had been right after all. But the letters also contained some deeply disturbing news: The English were now applying another filthy strategy: devastating Boer farms, and the practice was becoming widespread. Danie warned: they should start burying all their most valuable possessions. To make that possible, Greeff could dig holes in the banks of one of the erosion gullies. The money and jewels, however, they should themselves bury in secret where none could observe them. They should keep out only just enough of the gold sovereigns as would be necessary for daily use.

It might be as well for the English photographer to remain, Danie wrote, for even though he was not worth much, at least there would be a man in the house. Also, he might perhaps be able to intervene if the Khakis arrived on their ungodly expeditions.

Joey was only too happy and, insofar as he could, he tried to 191

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make himself useful.

So it happened that it was he who brought Magrieta two letters from town that August. One was addressed to Widow M.J. van Wyk. It was from her half-brother Horst. The other was from her mother.

Horst explained in elegant German that, after her husband’s death and since there was no news of a child of the marriage, Magrieta in fact had no further ties to the people and the place where she was living, and that he would himself come and rescue her from the war as soon as she indicated that it would be convenient. He had always been of the belief that the Lord had a higher purpose for her than merely a marriage in a still barbaric part of the country. Given the exceptional qualities, he wrote, with which the Creator had endowed her.

Her mother shared her grief, saying that whatever she decided about her future, she should know that her mother would always welcome her home — almost as if she half expected her daughter to return to the mission station.

This was when Magrieta first realised that in fact she no longer had any ties of blood with the Van Wyks. Her husband was dead, there was no child to bind her into the family, and her continued presence on the farm was now perhaps just a kind of charity. But the thought of the burning expression in her half-brother’s eyes reignited her old revulsion. The thought of driving all those miles alone in his company was quite odious. She wrote back that she might travel down to the Cape Colony once the trains were running to schedule again. Not before then. Still, she did go to Gertruida with the question: “I don’t know what my ties to the Van Wyks now are, Aunt Gertruida. Am I just a loose appendage now? After all, my blood tie with you all is in his grave.”

Gertruida reassured her, then went straight to Dorothea, 192

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who assured Magrieta most emphatically that she had become like a daughter to her, that the bond of marriage before God made it clear that she and Daantjie had become one flesh, and that she would therefore never be rejected. She would always be a real daughter in this home. She cautioned Magrieta not to make any over-hasty decisions in her time of mourning and sorrow. The entire world around them was all one great upheaval. It would be senseless for her to try to make her way in wartime through soldiers and itinerants, even on the trains.

What Dorothea neglected to say, but certainly thought, was that a journey like that would be particularly hazardous for a young woman with Magrieta’s looks. None of the women missed noticing how the Van der Merwe who had brought the letters from the front could not stop staring at Magrieta or how Joey Drew stammered whenever she talked to him. Magrieta had a choice. *** In those days, as the worst of the pain of Daantjie’s death was waning and Magrieta was worrying about her choices, Daantjie himself would often spend the evening sitting near his hideout with his back to the late-afternoon sun. Sitting there idly, he would watch his shadow lengthening as the sun set. He always went up to a high vantage point to sit and wait for Soldaat. As the twilight gathered in hollows and valleys and the darkness of night dammed up in shallow depressions, Daantjie’s shadow first dissolved in the dusk and later merged into the darkness.

Daantjie had no conception of just how far his everlengthening shadow was falling, nor how his lie had become part of a vast darkness. He never thought that far. All he knew was that after the war he would one day have to go back. The 193

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choice his beautiful Magrieta would face never occurred to him.

But, like roots gradually probing ever deeper into the soil, right down into the narrowest, deepest clefts of everything, affecting everyone, so the skeletal, myriad, manifold, satanic fingers of war left nothing untouched. In the same heartless way, they crept into the tenderest recesses of Magrieta van Wyk’s being and took all her decisions for her.

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Seven The mother congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church was celebrating its third quarterly Communion Service for 1944.

Sitting piously beside the still beautifully preserved Tante Magrieta was Oom Daantjie van Wyk. It was Daniël Egbert van Wyk himself seated there — proud bearer of the Van Wyk family name, former Church Elder, now Elder Emeritus — not through any unwillingness to continue serving the Church but on account of the ripeness of his years.

With great worshipfulness and piety, he had filled his late father’s vacant seat in the Elders’ Pew for the twenty years since 1924, when death had deprived the congregation of the elder Daniël Egbert van Wyk, name-bearer, father, and heroic veteran of the War. Ever since, Oom Daantjie, that outstanding example of pious godliness, had given unstinting and selfless service to the Church of God. A man to be revered, a pillar in the farming community, the church and politics — a man with a warm heart and an open hand for his people, his fellow man and his party. A man, moreover, beautifully and faithfully supported by his dearly beloved and deeply appreciated helpmeet, Tante Magrieta van Wyk — “a fact he always states with conviction,” as the Reverend Mr Sanders remarked in church on the occasion of Oom Daantjie and Tante Magrieta’s forty-fifth wedding anniversary, adding: “What jewels of the community these two old folk are! But Oom Daantjie and Tante Magrieta are not just ornaments for us alone: they are jewels, too, in that matchless crown of Righteousness and all195

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encompassing Love. And that crown, the one reserved for those of us who have walked in the fear of the Lord, will justly and with immeasurable love be accorded them on the day when it shall please the Almighty to summon them to the mansion already prepared for them on high.”

In the aisle at the end of the pew, the deacon wiped the edge of the communion chalice with his snowy white napkin. The tray of tiny communion glasses had all been passed along the pew and Magrieta had taken one. Daantjie, however, insisted on drinking from the chalice since he considered that more scriptural.

So in September 1944 hands protruding from long-sleeved church dresses and suit jackets passed the chalice along the pew to Daantjie. He took it and his liver-spotted old farmer’s hands locked intimately round the polished silver as he bowed his head and closed his eyes.

It could only be in prayer. In the face of the precious blood shed for our salvation. Daniël Egbert van Wyk carefully tipped the chalice and took a small sip, swallowed piously, and then sent the chalice back down the pew. Only five members of the congregation insisted on the chalice and in his pew he was the only one. He closed his eyes again, but — out of respect — neglected to wipe his mouth. No-one noticed Daantjie van Wyk crying in soundless agony.

They drove home along the two-track road in their 1936 Chevrolet. There were no new cars to be had during the war.

Where the road dipped, Daantjie brought the car almost to a standstill as he grated the gears and bounced over the humps.

Where the centre ridge in the road looked too high for the car’s undercarriage, he swerved out of the way.

Magrieta stared impassively at the road ahead, saying nothing about his old man’s driving skills. All they said to each 196

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other on the way back to the farm was: “Nice service” and “Yes.” Neither thought it worth remembering who had made the phatic comment or who had disinterestedly affirmed it.

The pine trees, now forty years old, that his father Danie had planted soon after the War, towered on either side above the driveway up to the homestead. In front of the house Magrieta got out of the car without a word. Before she had even crossed the veranda, she lifted her church hat off her silver-grey hair as though the thing was bothering her.

Daantjie turned the car and drove back down the drive.

Magrieta watched him from the front door: “Soldaat,” she said to herself and closed the door behind her.

From his family huts Soldaat watched Daantjie’s car bumping along over the uneven veld. “Fetch a chair and keep out of the way,” he ordered. “He’s been to the Big Church again.” His people brought the chair and disappeared. They were familiar with these visits.

Daantjie arrived and sat down without greeting. In his Sunday suit, tie and shining shoes, he was a model of elegance.

Soldaat sat there barefoot, his clothes threadbare. Beside each other like this they looked even blacker and whiter than usual, like the opposite banks of a ravine when the last rays of the setting sun catches only one cliff face. But there was no ravine between the two of them. They were just two old men sitting on chairs, their feet resting on a neat dung-smeared courtyard surrounded by clay huts decorated with painted patterns and with small irregular windows facing inwards. Chickens pecked in the dirt. Beside one wall a goat was chewing a ragged cloth.

Between the fire-stones on the ground in front of them a fire was dying in white ash under an almost empty porridge pot.

Together, they both smelt the smeared dung under their feet, the last sweet wisps of smoke from the dung fire, burnt 197

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porridge and the acrid smell of the noonday sun rising from the baking earth round them. They had sat together like this too long when they were young and running away from the fighting.

“Our time is nearly up, Soldaat,” Daantjie broke the silence.

“You’ll have to tell her, so the thing can burn itself out and die, Daantjie. If you don’t tell her, we’re going to die like this, and that we must not do.”

“You know that too many things have built up around it for us to turn around now. I can’t tell her, and I won’t. I’m just trying to work out what the hell happened to me.”

“You were beside yourself with lust and jealousy, that’s what. It happens to everybody when you’re young. But I don’t want to go over to the Other Side with that lovely woman’s heart round my neck. You will have to speak up, I’ve kept the thing bottled up inside me for too long already.”

Soldaat was grey, toothless and wrinkled. On one of his feet the big toe was missing.

“You’ve stood by me all these years, Soldaat. Don’t make me kill you in our old age.”

“You talk easily of killing. It would be better if you spoke, Daantjie. You’ve made me carry too much of your burden.

There are times when I want to lift the thing off my back, too …”

Soldaat was silent for a while, and Daantjie was disturbed at the prospect. “You’re damned well not going to do it!”

Soldaat saw it was necessary to calm Daantjie down: “ … then I look at my toe. You cut it off. Else I wouldn’t have been here.”

But there was still another, different anxiety in Daantjie: “What did we come here for, Soldaat? What was going on in my head?”

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“Your brains went rotten because of Magrieta. You heard about that German, then you went mad. That’s what you came looking for. It wasn’t me.” *** For, out of the blue, the Reverend Horst Bunge had arrived on the farm with his carriage and horses that September in 1900, fully intending to take Magrieta away with him. He spent two tense, uncomfortable and fruitless weeks pleading with her and praying in German until Dorothea asked him please to leave: he was cruelly upsetting Magrieta in her time of bitter, agonised mourning.

Daantjie meanwhile had taken refuge near the Basutoland border because, so Soldaat assured him, mountains were better to hide in.

Right from the start of their going to earth, Soldaat had taken charge of Daantjie. “You Boers are so used to rushing everywhere, you’ve forgotten how to escape,” he said. Daantjie had not even realised that when you are fleeing, whether on horseback or on foot, you need to do so either on hard ground or knee-deep in streams of water. Take care always to position yourself high above the plain when you’re resting, so you can see farther. Never sleep in a place where there is no easy escape, and never where anyone might come across you by surprise. If you don’t know which side they might come from, keep two escape routes open. Never rob the same place twice unless you have no other option. Never leave behind any hoofor footprints, feathers, bits of animal skin or anything else that could help track you down. Don’t just kick your campfire ashes aside — bury them and sweep the spot smooth before you leave. Toss your fire-stones into the long grass, strew fallen 199

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leaves and grass and clean new stones and animal droppings over the patch of ash, and piss on it. That will make it look old.

Always move on faster than a story can start spreading. And don’t wash or shave, or curry-comb your horse — not if before you became a fugitive your name was Flash Danie van Wyk. Soldaat gave Danie the name Koot Duvenhage and said that from now on he himself would be Alfred. He forbade Daantjie to shave, so his beard would cover his face. He soaked Daantjie’s smart hat in water and stamped it into the mud, to ruin its shape. The tops of his thigh-length embossed leather riding boots had to be cut down to ankle height. His chained spurs and riding breeches were buried beside the road. The fancy saddle and bridle were ground into the earth till their seams showed white along the ridges. So Soldaat ensured that within three days Flash Daantjie van Wyk looked thoroughly disreputable.

After that they were continually on the move or waiting, shifting and stopping. Daantjie knew not only that he had to hide from friends and enemies alike but that he had to keep out of sight of all eyes wherever, for under each pair of eyes was a mouth that might later talk. Before Daantjie came up with his lie about being a Boer scout, it was Soldaat who had to go looking for food for them, because if he were to run into anyone he knew, it wouldn’t matter so much — he wasn’t dead like Daantjie. If he met any acquaintances he would tell them that Daantjie had died bravely and that he, Soldaat, had now become a wanderer without any interest in either Boer or Englishman.

It was on one of his foraging expeditions that Soldaat heard that the Van Wyks’ house was still standing, that Magrieta was in mourning, and that a tall German from the Cape Colony had arrived on the farm.

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Soldaat did not get back till late that night. For safety’s sake, Daantjie had not lit a fire, even though the cold of the early spring evenings still bit sharply. It was late before he heard horse hooves stepping on the stony ground. He recognised that it was Soldaat, because one of the horse’s front feet made a clicking sound. They would need to find a new horseshoe and nails and shoe the hoof properly.

“I could only get two fowls, but I heard plenty of news.”

The fire had already been laid, so as he lit it and blew it into life, Soldaat related how the English had apparently started burning down homesteads and stealing farm animals in this area, too, but that the Van Wyk homestead was still unscathed.

The woman he had met making her way on foot to her folk in Basutoland told him the Van Wyks were all still well. Sarah had told her that Magrieta no longer actually wept but that she was still silently in deep mourning. The Englishman with the camera was still there. They also said a tall man with white hair had arrived from the Cape Colony to fetch Magrieta. The woman could tell Soldaat nothing about other men who wanted to call on the widow — “Did she say widow?”

“Man, are you stupid, Daantjie van Wyk? Magrieta’s husband is dead, isn’t he? She’s your widow.”

In all the months of wandering, Daantjie had thought of nothing but Magrieta — when he was not fretting about “that business”, or his father’s attitude, or his eventual untruthful return. Now, though, it was as if the word “widow” had crystallised into clear realisation what he had already known.

His thoughts ricocheted off that word in a new direction.

An unbearable jealousy took hold of him. His heart beat aloud in his ears. Images of sexual jealousy, stories conjured up only in his tortured imagination, possessed him utterly and 201

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could not be resisted. Every night, the whole time while he was fleeing from place to place, he would wrestle under his blankets with his frustrated need for release. As visions of Magrieta’s young figure rose up before him, he would eventually yield anyway and silently satisfy himself: Magrieta in the heat of their embraces — her body shuddering — her back arching in ecstatic convulsions — holding her breath for a moment at the height of her climax — her gasping as she cried out and released her pent-up breath — her eyes losing focus as her pupils dilated and those divinely beautiful eyes turned inwards into herself … it all had kept coming back to him.

But that night, after Soldaat had mentioned her widowhood, things were suddenly different: he was not the one with her, igniting her passion now. It was not him but someone else that Magrieta was clutching, some faceless stranger was making her pant.

Sometimes in his fevered mind the man on top of Magrieta had the clergyman’s long thin body and blond hair, for Magrieta had often told Daantjie how the pious swine had lusted after her body without actually trying to reveal it.

Sometimes he imagined it was some stranger. Fantasies caused the worst of the warping in Daantjie’s head. Where at first he had dreamt of arriving home a war hero, like a lover returned from the dead, being embraced by a Magrieta quite overcome with joy — now things were different. His one dream had always been of her running to him, of her tears and words of yearning for him, of her welcoming body.

Now his dreams were jealous visions of trapping her in her unfaithfulness. Catching her in unbridled, lascivious nakedness. Of her fright and of himself, the injured husband, the disappointed man, the one returning from the dead. And how, in the face of the resounding words his dreams were now 202

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conjuring up in him, her contrition for the injustice she had done him would overwhelm her.

At the back of his head he knew that the disturbing images he had invoked were unfounded, but somewhere deep inside he welcomed the distress they were causing him: the beating of his turbulent heart in his ears, the rage, the pain, the selfjustification — all served to vindicate what he had become.

That German was on the farm. What was he doing there? At four o’clock in the morning Daantjie was still awake. He shook Soldaat: “Saddle the horses, I want to see what’s going on there.” *** “There was someone outside round the house last night,” Gertruida said in the kitchen.

They all went out to look at the footprints. Gertruida had been loosening the soil to pull up the first spring weeds from the damp basins round the roots of the roses. In the bed where she was pruning the climber roses there was the print of a large male boot. Someone wearing a large left boot had stepped there — as though the person had been creeping along the low wall where the veranda pillars were covered in climbing roses.

There was a certain inhibition in their speculations about whose footprint this could be. It was too big for either Greeff or Joey Drew. The missionary had already been gone for more than a week. Oupa Daniël’s feet were so shrunken with age that he had to buy smaller shoes very year. Some stranger had been round the house last night.

“We shall need to keep our eyes open, we are becoming too complacent,” they told one another. At night, they would have to listen most acutely. Had no-one heard the dogs barking?

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“No, no more than usual.”

Only Fienatjie knew who had been there. When Sannie told her daughters that Nellie had come to warn them that there was someone walking about on the farm at night and that they should keep their eyes and ears open, Fienatjie said: “It’s Oom Daantjie, Ma. It’s Oom Daantjie who comes here in the night.”

Sannie Minter looked slightly apprehensively at the child, and later, when she told Nellie about it, her unease was palpable: “I have always wished so hard that the child would outgrow the caul — particularly once I had the thing buried.

Her nightmares about the ants and the children she hears singing are a heavy cross for the family to bear, but now things are getting worse, because it seems to me she is now starting to see the dead.”

“What, Ma!” “Do you know what she’s come out with now?”

“Ma?” Sannie leant over to her daughter-in-law and said, barely above a whisper: “She says she dreams that the late Daantjie walks the night here! I can’t think why the child is being punished like this. But this is the first time she has come up with a story about seeing the dead walking. It must be the late Daantjie’s spirit that cannot rest. But just imagine what would happen if she took this tale to Magrieta or your mother! I warned her: if she mentions a single word about this thing, I’ll really beat her bottom for her. There are days when I just don’t know what to do about the child. I should have buried that caul on the very first day. It was a sin to preserve and keep it for luck. It is not right to tempt the Lord; if you do, He punishes you.”

“But what is it that she sees, Ma?” “Well, she says he’s terribly thin and dirty and he’s got a 204

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great big beard, and she says his head is wrapped in grave cloths. The grave is terribly cruel. They say if your soul cannot find peace, your hair and nails go on growing once you’re dead. But please don‘t talk to Fiena about this thing. If no-one mentions it, she sometimes forgets.”

Up at their meeting place Fienatjie told Joey Drew that afternoon that Daantjie was not dead and that he came walking around the farm at night. Joey eventually grasped enough to teach her the English word “ghost”, but he did not believe her till months later. For Danie had told him how badly his son had been shot to pieces, and had shown him with tears in his eyes the knife with the black dried blood on it. So even though Joey did not believe what Fienatjie told him so earnestly, he did not forget what she had said. *** Daantjie struggled to his feet. “I’d better get back,” he said and started heading home.

“You’re forgetting your car! You drove here.”

The old man turned round. He was getting forgetful.

Sometimes, when he became fearful again because of the things that had happened in that now so distant past, he had difficulty marshalling his thoughts. He turned back to Soldaat: “Since the war, have you ever gone back to see if there was anything of ours left in the gully?”

“The water has run down that ditch a hundred times — what could possibly have remained?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

He drove home more carefully and parked the car in the garage. Seeing that he had returned, Magrieta brought the Sunday dinner to the neatly laid table in the dining room. He 205

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said grace. A brooding silence hung over their meal. They said nothing. The only sound was the clicking of cutlery on porcelain.

He knew he had better say nothing. She, too, knew she should rather keep her peace. That was always the way things were at this time of year. It was as though the coming of the new season would raise from the graves of their memories the young people whom they had been and replay what had happened to them then. Yet, again, Magrieta could not help asking, with a mocking smile of disbelief already playing round her lips: “So what did Soldaat have to say this time?”

Daantjie tried to brush it aside: “… just went over to see how he was. One has one’s Christian duty, and we did grow up together. From when we were very small.”

“I mean: what did he say this time about where you spent the war.”

Daantjie put down his knife and fork and stood up. “It’s been almost fifty years and still you go on nagging!” He shoved his plate aside.

Magrieta heard him bang the front door as he went out in a rage.

She collected up the dishes. For the sake of peace she should not have said it, but sometimes she felt that words like this might help. They were like shards of defiance against the memory.

Out on the veranda Daantjie tried to recall what had happened to him late in September that year. It was not just that he had been overcome with lust, as Soldaat maintained.

He had not been himself. He could not have been in his right mind. He tried to remember, because — ever since he had had that warning from his heart two years ago — whenever he was taking Holy Communion unworthily and so drinking 206

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damnation unto himself, he found himself remembering things that he had tried for so long to force back into silent oblivion: All that week, when they were hiding in the familiar erosion gullies of their childhood only a few miles from the homestead, Soldaat pleaded and pleaded with Daantjie to decide one way or the other and put an end to their misery. There were English troops everywhere that he could hand himself over to; he could go to Magrieta and tell her he was tired of the war, because there was no way they could win anyway — as two of their neighbours had already done. But to hide out there where everyone knew him was just looking for trouble.

For by that time Soldaat was fully informed. At night he would visit his own homestead, find food, sleep with both his wives, tell everyone how bravely Daantjie had died and explain how he, Soldaat, was now a fugitive because he had stolen a rifle. But everyone was told to keep their mouths shut and never even to approach the gullies, because he did not want any trouble. He also insisted that Daantjie make himself as unrecognisable as possible, just in case he was seen.

“Blacken your face,” he ordered. “You’re already as skinny as a reed. Blacken yourself and nobody will even imagine it’s you. And a black man can move about more easily in the dark.”

Soldaat sent some of his folk with a long tale to beg Sarah for some black polish. On the second day Daantjie blackened every exposed part of his body — and did not even feel a fool as he did so, because it made him feel safer. At night a black man can walk around less conspicuously, the more so if he wraps a dark scarf round his head and face, till no more than his eyes are visible.

Then he began prowling around the homestead at night, getting the dogs used to him again. By sheer chance, from the 207

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distance of the gully, he saw the first of Magrieta’s hopeful suitors arriving: Thys Labuschagne — he would have recognised Thys’ dun-coloured horse from a mile way. But after only half an hour Thys was on his way again in midafternoon. Sarah told Soldaat’s folk that Thys had pretended he was coming to express his condolences at Magrieta’s loss, but he actually intended to ask permission to come calling on Magrieta again. Dorothea showed him the door pretty smartly — he had surrendered and taken the oath of allegiance to the British Crown! Sarah said Dorothea had shouted after him that Daantjie was barely cold and yet he, Thys Labuschagne, who had deserted his own side, had now come scavenging like a vulture on the newly widowed wife of the fallen hero.

Leaning against the edge of the ditch Daantjie told Soldaat: “I’ll kill them all, one by one. One at a time. I’ll lie in wait at the ford and shoot them one by one. She’s my wife.”

Soldaat looked at the scruffy, begrimed white man with the missing tooth, and tried once more: “She doesn’t know that. Go and tell her.”

Daantjie simply stared out ahead. That was the last thing he would ever do. He would return after the war and, whatever amount of lying it took, he would regain his honour in everyone’s eyes. Like a rinkhals, he could not help “that business”, and damn it he had suffered enough already. *** There was no predicting the weather in these late September evenings. The seasons were still chopping and changing between winter and summer, but it happened on such a night as this. On such a night as this. One of the warm ones, when summer was getting the upper hand.

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By the light of the full yellow moon, Magrieta looked down from the easy chair on the veranda to where the road wound up to the homestead. It had been different, that night, and yet the same. Pa Danie’s pine trees, now looming dark along the drive, were not there then and the lower gate was an ordinary farm gate, not the ostentatious wrought-iron one with stone pillars which Daantjie had had built ten years ago. Nor had there been a great big board then, proclaiming Daantjie & Magrieta van Wyk, Grotegeluk.

Grote geluk - Great luck indeed! “Everything that ever hurt me came through that gate.”

It was probably the same on that night, so much like this one. Was there less of a moon then? She could not tell now.

Could the climbing roses on the pillars really be fifty or more years old? She could not remember their ever being transplanted, but they still budded almost too early. Like now.

The moonlight was the same, for the moon never grows old — it remains what it has always been, counting down women’s fertility month by month and watching how everything down below endlessly rotated and perished.

The dogs lying on the veranda now, though, were different dogs. In the bedroom behind her she heard Daantjie getting ready for bed like the old man he was: resting his stick too crookedly against the bedside cabinet and of course knocking it aside so that it fell clattering onto the wooden floor; loudly snorting to clear the snot in the back of his nose and swallowing it down the back of his pink throat; the thud of his dropping shoes; and finally the heavy sigh as he lay down. The creaking of the bed as he shifted his body into a comfortable position. The creaking of their bed. The creaking of the two little lovebirds’ sanctified marriage bed. Bitterness welled up in her like acid reflux.

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God, how she hated the way that bed creaked! For half a lifetime she had had to listen to it while, in his haste, her official, fully authorised, lawful, duly certified husband — the man who walked around all day with his sanctimonious mug and his edifying pronouncements — first pounded sheer pain into her dry, unwilling softness; pinned her down and rode her like an animal. To the creaking beat of that damned bed — that chirr-chirr keeping time, keeping time, keeping time with her dry pain, and carrying on and on and on under the pounding of his body. That chirring all the time he was panting heightened her revulsion — until he had done and rolled off her, and she was glad that she had not moved at all, had not felt anything at all, had not uttered a sound. But the bedstead would not shut up, it went on chirring: pay up, pay up, pay up — a debt which she had never incurred and which she would never be able to pay off, not even if she died.

“Cursed be the day that war came and shattered everything!” Magrieta’s resentment spoke aloud into the dark of such-a-night-as-this.

“Aren’t you coming to bed, my dear?” Daantjie’s old-man’s voice came through the open window.

“No!” He did not ask any more. He knew why.

There had been a time — how long ago: ten years, twenty?

— when Daantjie had been determined to try to make love to her. For her, that was even worse, because she knew why he was doing so. In his head the war had started cooling off and her own coldness had caught up with him. When he began to have difficulty getting hard, he wanted them to indulge in intimate foreplay again, like they used to — to help him get it up. He tried to tease and sweet-talk her into playing with him: she lay there passive, resolutely unresponsive. Till he leapt up 210

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out of bed in a rage at his impotence, cursing and swearing at anything and everything. Particularly at her, blaming her silence, her pursed lips under his own, her unresponsive body, for his failure to perform. His enraged imprecations and selfpitying whingeing went echoing down the passage, through the kitchen and out the back door. His cursing of his cold wife rippled outwards to include everything that had ever happened to him. Including the thanks-for-nothing he had received for his heroism in the war. And his father’s blunt disgust as well. And that fucking Englishman who had had to come and wreck everything too. Then he would sometimes sit in the dining room and drink, or go out into the garden and pray, like Horst Bunge. Though, unlike the missionary’s quiet mutterings, Daantjie prayed out loud, with tears in his voice — full of reproaches, right under the bedroom window, so she could hear him. Like a child wanting his wrongs acknowledged. Like the child he had always been, despite his loud-mouthed swagger. Did Magrieta pity him? Never! Not even once.

She had still been grieving for him when she went to bed on that night-such-as-this. She was still mourning him, yearning for him. In the middle of her cycle she felt her body refusing to forget … She had fallen asleep. The beautiful young widow, the scarcely-more-than-a-girl that she still was, had simply gone to sleep, nothing more. But in the darkness all round the house there had been eyes. They had been looking in from out of the night, of course, but she was trapped in the labyrinth of her thoughts, so she remained unaware of them. Who the hell could it have been? Who was it?

She did not feel Daantjie’s fevered glance. He was standing, black, beside the climbing rose against the pillar opposite Magrieta’s bedroom window. The rest of the household was 211

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asleep behind dark windows, but in their bedroom, his and Magrieta’s bedroom, a candle was still burning. The drawn curtains did not quite meet, so a strip of yellow light shone through between them. She was moving about in the room.

Once or twice her shadow fell indistinctly on the curtains, but he could not really make out her shape — she was too close to the candle. Only now and again did he get a brief glimpse of her through the chink.

The tension of being so close to her — the contained excitement of the voyeur — took hold of him. The veranda did not stretch quite as far as their bedroom window, so he crept round the low wall and peered cautiously through the chink — though he knew the moonlight could expose him there and that his head would show up darkly against the light in the curtains.

Then he saw Magrieta, the candle at an angle between her and the mirror. She was standing in front of the dressing table, still in her petticoat, drawing the brush through her golden hair, still counting off all fifty strokes as her mother had taught her when she was a girl, as she had done every night when they were together. He couldn’t help himself: before she had given her hair even twenty brush strokes, he was fully aroused.

As always, the candlelight enhanced the curve of her throat, shining gently on the tender firmness of her neck as the muscles tautened ever so slightly when her head pulled back in time with the strokes of the brush, till her throat was exposed in all its vulnerability, as though in surrender, and her breasts tilted forward like a challenge. Daantjie knew every stroke of the tortoiseshell brush — how, when she drew a handful of her long hair forward to brush it straight with long strokes, she would turn her head and tighten her grip on the ends, brushing out the tangles with short, sharp movements. Then 212

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she would tilt her neck sideways, showing the softness of its sides and how it flowed gently down into her beautiful shoulders with never a knot or wrinkle.

Daantjie was trembling, unaware of how one of his knuckles was rattling against the window pane. Till Magrieta suddenly looked round towards the window, unsure of whether she might have heard a noise, and he quickly ducked down beside the wall, holding his breath and waiting. But she did not come to the window and he could resume spying on her: watching her undress and too quickly — far too quickly! — draw her nightgown over her head and cover her young body — her breasts, her slim waist, and the little tuft of modesty between her hips and the cleft between her thighs. Now, before she carries the candle over to the bedside cabinet and sits down on the bed, she will cream her hands, like she does every night.

Daantjie knows exactly how sweet and utterly feminine her hands smell at night when she lays an arm across his chest and holds him tight in her sleep. He wants to smell them again. He has to.

The thin man’s body that Daantjie is pressing up against the wall cannot help trembling. He leans up against the sharp edge of the sandstone window sill, his ribcage heaving, his breath racing through his throat.

Tonight Magrieta is not doing her brief Bible reading or kneeling down to say her prayers, as she usually does. After their lovemaking and their drowsy chatting, when he was already drifting off, she always got up, read from her German Bible, knelt down beside the bed and, covering her forehead with her hands, said her prayers. But this night she does not.

Before snuffing the candle, she does, though, come across to the window, as she always did, winter and summer. She shoves the window frame up a couple of inches and draws the 213

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curtains aside a little, ready for when she will wake again early in the morning.

He ducks down, waiting. The light of the candle on the curtains disappears. Possible and impossible ways for him to come back to her swirl about in his head. Can she be asleep already? She has always fallen asleep easily.

The new casement cords that he had himself fastened to their counterweights work smoothly as he slides the window frame up. The moon is shining on his back — she would actually be able to see him, but he has stopped thinking rationally — he simply must get closer.

He lifts himself, sits astride the windowsill, swings his legs over and then lowers his feet quietly onto the wooden floor.

His moonlit shadow falls across the sleeping woman as he moves diagonally to slip into the darkness. He is so close he can smell her. The strip of moonlight through the half-drawn curtains falls across her arm and one shoulder.

She suddenly sits bolt upright, as though something has warned her. Daantjie can do nothing except stop her mouth before she can utter a sound. She struggles fiercely under him.

He feels her body moving against his. He holds her in a tight grip, and then it happens. It just happens. With his whole weight, he pins her down on the bed, one hand across her mouth. His free hand struggles to pull aside the bedclothes between them. His body screams deafeningly into his brain: “Nearer! Nearer!” He pulls her nightdress up past her thighs.

With his knee he forces her legs apart. He rips his fly buttons open, thrusts himself in and rapes her. Her nearness and the seething violence within him drives him mad — as though everything that has been building up inside him can find no other release than by being discharged here, into his wife’s most tender mystery. His discharging is compulsive. And soon 214

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done. For the long months of absence, pain and yearning, the fortnight of fierce jealousy, and a whole night of spying on her have turned him into an overheated beast. A couple of thrusts and all his stored seed shoots into her unwilling powerlessness — into the weaker vessel of her womanhood.

She was still struggling when he sprang up and leapt out through the window into the night. Her screams followed him as he sprinted down to the gate.

Only once he was there did he look back and see lights in the windows. From a distance he called Soldaat away from his home, saying they had to get away immediately. In the gully they grabbed what they could lay their hands on in the dark and rode away into the night. Not before they had stopped to rest the horses for the first time did they take time to talk.

“What’s happening now? Why are we running away?”

“I was with Magrieta.”

“Like that? Black and filthy?” That was not possible. Not for Flash Daantjie van Wyk. Daantjie said nothing more, so Soldaat had to prod him: “What did she say?”

“I didn’t speak to her.”

“You just looked?”

“No, I was in her room.”

“With her?”

“Yes.” “Did she see you?”

“No.” “So what did you do?”

“I held her down and …”

The truth dawned on Soldaat. “You grabbed her in the dark and you fucked her. That’s what you did!”

“Yes.” 215

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Almost immediately after what he had done — they were still pushing their horses hard into the night — all Daantjie’s thoughts were already of self-justification. He told himself: A man cannot rape his own wife. When he tried to explain this to Soldaat, the response was cold and calculated: “Oh yes, a man can. Look, I’m prepared to lie for you to other people, but I won’t play along when you start lying to yourself. You’re not worth as much as a rinkhals! Here we are, riding around in the night — why? Because you are a coward who pisses himself and runs away from the fighting! And if you force a woman against her will, you’re a pig. Go and lie to someone else!”

Soldaat rode on in silence and said nothing more to Daantjie all that night. Magrieta van Wyk was a lovely, gentle woman, not a bitch to be grabbed and fucked in the dark. Why the hell does the devil always command a man’s balls to attack and defile the most beautiful things he encounters? Why on earth was he, Soldaat, sticking by this man who had so rapidly turned into a pig? Even if they had spent most of their lives so far together?

“Are you going to sit outside all night?” Daantjie’s voice came through the window to Magrieta.

“If I feel like it, yes!”

How much did she dare allow herself to remember about that night? The night that had marked the start of so many evil things in her life. What could she still recall? The smell of her rapist she would remember forever: stale sweat, wood smoke, horse — and over all something like paraffin. That she did remember. His filthy smell and the lean, strong body on top of her and the hand covering her mouth and nose and forcing her to fight for breath. And the excruciating pain of his dry thrusting.

And afterwards the bedroom full of familiar women’s faces, 216

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bewildered behind their candles. How at first they simply could not believe the unthinkable, and could only be convinced by the open window and dirty black smears on her white body and her neck, and by the slimy semen and the blood smear that raised a little puddle in the middle of the chamber pot. For they made her sit on the thing to expel the stuff while Nellie heated a little water to wash her with, even though she would never again be clean. She had to wash deep inside, too, where he had penetrated her. She asked them please not to stand staring at her as she tried to cleanse herself down there — it was hard enough already.

While she was washing, suddenly Fienatjie arrived in her nightie and started knocking on the back door. Tante Gertuida went to investigate, but came back saying Fienatjie had dreamt what was happening and was making a nuisance of herself.

Her mother-in-law kept repeating: “It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen.”

No-one told Magrieta what Fienatjie had dreamt: it was too absurd. She had woken up screaming and when they asked her what had gone wrong this time, she said nothing about the ants and the little children singing, but said Oom Daantjie was pinning Tannie Magrieta down. She wanted to go and help and ran out of the house, her mother behind her. She outpaced Sannie and was hammering on the back door of the homestead.

Gertruida opened the top half of the door and Fienatjie said Oom Daantjie had come to hurt Tannie Magrieta.

She was still saying so when her mother arrived, out of breath. Almost every candle in the house was burning, so Sannie said she was sorry about everything. She apologised for the child’s behaviour and promised to beat her for conspiring with the devil and troubling the dead. But she did ask: “Has something happened here?”

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“What on earth could have happened here, Sannie? Go back to bed and please speak gently to the child. Don’t beat her. She can’t help it.” Gertruida closed the half-door and Sannie dragged her demon-possessed child into the night.

It was on that night, while Dorothea kept vigil beside her, holding her hand, that Magrieta first cursed the attractiveness of her body and the beauty of her face.

As she was doing now, forty-five years later, on the veranda, under the self-same moon. She told herself: “All I ever got from my beauty was pain.”

She got up and went to make herself a cup of night-time coffee. She would not be able to sleep anyway, and in any case Daantjie’s snoring was driving her off the veranda.

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Eight The tall, dignified old gentleman, seventy-four years of age, with the straight back and precise gait of a military officer, was standing at the reception desk in the museum. His mien and his brief, measured sentences bespoke a lifetime of disciplined soldiering. On the request slip he filled in Major P.R. Brooks (Rtd).

The lady behind the desk directed him in a friendly but official manner to one of the readers’ carrels: she would retrieve the requested files and bring them to him.

Philip Brooks had evidently been wounded at some stage but he bore his injury without self-consciousness, excuse or explanation. The injury was to his left hand, where a piece of shrapnel had sliced off the thumb, index finger and part of the palm. The doctor who had cleaned the wound, cut away the shreds of loose skin, removed the splinters of bone and disinfected the remaining flesh, had been in a hurry to get to more serious cases. That day everybody in the groaning, bloodand-mud-smeared tent, three miles behind the trenches in Flanders, had been in a hurry: the wounded were being brought in so rapidly that the stretchers had piled up in front of the field hospital.

However, the gap where his fingers had been did eventually heal to a healthy pink and the three remaining fingers gradually acquired new skills. The other places where fragments of metal had entered his body were covered by his 219

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clothes and thus invisible. They neither bothered nor concerned him. They were injuries suffered in the muddy trenches of Western Europe and were no more than flesh wounds. His deeper, internal scars came from an earlier war, the one he scarcely ever mentioned to anyone.

Everyone had tried to dissuade him from coming out to South Africa again: he was getting old — it was wartime — Hitler’s submarines were still sneaking through the ocean waters — where would he find a berth on board ship?

However, he still had some influence, so he sailed on a freight ship and then caught the up-country train. Now he was sitting waiting to examine things which he himself had had to kick out of a fire in order to prevent them from being destroyed.

The lady brought him five hefty files, clearly marked from one to five. On each was written in large block letters, in his own hand: J. F. Drew Collection.

On the cover of VOLUME ONE he had written: Donated by Captain P.R. Brooks — to be held in trust for posterity.

Note by the donor: I believe that Mr J.F. Drew recorded the effects of the 1899-1902 War on the local population with diligence and honesty. I therefore regard the contents of these volumes as historically important. For the record I wish to state that I have confiscated these photographs (as well as the diary and notes that accompany them) by force, and against the express 220

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wishes of Mr Drew. The only condition that Mr Drew eventually asked me to insist upon, is that the collection be kept unopened for fifty years or until the event of his death, whichever occurs first. I leave the collection in your safekeeping on condition that Mr Drew’s wishes be honoured. =Signed P.R. Brooks (Capt.) 21st July 1904.

Only Philip Brooks knew that Joey Drew had forbidden him, too, to look through the files, but he had given his word and kept it. Was that why he had come to South Africa now? To look — after forty-how-many years — at a bunch of faithful images, most of which he had seen before the conflagration anyway?

The library, it was agreed, would eventually hand over the materials to the museum which must surely come. That had been done — but not before he had heard that the museum had been established and then reminded them of the agreement.

Philip Brooks took out his pen and noted, under his original note — just for safety, and for a second time — that Joey Drew had died on 2 February 1938 in Somerset, England. Of a lung disease, needless to say. Philip wrote the 1944 date at the bottom and signed his name now as a Major, the rank he had eventually achieved.

It appeared that the museum had observed the restriction imposed, for he had to separate some of the pages charred in the fire. Had no-one been sufficiently curious about them then?

When he wrote to say that Joey Drew was dead and that the albums might now be opened, they had written back, thanked him and said the materials would now be opened and released.

That had not happened. There would have been a reason why not.

He started looking through the photographs. The edges of a 221

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few had been badly scorched. The doleful day when he had kicked the packages of papers and photographs out of Joey Drew’s fire, and then forcibly prevented the man from burning any more of his work, would remain with him for ever. One June day in 1902 some of his men called him to say that the photographer had gone berserk and was burning his possessions. He recalled the cross-eyed face of the little man at the fire. He was possessed by a grief which Philip, even after so many nostalgic and sometimes bitter times over mugs of beer with Joey Drew in Somerset pubs, could never quite fathom.

“I’ve lost more than the lot of you!” shrieked Drew's contorted mouth in front of the fire, “I’ve lost the most!

Everything! This was all I ever had!”

The cameras had already been burnt beyond repair and Joey was tossing the rest of his possessions into the flames, including the portfolios that he was so proud of — what he called his lest-we-forget-papers — when Philip ran up. He saved what he could, including some of the clothing, like the long jacket with the short sleeves that Joey always wore in winter like a coat over his jacket. The jacket was already badly scorched, but once he had calmed down a little, Joey suddenly wanted it back — because he still wanted to do things with what was in the jacket. Odd chap. The only possession he did not want to throw into the fire was the tinted and mounted enlargement of a little girl’s face — the one who was supposed to be able to dream the truth. She certainly did have exceptionally blue eyes.

Somewhere in the files there would also be photographs of the remarkable woman — no doubt another enlargement of the print that he, old as he was, still always carried with him. If the one in the files was badly scorched, the museum could have his one after his death. Through all the years he had kept it safe, 222

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like a special treasure. His own enlargement of the lovely woman’s face was unblemished and immaculate, though he had not been able to prevent the browning of almost half a century of creeping sepia round the edges of the tinted parts. If they wanted it, of course: for them it would be just one more wartime face.

He tried again to convince himself that it was not to see her that he had returned to South Africa just once more. But he would not try to visit her — far too many years had passed. He did not even know whether she and her husband were still alive.

The first photograph in VOL I showed the entire Van Wyk family before the war. Their home was the seventh that he had had to have burnt down. The seventh of how many? Forty?

Fifty? In his mind the phrase was always “to have burnt down” — as though he could not bear to hear his own direct complicity expressed in so many words. *** Martie van Wyk climbed up onto the roof of her house to try and see better. Black smoke was billowing up behind the gentle slope of the hillside between her homestead and the Prinsloos’.

In the still, autumn morning the column of smoke was rising vertically, only its head veering away in the upper air. So it was true! What the burghers who had stayed over the previous night said was true. What Wynand had shouted at her during their quarrel — after his second attempt to surrender, when she had tried to force him back to his commando — was true: they were burning. They were burning everything, burning it down, leaving nothing alive, not even the cats. And now they were carting away the people, too, as well as the animals they had 223

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not slaughtered. Nothing was being left alive, nothing. Unless you surrendered and signed the oath of allegiance. Or so they were saying. Wynand had tried to explain: “At least then we might be able to rescue something from the lost cause.” Martie snapped back: “Yes, provided your own people don’t then set fire to your stuff — and with good reason! Because then you would be a traitor.” Wynand countered that the Tommies were erecting wired-off enclosures all along the railway lines, where they were going to keep people caged till the war was over.

Outside of those camps there would be nothing left for the women and burghers to live on. And they would succeed, too, because they had already overrun the entire country, and every troop train was bringing in more and more of them. It was no use her trying to fart against thunder, Wynand said. He pleaded: “Please let’s just be left with something.” Why cannot Wynand simply hate the bastards? What has happened to “Home and Country” all of a sudden? What were the English here for anyway? Who gave them the right?

But there was no time left now to fret about right or fair play. She, a woman alone, was not going to try and stop them — that wouldn’t help — but never was she going to let them lock her up in an English camp like a nanny-goat that broke through fences! And if the Prinsloos were burning, that meant the Khakis were already on their way.

She ordered the horses harnessed to the cart. Rushing through the house gathering up what she could while shouting orders through the window, she kept reminding herself of what must not be forgotten: “Blankets, blankets, blankets! Paraffin, paraffin, paraffin! The gun — Oh God, yes, the gun … Siena, hurry up and get your bundle together, you’re coming too! One doll is enough, Driena, there isn’t space on the cart … Brandy … don’t leave any liquor for them …”

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When she opened the locked cabinet to fetch the brandy, she saw the bottle of strychnine and, in among the medicines in the home pharmacy, the jalap purgative. She took the strychnine and the jalap out of the cupboard and went into the kitchen.

The midday meal was already on the stove, cooking. Would they trust the peace enough to want to guzzle her food? She put the strychnine and the purgative on the table and took down the red tin of caustic soda from on top of the kitchen cupboard. Let them burn their dirty throats — she poured a mugful of caustic soda into each cooking pot. She could not suppress her malicious amusement when she placed the open, still half-full tin on the table and stood the flower in it that Driena had picked for her that morning.

Then she packed the cart. Once everything was on it, she smashed two bottles of brandy against a rock but kept two out.

“Don’t you dare touch these two bottles, Siena! Do you hear, Driena? You leave these things alone, I’m taking them along in case those devils track us down and try to molest us.” She had poured strychnine into one of the bottles of brandy and jalap into the other. She packed the bottles in the wagon chest beside the rifle. Near at hand. “Let the Good Lord decide how they shit themselves: completely, or only half-way!”

They drove off. She and Driena and Siena. Towards Dorothea — where else could they go? She did not look back.

She could not bear to see the destruction of what she and Wynand had worked so hard and for so long to accumulate.

She resisted looking back till, two hours later, they stopped to rest the horses. By then smoke was rising in the distance where her home had been, just as it had that morning from the Prinsloos’ place.

Feeling utterly powerless, Martie sat on the cart and cried, feeding her hatred with her memories of all the sweat and 225

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enthusiasm and determined joyfulness that she and Wynand had shared — from laying the foundations of the house — which he had measured out crookedly at first! — to building it, brick by brick. The roof, that they had so playfully thatched together. They had still been so very young then ... Every piece of furniture that they carried inside and set down with all the pride of new ownership. Each curtain that had come through her sewing machine. Each of everything … She told Drienatjie: “Watch everything very carefully, child: the injustice of that fire between the walls of our home will show us the truth about whether the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps. But cursed forever be that brood of vipers and damned for a thousand years be all the offspring that hatch in their foul nests.”

The horses were not yet properly rested when two horsemen came galloping up. Trying to flee would be pointless: she would wait. She did have the gun under her in the wagon chest.

The riders’ horses were already nearly tired out as they trotted up to the cart. There were two of them, in uniform.

Martie was determined to pretend not to understand them, but the first words that one of them uttered were in Afrikaans: “And where do you think you’re going, Mevrou?”

He was a tall man, with something like mockery in his domineering eyes. As though he was enjoying her helplessness.

His Khaki uniform fitted very neatly.

“Who are you to want to know? I’ll drive where I want to.”

This was the first Boer traitor Martie had had to look in the eye. It was like meeting face to face a devil that you had only been told about before. She had to say something, but what emerged did not sound nearly fierce enough. There were no words to express the depth of her loathing. She simply said: “Judas probably also wore khaki.”

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“Don’t make things difficult for us, Mevrou. Your house is already burning, so turn round right now and go back. You are all going to the camps, so the war can end.”

“And you can do this without shame? So, have you slaughtered all our stock yet? You, a bondsman of the devil and his minions, you have the gall to come and order me around!”

‘You can duck and dive and insult us as much as you like, Mevrou, but you don’t have any say in the matter. Turn back.

We’ve got work to do. And I’m not a traitor — I’m from the Cape Colony and a member of the British army. All I do is interpret for them.”

“You’ve got Boer blood! Does that mean nothing to you?

And do you call what you’re doing now interpreting?”

The soldier accompanying him was standing to one side, not understanding a word. Not even when the words came bursting from Martie’s lips. The hatred that had been building up in her all morning surged out like a dam breaking its walls.

She called the Boer everything that was foul, but no words were hurtful enough. She could not think of enough damning expressions to abuse him with. Not sparing Driena’s young ears, she yelled at him, screaming vituperation. She saw how shame and anger were building up in him. He dropped the “Mevrou” and ordered her to turn round right away or he would be compelled to use force.

“Force!” she screamed. “You’re the one looking for violence, you hell hound!”

With a furious gesture she ordered Driena and Siena to scramble off the wagon chest. “You look for trouble, you’ll get it!”

Martie opened the chest and was taking out the gun. The man leapt up onto the cart, shoved her aside so roughly that she almost tumbled down, and wrenched the gun out of her hands.

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He was saying: “Oh, so now you want to start shooting, do you?” when he caught sight of the brandy — two bottles lying one across the other where she had lifted out the gun. The Good Lord could decide how they were going to shit themselves, but she had allowed the bottle with the strychnine to lie on top, just in case the Good Lord was in any doubt.

The Boer defector passed her rifle to his Tommy henchman, lifted the top bottle out of the chest and hopped down off the cart. “A little war booty,” he told her with a faintly gloating smile as he twisted to loosen the cork which she had pushed in only half way.

“Don’t you drink my stuff!”

But he had no intention of letting this little windfall go to waste. The Tommy with him felt uncomfortable and refused the drink, but the turncoat lifted the bottle to his lips.

“Don’t drink that stuff!” she warned.

“Oh, I need a little something to calm my nerves after you threatened me with the rifle!”

To make sure the Tommy would also understand exactly what she had said, Martie warned loudly and in her best English: “DO NOT DRINK THAT STUFF!” The traitor laughed — that is how stupid he was! He put the bottle to his mouth: glug-glug-glug, he swallowed — four or five mouthfuls, straight off.

Martie watched him in silence: every mouthful represented her home, her furniture, her pets — and his betrayal. She had never before seen the effects of strychnine, but she felt no pity for him. It was like watching the death of a predator that had attacked the lambs of your flock — something like standing aside and just not feeling in your heart the pity your conscience tells you you ought to feel.

She was astonished at how quickly the strychnine worked.

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She did not know whether it burned his gullet, but he plucked the bottle away from his mouth and through a kind of choking throat said: “It’s got poison in it!”

For the sake of the Tommy Martie spoke English again: “I told you not to drink it."

But the renegade was past arguing. His stomach cramps started almost immediately. He folded double, vomiting strings of yellow-brown muck. Too soon, to Martie’s taste — he might vomit up enough of the stuff to be able to survive. When he started staggering and dropped the rifle, and his frightened Tommy henchman stood the other two rifles against the wheel of the cart and came closer to try and help him, Martie picked up the Boer’s gun, made sure there were two cartridges in the magazine, released the safety catch, calmly slid the lock over the top cartridge, and stood almost impassively looking at the two of them. What the poor Tommy must have been thinking she would never know, but all the bewildered man did was to try to sit the turncoat upright. He kept saying: “Get it out, Byars, get it out!” Or that’s what it sounded like to Martie. She had to fire a shot into the ground to get the Tommy’s attention.

With her standing there with the guns beside the wheel of the cart, there was real fear in the Tommy’s eyes.

He let “Byars” fall back to crawl around by himself in his own vomit with his stomach cramping in nauseous convulsions. The Tommy raised both his hands in surrender: even if he had not understood her words earlier, there was no doubt whatever about her mood now.

“Siena, put the guns on the cart and then tie their horses on behind. Driena, close your mouth and look the other way: you don’t stare at a pig while it’s dying.”

“Take off his shoes,” she ordered the Tommy. “… but …” he said, but that was all he could say before 229

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Martie’s second bullet raised a little puff of dust beside his feet and whined as it ricocheted away. She lifted the gun. Suddenly the cold, round eye of the barrel was staring at the Tommy’s chest.

“His shoes … he’ll not be needing them where he’s going.”

The Tommy undid the Boer’s boots with trembling hands and pulled them off the quivering legs and ankles.

“Siena, put the shoes on the cart. Now yours, Englishman.”

This time the Tommy did not argue: he sat down, pulled off his boots and put them on the cart himself.

And that was how Martie drove off. On the road behind, she could see the Tommy still trying to help the Boer turncoat sit up. Eventually he gave up and started hobbling gingerly on his bare feet back in the direction of the column of smoke — in the direction of her precious and only home, now no doubt nothing but a blackened burnt-out ruin; where everything that she had collected and treasured was now no more than a heap of smouldering embers and ash. The farmyard and the stock pens would now be running red with the blood of her animals.

She had no regrets about what she had just done or about the dying traitor sprawled across the two-track road behind her.

The two English horses, tethered to the cart by their bridles, had to trot along behind. Only many miles later did she take off their saddles and smack them on the rump to drive them off into the veld. For someone who had nothing left, the saddles and bridles were far too good to throw away. She took them with her. Likewise the boots and rifles.

Not before she came to her senses in Dorothea’s kitchen, when the chaos in her mind began to subside, did she realise what she had done. Until then, the heartache of her loss, the injustice of it all — as well as the satisfaction of her act of revenge — were too tangled up in her head to allow her to 230

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think rationally before she acted.

Martie sat at the head of the white-scrubbed kitchen table recounting the events of the morning. They all stood round her, their faces bent forward, ravenous for news, their eyes stretched wide, wanting to know. Only Magrieta stood apart.

It’s like rape, she thought — the violence, the abrupt seizing without asking, the defilement, the consequences. That is what they are doing to us and our country. The anxiety-ridden faces in the countryside around us — the ones that Wynand kept talking about and the subject of Pa Danie’s hopes — were no doubt indignantly watching it all — but those were the faces of people to whom it had not happened. Of folk who could watch from afar, from too far, over the wide, wide waters.

“It’s murder, Martie!” said Gertruida.

“But I never said the swine had to grab it and drink it! How could I help it if he just took the stuff himself?”

“The Khakis will track you down. We’ll have to hide you.”

While their discussions were swinging hither and thither about their options and the where and how to hide Martie, Joey Drew approached and asked Magrieta: “What’s going on? Why is the woman so upset?”

Magrieta’s eyes turned impassively towards him. Without a suggestion of emotion she told him what the breathless voices in their guttural tongue were saying: “Your soldiers have burnt down her house and they’re probably on their way to do the same here.”

“Why?” “Ask them yourself when they arrive.”

Joey Drew did not understand, but he realised that things were going to happen here that people would want to forget.

He went out to set up his camera on the hillside behind the homestead.

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Round the kitchen table, Dorothea eventually managed to persuade Martie that they should not use the guns that she had stolen to put up a fight, and that she should head up the hill before the English arrived. That was the decision, but Fienatjie came in through the back door and tugged at Gertruida’s dress.

“The ants are coming right now, Aunty. Come and see.”

Dorothea heard what Fienatjie said. She believed her: in this hour of crisis, she suddenly realised, that that was what the child had been dreaming about all along. Probably because the Khakis were continuing to stream in like ants on to a dog’s chewed bone. Well, there was no time now for Martie to flee up into the hills — the haystack was the only refuge.

“And what if they set fire to me there? Give me the guns — I’m damned well going to lie in wait for them!”

But Dorothea did not trust Martie — with a struggle she managed to remove the breeches of the Lee Metfords, held onto them, and gave the guns, the saddles and the bridles to Greeff to pitch into the refuse pit and cover with ash. They hurriedly hollowed out a hiding place for Martie in the haystack and she crawled into it.

Fienatjie took Gertruida’s hand and drew her out onto the front veranda. “They’re coming now!”

When the soldiers emerged behind the last of the hills a few seconds later, they did look like ants, even if there were not that many of them — only twenty or so — but they rode down in single file to the farm gate, only their round helmets showing above the edge of the hollow. Just like the heads of the caramelcoloured ants the children always played with, except they did not have antennae. Fienatjie’s nightmares had predicted the arrival of the ants exactly like this. Now she knew for certain that her dreams had been true the whole time.

“You see: I dreamt it right,” she told Gertruida proudly.

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Gertruida looked down into the clear blue of the child’s eyes and, in spite of all the distress raging all around right then, it felt somehow as though Fienatjie’s presence was enfolding them in an invisible curtain of quiet — a kind of acceptance of the inevitable which, in her nights of nightmares, the poor child had had to wrestle with all alone. To Gertruida it seemed they were being drawn together in a kind of intimacy that encompassed everyone and everything, from humans to rocks.

“Are they going to burn down our house, Fiena?”

“Yes, and then they are going to take us away to the tent place where the little children are singing … that’s what I dreamt.”

Gertruida went back inside. As she walked past the dining room door, she suddenly stopped and, for a moment, looked at her piano. “That this should turn out to be our fate.” The piano — brown, gleaming, unmoving, self-contained — seemed to know what a vast amount of music it held locked within it. But as with love, she thought, only the right touch could make it sing. Her most precious possession was probably just like her.

The piano had become her own piece of music, her only link with something like happiness — the song which had passed her by. Her memories were oh-so-profoundly caught up in the inner gleaming of its beautiful wood, in the sound of its strings, in the ivory keys under her fingers. And now, the fire. It felt as if she already knew that fire.

With Martie safely hidden, the goods that she had brought all unpacked and stowed around the house, and with her horses rubbed down to remove all signs of sweat and chafing reins, Dorothea told Greeff: “You saw nothing, Greeff! If you talk, we’ll be in deep trouble.”

Standing at the dining room window, they watched the Khakis arrive on the farm. Down at the first gate two groups of 233

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four troopers each broke away from the patrol and galloped up on either side of the house.

“Probably to ensure they are not being ambushed,” the women and Oupa Daniël decided. The patrol itself at first hung back, likely waiting for a signal from behind the house.

Eventually they came riding up. Still cautiously and widely spaced. The Prinsloos’ buggy came up behind the group, but not with the Prinsloos. On it were only the bare-foot Tommy, with the Boer turncoat lying in the back on one of Martie’s mattresses. In front of the house, the horsemen leapt off their mounts. Some dashed round the back while an officer and four more troops ran up the front steps and charged straight into the house through the open door. The commands were curt: every soldier knew what he had to do.

They posted a guard at the inner door of the dining room where the family were standing. The officer ordered the house searched: everyone was to be brought together in the dining room. From all through the house came the sound of doors slamming as the troops searched rooms and cupboards for more people.

No-one said a word — not even the Tommies, once they had been given their orders. The officer stepped inside and stood at the window, looking out. He had issued an instruction that someone should go and check whether Byars was well enough to interpret for them. If not, he foresaw difficulties. The man left the room.

In the ensuing silence other people began filtering into the room: first the two little girls who had tried to hide were summarily dragged inside; then the barefoot Tommy.

“Is one of them here?” asked the officer. The Tommy with bare, sore feet, trying to come to attention under the stern gaze of the officer, said the poisoner woman was not among them, 234

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but that one of the little girls had been on the horse cart with her. Of that he was certain. He could not say whether Byars was in any condition to be able to act as interpreter.

“Then she has to be here! Search. And fetch Byars, not matter how sick he feels. Somebody will have to make them understand what is happening.”

They waited. From within and without the house came the sounds of the search: doors and more doors banging. Why couldn’t they simply open them, rather than kicking and slamming them? From outside they heard the heavy wood of the wainhouse door dragging and rumbling as somebody thrust it open too far. Again and again they heard the doors to the stables and outbuildings creaking and crashing as they were violently forced out of their jambs. The wordless silence round their ears was broken only by the noise of men battering down doors without anybody trying to stop them, quite needlessly breaking open doors to allow foreign eyes, feet and hands access to the storerooms and sheds. All their privacy was being exposed, laid bare before the eyes and grabbing hands of the invaders.

Hands behind his back, the officer stood in front of the window, waiting. All their eyes were on him and about him.

He could feel them on his back — the combined eyes of people who knew what was coming and all of whose hatred was focused on him, like sunbeams through a magnifying glass. He was the focal point of their eyes and of everything behind those eyes. Justifiably, perhaps. *** It was the eyes. How many eyes had watched him while he did what he had to do? He had always made the interpreters talk 235

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to them while he tried to concentrate his attention and his own eyes elsewhere. The times when he could not help watching, he had seen every little scrap of defenceless humanity in the eyes of those who had stared at him in bewilderment, or fury, or hatred, or dejection, or filled with pleading to be allowed to keep at least something, however little. And in among those eyes there had always been the wide-eyed stares of frightened children, their simple fear; of women, both old and young; of old folk — dull but full of hatred, glowing through the ashen eyes of the aged. He could count on the fingers of his left hand the few who had been calm, who had meekly, or obsequiously, accepted the inevitable, or done so with some sort of compliant suffering. Those he could count on the three skilful fingers of the damaged pink hand left to him by a later, more honourable war. That must have been why he did not notice her at first.

Major Brooks’ eight fingers began paging more hurriedly through Joey Drew’s collection. Drew had deceived him after all. He had taken photographs of their arrival and departure.

And of the conflagration. For instance, here they are arriving: just a row of helmets in single file, protruding above the ridge — their heads like small white parabolas. Like what? Like those solitary ants, the mad-ants that he had sometimes sat watching as they scurried across his small camp table of an evening. And in this photograph they are coming up the road with the cart behind them, the one with the Cape Boer on it, still trying to vomit up what was no longer in him.

She must be here somewhere. It was in the dining room that he had first noticed her eyes. Here she is! Carefully, he drew the portrait of Magrieta van Wyk out of the album. The flames had burnt an irregular black mourning band on two of its edges, but for the rest it was undamaged. The photograph was another print of the one he always carried, and just as tastefully 236

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tinted. He held up the photograph between his whole and his damaged hands, in the same way that he always held up his own copy of her face — so the light could fall even better on her beauty. So that perfection could be perfectly illuminated.

He had spent too many hours staring at his one, sometimes dreaming that something might yet come of it, but here, in among the other pictures of the events of that time, this one looked closer to what she had looked like then but most likely did not any more. Would they still be living on the same farm?

She, and the husband who had returned after all? Or had she actually lied about the man’s return, as he had sometimes wondered?

The events in that dining room were now so very distant. *** The strange afternoon and the even stranger, unimaginable evening were beginning to take shape in that dining room: In due course the barefoot traitor was brought in and propped up on a dining room chair, obviously not fully conscious. The crusty remains of his nausea still stuck to his chin and trickled down the front of his uniform tunic. The greenish yellow tinge of approaching death was evident on his pale face. His body shuddered repeatedly with the aftershocks of the poisoning. He was ordered to ask the women where the woman was who had tried to poison him. Bravely, despite his constricted throat he did try to whisper, but the words were faint and indistinct, like a man’s death groans, weak and unconvincing. The eyes round him stared at him as though he did not exist — no, rather as though he did not merit existence.

“Where’s the woman that tried to passion me?” The words struggled out of him.

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It was the wrong sense of the word “passion”. The eyes were fixed on him, the mouths remained tight shut. Gertruida had to suppress a smile, for what she would have liked to say was: “If it is passion you are wanting, you don’t know Martie van Wyk!” Instead, like everyone round her, she held her peace.

“They don’t want to talk,” he whispered in the officer’s direction, hoping his duty was now done so that he could die in a more comfortable position than on an angular dining room chair in the gaze of eyes that were silently devouring him. He asked for water. One of the Tommies went to the kitchen to fetch some. None of the Van Wyks moved an inch. Except for their eyes, the eyes that Philip Brooks could not look at, even while with the full might of law behind him he was trying to track down a murderess.

In the formal accents of his class, the officer announced to his men and the defector that he would find that woman, even if they had to break down the whole place. He observed to his colleagues that this was evidently a wealthy family and that consequently greater resistance than usual was to be expected.

The silence descended again, a long silence, broken only by the distant sounds of men searching the homestead, the farmyard, the sheds, the outbuildings, stock pens and attics.

It happened when having to stand for so long became too much for Oupa Daniël. He shuffled to the head of the table, pulled out a chair and was just about to sit down when one of the Khakis rushed up and forced him back onto his feet. The Khaki must have regarded the old man’s attempt to sit down as a mortal sin, for he shouted in English that he would not countenance prisoners sitting down in the presence of an officer. Oupa Daniël lost his balance and the Khaki roughly jerked him upright again. The old man’s walking stick clattered 238

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onto the floor and the officer, his staring out of the window interrupted, turned to take in the scene before turning back again to whatever it was that was attracting his attention outside.

Oupa Daniël, his bony hands clamped claw-like onto the edge of the table, looked as though he would pull off the tablecloth in his fall. With the Khaki’s steadying hand in his armpit, the scrawny old man, bent with age, was crookedly attempting to stand up straight. Magrieta could not endure watching this any longer. The Van Wyks had agreed on motionless silence in the face of the invaders, but now she broke ranks. The light returned to her dull, withdrawn eyes, she shoved the Khaki aside and helped Oupa Daniël up again.

She settled the old man in the chair and challenged the Khaki with her eyes to try and stop her. The Khaki dropped his hands and made no further protest. Not least because her voice, in the English accents of his superiors, rang out clear as crystal in the silent room: “Your officer may have taught you to forget your respect for other people’s property, but you might at least retain some reverence for age.”

At the window, Philip Brooks swung round: at least one person here could speak English — perfect English. Who was the woman?

Now for the first time he noticed Magrieta van Wyk standing at the head of the table, behind the old man, a slender figure, dressed in black, with grey-blue eyes boring directly into his. Her golden hair was coiled in a roll. Narrow, white hands stood out sharply against the black of her clothes. Her face he would remember forever and carry with him for the rest of his life, both in his memory and in a tinted photograph.

The woman unsettled his self-confidence. Caught half offbalance, he said apologetically: “I thought you were Boers …”

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Magrieta’s eyes never wavered and the words from her delicate mouth were proud and precise: “We are Boers, Captain, but you have not taken the trouble to introduce yourself to us.”

“I am looking for a woman who tried to poison a member of the British Army … Miss.”

“If that is what has caused your good manners to evaporate, Captain, you should please not expect any co-operation from us.”

Like Joey Drew, when he first encountered Magrieta’s beauty at the front door, filthy and tattered as he was, Captain Philip Brooks suddenly found himself apologising: “In that case, I regret …”

“An expression of regret is not a personal introduction.”

He was like a child in her hands and everything which, contrary to his will, he was obliged to do, descended upon him like a dark cloud of guilt.

He tried grasping for an excuse: “My duty …”

“If inhumanity has been laid upon you as a duty, then your commanders must have included bad manners as part of it.

Who are you? Attach a name to the things you are doing — or are you ashamed of them?”

“I am Captain Brooks.”

“And we are?”

All that he could utter was a feeble: “We shall register your names …”

There was now a sharper edge to her words, a touch of civilised sarcasm: “Why don’t you just number us? Have you not yet noticed, Captain, that we, too, are people? We actually have names — much like your dogs, I suppose …”

In later years Philip Brooks thought a great deal about those words. Those words of Magrieta van Wyk’s — the surprise of 240

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hearing his language from her mouth — her striking appearance — her eyes — her slim hands, pale against the black of her dress when he saw her for the first time ... Was that what had caused the watershed in his thinking? Why had he not wanted to know their names? Why had he so desperately tried not to learn them? The question troubled him so much that many years later, in England, he felt he had to speak to Joey Drew about it. Joey had understood what was bothering him and said: “You should never pet or show too much affection to a slaughter animal that you have raised by hand.

And don’t give it a name, either. Particularly not a name, because a name is the start of knowing. And you must never look an animal in the eye before you slaughter it, because then its eyes are too much like your own. If you have to be hard, or violent, it’s always easier with nameless strangers. It’s easier to cross out a number than a name.” So Joey said. “Knowing leads to sympathy, and sympathy leads to pity, and pity makes you doubt whether you should do what you have to do.”

Philip often wondered about how well the women of that home, and the remarkable Magrieta, understood that violence perpetrated against strangers is an abstraction, whereas against anyone you know it is an act of conscience. “We have names,” she had said, and he remembered the glow in her eyes as she said it.

She was still speaking when raucous protestations from the kitchen area and the manic crashing of furniture reverberated down the passage. Martie’s high, breathless voice preceded her: “But let me go, dammit! Can’t you get it into your thick skull: I’ve got feet of my own to walk on?”

They shoved her through the dining room door, where she stopped for a moment to regain her dignity. Her upper arm was bleeding.

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“How did you hurt yourself?” asked Dorothea in Afrikaans.

“One of the bastards was poking around in the haystack with a pitchfork — after that Greeff of yours tattled to them that I was inside the thing. He was trying to stab me!”

Dorothea addressed the captain: “May I fetch a bandage for her wound?”

Captain Brooks nodded. More English! He was relieved: now his attention could escape from the snare of Magrieta’s eyes and be gratefully devoted to the dishevelled Martie.

The signs of her flight, her tears for her home and goods that had gone up in flames, her minor victory, and her hiding in the haystack — were visible all over her. There was hay in her hair and her clothes, her hair had come undone, her dress was creased and blood was trickling down her right sleeve: on her upper arm the patch of blood was a shiny red stain on the black of her dress, but where it reached the white cuff and along the wrist the red was bright and fresh. Blood was dripping from her middle finger onto the floor.

But in her eyes there was no compromise at all: under her frowning brows they glowed furiously, like the two red patches on her pale face. They can kill me right now, she told herself, but Martie van Wyk is damned well not going to give in. She caught sight of the traitor sitting on the chair and said in deliberate English: “So the bloody swine didn’t die after all.”

Gertruida reproached her in their own tongue: “Bad language is not going to help you, Sister.”

Martie turned her frown and her glowing cheeks on Gertruida: “Even here, at the very edge of death, you’re still the same sanctimonious, stuck-up old maid, Gertruida van Wyk! Your face as wrinkled as a dog’s arse. If the Khakis want to burn every thread I own and hang me from a pole for this stinking traitor’s filthy life, I will swear as much as I like!

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Martie van Wyk isn’t going to go to heaven holding her tongue.”

There was a commotion in the doorway behind Martie. A soldier was bringing in Greeff. They were carrying the two breechless Lee-Metfords and two pairs of British army boots, still grey with ash from the refuse pit.

Captain Philip Brooks was a precise man. It was growing late: they would have to spend the night. For now, he stopped all other activities on the farm. Some of the soldiers were already carrying the Minters’ meagre possessions out of the tenants’ cottage. He ordered them to stop, because he required, either down there or here up at the main homestead, a decent bed for the sick man. He would decide later whether the folk from the cottage would spend their last night on the farm in the large homestead or whether the cottage would provide suitable accommodation for a few of the troops instead. Sannie and her daughter were fetched and provisionally kept on the veranda of the large house.

Martie’s trial, too, was precisely regulated: with minutes in the diary, a description of the case and proper evidence, even though the accused had admitted in as many words that the poison had come from her, and even though the poisoned man’s appearance was telling evidence of her actions.

The trial was brief.

Brooks started by putting the charge to the accused, explained the powers conferred on him under martial law, and called witnesses.

The turncoat asserted that she had poisoned him.

The companion accompanying him confirmed it, while trying to insert his injured foot as gently as possible into the ash-grey boot.

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— he had taken it himself. She had warned him not to drink the stuff.

The minor point of dispute which the victim tried in a whisper to raise as an objection was swiftly solved: the Tommy said she had indeed said he should not drink it.

“How do you know?”

“She said it in English, and repeated it.”

The charge of deliberate and purposeful poisoning was dropped. Only a few explanations were needed for clarification: “Why did you have poison in your possession?”

“I couldn’t leave it at home — people like you might find and drink it.” She pointed to the turncoat: “Then the lot of you would be sitting there like him.”

“Fair enough, but what about the theft of the horses, rifles and boots?”

“They were going to molest us.”

“Did they?”

“The swine tried to touch me indecently on top of the cart.

He tried to touch me but not where I was holding onto the gun.

And that Tommy couldn’t keep his eyes off Siena’s buttocks. A woman knows these things — you could tell it a mile off.”

“And the caustic soda in the saucepans?”

“We like strongly favoured food. Or perhaps I wanted to make funny soap. You decide. I put in my food what I want to put in it. I didn’t invite anyone to taste it.”

“And hiding in the haystack?”

“What would you have done?”

“Fair enough.” The captain gave Martie a warning and let her off. He still could not keep his eyes off Magrieta.

When the trial was over, the farm folk were instructed to remain where they were till the next morning and not to try to escape. There would be guards posted. The lieutenant who had 244

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minuted the proceedings remained seated in order to record the personal details of all present.

Dorothea looked up from where she was spelling out her name for the minute-taker: “If you need a bed for your sick man, Captain, don’t let him sleep in this house. Here you will have to guard him very closely if you want him alive tomorrow.”

He understood what she was saying, for on every side the women’s hatred for Byars was stronger even than their loathing of himself. But he still asked: “Why? He’s a British soldier.”

“Where this man is writing down the names of all those present, I see that the sick man is a Beyers. That is an honourable Boer surname. How would you act against an Englishman who sold you out to your enemies?”

He looked at the strong woman in front of him and knew that he had better say nothing, because he would have to agree with her.

Then they did bring an Englishman to him: a cross-eyed, rather frightened little fellow, a photographer, with the surname Drew — Joey Drew, from Somerset in England. *** With considerable care, Joey Drew had folded and stuck down a kind of envelope on the back page of every album, using something like boiled glue which had become powdery in the passage of time. Inside them, on random sheets and scraps of paper were accumulated his explanations, notes and clarifications — some of the pages crudely stitched together with coarse thread in the shape of small booklets, the rest loose.

After all these years the dog-eared corners of the sheets were 245

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still there — probably as a result of careless handling, mostly in the field — scribbled and scrawled on in handwriting that made no concessions to legibility.

However, in the notes to VOL I Philip Brooks made out clearly that the learned man “from Somerset in England”, when recording their arrival on the farm, had written: Capt a hartles basterd. Name of Brooks. No simpathy. Lt better.

Philip Brooks smiled. He now understood that the fifty-year embargo had been meant to exclude his own eyes as well. He remembered, too, how they had found Joey Drew on the hillside and had brought him in and his cameras with him. The trial was over; the farm folk were safely detained inside the house; his troops were preparing for the night. They had found dried maize cobs in the barn and already lit fires with them to grill the meat they had stolen.

He was making arrangements with his lieutenants and setting the watch. The scouting patrols had received the message that they would proceed no farther that night and were now arriving. At that time he had some forty men under his command. They brought Joey to him on the front veranda — a little fellow, neatly dressed, and almost indecently squint.

In his thick, West-country accent, he said all he did was take photographs: during the siege of Kimberley he had been appointed regimental photographer in civilian dress with the aim of documenting the effects of the war on the local population. On him he had his letter of appointment, which had never been cancelled.

His explanations were hasty, with altogether too much embroidery, like those of a child caught red-handed — almost as though he was guilty of something, or perhaps he expected that his stay among the enemy might be regarded as improper.

“You are not to take photographs here.”

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Joey asked: “Are you really going to burn down this beautiful old house?”

It was not a happy conversation. He saw that Joey Drew was harmless. He tried obliquely to explain to his distressed fellow-Englishman that the war would never end while there were women left on the farms to supply the Boers with information and provisions. Joey only half-understood the wider implications of the war and tried, cautiously, to plead the case of the folk on this farm. He, Captain Brooks, however, was severe about the ban on Drew taking photographs. When Joey timidly tried to insist on a reason why, his curt response was that if Joey could not think of an answer for himself, there was not much hope for him. But of course Joey could think of the reason: such deeds were for forgetting! He and his camera would remember them. On their behalf.

Later, when the war had receded some fifteen or twenty years into their pasts — when they had begun to blur to such an extent that only things that had stirred them very deeply remained — Philip and Joey still maintained a kind of friendship, despite their class differences. In Somerset one evening, half maudlin, his eyes glazed from too much drink, Joey started talking about the cameras he had burnt. For years after a later war — and even now — Philip’s injured hand was still expelling tiny splinters of bone and fragments of trench grit. He gave Joey to understand that a wound like his was a kind of reminder that never left you. By the light of the pub lamp above them and with the firelight from the hearth flickering on their faces, Joey told him that at the time of their first encounter, he had believed that his camera had to be the people’s memory — a reminder, too, of the things that they would want to forget. That was the first time Joey had told him about the starvation in Kimberley and the Koranna woman 247

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who had expressed her loathing of white men in such a cruelly cunning way. A part of him had been left behind in Kimberley, he said bitterly, thanks to her. Angrily, he continued: “That woman ignited a hope in me that somewhere, sometime, I would still be able to come to rest in a woman’s arms. And then she pissed on it. She saw to it that I could never again trust anyone without reserve. I couldn’t entrust myself to anyone.”

How much of himself had he, Philip Brooks, left with Magrieta van Wyk? On that drunken night, with all his melancholy glistening in his eyes and a trembling in his voice, Joey added that the sadness of an entire continent, like the shards of a surviving soul, had been trapped in pairs of dark eyes in front of a wretched hovel — eyes devoid of hope, atop sacks of starving bones, in Kimberley’s black district. Like the shards of souls, numbed but resigned, still clutching at their failing frames for a little longer. Right there, where God and His mercy had abandoned them. That was what he had wanted to photograph with his camera. In those days he would never have betrayed his camera, said Joey, because that would have meant betraying the only truth. After that war he never touched a camera again.

Precise remembering was nothing but a curse because — though it was the pleasant things that you thought you would remember — in fact all that was left was the pain. The pleasant bits might still be fixed in your head, painted in rosy hues by the passing years, but the pain tarnishes the walls of your heart and makes them hard. Said Joey.

In the pub that night Philip had already realised that Joey’s solemn promise not to photograph the burning of the farm might in fact have been a hollow one, but there were too many shared confidences and parallels in their evening together for him to question it then. Now, here in the museum, he knew.

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On the day of his arrival on the farm, the nature of their conversation had led him and Joey away from the homestead where there were too many listening ears. They had strolled about a hundred yards when Magrieta van Wyk emerged from the house and came walking towards them. They both fell silent and watched the young woman advance. Joey observed: “Her name is Maghrita. She’s a war widow, and the loveliest person I have ever seen — man, woman or child.”

Then Magrieta approached them with that peculiar invitation.

Philip Brooks looked at her photograph again. The museum lady came up to ask if he had found everything he was looking for. He showed her Magrieta’s portrait and quoted Joey Drew’s truth: “Her name was Maghrita. At that time she was a war widow, and the loveliest person I have ever seen — man, woman or child.”

That was why he had accepted her request that day and done the unheard of, the unacceptable, the unthinkable. While the museum lady was looking at Magrieta’s photograph, he remembered how improper everything had been and how he had not been able to refuse. Not even the trained soldier in him was disciplined enough to decline an invitation from such a lady.

So when he courteously and gratefully accepted that offer, all Joey Drew could say was: “Gawd!” Leaving them, he walked away. *** Sheer desperation made them decide to send Magrieta to the captain with her apparently unthinkable invitation. Every single thing surrounding them, all the large and small 249

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possessions in the house, now suddenly cried out to be allowed to survive. Even the treasures and other precious items that they had buried high above the floodwater marks in the gully were no longer safe, for Greeff had had to help pack, bury and conceal them and now he had shown his true colours in the ash of the refuse pit.

Once the soldiers had left the house, the women gathered instinctively in the kitchen, looking at one another in silent desperation: Martie, Dorothea, Gertruida, Magrieta, and Nellie with croupy little Jakop Minter at the breast. They simply had to try to save something. Martie’s moment of loss was over, so she could break the silence: “There’s nothing you can do.

Sucking up to the devil when he’s already got his claws into you isn’t going to help.”

The only suggestion for finding grace in the eyes of the British — an utterly impossible hope — came from Gertruida.

“Let’s ask him to dinner with us tonight. ...”

They pondered and argued. Martie was furious, but Gertuida articulated the truth that Philip was to brood over for so long: “No human being is totally inhumane. Even if he will not spare everything, he will be more merciful if he knows us.”

They decided they might as well try. There was nothing more they could lose. And in any case the man would refuse to dine with them — he had spent the whole day thinking about poison.

“He’ll come,” said Gertruida. “If Magrieta invites him, he’ll come.”

“Why?” “Because he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. That’s why.”

They stared at her in amazement — what could she possibly know about things of this nature?

Martie flared up: “I’m not eating with that filth! If you want 250

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to make table whores of yourselves and sell your honour just for the sake of your goods, go ahead, but don’t expect me to join you. He won’t come, but how you could even think of sucking up to the enemy like this is completely beyond me.

Where’s your self-respect? To go crawling on your knees to that son of Belial! If he’s going to humiliate you, then let him, but in God’s name don’t do it for him. He may be lusting after Magrieta, but it’s outrageous that Boer women should even think of using that to their advantage. I also saw him looking at her as stupidly as a lizard that had swallowed nicotine, but you are now acting like bitches in front of the enemy dog! What do you think poor dead Daantjie would have said if he knew you were feeding his murderers? Or Danie? I think I’d better go into Pa’s bedroom with him and pray. Maybe God will understand better than me how you can bring such disgrace upon yourselves.” With these words and many more like them, Martie stormed out of the kitchen.

Magrieta made her way down to where the captain and Joey were talking as they walked. She delivered the invitation, and heard it being accepted. All Joey Drew could say was “Gawd!” before turning his back and walking away.

The women started preparing the meal. They took out their best wine and laid the table as if for an honoured guest, wondering all the while whether what they were doing was right. Each of them was slightly ashamed because Martie’s outburst had echoed reservations of their own. Yet when Magrieta returned with the news that the man had accepted and would be arriving at seven o’clock, they went ahead with the unthinkable.

And so that extraordinary meal came about. There was a sense of togetherness in it that would reverberate for long years in the minds of all those present. A sense they would never 251

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quite be able to explain. Not to themselves, and not to others either — at any rate not without embarrassment. For the women, this was as close as they would come to treason: they were sacrificing part of their honour for the sake of worldly goods. For Philip Brooks, there was a lasting unease: what was the real reason for his breaking all the rules, both written and unwritten, in this way? It was without a doubt the woman Magrieta and nothing else. And for him, as for her, the whole event had a kind of unreality.

The Tommy with the sore feet was on guard duty at the front door. When Philip Brooks arrived, neatly kitted out for the social occasion, the man begged leave to perform his duty seated and barefoot. Philip gave permission with a smile. That unexpected smile may have been what allowed the man to speak out of turn when the captain lifted his hand to knock at the door. He had heard already that Brooks had been invited to dinner: he could not help trying to warn: “I know it’s got nothing to do with me, Captain, but these women use poison.”

“Just you do your duty, soldier. Leave me to see to it that I don’t swallow poison.”

He lifted his hand again to knock.

“Captain, you’re knocking on a door that you’re going to burn down tomorrow …”

Which was true.

“I know my duty. Just you do yours,” he said sternly and knocked.

As he entered, everyone, himself included, retreated into strict formality. There was no sign of cordiality except what was required by rigid etiquette: a formal welcome and their thanks that he had found time to accept the invitation; his answering expression of appreciation. It was an evening of formalities, since formality offered a means of avoidance to 252

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people who could think of no other way of acting. Nothing but strict adherence to the rules of conduct of the time could render their actions possible.

Dorothea introduced each of them in turn, precisely, with the correct gestures and inflections in her voice, as though she was conducting an exercise in formality at a Victorian finishing school. She omitted neither a Miss nor a Mrs, indicating their respective relationships in terms of civilised correctness: my sister-in-law, my daughter-in-law, you have already met Mr Drew.

Seated round the table were only Dorothea — at the head — with Gertruida, Magrieta and the two Englishmen: Captain Brooks and Joey Drew. Oupa Daniël refused to take his place at the table for that would be bending the knee to Baal; Nellie excused herself on account of little Jakop’s tearful snivelling; the little girls were made to eat in the kitchen with Sannie Minter and her children. Martie was pacing up and down the house in a rage.

Joey Drew did not know what to make of the whole business. All he did know was that there was something happening round that table that was way beyond the ability of a man of his class to understand. Something that, if he were to photograph it, would be no more than a picture of a sophisticated dinner party. Nothing more than that. There were things that his lenses could not see and that would always elude his camera’s ability to recall — such as the refined, prescribed social manners designed to deceive, and to conceal everything inward. On that drunken evening in Somerset so many years later, he tried to explain his dilemma to Philip Brooks, who had replied rather enigmatically: “The art of diplomacy is to reveal nothing on the surface — and all your camera can see is the outside.”

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Magrieta and Gertruida themselves brought the dishes to the table, in the centre of which stood a carafe of red wine. On the starched damask tablecloth, with napkins to match, were solid silver cutlery, blue Delft china, crystal glasses — all precisely correct. With its warm, homely, amber glow the hanging lamp looked down on a dinner fit for the very best, but the eyes of those seated round the table were withdrawn, uncertain, like the windows of houses on show. The hands that moved across the table did so in a studied fashion, uncertainly, as if afraid to do wrong — as though unwilling to belong to the bodies they were attached to or reluctant to be party to what their fingers were doing.

Once they were seated Dorothea said a few more words of welcome and assured Philip that he need have no fear of poisoning since all the food would come from the self-same dishes. She added that, for the sake of conviviality, the war and the days to come would not be mentioned at the table.

He was then asked to say grace. The women bowed their heads and closed their eyes.

He murmured the formal “For what we are about to receive …” but not so quietly that Martie, behind the interleading door, could not hear it.

At the door Martie’s whole body was shaking. This was too much! After all that had come crashing down on her that day — the humiliation, the hypocrisy, the disgrace, was too much to bear. She returned to Oupa Daniël’s room and found him on his knees beside the bed in his nightgown. He looked so thin, small and old. In his desperation he had buried his face in the feather mattress, leaving only the back of his grey head and the long hair in his neck visible. With his beard flattened against the bedding, he was mumbling his feverish supplications into the eiderdown. As he knelt there Martie noticed how bony, 254

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how skeletal, his hipbones were, as his shrunken buttocks pressed up against his nightgown, like little bread rolls under his sharp spine. His shoulder blades looked like plucked chicken wings beneath the material of the nightshirt. She had to shake him to get his attention. The old man’s eyes in the old man’s face looked up at her. In almost Biblical tones and terms he reprimanded her: “Why dost thou trouble me? Canst not see that I am pleading with my God?” “Your painful knee won’t stand it, Pa. Please get into bed.”

“God is faithful. We may not cease from supplication, Martie. God will give ear to our pleading.” He was in earnest.

He believed that what he was doing was the only right thing to do, but because of her outrage at what was happening in the dining room, she overlooked his earnestness: “The Lord understands old people’s knees, Pa. He will hear you just as clearly when you’re lying down.”

She pulled him to his feet almost roughly, helped him into bed and seething with venom like an over-ripe boil, exclaimed: “D’you know what they’ve done, Pa? They actually let that Englishman say grace at the table! And all he did was to recite that silly little for-what-we-are-about-to-receive rhyme. Has the man no shame, even before the face of God? For-what-we-areabout-to-receive is fire and destruction, that’s all! And the scoundrel thanks God for it! And they sit there feeding him! Pa, they’re entertaining that Englishman as if they have no idea what he is going to do to them! Are they mad?”

The old man said nothing, he just turned over and lay staring wide-eyed at the wall — at the plaster which his own hands had applied and smoothed over all those years ago — but without seeing it, wondering instead whether the eager flames licking up from the wooden floor and the furniture would crack his meticulous handiwork, and make it peel away 255

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and disintegrate, like in the burnt-out ruins of other farms he had already seen.

Martie sat herself down in the chair beside him like someone watching at a deathbed. Yet with each fresh surge of her rage she felt her thoughts returning to the heavy revolver hidden under the loose floorboard in Daantjie and Magrieta’s bedroom, where she herself had helped to hide it after Magrieta was raped. The rapist had lost or dropped the weapon just outside the window.

In the dining room the hanging lamp was still beaming down on the people round the table. The prominent gleam of the piano eclipsed the small harmonium, now relegated to a corner of the room with its mirror facing the farthest corner, like some decrepit old thing that had been discarded and so had to turn its face away. Shining cutlery clicked on splendid china on the snowy tablecloth. In a small drawer in the carved sideboard lay Daantjie’s knife black with dried blood. In the sideboard mirror Dorothea saw the room and everyone in it twice reflected — another, a different world, the mysterious world that St Paul saw through a glass darkly… For a moment she wondered which of the two worlds was the real one: this one here, where she knew she was sitting, or that one there, where she saw herself moving in the silvered glass. For this one was now quite as unreal as the other one had always been. The portraits on the walls stared down with severe expressions on the living as though able to hear their stilted conversations and see their studied gestures. Dorothea looked up at the people in the portraits and read disapproval and rejection in their fixed gaze. She did not know what the morrow would bring. The man would not have come to dinner if he intended to burn their house down. Nobody could be that callous. Yet her eyes wandered almost as in farewell over her belongings: the 256

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wallpaper, the picture rails, the varnished wooden ceiling and polished floorboards, the heavy old furniture which Granny Amy had brought with her across the Orange River from the Eastern Cape when she had married the Boer, Daniël Egbert van Wyk. She, too, was hanging on the wall, already old when the portrait was taken, but still visibly English in her wan formality, sitting there at Pa Daniël’s side. Now one of her people was seated at their table — with what intention?

Confronted by a woman like Magrieta, does every man simply become as depraved and lust-driven as a dog sniffing a bitch?

As unconscionable as that? In this hour of loss, Dorothea found herself thinking thoughts that she would never formerly have permitted: What was it about Magrieta that would make a man act like that? Certainly there were other women as pretty or almost as pretty as her? Did she exude some kind of smell?

Their discomfiture round the table made them avoid many forbidden subjects: tomorrow and the day after were impossible; the war was taboo. Even the present moment around them was out of the question. They were compelled to speak about the past. As, for instance, when the Englishman was talking about his heritage and casually remarked: “This is a particularly beautiful dinner service …”

Dorothea started telling that the service was Dutch and had come down from her maternal great-grandmother, and how it had been very carefully passed down as an heirloom from eldest daughter to eldest daughter in each generation until now it was hers. The set was still complete: twelve of everything — the precious porcelain had survived even the hazardous oxwagon journey into the interior. The pricelessness of the pieces in front of them rang in their ears and as their value increased while she was speaking, so Philip Brooks’ embarrassment grew ever greater. As her awareness of her 257

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precious heritage was heightened, she found fewer words to describe it. The ends of her sentences dwindled away in quieter, hesitant tones until the last one faded into silence before reaching its conclusion. For what would happen to it all?

Tomorrow.

Everyone knew that the dinner was not just an impossibility but a mistake and a disgrace. Even Joey Drew was aware of that. Magrieta ate little and was relieved when she could start carrying the dishes to the kitchen, knowing that the Englishman’s eyes were following the movement of her hips.

Gertruida was thinking about her piano, wondering how she might manage to save this, her only precious possession.

Then Philip Brooks asked — merely to have something neutral to say — who played the piano.

Miss Van Wyk, they told him, and he made a polite request that she should please play something, since he, too, played the instrument. But Miss Van Wyk refused: she said that under the circumstances she did not feel she could, but she would be happy to listen if he would care to play.

And he did, because then he still had ten fingers. *** In the museum, as the images of that dining room, Magrieta van Wyk and the piano came back to him out of scorched photographs, the retired major suddenly understood the admonitions of the gods. The pink scar tissue beside his three differently skilled fingers was the evidence of it.

He looked at his eight fingers. The two missing ones and their small bones would have been piled up with the pieces and bone fragments of all the other amputated limbs thrown away or otherwise disposed of in a hole or something that day.

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Jumbled up with other cut off or sawn off body parts. Those parts, that is, that were not simply blown into nowhere by shells and shrapnel. Retribution perhaps for the sins of his fingers? But in that case it would have had to be his eyes that were forfeit. In them the image of Magrieta van Wyk at the table in the dining room was fixed forever. *** The plates and the serving dishes had been taken to the kitchen, but the tablecloth had not been removed. The glasses and the carafe of dessert wine, the salt and pepper cellars and the gravy boat with its prettily decorated lid were all still in place.

Magrieta’s left hand lay on the table, her head bent forward, the curve of her neck gentle under the golden hair, her forehead, nose and mouth, and those pale cheeks — a perfect, seamless match. Philip Brooks’ eyes — like Daantjie’s, that first night at the mission station when he saw her caressed by the lamplight — could not see enough of her. His breast was in turmoil. As he played, his eyes kept looking up from the keys at her, but her eyes were looking only at her own hand on the half-cleared dinner table — a narrow feminine hand, relaxed and white, with slender fingers and, even whiter, even more tender, the curve of her inside wrist.

When he rose to take his seat at the piano, Gertruida said there was sheet music in the piano stool, but he confessed that he could not read music and played by ear. As he started to play, Gertruida shuddered at his touch and the way he kept drowning the music with the pedal — without any respect for the distinctions in the bass progression, even. But then, he did not know.

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They were all glad that something was happening to help the time pass without their having to weigh every word they said or to search for expressions bland enough for a conversation that was quite impossible anyway.

The notes of Gertruida’s piano flowed into the house all the way to Martie. They leaked through the gap in the doorway and streamed down the passage through the open door of Oupa Daniël’s room. In Martie’s ears the sound grew so loud it was deafening. Seeping out through the dining room doorway, the noise became a stream, surging up against the door jamb, rolling, swirling, spinning, slapping — mindless waters compelled by the heavy imbalance in the weight of their search for equilibrium, shoving up against everything, spurting, pouring and seething through the relief offered by any opening. In her ears the sound was the unbearable rushing of a flood, as mindlessly uncontainable as a tidal wave, breaking and ripping through everything.

She hated that piano — a frivolous thing, and demonic as well. Also because its gleaming presence had brought even more luxury into her sister-in-law’s already far larger house.

The injustice of the elder brother’s inheritance had long rankled in her imagination. Even though the piano belonged to Gertruida, it was still part of the contents of the house she envied. It emphasised Gertruida’s superior education. But the fury in Martie, as she lifted the loose floorboard and lifted the heavy old revolver, was fuelled by the humiliation which they had allowed the Englishman to force upon them. An enemy who had burnt every single thing she owned was now sitting like Lord Muck and playing on the thing. It could only be him: Gertruida could not play that badly.

The old revolver was wrapped in an oilcloth. She unwrapped it and spun the cylinder to check that it was 260

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loaded. Gripping the weapon under her sore arm, she cocked it with the thumb of her right hand. Then she walked down the passage, into the stream of sound, and kicked the inner door wide open.

They sat there facing her, like children caught in some mischief. The piano fell silent, the Englishman was on his feet.

But no-one moved because behind the revolver there was sheer frenzy in Martie’s eyes.

Dorothea sprang up and came closer. “No, Martie!” she said, but the mouth of the revolver swung round towards her: “Keep away from me, you table whore!” Dorothea could see that Martie was beside herself and completely unaccountable. She tried more gently: “Martie, think what you’re doing …”

“You think about what you’re doing, Dorothea van Wyk! Tomorrow everything in this house will be burnt to ashes! Your whoring isn’t going get you a single thing out of him! They’ll smash and burn the lot! The lot! You can forget about washing the dishes — they’re all going to be smashed in the morning!

Don’t you understand?”

Martie grabbed the porcelain gravy boat off the table and hurled it against the farthest wall. Dark drops of gravy hung for a moment suspended in mid-air before falling, leaving a trail of gravy across the tablecloth and along the floor to the wall. A large brown blotch appeared on the wallpaper. Even as it shattered the old porcelain sounded refined.

“Martie, that dish was too old to be broken like that!” was all that came from Dorothea’s lips.

“Tell that to your guest!” Martie walked straight up to Philip Brooks at the piano with the revolver and asked directly in English: “Are you going to burn down this house, Brooks?”

“It isn’t easy for me … I’m a soldier.”

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*** Forty years later the retired Major Brooks felt beads of embarrassed perspiration forming on his upper lip and in his armpits. He ought never to have started getting to know them, for now he was recalling them by name as each detail of the moment came back to him.

He could make out, vaguely, the round heads of the bullets in the holes in the cylinder of the revolver. He could see that it was already cocked. The woman in front of him had murder in her eyes. Over her flood of words, he tried to explain that the war would never end while the farm folk could supply the Boers with information and provisions. Unexpectedly he was now the accused. He could not remember everything he had said, but what did remain with him was the glint in the Martiewoman’s eyes. It was all in her eyes: hatred, revulsion, rage, humiliation, impotence in the face of injustice, vengeance — all of it together in that one glance.

In his stammering attempts at justification of deeds unjustifiable, he added lamely that it was unsafe for the women to be alone on the farms, that there had been instances of murder and rape. Did he imagine it or was there a sudden silence when he mentioned rape? For Magrieta rose to her feet and before leaving the room said: “You’ve got here too late for me.”

Even with the revolver in a mad woman’s hand pointing straight at his face, Philip Brooks’ eyes still followed Magrieta.

The thought that that beautiful woman had been raped suddenly eclipsed everything. Moments later he heard the front door opening and his barefoot sentry entered the foyer.

Had the sentry heard the row, or had Magrieta called him? He would never know.

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Martie van Wyk’s flood of vituperation suddenly became hesitant, as though she was breathless, and it was he who caught her and held her upright when she started swaying.

The revolver dropped onto the floor and her knees gave way under her. The women took over from him and led her out.

Dorothea asked: “What time tomorrow morning?”

“Seven o’clock.”

She asked what they would be permitted to take with them and he explained.

He tried to thank her for the dinner, but she stopped him: “Don’t, Captain. We all feel exactly as she does. Burn it all if you must, but if you want to do anything for me, just see to it that we are gone before you set fire to it and kill all our animals.”

She left and went down the passage.

He picked up the revolver and held back the hammer while pulling the trigger to allow the hammer to come to rest gently.

He handed the weapon to his sentry and accompanied him out of the room he should never have entered.

Outside, he knew what he had to do. The small camp table had been set up in his tent. He would need to check that the lieutenant’s report had minuted all the events of the day and said nothing at all about the dinner. But he did not go to his tent. Instead, feeling the need to escape from the scene of his disgrace, he walked down to the farm gate, pretending to inspect the guards. From the gate he heard the piano being played with a meticulous precision such as he had never before heard. The shining notes seemed to connect with the stars in the night sky. While he stood listening, Joey Drew came alongside: “She’s unmarried and she’s a very, very good pianist. The piano is the only thing she’s got.”

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“Don’t you care? Listen to her playing her goodbye.”

“I’m a soldier,” he said, knowing that his evasion was a lie.

Joey Drew stopped trying. Just asked if he could keep his cart and horses and his own goods. “Of course,” Philip consented. And when Greeff came and asked to join the British forces, he agreed, knowing that, by his actions at the refuse pit and the haystack, the man had already betrayed the Van Wyks.

In a further attempt to curry favour, Greeff offered to show them in the morning where the most valuable items had been buried.

After Greeff had gone, Philip Brooks stayed for a long time, watching the shadows of the female figures moving behind the curtains, but he could not make out which one was Magrieta’s.

Lamps and lit candles were hurrying from one lighted window to another, but he could not tell which lamp or candle was hers.

How does one select what is most precious? The gentle notes of the old maid’s piano left no doubt about what she treasured most. And what does rape feel like if you are Magrieta van Wyk? He sent them away to the camp early the next day. All of them: the Van Wyks, the Minters and the farm workers. Once he had pointed out the spot where the hoard had been buried, Greeff and the turncoat were sent away among the first group, so that Philip could re-bury the family’s valuables when the informers were not present. He forbade the soldiers to pillage or plunder. Which they grumbled about, of course, because plenty of the treasures were easily portable. More objects from the homestead, including the dinner service, had to be buried in a place which nobody would know about. He had a few pieces of the family’s furniture loaded onto the wagon for them to use in the camp, but he ordered that the piano be removed and placed in his own tent in the camp.

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Only once all that had been done did he act according to his orders and have everything killed and burnt. But this time it was different. Very different. So different that Joey Drew’s photograph of the burning house was now trembling between his eight fingers.

The museum lady came up and asked if she might bring him some water, because he looked distressed.

“I am distressed,” he said.

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Nine The string of wagons and carts trundled along slowly under a godforsaken cloud, even though the late March morning was bright and fresh. All around them lay a landscape ravaged by war. Fences had been flattened, wires cut. Gates hung wide. In some places the wagons rolled through waves of the stench of slaughtered animals that were all still in fine condition after the summer — simply shot and left to rot. In the corner of the Van Graans’ stock-pen lay dead cows, bloated, stiff-legged and rigid, their stomachs hideously distended — pitiful creatures forced into the corner and simply mown down. As the wagons were passing the homestead, the group saw how an entire flock of sheep had been driven into the calf pen and there massacred, one heaped on top of another. The pile of swollen carcases pushing up above the wall of the calf pen had a grey crust of wool topping the rotting pasty underneath, like bread dough ready for kneading.

“They stabbed the sheep with their bayonets,” said one of the folk from the farm as they loaded her and her children onto the wagon. “Couldn’t be bothered to kill them all — too much hard work. Some were still left alive yesterday, groaning underneath the heap of dead ones. They slaughtered only one young lamb to cook — most of them eat only chicken and duck.”

There was no movement at all on the bare farmyard. The burnt-out house stared out across the plain with empty, 266

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blackened eyes. The roof had fallen in, leaving only the burnt walls — no roof, no doors, no windows. On the front veranda the pile of what had been furniture was now a heap of ash. The only objects not burnt to cinders — cooking pots, fire-warped iron bedsteads and a few unrecognisable metal remains — stood out starkly against the white ash. A fire lit under the long oxwagon had caused the centre section between the front and rear wheels to collapse. All that was left of the Cape cart in among the ashes were part of the draw-bar, the dashboard and the burnt ribs of the canopy struts. The fruit trees in the orchard had been chopped down level with the ground.

Judging by the state of the vegetable patch, the Khakis must have kept their horses there.

The women held their handkerchiefs to their noses to counter the dreadful stench but nobody said anything: they all knew that, on the farms they had just left, the same must now have happened to their own homes, their livestock, their pets.

At some stages the Khakis escorting them even tried to set the roadside grazing alight but the grass tufts in the autumn veld were still too green, even though the upper ends of the stems and the ripe seed pods were yellowing, ready for the coming winter. The veld fires that the soldiers tried to light struggled smokily in the still morning air but flickered out as soon as they reached the edge of any bare patch of grazing.

“They’re trying to burn down and burn out everything,” Sannie Minter remarked, and then fell silent since there was no response from anyone near her. What they all knew was more than anyone’s words could express.

None of them had any idea about incarceration, but all knew they were no longer in their own hands. So was that was what freedom had been about? … Was that what Danie had always meant? Not to be as they were now. To be able to come 267

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and go as you please. Not to have to obey orders from other people without protest. To own and possess things that cannot summarily be taken away or burnt. Not to have to look into the eyes of strangers for everything that you dare need. Not to be compelled to beg for a little privacy to exercise your body’s most private functions...

The escort patrol was fifteen men strong, split into two groups: one behind the convoy, one in front. They kept to themselves but there were also one or two horsemen constantly on the horizon.

“Scouts,” explained Oupa Daniël.

The women would not believe it was all because of that last dinner — the Khakis could appreciate good carriages and furniture: that explained why the spider had been spared and why a few good pieces from the household had been loaded onto the wagon. Dorothea, Gertruida and Oupa Daniël were in the spider. Behind them came the mule-drawn wagon with Magrieta, Sannie Minter, Nellie with little Jakop, and Martie — her rage now spent, but still truculent on account of the dinner — along with the children and most of the bedding. Then followed the wagon with those of Soldaat’s folk who had not managed to run away during the night, and Martie’s Siena.

Second from last in the convoy was the Prinsloos’ sprung cart, with the turncoat, alone, recuperating on Martie’s mattress.

Bringing up the rear was another mule cart loaded with the Khakis’ own baggage and what they had looted.

They moved at a funereal pace because the wagons were slow and it seemed that the group had to be kept together.

There was no haste — not in Oupa Daniël, nor in the women either. Gertruida, who through so many painfully slow years had already learnt to endure another, indescribable imprisonment, knew better than the others that when in prison, 268

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you simply have to go on existing from moment to moment.

There is no point in counting down the seconds or the hours: they are nothing but time, and time passes. Only the heavy cast-iron back of her piano, as indestructible as eternity, would now be lying in the ashes of the household. Would they have carried such a heavy object outside or just burnt it in the house?

By afternoon Martie had again become rebellious about the injustice of it all. She went on and on stating what everyone knew, till eventually Magrieta shifted over to sit on the side rail of the mule wagon. To catch more of the breeze, she said. When they passed under the shadow of a few stray clouds, she threw back her bonnet. Her full face and her golden hair formed a striking contrast with the grimness of her mourning black.

Only Martie observed that the Khakis had noticed this and were riding up close, singly or in pairs. They pretended to be simply inspecting the convoy but they quite obviously took longer about it when near the mule wagon where Magrieta was seated. Martie saw them and snarled: “Cover your head and face, Magrieta! You are just enticing that randy mob who want to see what their captain’s girlfriends look like!”

Magrieta pulled her bonnet back over her head and, turning round briefly, looked inwards. It sounded as though the officer was calling his men away, but she was not sure.

From the moment when she had begun to feel like herself again, after her honour had been so brutally ripped out of her that night, Magrieta had never mentioned her disgrace to anyone. “It did not happen,” said her mother-in-law, and everyone maintained the conspiracy of silence and continued as though nothing like it had happened or could have happened. Trying to consign the thing to oblivion. Trying to smother it by their silence. Trying to cleanse it by denial. That is 269

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what Dorothea and Gertruida decided, whispering to each other in the kitchen, and that is what they told Nellie to accept.

But in Magrieta herself, in every moment of every day, that night was fixed, hideous and overwhelming. Without any warning the smell of her rapist would rise up in her nostrils: the smell of stale sweat, paraffin and wood smoke. At times she sensed his lean, powerful body pressing down on her, forcing himself upon her, blocking her nose and mouth, biting her shoulder, forcing her unwilling legs apart and thrusting himself into her. She could never ever wash enough. Sarah had to scold her for continually washing herself, top and bottom, umpteen times a day.

“You’re going to wash your skin off, Nonnie,” said Sarah.

“Being clean is good, but too clean is a sickness.” But then Sarah did not know. Perhaps all that washing had become a disease.

On the mule cart, with the soldiers so impudently ogling her, Magrieta now felt a fresh surge of revulsion at her beauty.

“My being pretty was what brought it down on me. It’s all the fault of my looks.” It would not have happened if she were not so pretty. Horst would have left her alone if she had been unattractive; the monster that attacked her that night would not have come if she had been ugly. For the umpteenth time she thought again of young Abraham Carelse at the mission station. When he began to take an interest in girls, he went off his head because no girl would look at him. Because he was so ugly and so hated his own appearance, he took a knife and mutilated his face. She, too, would draw a knife through her cheeks for she hated her prettiness just like he had hated his unsightly face. To mutilate her face was not a mere thought that occurred to her: it was an urge. If Young-Abraham could go mad and do so, why should not she put an end to her 270

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punishment? She began to imagine the blade slicing through her cheeks, like Young-Abraham’s, and how crooked and lumpy the stitching would leave them, and the pink scars under the scabs. Like his.

On the day that he disfigured himself, they brought him to the mission station for the deep, cross-cut slashes in his cheeks to be stitched up. He was made to remain there under supervision till the wounds had healed completely, while Horst prayed the devil off his shoulder. It did not help — the next cut he made was his jugular.

However, when all his cuts had almost healed and the scabs had fallen off, Horst left him alone in the prayer room for an hour to pray on his own. But days earlier, Young-Abraham had stolen a table knife and behind Horst’s back, when they had allowed him to sit in the sun leaning against the wainhouse wall where everyone could keep an eye on him, he had surreptitiously but determinedly whetted it on stones in the foundation of the wall.

He had bled to death in the prayer room: right on the priedieu. First, though, he had lifted the mirror off the wall and stood it up against a small pile of Bibles. “Young-Abraham must have wanted to tell the Lord something by shedding his blood all over the mirror and the Bibles,” her mother said.

Horst should have removed the mirror from the prayer room and stored it somewhere out of sight. “Why did you want to hang a mirror in a place of worship, anyway?” her mother reprimanded him: “You are supposed to seek the face of the Lord, not your own!”

Magrieta had begun to believe that revulsion and avoiding others was preferable to the fawning admiration of men like that squint photographer. While other people built imaginary castles in the air, she dreamt of mutilation and being liberated 271

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through disgust.

As they left the house that morning, she had slipped Daantjie’s blood-encrusted knife into the pocket of her dress.

Now she took it out and tried to open it, but the hardened blood had apparently rusted the blade. She broke her thumbnail trying, but it would not open. She would open it — and she would cut! Perhaps it could slice off some of her defilement — this knife, black with the blood of the man she loved.

Magrieta was scarcely aware that Fienatjie Minter had come to sit beside her. Only in the late afternoon, when the mule cart’s shadow was stretching ever farther out, and the shadows of the mules showed them walking on stilts, and the shadowheads of the people on the cart bobbed and floated thirty paces away across the uneven grass, only then did Magrieta notice another little shadow alongside hers. Fienatjie put her arm round Magrieta, as if in a gesture of comfort. When the urge towards self-mutilation took hold of her again with increased ferocity, the child took the knife away and slipped it back in her pocket. The child must have known. As she herself knew.

“What have you dreamt about me, Fienatjie?”

Those blue eyes looked at Magrieta and then into the distance, as though she was considering saying the unsayable.

It was a while before she answered: “I dreamt it would be like this, Aunty Magrieta.”

Neither said anything more, since both of them knew about that other thing, the thing that was worse than death, the thing which might even mean death itself. Magrieta realised that she would not be able to remain silent any longer. She had accepted Fienatjie’s confirmation without question. Also because she now had to start believing the signs that she had tried for months to wish away.

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The convoy reached the railway line late in the afternoon.

The English ordered the pallid defector to tell them that they would be stopping there for the night because there was water in the stream. The firewood had unfortunately been left behind on the farm: the women would have to see what they could scrape together for fuel. They should lay out their bedding under the wagons, and, no, they could not have the canvas sheeting off the cart — that was for the sick man. For their personal needs they should use the left-hand bank of the stream. The soldiers would keep away.

They started foraging for wood to burn, lit small fires, attempted some cooking and bed-making.

Sannie Minter could hardly bear to spread her new bedding on the bare earth. As they had been packing the night before, Dorothea had made her a present of a pile of eiderdowns, pillows, sheets and pillowslips: “Yours are old and these have hardly been used. Take them for yourself and the children.”

When Sannie protested, Dorothea said sharply: “Well, do you want me to consign them to the flames? They are worldly goods, Sannie. In this time of trial the Lord is rubbing my nose hard in my attachment to earthly possessions. Everything I have exhausted myself acquiring is now just fuel. Now take them!” Yet even under the wagon, Sannie still felt it too great a luxury. Her own bedding had been threadbare, dating as it did from the days before she and Jakop had had to flee from the bank. The eiderdowns Dorothea had simply given her as a gift did not even have any lumps in them. They still puffed up thick, warm and light in their cotton slips. The blankets were still woolly, not worn at all. There were no signs of wear on the sheets and pillow cases either, and everything smelt so fresh.

She could hardly remember such fine bedding. Nor could her children.

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They waited until dusk had fallen before going down to the stream to wash. All together, for safety, with Martie complaining furiously: “And now I am expected to do my business squatting like a savage behind a riverbank, and not knowing from how far away some randy Englishman is spying on me! How much further are they going to humiliate us?

Driena, press hard — I don’t want to have to deal with stomach trouble as well tonight.”

When the women were returning to the pots to finish cooking their evening meal, Magrieta drew Dorothea aside.

“Ma, I need to talk to you …”

“What is it, child?”

Magrieta did not have the energy for a long explanation. She said directly: “Ma, I’m expecting a baby as a result of the rape.”

“Oh, my God!” They hung back beside the stream while round them the evening darkened into night. At last Magrieta had come out with her truth. The oppression was now no longer hers alone.

But there was too much to say and yet there was nothing more to add. They simply stood there in silence. In the pool under the bank where the stream’s flow was already slowing down with the approach of winter, a catfish surfaced to gulp a bubble of air for the night, slightly disturbing the surface of the pool.

Fires had been lit under cooking pots beside the wagons behind them. None of that could be heard, though, as if, in the face of the strangeness of the night in the open, the folk at the wagons, and the Khakis at their own fires, were all whispering — near a stream, beside a low railway bridge, where hatred and guilt now had to lie down together.

At last: “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Ma.” “How long have you known? Why have you only told me now?”

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“I couldn’t believe it, Ma … I didn’t want to.”

“How many months is it?”

“October, November, December, January, February, and now March is nearing its end. It was at the end of September.”

“Six. You’re carrying small, which explains why nothing is really showing.”

“I’ve already had to let out my dresses three times …”

“But then the little one must be kicking by now!”

“Yes, the thing is kicking. I didn’t want to believe it, Ma! And, Ma …”

She was searching for words, but they seemed to have withered in the dark night of her undeserved shame: “God knows, I was too ashamed to speak, Ma … and too humiliated … At first I thought it was shock that had made me skip a period. Then my breasts got sore … I didn’t want to believe it.

Isn’t there anything we can do about it?”

Again a silence fell between them, a silence whirling with thoughts.

Can one do anything about it? May one? After all, it had not been intended — it had come about without being agreed to, as a result of force majeure which you could do nothing to resist.

Nothing at all. You had no part in it, yet now the undeserved shame of it is growing inside you! What do you do with a baby like that? Do you give him or her up for adoption? Do you just throw the unwelcome little creature away? It was too late to abort, and how do you do that anyway? You’ve only ever heard tell about such things. And …

“Was he black or white?”

“He shoved my head aside and blocked my nose and mouth. It was dark.”

This was the first time she had spoken about it. The first time that those hesitant words had crossed her lips: “He stank 275

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of sweat and paraffin. He was thin. He had a beard … and his face was wrapped in a cloth or something … part of it came loose … I felt …”

“Peppercorns?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it was a white man we might still be able to lie our way out of it.”

“I don’t want the thing, Ma.” “I know. You might still have been able to go back to the Cape Colony before the disgrace was obvious … But now we’re stuck. The war. Perhaps that will make it possible to cover it all up. How much more do we have to endure before God is satisfied with our tribulations!”

Another silence fell between them. Then Magrieta asked: “Where were the dogs that night, Ma?” “Your Aunt Gertruida asked the same question. That was what made her think it was someone familiar, and white.”

Fienatjie Minter came up to them out of the darkness. By the time they noticed, she was already there beside them. Why had the child approached them so quietly? How much had she heard? Did she know? But Fienatjie simply took Magrieta’s hand and said, in an almost motherly way: “It was a white man.” Then she scurried back to the wagons, because her mother had forbidden her to mention the late Oom Daantjie’s name ever again.

All except Magrieta were asleep when the captain arrived in the Cape cart with the last of the troops. In the patches of faint light thrown by the moving lanterns, she saw that someone had already pitched his tent for him and that he was sitting at the camp table alone, having his supper by the light of two lanterns. Later he and one of the lieutenants sat up for a long time, writing. Probably recording all they had been doing. Was 276

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she imagining it or was that Aunt Gertruida’s piano lashed sideways across the Cape cart? The canopy was down, with some large square thing under it. She noticed, too, that Danie’s black carriage horses had been spared. There was no sign of Joey Drew or his cart. *** Joey had driven off early that morning on the farm — first down the road, then round about through the veld, and finally back up behind the last low hill. There he untied his horses and climbed to the top, camera in hand. From the summit he watched the captain having the most valuables items re-buried in a new hole, adding other articles from the house as well.

Joey also saw how great an effort was called for to get the piano loaded onto the Cape cart and then covered with blankets. He sat watching the large stock being shot, the small stock bayonetted, the poultry having their necks wrung, the dogs’ skulls being bashed in.

Eventually smoke started curling up out of the roof of the homestead, breaking and billowing through the windows and outside doors, and then everything burst into flame. The pile of furniture, bedding, curtains, ornaments and clothes burnt to ash in the fire lit at the front of the house. The haystacks and the piles of firewood were the first to burn out. The iron roofs on the house, the outbuildings and stock pens first turned black and warped in the heat and then, when the beams and struts supporting them gave way, collapsed in sudden upthrusts of smoke and ash. With so little furniture to burn, the Minter cottage was soon no more than a hollow shell. The Khakis selected some of the implements and then tried to dispose of the rest. Before they set fire to the house, they 277

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carried the stove plates outside so that with clattering precision a violently wielded sledgehammer could smash them to pieces on the stone steps.

While surreptitiously photographing the scene, Joey could not stop watching in horror — unable to believe his eyes. The fullness of life in a home, and the whole lived journey of the people of that home, burnt! Burnt away! Burnt up! It was hard work, but the captain saw to it that the destruction was carried out thoroughly — even the vegetable garden and orchard, the chicken runs and outbuildings — no shelter or means of sustenance was to be left standing.

None was.

The troops did not leave before the afternoon, piano and all, with Danie van Wyk’s carriage horses drawing the Cape cart.

An uncanny silence fell on the farm. Through his lens Joey saw that everything in front of him was dead: the burnt-out buildings smouldered on silently in the centre of his image.

Wisps of smoke rose lazily, no longer driven by the haste of the flames. It was as though every living thing had gone to sleep forever. All round the fresh ruins and all over the farmyard and garden and orchard, animals and trees were left lying on their sides. Only the windmill had been pulled over onto its belly, the vanes of its wind-wheel face-down on the ground.

At that moment, Joey did not want to be an Englishman from Somerset any more.

He went down to the farmyard, chose two fowls from the heap of dead ones and hacked himself a shoulder of mutton off the carcase of a sheep. There were still plenty of usable embers glowing but the silent devastation depressed him. Perhaps a lost soul left behind and forgotten on the Day of Judgement would feel like he was feeling then: lost and abandoned in the midst of chaos. All life and order had suddenly gone 278

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elsewhere. Gone. Just gone … He preferred to climb back up and grill his chickens and mutton behind the crown of the hill.

From there he would not be able to see the destruction. He would be needing cooked food for his journey.

He crouched down on his haunches for a while at the place where he and Fienatjie had hidden their treasures. At least her precious little things were still safe in the small tin trunk: odd needles, buttons, buckles, scraps of ribbon, a small comb, pieces of cloth, foreign coins, a medal — and her closewrapped, salt-white caul. He noticed that the salt in the caul had caused some rust in the trunk, but he could never take it out and throw it away — that would be sacrilege, so he tore a piece off the tail of his shirt and wrapped the package a little tighter. He would explain about the rust to Fienatjie when they were there together again. She would not mind. Perhaps she already knew what he was doing — even as he was doing it.

You never knew with that child.

But as his hands were winding the strip of shirt round the mystery of what Fienatjie was to be, in his breast there was a painful yearning. Joey was heartsore. About everything. About destruction. About the devastation wrought by the strong upon weaker folk. About how nobody really understood even his own actions, good or bad. About Fienatjie — especially about Fienatjie. For it seemed to him that that child’s divinely beautiful eyes had long since been compelled to see everything that he had witnessed that day — in the troubled nights when she dreamt of the little children singing.

He began to understand that part of the miracle that was her eyes must have been in the heart-wrenching knowledge that lay behind all that blue, knowledge that was hers alone, and that could never be expressed.

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*** The concentration camp was half a mile from the railway line.

On a bleak, barren plain. Without shelter or protection. Without firewood or water. Bell tents pitched and arranged in precise rows: dead straight, parade-ground straight. Seen diagonally from a distance, their sharp white points resembled the teeth of saw blades. The roads and footpaths, by contrast, were winding and met up at the camp in a freer, more flexible fashion. Somehow or other the Khakis had managed to burn all the grass in and around the camp. The white saw-teeth marched beside each other in lockstep across a burnt blackness.

Oupa Daniël observed that the military’s obsession that everything should be in precisely straight lines took no account of where run-off rainwater was likely to collect in the brackish hollows. “We should see if we can get tents on one of the slightly higher areas,” he told Gertruida who was sitting beside him. Her attention, however, was elsewhere: “So, this then is our destination and our fate …” she thought, for even in the bright light of noonday, the place seemed to be a kind of apocalyptic premonition in black and white — a ghostly black place where white wraiths would drift back and forth in full daylight in a weird kind of darkling gloom. What hung over the camp was more than mere misery: it seemed as if death itself had taken up residence there. Every yard of the rutted road that they rumbled and bumped along confirmed the fact.

The diminutive mounds in the graveyard were too fresh. The space occupied by the rows of graves was altogether too large for the number of tents that had been occupied for no more than a few months.

So far, they had been too isolated, too able to live out of the way of the war. Even “concentration camp”, an expression 280

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mentioned by one of the visitors to the farm, was still a novel concept. In their hearts they did not want to believe that it could really be as bad as the visitor had described. Their hearts told them that people always tend to exaggerate. Certainly the English were the enemy, but monsters that killed children they surely were not. Surely only fire-breathing furies like Martie could believe that sort of thing about the Khakis. They did not believe it, even while they were being carted off on the wagons, knowing that their farm now lay ravaged, their animals rotting in their own blood. Now, however, their own eyes were seeing what they had so far only heard tell about.

The wagons trundled along slowly towards the camp behind the sluggard of a boy leading the oxen. There was plenty of time to look and to listen — to look, too, at the overlarge graveyard they passed on the way towards what must be the front gate of the tent camp. It was a camp. Enclosed in a barbed-wire fence, like a stock pen, with guards at its front gate. There were the rows of tents and, slightly to one side, some larger tents and small buildings which they would get to know as “service areas”. A service area was where food, firewood and water were distributed, where the administration was done, where the camp commander’s office tent was. That was where you had to go to plead or to protest, usually fruitlessly. Adjacent to the service area was the small stone building that they would get to know as the always over-filled mortuary. Nearby, a little farther off for safety sake, were the hospital tents. Beside those was the carpentry shop under a canvas awning where, at first, shop-made coffins were stored and sold; where — later — coffins were knocked together on demand. Eventually, when supplies of wood ran out, it would stand empty and desolate. When they arrived, though, it was the only industry in the camp. A plank bore the notice that 281

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coffins could be bought for one English pound and fifteen shillings.

All this they would learn in time, but for the moment their small procession had to wait at the gate for a hearse to pass bearing three coffins, one large, two small. It was unbelievable, all this burying — surely it was not possible? That many people do not just die all at once. Two other burials were taking place in the graveyard as they passed. You could tell from the two groups of mourners standing there and hearing the strains of “Abide with me” rising sadly from first one group, then from the other — a sad, low moaning sound, softened and weakened by distance, coming from too few voices in the desolate open spaces round all the graves.

A strange sound hung over the graveyard — actually, a mixture of sounds, for in among the hymns a woman’s voice could be heard howling like an animal, loudly, urgently, but distant. Not far from the burials they heard the droning of the work-song of a team of black gravediggers as picks and shovels kept up a rhythm of their own, striking and scraping the earth.

The air was full of noise — as though the autumn afternoon itself was mourning for those — too many of them — that had to be put away — too soon — in the chalky soil.

The hearse with the three coffins passing them was a mule cart drawn by two oxen. It had been painted black by someone who either took no care or else had too little paint and so had to be satisfied with a single layer: the wood underneath still showed through the dull, dirty black. The cart had been smeared rather than painted. Its melancholy square shape, like a well-made joint, fitted perfectly into this afternoon. A few women walked behind, one of them hard against the back of the cart with her hand on the smallest of the coffins, as though unwilling to forego a final chance of touching it. Her sobbing 282

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melted into the noises from the graveyard, adding yet another strand to the tangle of sound. Gertruida’s trained ears were able to identify the variously intertwined themes in this unending fugue of death.

It seemed that in the very first hour after their arrival they were being shown everything, being made to understand everything that “concentration camp” meant.

“It’s like hell,” Dorothea whispered, appalled.

“Murder!” was Martie’s comment.

“God neither slumbers nor sleeps,” said Oupa Daniël bitterly.

Nellie hugged little Jakop closer to her chest, to pacify him.

“Not my child. Not Petrus’ baby son.”

Fienatjie tugged at her mother’s sleeve, insisting: “Can you hear, Ma? Ma, can you hear now?”

“I’m not deaf, Fiena! Now keep quiet! You must learn to respect the dead.”

The scolding made Fienatjie cringe. Magrieta drew her close and asked, very gently: “What is it that we should hear, Fienatjie?”

The child whispered in her ear: “The little children singing, Aunty Magrieta. They are singing just like I dreamt they did.”

Magrieta could not hear them, but she sat amazed at how the blue of the sky above their heads was reflected in Fienatjie’s eyes as the child looked up, awestruck, almost entranced, listening to something. Only Fienatjie could clearly hear what sounded from on high. The others were all still trapped in the noise on the flat earth round about them. Even that was too much for them.

On the morning after the night beside the stream, Captain Brooks and the other half of his group of Khakis headed off in a different direction. He left without coming to speak to them or 283

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saying good-bye. How would he have been able to look them in the eye after what he must certainly have done? So it was one of the lieutenants who booked them in at the gate of the camp and prepared their papers for them. The British made a Boer collaborator with a white band round his sleeve translate for them — quite unnecessarily — , then they were given their ration cards and told to stay beside the wagons until they could be taken to their allocated tents. After that, they proceeded down a kind of lane and into the camp.

They soon realised that something was not right. Something had gone wrong but they did not know what. A pair of soldiers walking along beside them chased away the children who came to ask if they had brought any food with them — children with the resignation of old people in their eyes, the effects of malnutrition.

Dorothea was about to look into the food they had brought for the road, but one of the Tommies intervened and forbade her to give anything to the children. They tried to greet people passing the wagon, but all round them there were only silent, hostile eyes. One woman spat on the ground and turned her back on them. What could there be about them that made people behave like that?

The women and Oupa Daniël were taken to their tents. The Khakis helped them unload and carry their furniture inside.

Each adult had a bed and each tent had a small table and some chairs.

By now they needed to find the toilets. A woman from the next-door tent pointed them to the “hen-roosts”. Right from the start it was obvious that these places to relieve oneself offered anything but relief, and that the “hen-roost” description was accurate: the latrine was nothing but a canvas partition, with beams erected over a long ditch — any hope of privacy was out 284

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of the question. What you needed to do, you had to do as one in among a row of others — in full view and earshot of whoever among your fellow-users happened to be looking or listening. When they entered that afternoon there was only a child in there, a small, deathly pale girl with large feverish eyes and a pink rash on her neck and chin, who kept saying “Sorry” because the continual spasms of her thin frame did not allow her to get up off the structure. She could not even go to the funeral today, she said. No-one thought to ask her who of hers was being buried. Suddenly there were so many funerals taking place around them that one more simply disappeared into the numbers. Even when they had only just arrived. The concentration camp wasted no time in making its attitudes apparent. The overpowering stench that welled up from the latrine ditch under the hen-roosts reeked of disease, of dysentery and diarrhoea, of degradation and humiliation. The air that hung above the pit was like some thick, revolting, suffocating treacle. They knew they would never be able to grow accustomed to it. Nor could they get used to the flies that commuted back and forth between the muck and themselves.

Late that afternoon when Oupa Daniël arrived in front of the tent allocated to Dorothea, Gertruida, Nellie and the baby.

The women were still trying to arrange their things as best they could when the old man called from outside the tent. When Dorothea opened the tent flap, there he stood with his clothes and bedding bundled up in a blanket.

“What is it, Pa? You can’t move in here!”

“I’m not staying with traitors. They put me in a tent full of turncoats. I won’t stay there.”

“Pa?” The old man was trembling with indignation: “They booked me in with the collaborators.”

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They had been warned on arrival that no moving from one tent to another without permission would be tolerated. In order to prevent confusion and bed-hopping, the authorities exercised meticulous control over every sleeping space, but it was late in the afternoon, so Dorothea, Gertruida and Nellie simply went to his tent to fetch the old man’s bed from among those of the collaborators. One of the occupants sitting on a bed remarked with a half-smile: “So, we’re not good enough to sleep with.”

Dorothea replied: “Just lift one end and help us get the bed out, please.”

The man lit his pipe and walked out of the tent. “If the madam feels so strongly, let her lift the bed herself. I’m just telling you that carrying off the bed is against the rules and I’m going right now to report what you’re doing.” With that he marched out of the tent and went off.

However, nobody interfered with their bed carrying. Only later did they hear that word had come to the camp authorities that, for some reason, the Van Wyk family were Captain Brooks’ favourites. The tale that there was something going on between the Captain and the pretty widow was the only explanation, so it gained immediate credence, especially after the allocation of the tents.

Magrieta was the only one given a tent of her own — on the edge of the row closest to the soldiers’ own camp. A barbedwire fence and a guarded gate separated the soldiers and the inhabitants of the camp. Her tent was a bare thirty yards from the gate.

But when they were faced with Oupa Daniël’s flat refusal to sleep with the collaborators, they carried Gertruida’s bed across to Magrieta’s tent and made space for Oupa Daniël with Dorothea and Nellie.

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It was at the cooking shelters that night that they were told the full truth: their tents were among those of the collaborators.

They had been allocated space between the women whose husbands had taken the oath of loyalty and were no longer in the field, and those who were now actively colluding and fighting alongside the English. The woman who told them said: “You might as well make yourselves at home here among the goats, the sheep are quartered two rows away. Better not go there — all you’ll get is insults.”

Her husband was in the service of the English, she said, and it was his opinion that after the war was over he would be given a farm for his services. That, they hoped, was how the days of their servitude to others would end when the war did.

They were better treated here, there were fewer of them to a tent, their rations were better than those on the other side, and even if there were deaths among them, too, these were fewer than those among the women whose husbands were still in the field. The Van Wyk and Minter families could share her cooking fire, the woman said, because fuel was scarce. Next time they could help her. They cooked their first meal in the camp over the fire of a defector.

Martie fulminated: “It’s all the fault of that dinner! That’s why your captain has put us here among the vermin!” She added: “I’m moving tomorrow. What will people think of this family?”

All Dorothea could answer was: “We’ll work things out tomorrow, but for heaven’s sake can we first just give everyone something to eat and get to sleep?”

It was the fault of that dinner. While they sat around in a circle on chairs beside Dorothea’s tent with their food on their laps, everyone realised that that was true. The dinner with an enemy officer lay as heavy as betrayal upon their minds for 287

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they had already seen how they were being given privileged treatment. The man probably meant well — if the devil can be thought of as having good intentions — but that was why noone would talk to them except the women in the tents near theirs. That was why the woman in the road had spat on the ground. That was why nobody had returned their greetings.

For people could see how much furniture they had been allowed to bring with them and which tents they had been allocated. That was why they were regarded as collaborators.

The separation of the sheep and the goats mentioned by the woman beside the fires was obvious enough. Down along the row of tents children were clearly not allowed to play together.

The two groups of women hardly spoke to one another, or only on sufferance, or not at all. Even the burials, so the Van Wyks and Minters were to learn later, were largely separate. It was as though the two groups of people had been sliced off from each other with a knife and widely split apart. This division cut right across old bonds of kinship and friendship. The hostility increased corrosively as the hatred at its root grew ever more abundant — copiously fed by the deaths and the corpses on the battlefield and in the camp.

In their tent that first night, Gertruida wondered aloud: “What would they have done with my piano? Did you see the Cape cart come in?”

Magrieta answered: “Probably just stole it.”

In the midst of all the misery, a hope sprang up in Gertruida’s heart of hearts that the rectangular object wrapped in blankets and transported on the Cape cart might just be her piano. Maybe — just maybe — she would get her most precious possession back again when once the storm raging above them had run its course. That same night, however, they realised they would no longer need to worry about where her 288

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piano had landed.

It was in the wee small hours. The last wisps of smoke were still curling up out of the ash of the cooking fires and a few last bits of kindling — like hope in the quaking hearts round sickbeds in the camp — flared up one final time before collapsing into strips of white ash. As night fell the bell tents began to glow like yellow triangles with the vague shadows of human figures on the inside of the canvas and the sharp silhouettes of those still outside. But by early in the evening the triangles were winking out one by one and disappearing into the black dark as each precious candle stub was snuffed out and lamps with hardly a lick of paraffin left in them were extinguished.

There was a slight nip in the evening air already but despite it, Magrieta took a chair and sat outside in front of the tent. To escape from having to talk. And to try to exorcise her swirling thoughts about the hated catfish thing stirring in the waters of her womb. Going to bed would be pointless while desperation kept her awake. Gradually the camp grew quiet, except for a baby crying somewhere. In this camp there was always a baby crying somewhere; always a few lights keeping vigil in their triangles, like branding irons held against the night — until daylight outshone their dull glow.

The Khaki patrol rode up from the main gate to their camp where they handed the reins to those apparently responsible for taking care of the animals. Philip Brooks emerged out of the disorder in the dark at the gate. He came to greet Magrieta, sitting etched against the triangle of the tent she shared with Gertruida, asking whether they had everything they needed.

“We have too much,” she replied.

He did not understand, so she explained: they were being regarded as turncoats, they had been placed among the collaborators; they had received defectors ration-cards. “We 289

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would prefer to die among our own people rather than look as though we were party to betrayal.”

Philip considered for a moment and then replied, stiffly: “I wanted to do the best I could for you within the limits of my responsibilities. However, I do understand. I have observed the attitudes prevalent in the camp.”

“Then please leave. I do not want any gossip about me and an Englishman.”

“That, too, I understand. While I am here, you should please speak up if I can be of assistance. I shall instruct the sentries at the gate to grant you access. Good-night.”

Magrieta returned the greeting. She remained seated and noticed him entering the nearest tent beyond the fence. “He has arranged things this way.”

“Who were you talking to outside?” asked Gertruida when Magrieta went into the tent.

“Captain Brooks.”

“It was not for nothing that he placed you here in a tent by yourself beside the gate. The man has intentions.”

“Probably …”

It was only later, once they had gone to bed and blown out the lamp that they heard the piano. It was Brooks, playing the same tunes as he had on the farm. Gertruida had no doubt about its being him and her piano. She would recognise the sound of her piano among thousands, and the Englishman was playing with his characteristic ineptitude. “If only the man would lift his foot off the pedal occasionally. And one of the D strings has gone slack in the move. Listen - the very note is flat.

And the wretch plays everything in D major ... probably the only bass the man knows.”

They lay a long time in the dark, listening to the Englishman’s tunes in D. As always, there was a baby crying 290

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somewhere. There would surely be lights burning at the bedsides of the dying.

While Captain Brooks’ clumsy fingers were sending his love-songs out into the night, Magrieta van Wyk told Gertruida that she was expecting the rapist’s child. *** The camp was stirring well before dawn that autumn because the slaughtering had to start early — barely two hundred yards from the wire fence. They did not shoot the animals, they cut their throats. The abattoir, consisting of three sets of two slaughter poles each, with cross-bars between their heads and two pulleys, was set up on the only low rise in the area. Like a beastly Golgotha, for everyone to see from afar off. That was where the cattle, powerless, with rawhide thongs round their horns or necks, were hauled up on pulleys to have their throats cut. Surely they had enough bullets for a decent coup de grâce?

Every morning the dawn was heralded by the desperate lowing of half-choked cattle. When the first sunbeams crawled across the landscape, the naked carcases, gleaming pink and stripped of their hides, were already hanging from the crossbeams by their back hooves. As the guts and viscera were cut from the bodies they plopped onto the hide spread out beneath. Only the livers were cut out and set aside. The intestines, stomachs, lungs, gall bladders, spleens, hearts and other innards — sometimes including an unborn calf — were carried away in a skin and tipped out onto the floor of the entrails cart. The load on the cart was a wobbling, multicoloured oyster with three or more heads — tongueless heads with dull leaden eyes staring up at the sky, staring up from where they had been piled alongside the hooves, tails, udders, 291

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testicles... Then, while the carcases were being hacked into manageable haunches, shoulders, loins, ribs and necks, the cart moved off with its spongy load. The many-headed oyster seemed to fear the hardness of the outside world for, with every bump over a tussock, or when a wheel hit a rock, a shudder ran through it. Eventually the cart disappeared round the hillock to where a black crowd was waiting on their patch of open ground for every edible piece that they could clean and share out.

The meat was loaded onto a wagon. The three sets of poles were left to reek for the rest of the day, unwashed, and avoided on account of the stench.

That, fittingly, was how every morning began.

That, and the conversations, with everyone asking who was to be buried that day. Not “whether” — just “who”.

In those days in March and April, when portions of meat were still regularly doled out, the women would meet and chat in front of the butchery tent. Everyone came early to make sure she received her due portion, because the butchers went on cutting till the meat was finished and then shrugged their shoulders at the latecomers. The women were admitted in small groups to where the still soft warm meat lay on tables, carelessly hacked into portions ready to be distributed — dirty and quickly, accompanied in the recent hot days by a small cloud of flies. The ration card was examined, ticked, the correct amount of meat was estimated and handed over, and only then could you leave with your precious share, meagre as it was.

They could not understand it. People being brought in told of fine slaughter stock being mown down indiscriminately on the farms, while in the camp all they had to eat was the tough meat of the skinny animals that had had to try and graze on the half-burnt veld near the camp. Only an Englishman could be so 292

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stupid or care so little. Because every evening one or more of the scorched earth patrols would return to their camp with enough farm vehicles to bring much better slaughter stock.

Only occasionally were fowls brought in, but those all went to the soldiers’ camp.

When you asked the white flag renegades or defectors about this, they replied that driving large herds of livestock only attracted the commandoes. Also, it was too difficult because livestock moved slowly and you needed black herdsmen to drive the stock and they were unwilling, because they maintained that if the Boers caught you with English or with Boer cattle, they would shoot you anyway. Imagine that!

But that was before the winter, when the meat ran out for long stretches. Then meagre portions of tinned bully beef were substituted.

The Van Wyks’ and Minters’ first day in the camp was not one to be easily forgotten.

Martie was first up because of the pain in her arm. Round the site of the stab wound, the inflamed swelling was an angry red. It was difficult for her even to lift her arm. It was the pain that woke her, but her first thoughts were of all she had had and then lost. She remembered her home as it had been. One by one, the struggles and challenges they had had to overcome to build up her and Wynand’s farm and home presented themselves to her mind. By first light she could no longer stay in bed. She got up angry and moved about aggressively, not minding whom she disturbed in the process. Why was she the one who was booked in with the Minter woman? As further punishment for nearly killing that turncoat? For a punishment it was. When she got up, Sannie Minter lay still on the other bed in the tent, breathing heavily in her sleep. Their mother had arranged bedding on the floor for the little Minter girls, 293

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with their feet under her bed because there was no other space.

Martie’s Driena shared the other bed with her mother, sleeping head to toe. Martie had to step over the row of Minter heads to get out of the tent. She already felt irritated with them because little Fiena had woken twice in the night screaming. Halfasleep, she was carrying on about children singing. The child is going mad, Martie decided. That’s what happens when you get involved with the devil and such things. Remember the witch of Endor.

She left the tent, heading for the hen-roost toilets, but emerged from them even angrier than she had entered. A tent two tents from the one she shared with Sannie Minter accommodated the family of a white-flag renegade. She saw him entering the tent and then four children tumbled out through the tent flap. As she approached she noticed the children just standing around aimlessly outside. It was clear to her what was going on: the renegade had come to claim his conjugal rights. The devil got into her: “What are you all doing outside like this?”

One of them answered: “My dad is talking to my ma.”

“Tell him I want him.”

“He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

Martie slapped her flat hand against the tent flap. “Come out! I want to talk to you.”

There was no reaction. Martie went on slapping the canvas till enquiring heads started peering out through other tent flaps. When eventually the man stuck out a tousled head, Martie told him straightaway: “Go and pour lime on the mess in the toilets. They stink to high heaven.”

The man was not in a good mood. “All lime does is kill the maggots. We haven’t got time to keep digging new trenches.”

The head disappeared into the tent again.

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Martie yelled at the closed tent flap: “That’s because you’re so busy digging graves for your own people!”

As she turned away from the tent the other curious heads quickly withdrew into their tents again. They were familiar with this attitude. Many of the women whose husbands collaborated with the enemy felt ashamed.

At Dorothea’s tent Oupa Daniël was already sitting outside so that the women could get dressed. He had his Bible with him and was mumbling prayers. Martie managed to slip past his closed eyes. “He’ll kill himself praying yet, whether it helps or not,” she thought dismissively. Her bitterness outweighed even the sacred promises she had made when Driena was born.

Inside the tent, Dorothea examined the wound, patiently endured Martie’s explosiveness and rummaged in the small medicine chest for a bandage and some liniment to make a hot compress. They had to go to the fires for hot water. Kettle and saucepan in hand they headed for the water tanks. The first smoke of the day was already spreading over the camp — low and lazy and without the slightest breeze to bear it away. There would surely be one fire where they could heat a little water.

As long as it was not a renegade’s fire.

Martie insisted: “Let’s go to our own people and find an honest fire.”

They walked right through the rows of tents to the other row of cooking places. Three women were already busy there.

“May we heat a little water at one of your fires?” asked Dorothea, although her “Good-morning” had been met with silence.

“No,” answered one of the women.

“You’ve got your own fires,” said another.

Dorothea silenced Martie’s flare-up and responded in measured words: “We’re not collaborators. Our husbands are 295

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still in the field. My only son was killed in battle.”

But the manner of their arrival had not gone unnoticed. “By now everybody has heard that you are the rich Van Wyks, but why did the English allow you to bring so much stuff with you? And put you among the collaborators? Tell me that.”

The six eyes were hostile as Dorothea explained: their husbands were on commando; her son was dead. But to explain Brooks’ favoured treatment of the Van Wyk family she eventually had to tell about the dinner and how, out of desperation, they had given the Englishman a meal, in the hope that he might at least spare something of theirs. That may have been why he thought he was doing them a favour by putting them among the defectors. She was apologetic. There was even a sense of shame in her account — like in confessing sins unthinkingly committed. She, the proud Dorothea van Wyk, suddenly found herself humbled in front of Let Pieterse, Jacoba de Villiers and Grieta Harmse — and in front of her sister-in-law, Martie, as well, who had known better and had wanted to force the Englishman to leave their table that night.

Dorothea and Martie only learned the names of the women later, once they had accepted that she had told the truth. When their hostility softened, they began to relate their own experiences: their losses, the quiet violence of the camp, how the hospital tents meant starvation and death, backstabbing and hatred. And the all-pervasive presence of death.

But Grieta Harmse added something more: “There’s a story going around that one of the captains has taken a fancy to the pretty blonde widow, and that that is why you are getting special treatment.”

Dorothea was shocked to hear that anyone could think that.

How did a tale like that get about — that and its embellishments? From a Tommy to a turncoat to the wife of a 296

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renegade — and from there to seep through the curtain of division, across the wall of duplicity, till the gossip was accepted as fact at every washing facility, every cooking fire.

They had been in the camp for only one afternoon and a single morning — they had so far encountered only two of their former acquaintances — but already their name, their wealth and poor Magrieta’s dishonour had spread throughout the camp. Magrieta barely knew the man, but by this time everyone would know who she was and that she had been allocated a tent of her own close to the gate. Yet none of this could be true about Magrieta.

“What he may think is one thing, but what my daughter-inlaw thinks is something completely different. She cannot help it. She scarcely even knows him … she loved her late husband very dearly.”

The eyes watching her were quiet, expressionless. They did not contradict her or mention the matter again, but even if they did not know, they still wondered.

Martie wanted to move away to a different tent.

“You won’t succeed. They keep you where their books say you have to be. Even the renegade men are not allowed to sleep with their wives. You’ll have to go and ask for permission and they’ll refuse it.”

“I’m going to find an empty tent and I’m going to move in.

I’d like to see who’s going to stop me.”

“They’re burying little Johanna today. She was the only one left in that death tent.”

“What death tent?”

Yes, the women said, this is now the second family to have occupied that tent where every one of them has died. People believed that a spirit of vengeance had remained in that tent, the ghost of the daughter of the first family to have died in it.

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Their name was Davel, and the daughter who was the first to die was on the brink of getting married. She was the one who stopped eating and died a virtual skeleton. She pined away for love. Everbody remembered her funeral because then it was still possible to buy decent coffins. She was one of the first to be buried. Not like now, when it had all become too much for everybody. People were saying that the Davel girl had cursed the tent. Nobody wanted to go into it. The last little daughter of the Benades who had been made to stay there was buried yesterday — by folk who were not even kin to her, simply for the love in their hearts and for pity, and with no more than blanket as a covering.

That was the only tent Martie could go to.

She started moving her stuff into the death tent that same morning. The renegade who protested and ran off to report her move to the authorities, came back rather sheepishly a little later to say they had granted permission for her transfer.

Nobody else was prepared to enter the haunted thing anyway.

He hinted bitterly that this unheard-of concession was only granted because she was one of the Van Wyks, and everyone knew just where that love of the officers came from, because guess who was ever so conveniently given the tent right at the gate of the soldiers’ camp? But, Van Wyk or not, the concession came with a condition: Sannie Minter and her children would have to move with her. Tents were scarce and no space was to be wasted. Furthermore, if Martie did not stop her stream of insults, she would find herself locked up with Mad-Netta.

Martie had not yet heard of Mad-Netta or the lock-up. Only Fienatjie knew, because she dreamt a great deal in those nights.

Always about the little children singing — though she now heard them by day as well, when their voices floated over in the funeral hymns from the burial ground. Fienatjie soon got to 298

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know the dying children. She could clearly distinguish the different voice among the others whenever a newly-dead child joined the chorus. Fienatjie also told Magrieta that she had dreamt that there was something like soot hanging over the whole camp and that there was a lot of soot in the tent they were going to live in now.

But neither she nor Magrieta could make out what that soot signified. *** The young lady from the Museum was watching the old major, who had now come back to the same sheaf of photographs for the sixth day. He sat bolt upright, just as erect as when he was walking or standing. His thin hair was white. His neck showed blotches and patches from being exposed to the sun for too long — the sun which had never really dared to set properly on the campaigns of the Empire either. Soldiers’ helmets are not sunshades. Even at his age, the major was still attractive. In his young days he must have been strikingly handsome. He had only one-and-a-half hands left. But she would not ask him about that, because he inhabited a separate world set apart behind the impenetrable wall of his courteous correctness. She put the magnifying glass that he had requested the previous day down beside the files again and watched him carefully using it to study the photographs more closely. What could they mean to him? An old man’s memories, she supposed, or perhaps a kind of last pilgrimage. She noticed that he was also using the magnifying glass to examine the notes made by the photographer on the crumbling scraps of paper. She went across to him and asked whether, for the sake of clarity and to

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simplify the Museum’s task, he would mind please making notes to accompany the documents.

Eyes with the white rims of old age round the irises looked up at her almost gratefully.

“Yes,” said his military accented English, “I will. People should understand. Look …”

It was a camp photograph, taken between rows of tents.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“The woman is blind. A child is leading her … and she in turn is leading a goat,” she answered.

“She was not blind. But what happened was odd. I shall make notes, so that others will be able to understand.”

She fetched a new note pad from her cupboard and noted on the cover: Notes on the J.F. Drew Collection by Major P.R. Brooks. July 1944. Accession number B/501/F. She put it down in front of him. “If you would, please,” she said. “We would be grateful.”

Absently, he nodded “Yes”. It seemed to her that he had already melted into the sepia of the old photographs and disappeared into times past.

He was there. But how does one record in a logical manner the whirlpool of past concepts and images? Should he try to reexplain all the attitudes prevailing in himself and others at the time? The photographer, who later became a kind of friend despite their class distinctions, but who at the time was just a cross-eyed little nuisance, was obsessed with the child’s eyes and firmly believed that she had other-worldly senses. The woman she was leading by the hand like a blind person was unhinged, completely mad. Not on account of the camp — she arrived there in that condition. They had been stuck with her. A fact he would need to note.

He and his men had brought her to the camp a few days 300

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before he got to know the Van Wyks by name and by sight. He was more uncompromising then. He could still be the impassive soldier, keeping his feelings quite apart from things which his duty required be done before his eyes and by his authority. After all, you could not allow your duties to penetrate the soft kernel of your compassion. To look away while you were overseeing, that was what you had to learn.

Still, he had been disturbed when they had had to bring the woman into the camp with her hands and feet bound.

She had been quite out of control. The cottage she and her brother lived in — so the interpreter said later — was poverty stricken. Two rooms under a disintegrating thatched roof.

Hardly any furniture. An open hearth. Two beds in the same room. The interpreter had known about them: two warped creatures, the result of incestuous couplings. But nevertheless the owners of their own land, not tenants or hirelings. She had been home alone when they arrived, the brother had apparently fled on their only horse. The major recalled what they had had to do: burn down and slaughter, like everywhere else. There was not much. A few cattle, fowls, sheep and three milch goats.

They had not had the interpreter with them that day and the woman neither understood nor spoke — simply watched while they burnt and killed every living thing. But when they cut the throats of the three nanny-goats, a veritable flood of words escaped her desperate mouth and they had to restrain her.

The old man straightened up in his chair. How many homes had he had destroyed? He could not count — there were too many and he did not remember them all. But this poor hovel of a home he did remember. Because of the lunatic woman. When they wanted to load her onto the small sprung-carriage they had, she went along with them and climbed in meekly enough, 301

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but as soon as they started to move she jumped down and ran back to the carcases of the goats and they had to bring her back again. At first they tied her feet together, but she quickly worked them free and the running back started all over again.

So then they tied her hands behind her back. She lay on her side in the little carriage, repeatedly struggling like someone trying to break free because she had remembered some task which required urgent attention.

The major shook his head, the pen in his hand irresolute, hesitant, for something he had noticed at the time had seeped back into his consciousness. Had he just imagined it? It was so long ago. He had tried to forget so much of it. And yet … It was like that. In the most agonising moments in their campaigns of destruction, they had avoided even looking at one another.

They could not look one another in the eye! Not when you had to smash inthe head of a little boy’s puppy with a rifle butt right in front of him, to make sure the animal was dead. What kind of mutual recognition would they have been trying to avoid? The pity that might have shown in their eyes? And to look into the eyes of a child like that — frightened, crying and desperately pleading in his strange language, right there where the puppy with the bayonet wound was cowering in a corner, while you put it out of its misery … nobody could look into the eyes of a child like that. Not while you were doing it, and not afterwards either. Was their avoidance of one another a sort of shame because of what they were doing to others? Like when you dared not look an animal in the eye while you were cutting its throat. That was what Joey Drew had told him, many years later in a pub in Somerset when they were both drunk: you should not know the names of things you are killing. And never look in their eyes. Never in their eyes, only look where you are cutting. That makes it bearable. They did not look at 302

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the little bundle of a woman lying in the carriage, and they did not look at one another either. That much he remembered.

But he really could not write down all these things — they had nothing to do with history. And yet they had everything to do with it, because that was what lived on in people’s attitudes after all the rage of the battles had died away.

So he set down in cold sentences, as measured as his speech, that the woman was apparently uncontrollable and that in desperation they had built her a kind of wire cage. He looked up: they could not have locked her up in the town gaol; they could not constantly keep looking after her, because she would stand waiting forever at every gate and whenever anyone had to pass through she would try to get out. At night, every night, she pulled off the canvas cover they put over the cage. Nobody could work out why. She would not eat either, though she did drink water. The women tried to pass food to her through the wire, but she just put it down and went on waiting at the gate.

Until Joey Drew brought the child to her.

The day after they brought the Van Wyks to the camp, Joey arrived and settled himself beside his horse cart in the soldiers’ camp. That same evening, after the captain and his men returned from yet another campaign of destruction, the crosseyed photographer arrived at his tent with the child. They had come to ask for a goat. A milch goat. That was what Joey indicated. The child said so. The child said they would be getting one the next day. The child said the woman would then eat and calm down. The child said … and Joey believed her every word.

He had been tired and had agreed. The next day his men were told to bring back a milch goat if they came across one.

They did. As the child had said.

That was when Joey took the photograph of the little 303

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procession that made its way through the camp each day to where the goat, without anyone’s say-so, could eat some of the fodder meant for the soldiers’ horses. With the child and the goat, the woman was calm. She ate. She no longer dragged the canvas sheet off the cage at night, and she talked to the child and the goat. To nobody else. And the child had to interpret, or explain, the strange words she uttered — how, the captain wanted to know, was he, who understood not a single word of her language, expected to understand? What kind of child was she? Joey Drew was quite inordinately attached to her. He could not stop talking about her eyes or her psychic gifts.

That was just one photograph.

But what Joey Drew could not photograph, and what the major could not record either, were the nights when his dreams about the pretty blonde widow kept him from sleeping, nor his irrational hope that if he went on recalling her in the tunes he played in the evenings — that she would come and talk to him.

How could he record that her mere presence had resurrected the humanity under his military detachment? Or how, after her advent, soldiering became a tangled inferno of doubts and compassion? She was the one who had broken open in him the bleeding wound of remorse at his entanglement, a remorse that went on bleeding even as he continued doing his work, regardless. Then, and in all the years thereafter. Like now.

It was thanks to her that he began to understand that the epidemics raging through the camps occurred because they had confined people like livestock. These were not the blind deaths of fate — these were their own deaths, they were the death of the Empire. But he knew, too, that by then it was too late to reverse the process. Where were the people, the children, to be taken? They no longer had homes or any livelihood outside the camp. He himself had helped to destroy them.

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The museum lady saw the old man sitting with his head between his hands, one whole and one damaged, and realised she should not disturb because once again, like so many times before, he had the photograph of the pretty woman on the desk in front of him. *** The Van Wyks received two visits to their tents in those first few days in camp.

On their first Sunday there it was the Reverend Dominee Verhage. He came to serve Holy Communion with a small bag of cubes of dry bread and a demijohn of Communion wine from which he filled the chalice. He had with him a silver chalice for the Blood and a silver paten for the Flesh, but the Lord’s Table in the camp was the butchers’ bench covered with a white sheet. Under the open sky. There was no large enough tent available. His words sounded strange in the ears of the congregation because they came without any of the gentle sacred resonances of a church building and vanished into spaces of silence as soon as they were pronounced. They were like the flat dulled words of the funerals they had to listen to every day — the slow words intended for comfort with a message of hope in the hereafter. Words whose meaning was eroded through continual repetition. All was just futile emptiness: a mist of dogged faith masking their agonising reality.

Dominee Verhage preached on suffering: on the pain of the Lamb of God who had to be slaughtered in order to atone for all sins, and also on the pain they were enduring. Oupa Daniël was in distress: the tiny cube of Communion bread was too hard for his toothless gums: he was compelled to suck at the 305

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sacred flesh like a catfish, before he could swallow it. After the service, still upset, he asked Dominee Verhage just how many more sacrifices the Lord would require. The minister shook his head and said these were mysteries; man should not question the ways of the Lord. One’s duty was to accept, not dispute, and to persevere in faithful hope. He cited the tribulations of the children of Israel, though he could not pinpoint which particular sins of theirs had incited the wrath of the Lord at this time.

After the service, however, he came to the Van Wyks’ tents to ask Oupa Daniël whether he would assist the other Church Elders in the camp with burying the dead. All who were competent would have to start helping: sometimes there were up to forty funerals on a single day. He had a handwritten funeral oration with him, which Oupa Daniël, as a serving Elder, could read aloud before he addressed the mourners with words of comfort and encouragement. They prayed together about the matter; Oupa Daniël agreed; and the minister left with his silverware, his demijohn and his bag of rusks, on his way to the next camp to serve Holy Communion there and to baptise any babies born in the camp.

Oupa Daniël wrestled and prayed hard for guidance on whether he ought to bury renegades as well, but eventually conducted the funeral services of all who came to ask him, without respect of persons or political convictions. He was not strong enough to walk in the procession all the way to the graveyard: they had to help him up onto the rectangular hearse each time so that he could ride along with the coffins. The odour that escaped like a sigh from some coffins reminded him every single day of mortality — and he had to fight every time against his questions about what had become of his God’s grace and mercy.

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The second visit occurred on the following evening: Doctor Blake.

He was still young, probably no more than thirty, tired, dispirited, confused, thin and prematurely bald — with the hollow cheeks and fiery eyes of a prophet whom no-one would listen to. They could see the tension in his eyes. His bony fingers trembled so much when he accepted the mug of coffee that he struggled not to spill it. He came because he had heard that this family could speak proper English, but his was not a social call. He had come to ask for help. Not because he thought they would be able to help control the surging epidemics, but to assist him make himself better understood in the circumstances under which he was compelled to work.

Would one of the Van Wyk ladies please come and interpret?

The women currently doing the interpreting in the hospital might misunderstand him, because the more he tried to explain to the mothers that he was not trying to starve the sick children, the less they seemed to understand. He knew that the whole camp regarded the hospital as a place where children went to die because that was where they wasted away from starvation. But that was not the case. He repeated “That isn’t so” again and again, as though trying to convince himself too.

He kept on relentlessly explaining, in a flood of medical terms, about dysentery and diarrhoea and irritation of the bowels.

Solid food exacerbated everything: the intestines could not cope with it. He needed fresh milk, and fresh eggs, and … you have to remove the sick from the tents because of the contagion of the diseases, that was why force was sometimes necessary, and you had to bury the dead immediately, without these endless night vigils … and … and …

When at last he fell silent, Gertruida rose to her feet: “I believe you. I shall come.”

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“Tomorrow. Starting tomorrow — please!”

“No. Now!” Gertruida said, and even though it was quite late in the afternoon, she set off in the direction of the hospital tents. Without even saying good-bye, Doctor Blake put down his coffee and accompanied Gertruida.

She did not return until just before dawn the next morning.

Magrieta was awake already.

“How do things look there?” she asked as Gertruida bent to enter the tent.

Gertruida sat down on her bed and murmured almost inaudibly but with exhausted, measured conviction: “I don’t believe in God any more.”

It was better not to say anything then. Only later did Magrieta try to persuade Gertruida: “Perhaps you should not go there again, Aunt Gertruida.”

The older woman did not reply. She simply stared out ahead of her as though the images of her visit to the hospital were still with her.

Between long silences that morning, Gertruida van Wyk added only two things before — without eating or drinking anything at all — she fell asleep in the clothes she had worn the previous day. What she said was: “Let this old barren nannygoat try to be a last mother to them …”

And: “Hell stinks.”

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Ten The war kept coming back to them, starkly and from various directions, every single year, even now. Most particularly on the day that Daantjie and Magrieta had to drive over to fetch Martie and take her to the concentration camp graveyard.

Martie still had nothing but a horse-drawn buggy as a means of transport and her annual pilgrimage was the most important day of her year. So the thirty-mile trip had to be made on the Sunday closest to what would have been Driena’s birthday.

Daantjie and Magrieta did this from a sense of duty, though neither of them ever felt like it — because they knew it would bring back the past all too clearly.

Betweenwhiles, in the long, bitter-grey silences of their marriage, they tried to forget. Though nowadays, given the current political situation, Daantjie had much to say about the suffering inflicted on the Boer volk by the Empire, and the ferocity of the conflict in which he had participated. He kept raging on, particularly about treachery: both then, when his Uncle Wynand had dragged the proud name of the Van Wyks through the mud in the Peace Committees, and now, when these red-tab-wearing vermin were actually fighting for the enemy against the Germans. He particularly abominated these new traitors, these Knights for Truth, who would go to any lengths to have a supporter of the German cause like him, Danie van Wyk, interned. Be it said, however, that he discussed such things only with his fellow Nationalists, never in front of 309

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his wife. As far as she was concerned, any word from Daantjie about the current war was a powder keg.

This year his antagonism against what (behind her back) he called Martie’s “graveyard fetish” and self-inflicted “painguzzling” was greater than in previous years, because — as as a result of Smuts’ traitorous support of yet another Imperial war — tyres were unobtainable and petrol coupons came at a price. The car’s tyres were smooth, in places the canvas was showing through, and Daantjie did not feel like having to stop beside the road again to stick paper-thin patches on wartime inner tubes. What’s more, the hand-pump’s connection had a slow puncture, which meant he would have to pump twice as long and hard as otherwise. And he was not getting any younger.

But, for Martie’s sake, Daantjie and Magrieta continued to go. For Martie, life had ended in the camp. That was obvious again as they approached the remaining half of her homestead: even though she could not halt the passage of time, Martie still clung to the moment when the course of her life was frozen.

The message was written all over the place: here time will not be allowed to carry on undisturbed and as usual; here life will remain in the now the way it was in the then.

After the war Martie had restored only half the house and replaced only half the roof. Cantankerous, tearful and hatedriven, with her own hands she had built a wall between the two sections — a new outer wall, right up to the roof beam.

The half which she did not live in, she let go to ruin. In the rains the raw brick walls of the unrestored section gradually crumbled and disintegrated downwards from the top, leaving uneven chunks of useless masonry up against Martie’s bitter dividing wall. As for the outbuildings, she made half of them usable, but that was all. After the war, the late Danie had 310

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offered to repair the whole house for her, but she maintained grimly that that section was Wynand’s and that she wanted to see it disintegrating before her eyes. Danie understood that that must have meant something to her, and so did not press the issue. In the same way, Martie used only half the farm, ignoring the rest. Let the years take over the running of Wynand’s part. That was the way she wanted it: in her every waking moment, her eyes should remind her of that moment when her life was halted in its tracks. After Siena’s death, she coped entirely alone, with only riven time for company.

Old and bent, Martie was waiting for them at the door — her hat on, handbag under her arm, in her church clothes, with a small picnic basket, a trowel and a short-handled rake leaning against the wall behind her. As in every year, she had a bunch of flowers clasped in both hands. They were winter blooms, which Martie cossetted in tins especially for this occasion — putting them out in the sunshine when the wind was not too cold by day, taking them into the kitchen at night.

At the graveyard she would pluck one bloom from the bunch and hand it to Magrieta to take to the angel. Magrieta knew that there was a small jar in her handbag and that she would take it out in the car and twist it round and round between her fingers, as she always did. By the time they reached Blesbokpan she would be wiping away the tears. They would drive on without any of the usual comments about the corrugations in the road, or the weather, or the current war.

Daantjie would refrain from asking when he should dose or brand any of her cattle, or take them to a stock sale. The only appropriate thing was silence. A reverent silence. For the sake of Martie and her Driena. So all three kept to themselves the private thoughts which stuck like molten tar to the war and the camp.

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When they turned aside off the actual road through the concertina gate towards the graveyard and had to drive across the veld, Daantjie’s irritation surged even higher. His buttocks let him feel how his worn tyres were being tested by every hump and tussock. He could hear the trowel and rake clattering against each other where Martie had put them upright on the back seat. His sister-in-law’s damned churchyard implements were no doubt wrecking his car’s carefully preserved upholstery. Anyway, better say nothing on a day like this.

He stopped beside the desolation. Heaps of soil. Row upon row of long piles of soil, overgrown with this year’s grass. In between, sparse and thin, a few widely separated gravestones, erected by a few survivors — in all likelihood dutiful or loving remembrances erected soon after the war. There were too few of them, too few chiselled stones in memory, standing upright like icons of conscience surrounded by all-pervasive neglect, seeming even more alone through being so few. Every year, as Magrieta walked past the overgrown mounds of the unremembered, she realised again just how short-lived human remembering and caring can be. Or could this neglecting to remember be just one more result of post-war bewilderment and poverty? Or of other, new loves? Of good intentions postponed and then forgotten?

The three old people followed the rite of their annual return: Daantjie got out and walked round the car to see if the tyres were all still all firm, opened the front door and sat sideways, poured himself a mug of coffee from the thermos flask and left the women to their own devices. He would pay his courtesy call on the relevant graves later, in three hours’ time, when he would have to remind Martie that it was time to return.

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straight to Driena’s grave with its polished granite headstone: on it her child’s name and dates, and below, engraved in Dutch, MOTHER’S DARLING, DEEPLY MOURNED. There was no mention of the child’s father. The gravestone, too, was divided in two.

Magrieta walked through the cemetery with the flower in her hand to where the camp had been. Daantjie’s eyes followed her progress. Furious, like every year, because he knew she was going to remember the Englishman. But first she would go and touch the angel. That Daantjie also knew.

As she did every year, Magrieta went first to the marble angel, carefully placed the single bloom she had with her on the grave and stood there in silence for a while. It was the last grave in the row: that was where the burying had come to an end. Every year, Magrieta remembered, with tenderness and gratitude, the child who lay there and she was reminded once more that this was also a grave in which other precious little things had been laid to rest, among them the caul of too much knowledge. The angel had been placed there in an act of the purest love she had ever seen. That was why she said good-bye to it by name and stroked its head before walking on to where the camp tents had stood.

Daantjie not only saw all this — he imagined he knew what he was seeing.

Magrieta was looking for the spot where the gate had been.

The gate she should never have walked through. In the first few years after the war, the place was easy to identify because the holes where the gate posts had been pulled up were still there. But as the years passed the holes became first hollows, 313

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then slight depressions, then small patches of almost level ground and then they were gone. Only in her head were the gate-posts still in place. Why was she doing it? She could not call back what had happened inside her, since it was not nighttime, her husband was no longer dead, nor was there a catfish growing in the waters of her womb any more. Now, decades later, she was standing there in bright sunshine, on the spot where the gate-posts between the soldiers’ camp and the women’s tents might once have stood and no longer did. Even the soil’s memory was shorter than hers: She had been sitting outside, as always. Almost all night through. Every night, even though it was cold, because sleep was beyond her. Perhaps he thought she was waiting for him, but that was not the whole truth. Aunt Gertruida spent every night from sundown till dawn the next morning beside the children in the hospital tents. Magrieta sat alone, the tumour relentlessly growing in her belly, her thoughts pervaded with turmoil. With desperation.

Each evening, and sometimes even quite late at night, when he returned to camp from his sporadic expeditions of destruction, he came to pay her a brief call. A little later, through the illuminated gap between the tent flaps, which he would leave open like an invitation, he would send out into the silences of the camp night, his tunes in D, the ones that so irritated Aunt Gertruida’s ears.

Every time, after paying his respects, he would say: “If any of you should need me … I’ll instruct the sentries at the gate to allow you free passage.”

That night she had risen from the chair she sat on outside each evening and walked through the gate to his tent. The guards uttered not a word, did not even shuffle their feet, as though turned to stone by this long-awaited indiscretion. She 314

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had looked into the tent: there were lit lanterns on the piano and on the large officer’s trunk. In the tent were a small table, two folding camp chairs, a narrow bed — and the piano, large and out of place in the tent. He must have felt her gaze on him, or perhaps she had made a slight noise, because he suddenly looked up.

“You’ve come.” He stopped playing and rose to his feet.

“If you stop playing, I won’t be able to come in.”

He sat down and resumed playing.

“Please come in. I’ll keep playing. Do sit down.”

There was something slightly improper about the way the sounds of the piano had to keep affirming the innocence of their togetherness. Nevertheless, she sat down at the foot of the bed and he played on.

“I trust you have not come simply because there may be a problem.”

“There is a problem, but not one that a British officer can do anything about.”

“I can always try …” “… only God could help now.”

He had to look at her over his shoulder as he played. A slight frown contracted his eyebrows when he realised she was being serious.

“A death?”

“Worse.”

“May I know what it is?”

“I am expecting a child as a result of the rape.”

Now, standing where the gate had been, she recalled the wide-eyed, disturbed look on his face, his thin fingers lifting off the keys, his rising and turning round to face her. The wordlessness of his shocked, open mouth.

She rose to her feet. “Play!”

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He sat down and touched the keys.

As matter-of-factly as possible, she said: “Don’t stop playing till I get back …” and slipped out of the tent and back into the night.

Magrieta hurried past the stony-faced guards, bent forward to enter her tent, and sat in the dark till morning came. He went on playing till morning. Must have been a misunderstanding, she thought — she had meant only that he should continue to play until she was back in her tent. Perhaps he thought she had said she would come back. She sat listening — there was no sleep in her and she was trying to work out why she had gone and blurted out her fate to a stranger. A foreigner. Yet he had had to know. Even if any affection was quite impossible. Anyway, by that time the signs in her body were unmistakable. Had she wanted to make him understand that the thing in her body was not her husband’s? That the thing growing inside her had no connection with the fallen?

That her condition was not her fault? That she may have been defiled but was innocent of complicity? What could it be within her that so suddenly wanted to surge back up into life? She had been raped; she was pregnant, and yet her heart had leapt at the sight of the neck and shoulders of a strange man sitting at a piano. And she wanted to be beautiful once more. What she had so cursed was now a yearning again. That night took her back to the evening when she first met Daantjie, when she was so delighted to know that she was just as beautiful under the hanging lamp in the dining room as in her vain virginal mirror behind a lit candle. Except that this time her beauty could not lead anywhere. There was nothing left beautiful in tarnished women. She was mad, she decided: she knew nothing at all about the captain. Absolutely nothing. Except that he destroyed Boer homesteads and farmyards.

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Her confusion was complete. She promised herself that she would never again respond to the call of the piano.

Though she knew she would.

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Eleven “I am expecting the rapist’s child.”

He must have been blind! Yet even now, as she said the words, he could not see any clear signs of her condition.

Perhaps it was because when he went to say good-night to her it was always in the dark, when she was silhouetted against the yellow triangle of the tent. She had always been seated. That must be why.

She did come again. He tried to recall how much they managed to say during the piano playing that she so insisted on.

The major was sitting in his hotel room, hunched over the small desk, the museum’s magnifying glass in his hand, his thoughts soaked in the scorched photographs and the awkwardly expressed truths in Joey’s little notebooks. Round him, the present had dissolved in the fading sepia photographs and the irregularly sized pages, each edged with a mourning frame, the result of the flames. He was absorbed, immersed, in the time-yellowed images. The ink of the delicate handwriting had begun to run in the fibres of the paper. The script was grubby and indistinct, worn dull in conditions of long ago.

The major was brooding about war, complicity, guilt; about all the might-have-beens of his life that, like a recurring dream, occupied his days and nights. Inevitably his thoughts were constantly about her. About their unheard-of trysts. All their meetings. The dinner. The piano-playing. Their parting. All of 318

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it was extraordinary and absurd. What could the gods have been thinking when they painted that backdrop for an all-toobrief bringing together of two people? He imagined that those gods would have preferred a different kind of stage for the never-fulfilled, the truncated, the agonising play between him and her to be played out on. A backdrop so strange that it could perhaps be believed in only in made-up tales, and then for no more than a moment. The major wondered whether she too, like him, might have begun to suspect, later, that it had all been no more than a chimera, a distorted illusion from a place unknown. But the camp had been real and sometimes, in sweet dreams or nightmares, you do know that you are dreaming and are going to wake up before long.

No, what happened had been real. Everyone had known about it. Those long hours of watching beside death beds had kept enough eyes awake through the nights. The sentries, their eyes open, had stood guard and then returned to their tents taking their mouths with them. Right from the time of her first visit, the tales about the unheard-of goings-on at the gate of the soldiers’ camp were rife.

She had been concerned about them, but continued to come.

She said once that if everyone knew about her shame and could see it growing larger day by day under her clothes, nothing worse could be said about her. So everybody must have known, sniggered, speculated, scandalised, gossiped, condemned — even though his uninterrupted piano-playing should have exorcised any suspicions of physical contact between them. He himself heard none of the gossip except when she mentioned something to him. No-one else would have dared to speak to him about it. Even when Drew moved his sleeping spot closer, the better to be able to watch them, and the captain confronted him about the move, neither he nor the 319

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photographer made any direct reference to it.

But in his little notebooks Drew did record: “Capt lovesic.”

And on another small page: “Capt must lern mor songs. He bo — …” There the writing became illegible — perhaps it was a mercy that the blackness of the fire had blotted out Joey’s judgement. The nights were long and his repertoire was certainly not extensive, so when he had exhausted it, he simply started again. Joey’s abbreviated “bo— …” might have been something like boring. He could hear his tunes going round and round in everyone’s heads, sometimes being whistled in mockery in the soldiers’ camp.

Only many years later, in a pub in Somerset, did Joey tell him that the soldiers and many of his fellow-officers had complained to one another about his pointless playing during the very worst hours of the night. This never reached his ears, though — not after they realised why he was playing like that, said Joey. He was tolerated out of the sympathy of lonely men, each one of them with a hollowness within him — that aching hollow in every man in every campaign, because, Joey said, only the warmth of a woman could fill it. He went on to tell again what Betjie-the-whore had done to him and why he could worship a little girl — as pure as snow, thank God — without the presence of her body, just for her eyes, and her knowing, and how she could say Joey, and because she was always so pleased to see him. It was all on account of the hollowness, Joey asserted. The women in the camp evidently also loathed his piano-playing — his musical courtship of a Boer widow and the pretence that the stream of sound proved that their togetherness was chaste. It was even suggested that someone else took over the playing from time to time, since only mad people could carry on like him and Magrieta. Within earshot of everybody, too.

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The major knew it had been a crazy thing to do, but he had done it. That he could never deny. At that moment in time, his entire world was wrapped up in the uniqueness of one woman.

In the face of his obsession his sound judgement simply had to retreat. At first it was her beauty that had overwhelmed him, but gradually her despairing woundedness overcame him and, so he always believed, led to a deepening far beyond the ordinary craving of romantic infatuation. The piano was his only means of reaching her.

And yet they did talk. After a while she took to sitting at the head of his narrow bed so that he did not have to wrench his neck round to see her. He saw the desperation rising in her eyes, the rage flashing across her face at the injustice of it all, the way she interlaced and unlocked her fingers when speaking about it. As time passed he began to suspect that it was only with him that she was able to talk about the thing growing inside her: she said the women in the camp maintained their tight-lipped silence — as though from a strange kind of respect for her. Perhaps because in a way she represented their own powerlessness. They pretended that no such thing could happen, or had happened. But there was no help for it. Nothing could eradicate what had in fact happened.

There is nothing that can undo rape, thought the major .

Even the sometimes far-fetched justifications presented to the world afterwards were nothing more than playing with lies.

Irrespective of whether it happened to be a person, or a group of people, or a country, or simply the anger that Betjie took out on poor Joey. Rape assumed many guises. The ones that, somewhere, prompted Betjie’s vengefulness too, probably.

Magrieta said repeatedly she did not want the thing inside her. She never referred to it in any other terms. He tried, although it might have been naïve of him, to propose a variety 321

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of options of how he might perhaps be able to help her: he offered to marry her and give the child a name; he could help her travel to the Cape Colony before the birth; he could arrange for adoption; he would …

And was the coming baby black or white? The unmistakeable fact of colour would definitely affect things. But she just did not know.

He recalled the night when she told him her intention.

It was clear that the birth was imminent. He observed in her the different beauty that came over the faces of women as their time drew nearer: the gentle beauty of anticipation-andhesitancy, and of fulfilment. That beauty was something else she could not help. A few nights previously she had railed against what her beauty had done to her. She would not have been carrying a rapist’s catfish-thing inside her at this moment if she had been ugly — those were her words. She hated her beauty, so much that at times an urge to self-mutilation had arisen in her, in an attempt to destroy her beauty and the grief it had caused her. That he remembered: that was what she said.

And without any hesitation she admitted to an affection for him, saying that since she had learnt to know him, she would have wanted to be attractive again. But without the disgrace.

He realised that she was revealing to him something deep inside her: a small confession that he had cherished for all the years since. The next time they talked, she entrusted even more to him.

She said he could stop trying to help her, because the baby would be born dead. Stillborn. That was the word she chose.

That was the only time she spoke of a baby and not about the thing. After saying that, she sat for a few moments longer.

When he grasped what she said, he sprang up: “That cannot happen! Not to you!”

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She left hurriedly — as if fleeing from what she had just said.

Whenever the major delved back into that piece of recollection, the same feelings and thoughts jolted him all over again. A kind of amazement before the fact that she had entrusted her very deepest secret to him, and at the same time the tormenting thoughts which their togetherness had ignited within him: the impossibility of effacing his complicity in the violence, destruction, suffering; the responsibility for making impossible choices, the guilty consequences of which could never be dispelled or compensated for, however justifiable the reason for the decision might have seemed. Like the destruction and the camps.

He saw it in her eyes as she was saying it: clearly, just as he did now. In them was all the agony of the inexorable fate that being a woman had meted out to her.

She had known it all so precisely. *** The night outside lay heavily on the house and oppressed Daantjie with a sense of gloom and despondency.

Magrieta sat watching the kitchen lamp modestly defying the darkness and revealing all the familiar objects. All the yellow light reflected back to her were a stove, a table top, cups, pans, floor, walls, curtained windows. The shallow surface visibility of each object, she thought, was no more than a thin exterior skin. Being visible was like being beautiful — merely a paper-thin membrane of false evidence covering the darkness within. To illuminate the interior, you first had to cut, saw, chop, break, destroy. Intact objects preserve their dark secrets deep within. The limited power of this small lamp that 323

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she had lit for the sake of her eyes was simply making the darkness of the night even deeper — a darkness reaching away in all directions into infinity. Beyond where her spot of light extended and beyond where she could see, there was nothing but the dark. That must be what death is like. The light in your little lamp flickers out and your sight folds back into your eyes.

But the lamp could not crack open the silence. It infiltrated the room and hovered there as though waiting for something to break it — a mouse moving in a cupboard, or the distant barking of a dog, to remind her of the existence of things outside the house, or a cough from Daantjie in the bedroom to confirm the undying silences between them.

That was what she remembered about her camp pregnancy: the silences. The silences that not even a stream of piano tunes could exorcise.

Sitting alone in the kitchen at night, she sometimes listened to the silence. But here the absence of sound was lifeless, straightforward — ultimately merely a buzz coming from her own ears. In the camp, during those final weeks of her pregnancy, the silence had been alive, because despite all the noises, it had remained silence. It was the screaming silences of deliberately suppressed comments, of people who would try to talk about other things. It was the eyes that went quiet so that their pity about her condition would not become obvious. After everyone had learnt of her visiting an enemy officer, it seemed to her that this knowledge framed all the suppressed words: we shall not mention your questionable night visits because we know of your intolerable disgrace.

Even within her own family circle she was treated with a kind of unnatural compassion. Ma Dorothea suggested several times that she should rather not go on visiting Captain Brooks.

Aunt Gertruida said no more than that she was making things 324

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even more difficult for herself. Even Martie curbed her sharp tongue, expressing her disapproval only in insinuations about dishonour to the family name. Not one of them reproached her for her strange actions. Magrieta found bitter words for herself for this odd behaviour: respect for pollution; regard for a virulent disease; esteem for the clap.

She often wondered how the camp had come to know that her pregnancy was the result of a vicious violation. Her own relatives would not have mentioned it. Had Joey Drew realised something? Did Martie let slip something during an outburst?

A word from Aunt Gertruida to her approved doctor? Surely not Philip. Yet somewhere an unguarded word must have slipped out. They knew and they kept mum — no longer asked her when — offered her no more help.

She was sitting outside, as she did every night, when the woman came up to her out of the dark. She did not immediately say her name, just: “I hear you’re expecting a child from a rape? Is that so?”

Magrieta clearly recalled “child from a rape”, but not much of the rest of the conversation except bits and pieces that filtered through. Her name was Hester Strydom and she was a midwife. “Wise-woman” was the word she used. She said she knew from bitter experience what Magrieta was going through, because she herself had been repeatedly raped by more than one man. She had fallen pregnant. The baby was born dead.

She had had to do it herself. Later, she had helped others who had been through the same hell.

Now, in her kitchen, after the passing years had eroded so much of her memory, Magrieta knew that she never considered doing anything other than accepting the offer of the wisewoman Hester Strydom. She did later wonder about the arguments that she had not considered - like the fact that the 325

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little mite was just as innocent of its coming as she was; that she would have blood on her hands; that she would have to account to God; that all life is sacred — and all the other things she had so firmly believed until the night when an unknown devil overpowered her body and forced his way into her.

She had thought through all the possibilities of what would happen at the time of the birth and after, and by that time her hate and confusion were so deep-seated that no other convictions would hold up against her compulsion to rid herself of the thing. She did not even ask how. She never did ask how, and now she was glad she had not.

It was not a choice. It was a foregone conclusion. That was why she told the only person whom she ever really spoke to: the child will be stillborn.

Nobody else. Dorothea and Gertruida would pray and be conscience-stricken all over again on her behalf, as they did and were already. All she could still hope for, even though she could no longer pray for it, was that the confinement should please happen at night and not drag a swarm of daylight-eyes in its wake.

In one way or another the many deaths all round them meant that death’s dagger now cut into them less deeply.

Dying had become commonplace. Too many and too often decreases even fear and sorrow. And excess blunts conscience. *** At first it was only other people who were continually dying round them, but then it struck them too: Martie’s Driena fell ill.

Even before Driena’s illness, Martie refused to hear any talk about peace or calm. Her bitterness about her home and her pets, about conditions in the camp, about the deaths, about the 326

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injustice, grew ever greater. It was murder, not disease. They were not just dying for no reason: they were being systematically murdered. “That much disease doesn’t just come from nowhere. That much death proves there are evil things happening behind the scenes. The English and their lackeys want to exterminate us and they’re doing it in as many ways as they can think of. Just look at what is in this little bottle! Every single thing in it I have taken out of food the Khakis have given us in the food compound: bluestone crystals in the sugar and flour; tiny sharp iron coils in the bully-beef.”

The yellow lumps in the meal were not rat piss, as the Boer collaborator asserted, it was poison. “Rat piss doesn’t smell like sulphur. And what is this? And this? It’s poison, that’s what it is. But don’t rely on Martie van Wyk to tell you what is going on: go and count the fresh graves before you start arguing.”

Martie’s embitterment took possession of her. And not just of her — of just about every woman in the camp. For how else could you think if, day after day, you had to watch children growing listless, emaciated, their eyes becoming those of old people — how one after another they die and are borne away on the black oxcart to the graveyard and eternity? Agonising, you look into the eyes of every living child — God! and into your own child’s eyes, too, your own child! — because you’re afraid, and you know. Those who have already had to bury parts of themselves have no more tears to shed. Only dry hate is left in them. Rumours, suspicions and accusations, buzzing around like the past summer’s camp flies, settled stickily on everybody. The hate was even more infectious than the epidemics, because the heart’s tissue that it fed on had been so thoroughly prepared, so fertilised — hearts just as susceptible to hate as were the children’s delicate bodies to dysentery or measles.

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What Martie thought about the hospital was what everybody thought: Just look at the supposed hospital! The hospital was death itself. Where did the story come from that the camp authorities had ordered that every sick person had to go to the hospital? To do what there? I’ll tell you what: to die!

Because there they can put their murder plans into effect directly and make any ailing child into a corpse. Watch how they starve sick children in the hospital till they are skeletons and can only die. Whether from disease or starvation.

And to think that her own sister-in-law could imagine that she was helping in that hospital! Gertruida ought to be deeply ashamed of herself for being party to the death of children, the tears of mothers, the murder of her own people! Is that what she went to the Cape Colony to study, when she picked up that satanic instrument? The one that sends out its demonic summons almost every night to call for the shattered Magrieta and makes her go traipsing like a sleepwalker after an Englishman.

Dorothea sometimes tried to calm Martie down; but any suggestion of an explanation was dismissed as just more treachery — like that dinner was treachery and like Magrieta’s visitings were treachery. But Magrieta was shattered and no longer accountable. Gertruida was. On one occasion Gertruida made an attempt to explain what the doctors in the hospital said about the epidemics. All that did was to unleash in Martie a flood of accusations. She raged that she would never speak to Gertruida again.

Then Driena fell ill.

First she complained of a headache and wouldn’t eat. Then she became feverish, her stomach was upset, there was a rash on her abdomen. Denial in Martie switched to anxiety.

She did everything she could. Because she was afraid the 328

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child might catch a chill she kept the tent closed up. She farmed out the Minter children to tents wherever there was still enough sleeping space for a child to be squeezed in. Martie kept the child quiet for fear of the hospital. She kept awake all night with a damp flannel for Driena’s forehead and cursed Sannie Minter’s presence since there was no room for her anywhere else. But as Driena’s condition deteriorated, her eyes sank into their sockets; the stools she passed in the chamberpot that Martie begged off Dorothea were the pea-soup of dysentery. Later there was blood in them. Martie tried every type of medication she could lay her hands on. She prayed as fervently as when she was expecting Driena and, just as she had then, she promised God the impossible. But Driena did not get better.

When the unmistakeable smell of dysentery — so terribly familiar in the camp — hung heavily inside the tent, Martie began to realise that her child was dying.

Magrieta then came upon the scene: Dorothea had asked her to take some of the soup she had heated across to Martie to see whether Driena would be able to keep some of it down. She herself would come over a little later. As she approached the tent Magrieta realised that something was wrong. Crazy Netta and the goat were waiting quietly in front of the tent.

Inside the tent something violent was happening.

Something or other kept slamming into the canvas, with Martie screaming: “I’ll kill you, you damned little bitch! You and your everlasting singing! Why have you come to upset my child with your devilish stories, you little shit!”

Magrieta entered. Everything was chaotic except the bed where Driena lay. Martie was beside herself, hitting out at Fienatjie with the rawhide thong she had tied up one of her bundles with before coming to the camp. The child was 329

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running back and forth, ducking and hopping aside to avoid the blows. Martie was yelling: “I’ll kill you and your singing!

Driena is not going to sing! My little Driena is not going to sing! Who are you to come and tell her what to do, you brat of Satan’s!”

Fienatjie leaped behind Magrieta’s heavy body, saying: “It is so, Aunty Magrieta! It is so! I dreamt it.”

“You didn’t! You’re lying! Get out of here and don’t you ever come back … Get out! Get out! Go, you Satan!”

Like someone struck in a moment of insight by a terrifying and suppressed realisation, Martie suddenly fell silent. She dropped the whip and stared at the child peering out from behind Magrieta’s heavy body. Still ready to try and argue against the unthinkable, she suddenly lacked conviction. Her pent-up anxiety made her words breathless and quiet: “It’s not so … You’re lying …”

The child’s voice was still quieter: “Driena is singing already, Aunty Magrieta. Listen …” Martie dropped the lash and turned to her child. She knew that Fienatjie had heard the truth: her only Driena was already singing.

She knelt down beside the body and prayed. That was how the rest of the family found her: Dorothea, Gertruida, Oupa Daniël, Nellie. Standing still, they watched her muttering and sobbing, tears wrung from between tight-pressed eyelids dripping down like pearls onto the sheet on the deathbed and sinking in; at times shaking her head like someone refusing to understand or accept. Out of respect for her prayer and her pain, they would not disturb her. Whatever reproaches she may have been hurling at God, and whatever vengeance she may have been calling down on the enemy, were inaudible, but it was clear that a great many things were seeping out of her. In the hour and more that she spent on her knees, Martie ran dry 330

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and then filled up again, for a fierce bitterness was now filling every space that her loss had emptied.

There were no coffins left in the camp, and no planks left to make any with. For days now the dead had been wrapped in blankets and buried just like that. Dorothea went to enquire and came in the evening to tell Martie: she would just have to bury her Driena in a blanket. Martie’s distress exploded: “I absolutely refuse to allow it! I will not allow it! I will not send my child into her grave like that.”

“They are saying that it will be weeks before wood arrives, when the train gets through. The coffin yard doesn’t have a scrap of wood left.”

“Driena is going to have a coffin!” “… but, Sister …”

Martie screamed: “She is going to have a coffin! The earth is too heavy! I will not have all that heavy earth piled on my child! Not on my child!” That was what she said and that was what she stuck to. Driena was going to have a coffin.

Martie went to the camp authorities to plead, but the turncoats just shook their heads, saying timber didn’t just fall out of the sky and they couldn’t make wood, and how was her child better than the others anyway? Everybody had to be buried that way, even the rich Van Wyks. There was no other option. And she couldn’t keep the body too long either — it was against the rules. Two days and not a day longer. And in the mortuary, not the tent. If she wanted to be stubborn, they would remove the corpse by force and bury it. She ought to realise they had problems of their own: with the bunch of halfstarved gravediggers they had, they had difficulty just trying to keep ahead. The British troops loathed what they called the “grave parades” and were almost no help at all. It wouldn’t help Martie to stand there yelling at them — they were just 331

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doing their job, they were not the ones who made people sick, and anyway the child was dead — she wouldn’t know anything about any part of it. Dying happened to everybody.

“Go and cry on your own. You’re not as special as you think.

Here, grab a blanket.”

The death obliged the authorities to note it in the record books. It caused the botheration of yet another grave. They might have objected to the resistance expected from a woman like Martie, or else they were too busy, but in the event nobody came to insist on having the corpse taken to the mortuary, as laid down in the regulations. Driena remained in the tent.

In desperation, Martie returned to Driena three times from the service area. Too little sleep and all her weeping and praying had made her light-headed. Dorothea helped her wash and lay out the corpse. There was so little left of Driena, lying there naked and white and bony on the sheet. They dressed her in the shroud that Dorothea made out of a sheet, and folded her hands. She was laid out decently and straight, as though ready to be coffined. *** That same morning, Dorothea wrote a letter to Danie with the news of Driena’s death. Wynand had to know. She sent Fienatjie to call Joey Drew, explained the circumstances to him and asked him to get the letter to Danie and the others as quickly as possible. Joey set off the same day.

From where Danie and Petrus were sitting they could watch Joey riding up and stopping at the spot agreed upon for him to leave urgent letters. Joey then turned round and headed back towards the camp through the gap in the hills. Something must have gone wrong. He had come specially. Towards nightfall 332

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they retrieved the letter from among the stones. Danie read it.

“Your Uncle Wynand’s Driena seems to have died this morning. Your mother-in-law asks that we let Wynand know.”

Danie looked up at Petrus, uncertainty in his eyes.

“If Uncle Wynand does what he has done for these past three weeks, he’ll be coming past here tomorrow. He has ridden past here every Thursday before turning aside towards the town. I’ll go and tell him when he comes.”

“No, I will.”

“I don’t think you should, Pa.” Danie stared at the ground at his feet as Petrus was speaking to him: “I know how you feel about Uncle Wynand, Pa. It will end up in a mess. Confronting him will be dangerous enough as it is, because then the Khakis will know how close we are to their positions.”

“Some way or other we’ve got to let him know, but you can’t go alone — he’s always got an escort. I’m coming with you. I want to look that traitor in the eye.”

“Fine, Pa. We’ll see if he comes.” *** Gertruida went to Martie’s tent that afternoon to express her condolences, but Martie looked at her quietly and asked: “Are you and your English henchmen satisfied now? Now you’ve got another one.” Gertruida made no reply. She turned round and walked away.

In the small hours of that night Martie left the body with the sleeping Sannie Minter and in desperation went to the hospital tents in search of Gertruida. As she walked she did not notice the standard lights or anything else in the camp. The chill winter breeze cut through her clothes but she was unaware of 333

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it. Only when she heard the piano did she stop for a moment before continuing on her way.

At the second of the hospital tents she saw Gertruida sitting beside a sick child. She hardly noticed the rows and rows of sick people. The heavy smells rising from the sick-beds she recognised only too well from her own tent, so they made no impression on her. She went straight to Gertruida: “Come outside, I want to talk to you!”

“This child needs me, Martie …”

“Is he not dying fast enough to your Khakis’ taste?”

“Shame upon you, Martie … he’s an innocent child …”

“Do you think I can’t see that? All of them that you are killing are innocent children! Leave him — you’ve already got him half-dead. Or do you supervise your handiwork?”

The boy’s eyes opened. He asked: “Am I going to die, Aunty?”

Gertruida could see that Martie was beside herself. She had to get her away from the child: “Wait outside for me, I’ll be with you in a minute.” She put down the lamp beside the bed and tried to reassure the child before she followed Martie: “No, you mustn’t think things like that. Be brave! I’ll be back soon.”

Martie was waiting for her outside: “Is that what you do in that death hole? Sit lying to dying children?”

“I try to make it easier for them.”

“I want a coffin for my child.”

“Where am I supposed to find one, Martie? If there aren’t any coffins, there aren’t any coffins.”

Anguish and bitterness entangled rendered Martie incoherent. She reviled, cried, threatened and pleaded: “The earth is going to squash my child flat, Gertruida! You’ve got to get me a coffin from those Khaki masters of yours. Driena can’t help it if you murder people faster than you can bring in wood 334

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… my child never asked to be here … And now you’re in with them so thick you won’t even help your own family … it’s your own blood that you want to have rolled in a blanket, Gertruida van Wyk … your own blood! But all you want to do is humiliate my child even in death and to have her squashed flat by the graveyard earth of your Englishmen. Just ask them for a few planks … and just listen to how that chum of yours is carrying on with Magrieta — that one you dined and wined on the farm — and you’ve done nothing about that either. Can’t you hear how that satanic instrument of yours is humiliating Magrieta? But to you of course, that doesn’t mean anything …

Oh God, please, Gertruida, help me … I just can’t … Oh, Gertruida, she’s my child, man! She’s my only, it’s my only one that you have taken … I have only the one … I just can’t …

Please! Please, I beg you … she’s my only … my only … Just listen to that piano carrying on as if there was no death in the camp. Those jolly little tunes — he’s jeering at our sufferings, Gertruida … Gertruida, and she was my only … Please …”

In the light falling on her through the gap in the hospital tent, Martie’s eyes were glazed. She was trembling violently.

Gertruida could see that she would not be able to hold out much longer and that no answer would get through to her. But when Martie spoke of her “only”, and of the “jolly tunes” that made a mockery of all the suffering in the camp, she came to a decision.

“You need to get some sleep, Martie. I’ll see to it that there are planks in the morning. Come.”

Then Martie said no more. When Gertuida took her arm and led her back to her tent, she went along without another word or a tear. In the tent she shook Sannie Minter where she was asleep on her bed beside the one with the body on it. She ordered Sannie to come with her and left the bed to Martie. As 335

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Martie was drifting off she asked: “Will you, please, Gertruida … planks .. the earth is so heavy …”

“I will. You go to sleep now.”

Martie collapsed, rather than fell asleep. Gertruida was grateful to see her sink away into merciful unconsciousness.

She took off her shoes and covered her with Sannie’s blanket.

Then she told Sannie to come along — she was going to silence the piano.

It was not difficult to gather enough women together. At nearly every tent where Gertruida asked, the women agreed almost eagerly. Twenty was enough already. Gertruida fetched the hand axe from the tent and took it with her.

Quietly, at three o’clock in the morning, the only sound the rustling of their dresses, they walked up to the sentries at the gate between the women’s and the soldiers’ camps. When the group approached, the sentries asked what they had come for at that time of night.

“We’re coming to negotiate.”

“What about? Stand back!”

But the women did not stand back. Instead they crowded round the sentries even more closely and, at a word, all simultaneously grabbed: feet, legs, arms, bodies, rifles. Hands shut tight over the sentries’ mouths. The overwhelming odds were too unexpected for much resistance and the sentries were pinned down on the ground before they could even grasp what was happening.

Someone whispered: “Sit on them!”

“Keep their mouths covered!”

The sentries lay, powerless, immobilised, helplessly pinned down under the weight of too many bodies. “The rifles … give one here.” Apart from the sound of the piano, everything was quiet. The camp had not noticed a thing.

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Gertruida took three women with her to the lit opening of the tent. She was the first to enter. “That’s my piano,” she said.

Magrieta and Philip Brooks sprang up. The last note ever to sound from the piano faded into silence. “Hands up!” said the woman with the rifle and pointed the barrel at Philip.

“What are you doing, Aunt Gertruida?”

“This is my piano! Get out! You’ve nothing to do with this Englishman, Magrieta van Wyk. This piano is mine!”

“Aunt Gertruida …”

“Go! You’re going through enough hell not to need more!”

This was a different Gertruida. Magrieta obeyed and walked out on to a path that she would remember for ever: out of the tent, into the dark, past the bunch of folk at the gate where some smothered struggling under a profusion of dress material was only just audible. But what she would remember best was a single stifled bark from the mouth of one of the women at the gate: “Gah!” That was all. For Magrieta it was everything. She returned to her tent and sat down in the dark. Her humiliation had temporarily suppressed even the stifling awareness of the catfish thing inside her. Magrieta began to realise what her nights in an English officer’s tent must have looked like in the eyes of the camp. “Gah!” one of them said. All of a sudden she regretted that, against her better judgement, she had persisted with her visits. But she knew, too, that these brief encounters were the only times that her pregnancy was bearable. Now she had no-one left to talk to. She realised that the piano would never summon her again, but her ears would not listen to her, they kept on waiting.

Captain Brooks stood with his back to the canvas wall of his tent and the barrel of a Lee-Metford held against his stomach.

He was ordered not to utter a sound and, twice, when he tried 337

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to say: “Ladies, ladies …” he sounded so pathetic that he gave up the attempt.

“This is my piano,” Gertruida repeated, perhaps for the tenth time. She knew the piano. First she removed the bottom panel. Another woman was called in and two of them carried the panel outside. Then Gertruida lifted the top lid, threw it back, lifted out the facing panel and passed it to the waiting hands. She was able to force the top lid out of its piano hinges, but the hinge on the keyboard lid was too strong. She picked up the axe and chopped the hinge away from the cross-bar.

The naked keys of the piano looked like the grimace of a skull. The strings still shone, but the mysteries of their vibrations were exposed and embarrassed against the backdrop of the cast-iron back. The felt-tipped hammers were waiting with their bent heads in obedient file, waiting for the mechanism of the keys to drive them to the strings. Now that the shine of the gleaming wood and the delicate reverberations had been stripped away, the soul of the piano was naked. Now it was just wood, metal and ivory, as it had been when only half-born, before ever it had made music at all.

Gertruida knew that her piano, her one and only, was now a thing of the past. A fury of violence swept through her.

Remorselessly, she kept on repeating: “It is my piano! It is my piano! It is my piano!” swinging the axe into the fragile heart of the instrument where the music of her piano resided. The side blows of the axe sent the hammers flying in all directions; the axe bit into the keys, leaving only a toothless deaths-head; the sharp edge of the axe sprang back from the strings of the heavy back, though some of the cords did snap and jerk away, curling and zinging.

They did not hear the troops approaching, but the noise had already disturbed the termite nest and suddenly there were 338

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swarms of half-dressed Khakis all round them.

Once inside the tent they seized the rifle and waited for the captain to tell them what to do. Gertruida stood there with the axe still in her hand. “Let them all go,” commanded Philip Brooks. “It was her piano.”

And to Gertruida: “Why? It was such a lovely instrument — I wanted to keep it for you till after the war.”

“Women and children are dying in the camp — constantly and painfully. Your romantic ditties sound like mockery, and you are not capable of playing a requiem. Besides, I don’t know of one in D.” “I did not realise …”

“I want my planks for a coffin for my sister-in-law’s little girl. I shall pay for the carpentry.”

“I will have the coffin made.”

The carpenters came to fetch the planks the next day, asked how long the corpse was, and a coffin was made for Martie’s Driena.

But that night, when Gertruida returned the axe to the tent she shared with Magrieta, she lit the candle so she could wash before going back to the hospital. She saw Magrieta, heavily pregnant, sitting on the bed with her hands between her knees.

Magrieta did not look up and neither of them said a word, although Gertruida did wonder whether she had not just deprived Magrieta of the only company she had had in the loneliness of her hell.

Outside again, walking to the hospital tent, Gertruida spoke a name into the darkness. Again and again.

The child was waiting for her. He had fouled himself again and Gertruida had to wipe him. She replaced the soiled and bloody waterproof underneath him and carried the dirty one to the laundry tub. When she returned to him and he asked again 339

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if he was going to die now, she told him to be brave.

How could she tell him that it was she herself who had died that night, more than even a child could? *** Tensely, on that Thursday, they waited for Wynand. Danie was unsure about how he would act towards his brother. He must not let his revulsion at what Wynand was doing get the better of him. That is what Petrus, too, cautioned him, for Petrus was beginning to know his father-in-law’s nature and feelings.

Danie was a gentle, sensible man, but quick-tempered when what was sacred to him came under attack. Danie van Wyk’s conviction that the fight had to continue with undiminished energy right to the end had grown ever stronger since that morning at the mass grave at Driefontein when he had seen his son’s name among those of the fallen. So Petrus was worried.

Meeting his brother in the company of Englishmen would cry out against everything his father-in-law believed in. But if Uncle Wynand was escorted by Tommies, as on previous Thursdays, there would have to be two of them to be able to talk to him. And his father-in-law had insisted.

Intercepting the Khakis would be easy, because they seemed to think that by this time there were no more Boers left in the district. You could tell by how self-assuredly they rode out in ever smaller groups or even singly. It was a pity, though, that Petrus and Danie would have to abandon their convenient hide-out, from where they had been able to observe so much that was happening and then to pass on the information. If the Khakis realised that there were still Boers in the area they would very soon come swarming out. But then Petrus’ corps really needed fresh horses: two of them had lost theirs when 340

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the poor animals had stepped on caltrops set by the Khakis. A corps cannot move riding two-up.

The gap between the hills that the road ran through was a narrow one. Waylaying someone travelling through there unguardedly offered no difficulty at all; but getting away again in daylight was dangerous because beyond the row of ridges there was nothing but the open plain.

Danie nodded and when he walked down to the road the gun-strap was across his chest and the rifle on his back. By the time he stopped in the middle of the road, Wynand and his two escorts were upon him.

Wynand was pale as he reined in his horse. Like practised soldiers, his two escorts immediately lifted their rifles, aimed at Danie and took up position on either side of the road.

“Tell your baboons to drop their weapons. We’ve got them covered.”

Wynand said nothing. Danie spoke to the soldiers in English. They looked round, hesitating, till at close range Petrus’ shot hit the ground between them and from somewhere a voice shouted “Hands Up!” They obeyed. Petrus picked up their weapons and held onto them. Nobody offered any greeting.

“Is this where I have to meet my brother?” Wynand remained silent. “Where is your gun?”

“I’m no longer in arms.”

“Have you joined up?”

“No.” “Then what the hell are you doing in among the English?”

“The war’s got to stop. The women and children are dying in the camps. We’ve got to negotiate for peace.”

“So, you have allowed yourself to be blackmailed by their inhumanity, have you?”

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“We’ve got to go on living after the war, brother … People are dying. We’ve got to save what can still be saved.”

“Don’t you call me your brother!” Danie pulled the rifle off his back and cocked it. Petrus could see things were going wrong: “Gently, Pa …”

Danie’s words were precise and measured: “I am telling you now, Wynand van Wyk: you will leave your English pals right here, you will turn round, and you will come back to the commando or I shall shoot you dead. You know me. You know I mean it.”

“Well then I have no choice, have I? Let the blood of women and children be on your head.”

“Pick up one of the English rifles and come with us. If I have to force you to do your duty, I’ll do so.”

Wynand walked over to where Petrus had stood the LeeMetfords against a rock and picked one up. Petrus handed him the Tommy’s ammunition but spoke to Danie: “You have a message for Uncle Wynand, Pa.” “What message?” asked Wynand.

Danie’s temper softened: “I don’t have good news for you, Wynand …”

“I will go and fight with you, man! What are you trying to tell me?”

“We got the news last night that your Driena had died in the camp. Yesterday. I am so sorry.”

Wynand threw down the gun in his hand and then stood still. There were tears in his vehemence: “… but you still want to go on — and on, and on! Oh God, you just want to go on and on!”

Wynand walked over to his horse and mounted.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, Wynand van Wyk?” 342

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“To my child.” Wynand jerked the horse round and started to ride away.

“You come with me or I’ll shoot you right now!” Danie shouted after him.

“Well then shoot and be done with it! I’m going!”

Danie lifted the rifle, and then lowered it again “Shoot him before he gets away, Petrus! I can’t — he’s my brother.”

Petrus pushed the barrel of Danie’s rifle down further.

“Don’t kill unless it’s necessary, Pa. Driena was his only child.

Killing Uncle Wynand won’t alter anything about the war.”

“We mustn’t let ourselves go soft, Petrus.”

“This is not going soft, Pa. That just leads to later regret. The war won’t last for ever.”

They took the boots, rifles and horses belonging to Wynand’s two Khakis and rode off in silence across the plain behind the ridges.

After almost an hour’s riding Danie remarked: “We dare not get soft with traitors, Petrus.”

“Uncle Wynand has not joined up, Pa. What he felt today was what you felt, Pa, when you saw Daantjie’s name on the list of the fallen. Let’s rather feel sorry for him.” A few minutes later, as though he had been thinking it over: “… I don‘t know what would become of me if something happened to Nellie or my little chap in that camp …” *** Oupa Daniël was highly conscious of the fact that he had not been ordained. Speaking at the burials, he faithfully read out, word for word, the minister’s brief funeral sermons. Like a ritual. He led the singing of the prescribed psalms and hymns himself in his trembling old man’s voice and his droning set 343

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the tone for the feeble singing round the graves. His sight was no longer good. Dorothea had written out the minister’s words for him in block capitals and had lent him her crochet glass to hang round his neck to help him enlarge the set words. It happened only occasionally that the paper hooked on the magnifying glass, causing him to lose his place and so sacrifice something of the dignity of his reading. In the prayers, though, he was free to lay the pain of his people before God, to express the injustice of everything in words, and to plead for salvation.

In his final words of comfort he would say that in all their pain they should never forsake God, for He would never forsake them; that all the suffering was a melting pot through which they would be purified; that God’s will must be done and that in the Lord’s good time relief would come. He had to repeat the ritual so often that, had he been younger, he would have known the words by heart, but he was old: he had to read out the words that the ordained minister had prescribed. Where he was free to choose his own words, he was too forgetful to realise how precisely similar his prayers and words of comfort had become.

The burials became too much for Oupa Daniël. Whereas at first he had been able to deliver the oration with a few suitable words about the deceased, now the unending interments were seriously affecting him. When the oxcart brought him back to his tent after a series of such services, he could barely keep upright: his old legs could no longer endure such long periods of standing. Fortunately, the burials in newly dug graves took place next to one another, so he was able to pronounce his oration over several corpses at once. Except when they reached the end of a row, when he would have to repeat his sermon and deliver it at both the end of one row and the start of the next.

There were three others to be buried on the same day as 344

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Driena, but only Driena had a coffin. The others were wrapped in blankets: two women’s corpses, sewn into their blankets with hessian twine; the child’s body tied up crosswise, like a parcel for posting. Driena’s coffin could be lowered in a dignified fashion with rawhide thongs. For those wrapped in blankets, two gravediggers had to climb into the graves for the bodies to be passed down to them. Throwing them in, or letting them slide down at an angle, was just too awful.

Each family stood at the graveside of their loved one while Oupa Daniël delivered his oration over all of them simultaneously. There were no longer many bystanders: only seventeen mourners for four bodies. Not like at first when deaths and funerals were something unusual and many people regarded it as their duty to attend.

With the aid of his magnifying glass, Oupa Daniël read the minister’s prescribed words. Two people were staring into Driena’s grave: Martie, at the coffin that had to prevent the heavy earth from crushing the delicate body of her only child; Gertruida at all that remained of her only possession, of the music within her, of her memory of a single perfect moment.

It was Magrieta who saw Wynand arriving. He had left his sweating horse at the gate of the graveyard and was hurrying though the graves.

“Please wait a moment, Oupa Daniël …”

Disturbed, the old man looked up: “What is it now, Magrieta?”

“Just wait a minute, Oupa Daniël, Uncle Wynand is coming.”

Martie looked round sharply. It was clear what she had concluded: “How did he get here? He’s a joiner!”

She charged at Wynand: she had found a focus for her bitterness: “What are you doing here, Wynand van Wyk?! Why 345

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are you not out fighting the bastards who murdered your child?”

Wynand tried to get a word in, in turn explaining and pleading, saying things like: “I’m no traitor. Please just let me take leave of my child in peace. She was my only one, too. I’m trying to put a stop to the deaths …”

But his words remained unheard in the torrent of Martie’s invective. She yelled: “Get your stinking traitor’s arse away from my baby, Wynand van Wyk! Get back to your Khakis.

This is my child’s grave, this is, and you — you! — killed her!

You never deserved a daughter like her, you traitor! Go to the hell-hounds feasting on the corpses of our children. Go to that great bitch of yours, Victoria, who swallows children to satisfy her greed, or that offshoot of hers who just goes on scavenging now that she’s dead. You’re lower than a dog watching the old bitch’s litter gobbling up our children as though they were at a feast. All these murderers deserve is to die, so why are you not trying to kill as many of them as possible? Why are you not helping to drive them into the sea, curse that they are? Are you such a coward that you can’t even hate them properly? Clear off! Get away from my child’s grave! You didn’t deserve her.

You never deserved my Drienatjie … And don’t you ever come near this grave again — it’s you and your Khakis that have driven my child into her grave today.”

At first Wynand, pleading, explaining, tried to approach the grave in the face of the torrent of words, but Martie picked up a stone from a heap of earth and hurled it at him, hitting him on the chest. She picked up more stones to throw at him, all the while screaming abuse. He turned round and tried to walk away with dignity, but her words and her stones pursued him.

A second woman ran up and cast a stone. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. It was as though something of their shared pain 346

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had broken out; as though the ancient lust of stoning had boiled up inside them. What they dared not risk doing to the collaborators in the camp, they now did to him. They ran after him, throwing stones and hurling words like “Traitor!” and “Dog!” at him.

At first Wynand pretended not to feel the stones bouncing off his back or sometimes hitting him on the legs or the back of his head, but trying to walk away with dignity was no longer possible. He fell into a trot, like an animal being driven away, with his wife’s voice and the uninterrupted stream of stones following him.

Near the gate the women stopped throwing and halted.

“Don’t you ever set your traitor’s paws anywhere near me, Wynand van Wyk!” were Martie’s last words as he mounted his tired horse and rode away from the camp. He was a good hundred yards from the camp before he realised that he still had his hat in his hand. The hat he had removed out of respect when he dismounted.

Martie and the others turned round and returned to the graves of their loved ones. “Please start again, Pa. My Driena deserves to be buried decently,” said Martie to Oupa Daniël.

The old man started again. They completed the ceremony right up to when they cast handfuls of earth in their final farewells. The piano wood of Driena’s shining coffin sounded its final vibrations in the ears round the grave. The blanket wrappings of the others were quiet, the earth thudding on them was barely audible. The folk standing round the graves heard the words “Dust to dust” and murmured their own words of farewell.

As the trickle of earth streamed gently down through her fingers onto the shining coffin, Martie swore: “Cursed be those who did this to you, Drienatjie! May they be damned to hell, 347

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they and all their henchmen.”

What Gertruida said as her handful of earth fell on the wood that she so loved, no-one could hear. It would not have made sense to them in any case, since they would not have been able to understand. It was a name none of them had ever heard.

Magrieta and Dorothea stayed with Martie in sympathy as she stood watching the grave being filled in and neatly finished off. There were no flowers anywhere in the camp, but when everything was done, Martie placed on the grave a cloth flower that she had cut out and stitched that morning. Only then did she allow them to lead her back to the tents. *** After covering the first mile from the camp, Wynand realised that he would not be able to make it to town that night. He had ridden the horse too hard in his haste to get to his child.

Eventually he had to dismount and lead the animal. At last the mare stopped and hung her head, trembling. She could not go any farther.

Wynand unsaddled beside the road, sat down in his blanket with his back to the saddle and waited first for night to fall.

Then for daylight to come. Unaware of the cold winter night passing over him, he made no attempt to light a fire. He did not feel the blood trickling down from the back of his head into his collar and congealing on his back.

Everything had come to a standstill *** The farm lay white under the snow of the previous night. IN the whiteness, all the rough places had been made plain and a 348

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silence hung over the morning. Sounds called forth no answering echoes. “Bitingly cold and wholly muffled under a spotless eiderdown.” That was what the late Aunt Gertruida used to say when it snowed like this. It had not stopped yet either — plump flakes, low-hanging clouds hung low, no wind at all. Along the driveway up to the homestead the outer boughs of Pa Danie’s pine trees were heavy with their clumps of white. Like on the anonymous Christmas card which Magrieta once received from somewhere in Europe.

A trail of early morning tracks led away from the back door to the cattle pens. Daantjie’s. The lambing ewes had better not come rushing out of the shelter again — that meant losses among the winter lambs. He would return shortly with white on his hat and shoulders, and stamp his feet at the kitchen door. Then, if there had been any losses, he would say: “A lambing ewe is a bloody stupid thing …” and so on, or he would say: “Luckily the ewes have kept their heads …” and so on. For forty years everything had been predictable.

Magrieta looked out across the white morning, something that happened every three or four years. Thank goodness it happens so rarely, she thought.

For on the night of the 10th of June 1901 when the camp was blanketed with snow, she felt her contractions coming at ever shorter intervals. The thing wanted out. She had no idea how long she would have to wait and there was no-one to ask, because her mother-in-law — Bitte, Vater … hilf noch ein einziges Mal ! — was not to know, and Aunt Gertruida was, as usual, in the hospital. Later she lit the lantern and walked through the fresh, untrodden snow to Hester Strydom’s tent.

She called from outside. The midwife asked who was there before poking her head through the gap in the tent flap.

“It’s me, Magrieta van Wyk. It’s coming.”

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“Wait for me, I’ll be with you straightaway.”

Inside the tent someone lit a lamp, a lantern, because that was what was swinging in Hester’s hand when she emerged.

There were two women. With them they had a bucket and a roll of something that looked like cloths. Hester sent her companion back into the tent to fetch the chimney soot “in case the afterbirth doesn’t come away easily.” Magrieta knew nothing about such things.

“Is your tent empty?” was all that Hester asked as they walked back.

“Yes, I’m alone. The others don’t know.”

“Better that way.”

In front of the kitchen window Magrieta wiped the condensation off the pane and watched the snowflakes drifting down. Now they were floating down into a farm morning; then they had done the same, but differently, falling between the circles of light of two moving lanterns: yellow on account of the sudden strange light on them. Simply appearing out of the dark, drifting from nowhere into the pale light, and then settling without haste on others. What she had seen then was still there behind her eyes somewhere: the patch of lantern light that she walked in, the coming and going of each step as her feet emerged from under the hem of her dress. She recalled, too, seeing the shoes of the two women, appearing and disappearing under the hems of their dresses. In their patch of light, three or four wordless paces apart, the snowflakes were illuminated — above, black figures in the swirling whiteness; beneath, lantern-yellow where the swinging seams of their dresses disturbed the snow. There was no link between the two patches of light. They remained separate, like distance. Across fresh snow. Softly, silently. Almost sneakily.

A strong contraction came over her on the way to her tent.

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She stopped. The pain receded but then her waters broke.

When she stood aside from the wetness all down her legs, she noticed the warmer patch steaming in the fresh snow between her newest, wide-set footprints.

“Tell us when it’s over. We’ve got to get to your tent.”

Once in the tent they made her undress, opened out their canvas covering on the mattress and spread the sheet over it.

Who knows how many times they had had to do this? They worked in silence. They knew what they were doing. They prepared her. Hester was apparently training her assistant and kept using strange expressions: “She had already dropped quite far before we arrived — feel here …”

“Doesn’t feel as if it has turned the wrong way …”

“Feel — the bones have opened …”

“Feels as if the head is beginning to move down …”

It was all “feel” as they prodded Magrieta’s abdomen. Then Hester said suddenly: “Remember the soft ground that I showed you — see if you can find it under the snow. Don’t wake the others while you’re fetching the spade. As deep as you can. Wake San and tell her to light a fire to heat water.

Maybe we’ll be lucky, but if she doesn’t finish before daylight, the hole will have to wait.”

“But what do we do with …?”

“Hide it till nightfall.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

Magrieta sat bolt upright when she realised what she had heard: “Here? Where? In the tent? All day? O God, please not!”

While her companion went out into the night, Hester sat silently at the foot of the bed, waiting. Magrieta lay still, knowing. Mention of the spade and the ground had made her realise what she was going to allow to happen.

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As a justification, or perhaps in an attempt to strengthen Magrieta for what she was going to do, Hester broke the waiting silence: “I was alone on the farm when they raped me.

Five of them. They all took turns. Again and again. For days on end. All of them watching and laughing.”

Outside, the snowflakes were drifting across the yard. The windowpane steamed up again and Magrieta wiped it clean once more: “I could have stopped it then … I never considered it. How could I have known what would happen if I had let the child live? A dark child in my white arms … or a white one, from a husband who had been dead much longer than nine months? Accept it and brazen out my humiliation, or else raise it? Explain everything day after day till everything and I, I and what I am, had been maligned, to the parting of body and soul?

For something that I genuinely had nothing to do with? What other sufferings would I still have had to endure, and go on enduring? For God’s sake, there really wasn’t a choice! It was not my fault.”

As on the other occasions when it had snowed on the farm and that 10th of June in the camp revived like a conscience, Magrieta could remember very little about the birth itself.

They had put the lanterns on the floor beside the bed as though wanting to keep her in the half-dark. With every contraction they said “Push!” The light came from below, sometimes casting weird shadows on their faces — orangeyellow lantern-faces, full of deep gashes under their black bonnets. Bending over her abdomen, they looked like demons — hooded, evil apparitions in monastic habits, like in Horst’s books on demonology. But these, by contrast, were her benefactors!

Could it be that she was then seeing before her eyes the two things which she could never reconcile — the black and the white that had become so entangled together in her mind?

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Nor could Magrieta recall the pain of the little one’s bursting forth upon the world because Hester’s urgent instructions to her assistant drowned out everything: “Do it all by feel. If you look, you won’t be able to. Do it before it can utter a sound!”

That is what they must have done, but Magrieta did not know what it was they were doing. Standing in front of the kitchen window now she thought that God had spared her that. She had not looked. She imagined she heard the sound of wool shears as they cut the umbilical cord, freeing her and severing an already unnecessary link. What they hurriedly and surreptitiously carried out of the tent was probably a silent, limp, swaddled little bundle. Except, when Hester lifted out the afterbirth and carried it wobbling in her hands through the lamplight to the bucket, Magrieta did see the fleshy substance taken from her body dangling through the open fingers. It was pink, bloody and slimy, like a sheep’s innards. She heard it plop into the bucket. She could not remember the pain. Just the slime.

“Luckily it’s come away whole. Go and bury it with the rest,” Hester ordered, passing the bucket to the assistant, who had just returned.

Hester bathed her with luke-warm water, told her she was lucky: for a first baby, it was a very smooth birth. There was no tearing or unnecessary bleeding. The canvas was pulled out from under her, the bedding was changed, the absorbent napkins for any later bleeding were folded thickly and slipped in under her. For now, she was told, she was to rest.

“I’ll wash the bedding and hang it out to dry.” Hester took the bundle and was walking away when she recited her parting words like a rhyme: “Nothing happened here. I’ll return the sheet as soon as I can get it dry in this cold. You will not come and thank me or attempt to reward me … nor 353

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enquire. I don’t know you. Once your milk comes in, express it for a few days … but only if your breasts are painful.”

Magrieta did not understand till later what “enquire” meant.

As she bent to leave the tent, Hester turned and offered some advice, as an afterthought: “Speak as little as possible and lie if you have to.”

Magrieta watched Daantjie coming back from the stock pens. The snow was falling still faster. At a distance he was a dark vagueness amidst the whirling whiteness. If he spoke to her now, she knew she would shout at him. She would not be able to help it. Not when the 10th of June 1901 had just revived within her. She hastened down the passage, fetched her coat and bonnet, and fled with her thoughts out through the front door, under the veranda roof, into the snow, down the road between the Christmas-card trees to the outer gate. Her winter boots, she noticed, were appearing and disappearing under her coat, just like on that night.

She had still been asleep when Gertruida returned to the tent at dawn. She woke Magrieta and when she sat up, asked: “What is this?” There was a piece of membrane on the floor.

“The thing came,” she said.

Then all the questions: “When?” “Who helped you?”

“Where’s the baby?”

Magrieta could remember every lie she told. The first one was almost wordless. She said she was tired, she would explain later.

“But where’s the baby?”

“Dead,” she said, and turned over.

Gertruida left the tent and returned with a distraught Dorothea.

“Where’s the child?” asked her mother-in-law.

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“Stillborn and buried.”

“That’s a mercy. Why didn’t you call me? Who helped you?”

“It was just me.”

“You alone? Where did you bury it?”

“Outside, under the snow.”

Her mother-in-law and Aunt Gertruida bent over her again, just as they did that night when she was made to sit on the chamber pot to let the rapist’s slime trickle out. Exactly like that. With questions. That must have been why she shouted out her lie, against the stream of questions: “My God, Ma! The thing came. It was dead on arrival. I dragged it out of me and buried it with the afterbirth. Deep enough! Now leave me! I don‘t need any more cross-examination! Just let me alone!”

Dorothea stood back in deep distress, hearing Magrieta’s last words: “I’ll never speak about this again, Ma! Never, ever!

It’s over! It didn’t happen! Leave me, dammit, I’ve suffered enough already!”

Dorothea looked at her quietly and asked gently: “Can I bring you something to drink? One gets thirsty after … this kind of thing.”

“Please … I am thirsty.”

Dorothea brought her some sugar water, laid her hand on Magrieta’s forehead for a moment and said, like Hester Strydom: “Try to sleep, I’ll come again later.”

Magrieta found that she had stopped walking and was now standing still. In front of her she could just make out what was left of the Minters’ cottage. No-one had repaired or lived in it since it had been burnt down. The walls had gradually crumbled away quietly from the top till all that was left to remind passers-by that people had once lived there was the square stone foundation. Magrieta was not thinking about the Minters, nor about Sannie Minter, who was now, thanks to 355

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Daantjie’s charity, whiling her days away in the verandah room, drooling, her mind wandering. Instead, she was thinking about Fienatjie Minter, that blest child who had known it all.

She had been empty, empty in body and in soul, that night after the little one was out of her and Hester and her assistant had disappeared into the snowy night. For how long? She lay there with only the unflickering lantern on Aunt Gertruida’s trousseau chest shedding its uncertain light on a cheerless concentration camp tent where yet another child had just been murdered. Before leaving, Hester had tuned up the wick. Too high. The long flame did brighten the tent for a brief moment or two, but the soot soon blackened the glass, leaving the flame to burn for itself alone, confined in its tiny sooty chamber, shedding very little light beyond.

Like herself, thought Magrieta. She was trapped in a sooty prison where all light had died; crushed by the weight of the graveyard earth that Martie so feared. She felt how guilt like some revolting thing was sucking at her, its soft leech’s bloodsucking lips all over her skin, slimy as a snail. She felt as though she had been gripped by a nothingness, a void, without any husband or lover, no close friend or relative who would understand. And no child of her own. There was no longer a God whom she could reach out to with her German prayers.

No-one she could cry out to: “Help me!” or “Hear me, for God’s sake!” Nobody to beg forgiveness of — her act seemed to have made God shrink back into His eternity. She was like the whole country: raped and overpowered against her will.

Everything that had been good and gentle and beautiful in her had now been ripped out, like a membranous, bloody placenta, together with the baby as she gave life and then silenced the life that had emerged from her womb “before it can utter a sound.”

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And then Fienatjie Minter was there. In the dim light her voice asked: “Aunty Magrieta?”

Fienatjie climbed up onto the bed and slipped her small, cold body and bare feet in between the winter blankets. The child snuggled up against her and hugged her tight. Fienatjie’s touch was a cool flake of mercy on the fever of her guilt. Her closeness was a droplet from God. “Listen, the little children are singing …” Fienatjie whispered, lying close to her.

She heard it then — in the silences above the heavy darkness overshadowing the white night outside the tent — the song of the children, drifting across. the thin, floating choir of thousands of dead camp children. She did hear it.

Unmistakeable and clear. And through all those voices she, like a ewe in a flock of sheep, she recognised the voice of the one that she had hated while it was growing inside her. The one they killed for her. She knew: it was the voice of her own child.

It was the voice of her own child, and it was clear. And indescribably sweet. *** What Daantjie hated most about the annual mourning expedition was that it forced him to confront the lie he believed in. However hard he tried to avoid this unpleasantness, the war, “that business” that he had discovered inside himself, the chronic fleeing from place to place, hiding with Soldaat, and then the humiliation of his return — all of it kept coming back to him in flashbacks. In the course of his daily life and in his secret heart of hearts he wallowed in his sense of the manifold injustice, that allowed him to play the martyr while he embroidered new, additional credible details to his delusions: 357

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he was always able to hold Magrieta’s infidelity during her widowhood against her; he could exaggerate his heroic military exploits, modestly but proudly, in the face of any sceptic; but his rejection by his father, so he painfully convinced himself, was the greatest injustice of all.

He could suffer his falsehood so convincingly that he actually believed it himself. Except when he took Holy Communion — when he knew he was drinking damnation upon himself. Or when Soldaat was present. That was when he knew he was lying. Soldaat’s eyes on him always knew the truth. Always. Here, too, where the truth lay in long rows of low graves on the featureless flat plain with its two rows of distant ridges on either side, he could not lie to himself. Not when he had to watch his wife, Magrieta, trotting along after a bunch of undoubtedly filthy memories.

Maybe it would all have been different if he had never run into that damned squint-eyed photographer. *** Joey Drew was constantly on the road at that stage of the war.

It was also at that time that Petrus Minter and Danie managed to get letters through to their womenfolk in the camp.

The first encounter between Petrus, Danie and Joey happened quite by chance. That winter Petrus was engaged in blowing up trains and gathering information in the vicinity of the camp. Sitting high up on a ridge, watching from a distance the comings and goings through the telescope that Petrus had taken off an English officer, they could gain no more than a vague impression of what was happening inside the camp, but they were able to distinguish clearly enough the columns setting off and returning from their campaigns of destruction.

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And to see how more and more people were being transported to the camp. Danie was able to record all such movements for his field reports. He could also attempt to determine the routines of the trains passing back and forth and sometimes halting at the camp, which helped Petrus work out when another of his victims would be passing.

One road into the camp ran barely five hundred yards from their hiding place between the ridges: they could see perfectly clearly everything passing on that road. One of the most heartbreaking sights in Danie’s life — one he saw three times on that road — was a vision of his brother Wynand accompanied by two Tommies in uniform. In his initial consternation he was all for running down and shooting his brother, but Petrus forbade it: all that would achieve would be to expose their hide-away.

On one of his monthly visits to the Boer authorities to make his reports and to fetch dynamite, Petrus found out what it was that Wynand was doing: he was not actively fighting on the English side, instead he was part of the Peace Committees trying to persuade the burghers and the authorities alike that it was necessary to negotiate for peace. Or that was what Petrus understood to be the case. For Danie, however, all that was nothing but perfidy. Yet they noticed something odd about the way Wynand was riding: he never rode right into the camp, always turning aside towards the town.

Their look-out spot was dangerously close to the English, so in order not to tempt fate too far, Petrus never brought the whole corps with him, only Danie. They never stayed longer than a day or two because the Khakis had now come up with a new trick: they were sending their own scouts out into the ridges to make sure that all was safe. However, these patrols were visible from a long way off, they kept mainly to the footpaths, and had — so far — been easily avoided. Petrus took 359

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care to carry out his train-destroying exploits a long way up the line, to ensure that their hiding place would not arouse suspicion.

“It’s that cross-eyed photographer,” Petrus told Danie, passing him the telescope and pointing in the direction of the road.

Danie took a look. “It looks like his cart and horses, but I can’t make out who is up on the cart. He is alone, though; that I can see.”

“It’s got to be him, Pa. And if he’s driving around here, that means the women can’t be on the farm any more. We’ll have to go and ask him what’s happening.”

“But how? They could come down on us if we go and block his way.”

“He can’t go in that direction and still get anywhere before dark. He’ll have to sleep beside the road — there aren’t any houses left in that area any more. We’ll catch up with him in the dark.”

When evening fell, they followed the road Joey had taken and came upon him where his fire was burning inside a ruin not far from the road. Joey was already wrapped in his blankets with his feet dangerously close to the fire. He leapt up in fright when Petrus shook him awake, but sat down, relieved, when he recognised them.

“And where are you heading for?”

As he saw fit, Joey pointed and explained and ignored the question.

He brought out the bottle of whisky — the smell of it still strong on his breath — and offered them some “with the compliments of Captain Brooks.” Joey possessed only two mugs, one of which was passably clean. In the interests of cleanliness, Petrus refused the offer but Danie, remembering 360

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the evening when he and Joey had trusted each other with the secrets of their lives, accepted the cleaner one. Joey addressed himself directly to the bottle, energetically explaining that he had personally convinced the same Captain Brooks of his higher calling as a photographer, stressing that he practised his profession — not for conscience’s sake, seeing that this was a personal matter — but as a faithful recording of the war and its course. Whereupon Captain Brooks had asked him (at a respectable rate of remuneration, he should add) to document all the destruction that the English were perpetrating. For Joey, Documentation was a new word — he heard it from the Captain’s own mouth — and he enjoyed using it, though he was somewhat surprised at apparently being understood without any need of explanation. So now, so he impressively informed them, he was on his way to perform official documentation of the war.

The truth, however, was rather different.

A story had reached Joey Drew that the pretty widow Van Wyk was visiting Captain Brooks’ tent at night when her spinster aunt was occupied in the hospital. For Joey, it was unthinkable that the woman he had so admired could sink to such depths, so he refused to believe the tale, but he was determined to investigate. No tent had been assigned to him, an uninvited visitor to the camp: he had to sleep under his cart.

It had therefore been a simple matter to shift his sleeping place closer to the officers’ section of the camp, and so to gain a more convenient position for keeping an eye on the gate. From under his blankets, of course, seeing that it was winter.

The captain confronted him the next day: “What does all this moving around of yours mean, Drew? You’re being tolerated in the camp as a gracious favour, and now you’re trying to move in with the officers! What for?”

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“The music,” Joey lied: it was for the music. The captain’s piano playing was a wonderfully soothing balm in his lonely nights. Brooks did not even smile: he simply lost his temper: Joey would be permitted to remain because he had apparently been appointed as some sort of regimental photographer during the siege of Kimberley. But what kind of photographer was he anyway? Had he photographed so much as a single skirmish? All he did was lie around the camp, sleeping his arse off and traipsing around after that blue-eyed child-visionary and the crazy woman with the goat.

“And how are they treating me?” Joey retorted. “Does a regimental photographer not even merit a decent place to sleep?” Well, then he would tell the captain: he had moved around out of protest at the treatment being meted out to him.

Captain Brooks looked at him long and hard. Joey directed his fearless gaze straight up at the captain’s right ear, because he knew: in fact, the captain could not move because he, Joey Drew, knew about that dinner with the enemy. And the captain could not really object to Joey’s harmless move closer to the gate. So, unobtrusively, the captain stroked his right ear and made a firm decision: that same day Joey could share a tent in among the troops, but he was required to ride out and document the destruction caused by the war, the erection of block-houses and the “sweeps”, and report to the captain on a weekly basis. But no escort patrol would be assigned to him — he would have to manage on his own. He was not in arms, so if the Boers caught him, the worst they could do was shake him out and release him.

Then the captain’s attitude softened quite noticeably: the camp authorities had indeed not treated him properly, him the regimental photographer. As a token of the army’s regret about its poor treatment of him, he could go to the captain for a 362

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liquor chit. And later, he could have more, if he knew how to behave himself, because the captain was a teetotaller — he had no use for his liquor ration. Joey understood precisely the origin of the captain’s sudden lenience. What the man meant by “good behaviour” was clear and palpable: “Shut your mouth about Magrieta van Wyk and me.”

He was allocated a tent far from the gate; claimed his liquor ration at the quarter-master’s tent; and duly set off on numerous journeys to document the conditions of the war.

With the firelight flickering on Joey’s honest face and his shadow dancing on the ruined wall behind him, Danie and Petrus learnt about the homestead that was no longer, about conditions in the camp, and that their loved ones were still alive. Hurriedly both of them wrote letters for Joey to take to the camp. Then they and Joey agreed upon times and places to meet again, to receive the women’s replies and later communications, like where Joey could conceal urgent messages in case of emergencies — with signs that there were messages hidden in specific spots. Danie and Petrus sat questioning Joey till the darkness began to fade and they had to mount and ride off again before dawn broke.

There was plenty that Joey could tell them, but he made no mention of Magrieta’s pregnancy nor of the rumours running rife in the camp about her and Captain Brooks. He failed to mention not only the captain's lucrative request for “good behaviour" but also other things, like the admiration he could not bring himself to taint with a blabbermouth.

They had ridden through the last dimness of the night when Danie wondered aloud: “Do you think we can trust him? Is he not going to lead the English to us?”

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before he could reach us. I trust him.”

“Why?” “He shows when he is lying.”

“Was he lying about that dinner?”

“I don’t think so. The whole thing is altogether too implausible for someone like him to be able to suck out of his thumb. In any case, he wants to keep the goodwill of the Van Wyks and he wouldn’t lie about things that can easily be clarified after the war. We’re sure to hear later.”

It was only Danie who would hear later. Much, much later. *** Soldaat said they should shift, and pretty quickly too, things were getting hot. More and more Khaki patrols were about and the folk on farms where he had been poaching and pilfering had long since realised that something was amiss. Twice already they had tried to forestall him at the chicken runs, and someone had removed his snares, too — twice — , which meant that somebody knew about them. If Daantjie was not prepared to shift, he would have to fend for himself. However, moving was not going to be easy: on the mountain side, there were ever more Khakis and less and less to steal or buy, while on the other side, towards the plains, you could easily be spotted from afar off, even though the Khakis had now become more complacent there. Their food was finished and the last house that Soldaat had broken into had now also been burnt down. They were hungry, but no longer dared shoot because there were too many people about. Even the snares remained empty — Soldaat suspected that they were being secretly cleared. They no longer had any coffee or tobacco at all. The

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dried maize kernels that they boiled up whole for hominy were finished too. They had no option but to move.

So they headed off into unknown territory where, again and again, they had to make a very quick escape from the wellorganised English and the unpredictably scattered Boers.

Nowhere was there any food to be found. Their hunger grew worse. Dire necessity drove them back again to the more dangerous but familiar area, where Soldaat might be able to muster more help from friends and relatives.

Late one afternoon — they had just started riding in search of another hiding place — they spotted Joey in the distance and watched him unharnessing his horses and pitching camp.

When they could make out who it was, Soldaat suggested they wait until dark and then rob him, but Daantjie saw a different possibility, convinced as he was that anyone who had known him only slightly would not recognise him in his new guise.

Soldaat was not so sure, until he took another good look at Daantjie.

There was very, very little left of the fussily groomed showoff Daantjie van Wyk: a dense growth of beard and moustache covered nearly all of his face, his greasy hair hung down to his shoulders, the gap between his front teeth was conspicuous, his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. As for his body, it was like dried leather: what was left of his clothes hung like sacks covering his bony skeleton. Everything he had on was in tatters anyway and his body odour was overpowering. The proud horse he had ridden to war was staggering, emaciated, uncombed, its winter coat shaggy, its eyes bulging. Nothing of Flash Daantjie van Wyk was left. Nothing at all.

Eventually Soldaat gave in and agreed that they could take a chance and approach Joey. They were in no doubt that they would be able to intimidate the squint photographer into 365

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giving them food. A man alone in open country does not easily refuse armed visitors something to eat. Just in case, Soldaat would disguise himself with the tooth-ache scarf he used on his pillaging raids. He would not understand English.

This was how Koot Duvenhage, that trusty scout, arrived at Joey’s campsite, with his batman, Alfred.

As far as Joey was concerned, all visitors to his campsites were unwelcome. You couldn’t cook and eat anything without having their hungry eyes staring your food out of your mouth and your drink out of your throat. If you did dare give them any food, they hung around you like stray cats till you had nothing left, no matter what direction you travelled in. One time he drove around for a solid week with the same people coincidentally pitching up at his fire every evening. So you have no option but to stay as hungry and thirsty as your visitors until they decide there’s nothing to scavenge and head off again. Sharing in times of scarcity, Joey decided, was harmful. That was a lesson he had learnt during the siege.

What you’ve got in your bottle and food basket, you conceal. In any case, all strangers’ intentions were suspect. In wartime, conditions were tailor-made for murders and robberies, and nobody would give a tinker’s curse about them once the war was over. So you greet them politely and you observe each other very carefully.

There was something familiar about the man who introduced himself as Koot Duvenhage and spoke such good English. His batman Alfred kept to one side with the horses.

Joey noticed Duvenhage staring fixedly at the kettle on the little fire, as he crouched down on his haunches with the German rifle across his skinny knees. Ah, so that was why he was here. Coffee. Food. His food and coffee. With a rifle across his knees. Then you’d better just hold your peace.

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But, thought Joey, I know this man. Maybe he was one of the group of Boers he had photographed on his first trip to Kimberley. Perhaps it was just the deprivation he had suffered.

Yet there was something recognisable about the voice as well.

Better give him coffee — there’s a rifle across his knees.

Joey gave in: “I’m just going to make some coffee.”

Duvenhage eagerly accepted and said something to his batman in that rasping lingo of theirs. The man with the toothache scarf brought him two mugs. Oh, so he also has to get coffee, does he? thought Joey. But he would have to hold his peace here, else they would seize all his provisions, including Captain Brooks’ liquor ration.

But he knew this man! From where, though?

Conversations always started in the same way: who are you and what are you doing here?

So Joey explained that he was actually a totally independent photographer, covering the war as a photo-journalist. He was not in the service of anybody: he treated Boer and Brit equally.

That was why, when he encountered them, both parties tolerated him. He could take Mr Duvenhage’s photograph tomorrow morning if he would like that.

That was absolutely not what Duvenhage wanted. Because, so he said, a highly respected Boer spy like himself, who gathered his information clad in rags — and the Englishman could run and tell his superiors that if he wanted to, because by tomorrow morning he would be a long way from here — would not want to have photographs of his face pinned up on the British army’s Most Wanted notice-boards. Despite the fact that newspapers in England had published his image with accounts of the outstanding manner in which he led the Boer forces.

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that Joey Drew wondered to himself: But isn’t this …? Could it be?

Joey asked: “Haven’t we met before somewhere?”

“No,” said Duvenhage, “that’s impossible.” He would have recognised the photographer. In any case he operated mainly nearer to the Cape Colony. He came originally from the distant Karoo. Did Mr Drew know where that was?

No, Mr Drew did not, so he must have been mistaken. Mr Drew did not say that he had observed that when the batman brought the mugs, his broken shoes showed that he had only one big toe. Nor that Mr Duvenhage’s missing front tooth had confirmed the recollection he had suddenly had.

It was him! What on earth was going on? And why? With tears in his eyes, the father of the man in front of him had shown Joey the knife with his son’s last blood on it. That night, while Joey and Danie van Wyk had been drinking brandy and unlocking the deepest cellars of their hearts to each other — before his brother came galloping up — the father had spoken of the ideals he had cherished for his son and the family name.

About the son’s heartbreaking fainting fits under fire. The father’s regret about his misplaced fury in the face of the defect which the war had revealed in his son. And how, in the fury of his disappointment, he had knocked out his son’s front tooth because of a black man’s toe that he refused to cut off. His profound thankfulness that his son had eventually been able to die a hero’s death! … Joey had also seen the stricken look in the widowed eyes of that most divinely beautiful woman; how this man’s mother, his aunt, his sisters, had broken down and sobbed as they mourned him.

Joey remembered how Daantjie van Wyk had despised and taunted him on the farm, but that was the least of things. What rose up before him as he recognised the man in front of him 368

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were Danie and Dorothea van Wyk’s heartache and Magrieta’s eyes. And Fienatjie Minter as well. For Fienatjie had dreamt that Daantjie was not dead. In his disbelief Joey had taught her the word ghost.

Something awoke in Joey Drew which he did not recognise and could never later explain. Something like hate. Malice.

Something demonic. Something akin to the pleasure of torture.

Something like that. Something evil.

He got up and walked across to his cart and fetched the whiskey bottle from the wagon chest, came back to the fire and poured himself and Duvenhage a drink. He did hold out the bottle to Alfred, but he shook his head.

Alfred saw that Duvenhage was drinking too avidly: “Don’t go knocking it back like that, Koot Duvenhage, your belly has been empty for two days.”

“Leave me alone, Alfred. It’s years since I had a drink.”

When he put down the mug, Joey poured more: “With the compliments of Captain Brooks.”

“To Captain Brooks, may he live long and lose the war!”

Joey did not keep track of how many times he poured.

Alfred tried to warn Duvenhage three times, but Duvenhage kept on drinking to Captain Brooks’ health. Until Joey decided it was time to pounce. “You know, Mr Duvenhage, you remind me strongly of someone I used to know, a Van Wyk.” “Probably a relative. … I have distant relatives with similar features. Including some Van Wyks.”

“The Van Wyk I’m talking belongs to a wealthy Boer family.

He had the most beautiful wife I’ve ever seen in my life.

Magrieta van Wyk.” “Don’t know them.”

You would remember Magrieta van Wyk if you had ever seen her. Gorgeous. Unforgettably gorgeous.”

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“Sorry, never seen her.”

“Hang on, let me show you.”

Joey fetched his portfolio and brought it to the fire, took out the mounted photograph of Magrieta that he had so meticulously tinted and showed it to Duvenhage. “Beautiful, hey?”

Duvenhage’s response was: “I’ll buy the photograph off you.” Joey noticed his hands trembling.

“Sorry, it’s not for sale. Everybody who sees it wants it. I sold the last one for five pounds — five pounds! Can you believe it? — to the same Captain Brooks whose health you are now drinking. He just wouldn’t give it back to me. I reckon if I had asked for fifty pounds he would still have bought it. … But of course he also had other reasons for wanting the thing.”

Joey waited for Duvenhage’s reaction. The hollow eyes suddenly looked up sharply: “What reasons?”

Don’t answer yet, Joey! Make the bastard sweat. “She’s now a widow, this Magrieta van Wyk. The man you so resemble was killed in the war. Another drink?”

The mug Duvenhage held out to Joey was shaking. “A widow?”

“Widow …”

Duvenhage’s questioning now took on an urgency: “What are the captain’s other reasons … for wanting to pay so much for a portrait like this?”

Joey, however, chattered on: “I don’t gossip. The man has been good to me, he lets me have his own liquor ration. It wouldn’t be right for me to reveal his secrets.”

Duvenhage, even more urgently: “Just tell me what reasons he had for wanting the thing.”

“People talk.”

“What do they say?”

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Duvenhage persisted even more vehemently but Joey seemed not to notice the insistence: “Oh, just the way people talk.”

“About Magrieta van Wyk and Captain Brooks?”

“Well, yes, actually …”

“Well, what?”

“Oh, nothing really …”

Duvenhage’s frustration erupted in fury. He flew up: “God Almighty, Englishman, what are you telling me half-finished stories for? What are they saying about Magrieta van Wyk and the bloody captain?”

“Gently, gently, Mr Duvenhage — after all, it’s none of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business!”

From where the horses were tethered Alfred cautioned: “Control yourself, Koot. You’re going to fuck up everything!”

Duvenhage pulled himself together: “It’s my business, as a fighter for the nation, when our women collude with the enemy! It’s a matter of security. That’s why it’s my business! So tell me before you get hurt. Is he courting her?”

“She’s a widow …and a man is just a man, after all …”

“Is he courting her?”

“It’s actually a bit worse than that …”

Hesitation now crept into Duvenhage’s anxious question: “What?”

“Everybody knows …”

“What does everybody know?”

Joey could see that between the drink and his jealousy, Duvenhage was becoming reckless. He was towering over Joey, his eyes glowering, the knuckles white on his balled fists, as the words burst from him loud and furious: “What? What does everybody know?”

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“About the piano playing …”

“Piano playing? But you’ve just said …”

Joey dished up his story slowly. Spoonful by spoonful.

About how the beautiful Magrieta van Wyk went to the captain late at night when he returned and called to her from his tent, playing all kinds of tunes on a looted piano; about how he went on playing, so nobody could say there was anything improper going on between the two. The sentries at the gate said they did not know how the two of them could keep the piano going while they were doing their thing, but every now and again the captain did lose the tune.

“What do they do?”

“The man-and-woman thing …” Joey said. “What else?” and saw the flood of jealousy contorting Duvenhage’s face, his racing breathing obvious in his trembling beard and moustache. That was when Joey announced: “The affair must have started a while ago. Everybody can see she is pretty far gone.”

“Is she expecting? From him?”

“Yes.” Duvenhage vanished. It was Daantjie van Wyk who stumbled away from the fire abruptly, bent double and vomited violently.

Joey knew, to his vast satisfaction: that nausea is not the result of the brandy, you bastard!

Soldaat wanted to help Daantjie onto his horse but the shock and the sudden drink, after days without food, had set in.

Daantjie went limp. Very much, thought Soldaat, like that black snake business they had experienced when the bullets came flying. There was nothing to be done about it.

Soldaat watched the Englishman preparing food but refused to eat any. Eventually he simply covered Daantjie with his 372

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blanket, unsaddled the horses properly and hobbled them, and then fell asleep beside Daantjie.

He woke next morning with the sun on his face. The Englishman was ready to drive away but was first trying to photograph the sleeping Daantjie. Soldaat jumped up, shook his head vigorously and rushed in front of the camera.

Joey gave in straightaway, shrugged his shoulders and put the camera back on the cart. He had no appetite for a wrestling match over his precious apparatus — and anyway he had already taken the first photograph before Soldaat woke up.

It was not a very good photo. The sun had only just come up, so the light was falling at a flat angle across the landscape.

Joey wanted a clear picture of Daantjie’s face. He shifted position so that the long, long morning shadows of the photographer and his tripod would fall across Daantjie’s body, not his face, but not much was clearly distinguishable on the final product. For instance, the splodges and blobs of vomit still stuck to Daantjie’s beard showed only as dull white spots. The gaping mouth with the missing tooth was disproportionately large in the beard. The eyes were closed, unfortunately. It was not a good image of Daantjie van Wyk. But what was clear on the photograph — though Joey missed it — was just how long and far the shadow of Joey Drew, Photographer, would stretch across Daantjie van Wyk’s life. The shattering moment on the evening before it was taken, when the acid vomit of a supposed truth crashed unstoppably through the freshly cracked crust of his growing lie, showed only as indistinct blotches in the man’s unkempt beard and could be read as something different. But the long, sharp shadow of Joey and his tripod would gradually also go lithe as a snake — writhing and intertwining, mating like snakes with “that business” of Daantjie’s. It would stay with Daantjie 373

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forever, besmirching his marital bed, like black stove polish that smelt of paraffin, and demonically transmogrifying in all sorts of places. It would become the dark after-taste of humiliation stuck in the far graveyard at the back of his throat.

Sitting sideways on the front seat of his car, Danie’s heart was pounding again with the jealousy that he had lived with all these years. For at a distance he could still watch her: a woman who should have been old and should have looked old. Certainly, her hair was white with some grey in it, but her body was still slender, and for her age her walk was still as supple as a willow stem, goddammit! Like a gazelle, he used to tell her, before the war came along and buggered everything up. She is still so damned beautiful people are constantly remarking on it.

“Whore!” is both his charge and his defence. He says it out loud, so he can hear himself say it, in an attempt to silence the memory of what happened in the days after that cross-eyed photographer blurted out the tale of her infidelity.

It doesn’t work, though At first, when Soldaat woke him that morning, he did not know where he was, but the sun was up already and Soldaat hurried to get him up onto his horse. They were out on the plains: they needed to find a dry gully to hide in, and urgently.

That day, Daantjie’s flight was different from on other days. He drank all the water they had with them, so carefully rationed in that arid country — both his own and Soldaat’s — without even asking Soldaat. Suddenly, he just did not care whether anyone saw them or not. The cross-eyed photographer’s affirmative “Yes” hung over everything. She was expecting the Englishman’s child. The images which suspicion and jealousy conjured up in him once he began to realise that Magrieta regarded herself as a widow, rose up in all kinds of guises to 374

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torment him. A thousand times he saw her naked body shuddering in ecstasy while she and the Englishman were making babies. It was unbearable, because it was no longer imagination. Hopeful denial was no longer possible. Castles in the air that might have been able to render a different outcome were beyond the reach of even the most improbable of dreams.

All that first day in the sun, between the dry clay banks of the gully, he said not a word. He did not notice that he was no longer hungry; he did not realise that at that moment he did not care what happened. All that remained was the emptiness of knowing. It was still too soon to derive the hollow comfort of pitying himself, or to soothe his pain with the balm of accusing her, or to cherish thoughts of vengeance.

Soldaat let Daantjie be. When evening fell, he led him back along the way they had come because he knew where there was a spring. Beside a small pool between steep banks they spent an almost wordless night. Soldaat stayed awake with Daantjie, afraid of the madness in the man’s eyes. All the night brought Soldaat was a single catfish on his line. Daantjie refused to eat any. Soldaat would never forget his scream, his voice somewhere between tears and threats: “I’m going to fuck that Englishman right out of her! Whore!”

Then he was crying. Like a helpless, trapped, tortured animal caught in a wolf trap, he groaned and howled till his voice grew hoarse and gave in. All that came out of him after that were hollow sobs as he cowered down, like when the bullets had come whistling past him, and fell asleep.

It was two days before he asked: “Did that cross-eyed little shit realise anything?”

“He wanted to take a photograph of you in your sleep.”

“And did he?”

“I stopped him.”

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“Oh!” “I don’t know if he realised anything. In your drunkenness you went overboard about the portrait. He must have got the message. Maybe he did, because I saw him going back the way he had come.”

“If he did, then let him go and spread the news, so that Magrieta will hear what she has done.”

That Magrieta should know that he was alive was not the worst. In fact, with a few minor adjustments, it could be made to bolster his lie when he finally returned.

Daantjie got out of the car and turned his back on the cemetery. He could not bear to watch Magrieta’s betrayal any longer — she was still standing there, lost in thought, on a spot where nothing but a few low shrubs were growing. But he could not stop Bella Steenkamp from making her appearance in his recollections.

After the distressing encounter with Joey Drew, he and Soldaat had returned to Bella. Right through the English swarming in the hills between them. It was Daantjie, tired of riding around, starving and constantly ducking and hiding, who insisted they go back there. He would return and make his peace with her.

“How?” asked Soldaat.

“Like this.”

“With her?”

“Yes.” “Do you think you’ll get it up this time?”

“I’ll shut my eyes and imagine she’s Magrieta.”

By then almost a month had passed since Bella had chased them away. If she had not cooled down yet, they could rob her anyway. They knew the place and she was unarmed.

On the previous occasion they had spent almost three weeks 376

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with Bella. When they first arrived at her place, Daantjie told her his Koot Duvenhage story. He was invited in and they were given food.

She must be dead by now, he thought. She was over fifty when the war was raging.

What was it about Bella Steenkamp that was now forcing its way into his memories? He remembered her body. She was everything that Magrieta was not — short, fat and hairy. Long black hair on her legs, dense heavy eyebrows close together, tufts under her arms, a trail of hair up her belly — from the overgrown bush right to her deep navel — a circle of long hairs round each nipple on her heavy breasts, a dark shadow on her upper lip that felt prickly when you kissed her. Grey inbetween. That is why he had not been able to and that was why she had chased them away.

Her romantic overtures extended over several days. First her insistence that they stay over and rest. That suited Daantjie because his Duvenhage lie was that he was waiting for a despatch. After that Bella invited him to come round in the evenings, which gradually ended later and later at night. The Bella came up with long sob-stories about a husband who had never treated her as she would have liked and who had disappeared years before. Soon she insisted that Daantjie sleep on a bed inside the house, because even if sleeping outdoors near the horses was safer, Soldaat could see to that on his own.

And anyway her dogs would bark. On the second night that Daantjie was to sleep inside, she heated water on the hearth and dragged in a tin bath. He was supposed to bath, but hardly had he stepped out of his clothes than she appeared in front of him, virtually naked, and put her crude proposal directly, like someone who had never learnt the niceties of romance. They went to bed and tried, but he was unable to rise to the occasion.

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Impotence was something he had never before experienced but he assured her that it was not her fault — more likely just the long stretches of hunger. Bella, however, burst out in irrational fury: a torrent of vituperative malice flowed from her frustrated mouth about the ox that he was. She could tell a mile off that his supposed scouting and despatch riding was all a big lie, she hissed. She yelled that his thing hung there limp because she was ugly, because she was old … and she chased him out of the house. He had better get going or she would report him to whatever English or Boer troops were passing in the road down below.

He spent that night beside the horses and before dawn the next morning they were on their way.

After the encounter with Joey and while they were riding back to Bella’s, Daantjie and Soldaat wondered why her house was still standing. Probably because it was hidden so deep up in the cleft in the hills and disuse had allowed the track up to it to become overgrown.

They reached her homestead one evening. Daantjie knocked at the door and called from outside that he had returned because he could not forget her. She opened the door and gave him to understand that he had remained in her thoughts too.

During all their wrestling on her bed, almost always in the dark, Daantjie imagined that it was Magrieta that he had hold of as he was relentlessly pounding his vengeance into her.

Bella washed and mended his clothes and gave him and Soldaat food without any explanation.

It was Bella who eventually told them that the war was over.

This, after she had again been to fetch provisions from a place whose location she would never divulge. All they knew about her secret store was that they were forbidden to accompany her there and that she always took a pack horse up the mountain, 378

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not down the track to the road. When Daantjie and Soldaat said good-bye to her, she stood beside Daantjie’s horse and thanked him quietly, lovingly and honestly “for a stroke of luck”, adding that she would remember him to her dying day and confessing that she had never had a husband. She did not believe what he told her, because otherwise he would have had to take the road a long while since. But it didn’t matter. She just wished she was younger for then she would have begged a child of him. The hills were a lonely place.

For the final months of the war Daantjie earned himself and Soldaat a place to stay almost every night by making somebody happy.

Daantjie turned round and walked back. Magrieta had already returned and was sitting waiting in the car.

The only words he said to Magrieta, before walking over to tell Martie to finish off so they could leave, were biting and cruel: “Well, have you finished hankering after the Englishman?”

Her reply came up, as it always did, from the thing that had lain between them now for forty years: “Where were you in the war, Daantjie van Wyk?”

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Twelve “Joey Drew,” the major said so loudly that he startled himself.

“Major?” asked the museum lady, busy sorting papers three tables away from him.

“Just a name,” he assured her, feeling slightly embarrassed, before getting on with his work again. “Just a name …” But Joey Drew had been haunting his mind all morning since he had come across the photograph. This was almost certainly the one that Joey had had a conscience about.

This morning again, just like yesterday, he had sat with a paperknife, struggling to prise apart the photographs in one bundle that had stuck together in the fire. The museum lady said that was the only option. They had tried various other methods with photographs that had arrived there scorched and stuck together, but even soaking them in a variety of fluids to loosen them had done more harm than good. So he was having to work with a magnifying glass, eyebrow tweezers and a scalpel — doing it with one and a half hands and old eyes.

Young people like her did not understand his difficulty.

Still, this had to be the photograph that Joey’s conscience had plagued him about. Odd, because Joey was not one to let himself be reproached by what little was left of his conscience.

Joey Drew. Odd little fellow. Major Brooks recalled how he had encountered Joey again for the first time since their paths had diverged after the war. His doctors had ordered him to find somewhere to recuperate after yet another piece of shrapnel had been removed from his back. This was his third 380

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surgical operation since being wounded in the Great War. His hand had healed — or at least no longer suppurated so sporadically — but with his back he had had to seek help when all of a sudden a painful red swelling came up round one of the old scars on his back. The pain and discomfort were tolerable, but as time passed he began to worry about a lameness in his legs. The inflammation, so the doctors said, was in a dangerous spot — it would be better to operate before the trouble spread to the spine and affected the bone marrow. So they had operated, nursed him, and sent him away to rest. They indicated that there were places that offered special off-peak tariffs and auxiliary services where war veterans to recuperate, and arranged accommodation for him accordingly.

So he and Joey had ended up in the same place in Somerset — he, legitimately, as a wounded veteran; Joey more likely semi-legitimately, for, as Philp Brooks discovered later, the regimental photographer from Kimberley days had shown his tattered letter of appointment, insisted on military treatment, averred that his place was among the officers, and asserted that his lung complaint had not originated in the first instance in the mines he had worked in, but in the siege and the host of battles which he, the regimental photographer, had had to document. Those were the times when he had inhaled too many gases from the exploding Boer cannon shells — in the course of making “gruelling sacrifices, and while doing more than his duty!” In the front lines, “the very front lines, in the face of death”, he, Joey Drew, had documented for posterity the mighty deeds of the Empire. That was where his coughing had come from, not the black-lung of Welsh coal mines where Fate had later forced him to labour. The old major grinned. Joey Drew could lie so skilfully that you believed him, even when you knew he was not telling the truth. Even the frankly 381

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disbelieving authorities must have believed enough of his story for them to treat him like a genuine war veteran.

But when it came to the photograph, Joey’s conscience tormented him. And the war would not leave him either. On the morning of their first meeting Major Brooks was sitting outdoors, leaning sideways in his chair, trying to make the pain bearable. He recognised Joey as the man came shuffling up to him, even smaller now and emaciated by TB. The hem of the dressing gown the resort must have given him had been roughly hitched up to prevent it from dragging on the floor and his hands stuck out of sleeves rolled back from the wrists.

The legs and arms of the striped pyjamas were also rolled up.

The slippers were padded at both the toe and the heel ends to keep them on the man’s all too small feet — but Joey could only move in them if he curled his toes underneath, walked on his heels and dragged his feet slightly. Major Brooks watched this little figure come shuffling towards him across the redpolished veranda. Joey’s thin, white, blue-veined ankles seemed to form a rather uncertain link between the rolled-up pyjama trousers and the lumpy slippers, almost as though he was floating as he shuffled — if such a thing was conceivable.

It was probably Joey’s fate always to have to wear clothes that were too big for him. Like that long jacket with the cut-off sleeves that he used to wear, winter and summer. The only garments that had ever fitted him, Joey once remarked bitterly, were the uniform that he had had to spend a night, a whole night! in Kimberley, shortening, so that it could be worn for one morning, one morning! That, and the tailored suit with which he had wanted to impress Magrieta van Wyk and make Fienatjie Minter proud. Sometimes a maudlin Joey would weep about the time when he had thought he was Joey Drew, Esq. — a gentleman in a well-fitting tailored suit; itinerant conscience 382

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of the Empire. But that was before Betjie-the-Whore, and before the Boer Hans Bester’s dead eyes started staring up at him out of the grave.

On the morning that he and the major first encountered each other again after so many years, his hair was already noticeably thinner, his beard sparser, his squinting eyes deeper in their sockets. The characteristically thin skin of TB sufferers was taut across the facial bones and the bridge of his nose; round his mouth and at the corners of his eyes were the tiny wrinkles caused by the relentless emaciation of consumption. Joey had deteriorated since the major had last seen him. He was out of breath after the very short walk and was coughing.

Tuberculosis, and no mistake.

“Captain Brooks!”

“Major Brooks, actually … honourably discharged as medically incapacitated.”

Joey was embarrassed at having once again committed a social gaffe in the presence of the upper classes. For a moment, he tasted again the class difference between himself and the major : on his tongue, in his accent, which he would ordinarily not have noticed except when he had to assume the gentry’s ladi-dah in front of the authorities to get himself admitted among the officers. Brooks was starved for company and was only too willing to talk about that other war. He started a conversation immediately. In fact, he started several conversations at once, because there was a real bond between him and the cross-eyed photographer: the South African war was still part of both of them, and just as Magrieta van Wyk had continued to live so clearly in the major ’s thoughts, so Fienatjie Minter’s eyes and how she would say “Joey” still kept coming to the fore in Joey’s mind, always leaving him moved.

Sitting at his small museum table, the major thought: the 383

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yearning that both of them had felt for so long was focused on the same end. That was why he could not get enough of the little fellow. Also because the man had known the Van Wyks so well. That was why. Because Joey Drew could talk about Magrieta van Wyk. How did their conversation get round to her photograph? He must remember and note it down, even if only for himself, before he wrote the history of the photograph for the museum. All of a sudden, halfway through their conversation, Joey announced enigmatically: “There’s a pub behind here!”

Their accommodation belonged to some or other benevolent organisation that would not countenance a liquor outlet on the premises. That was made perfectly clear to everyone upon arrival: no liquor in the rooms or on the property, no visits from members of the opposite sex. (An unattached lady or two had occasionally spent a night in a vacant room.) Before being permitted to share a room, married couples were required to show satisfactory evidence of their marital state. No children or dogs were allowed among the men recuperating. Other weaknesses were catered for in the form of a smoking room with huge ashtrays on every table and arm-rest. Capacious spittoons for the use of those who chewed tobacco were placed all over the uncarpeted floor of the room. Elsewhere the institution was chaste, the carpets were unstained by child, dog, cigar ash, pipe oil — or the brown stripes of spit with which less competent expectorators occasionally altered the patterns on the mats. The beds were intended for the relief of pain, not for sinful pleasures. As a consequence of painful recuperation and abstinence, the mattresses had lasted for years.

Day-matron Williams presided over all these moral commandments with a sharp and suspicious eye. Which was 384

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probably why Joey had announced the existence of the pub in a whisper.

To the museum lady’s quiet surprise, the major was grinning as he thought what a strange couple he and Joey must have made on their trips to the pub: Joey in his dressing gown, shuffling along on the heels of his slippers; himself, without his military dignity, walking crookedly on account of the shooting pains — two broken reeds on a short pilgrimage through the dimly lit lane between two buildings so close together they were almost touching. What tickled him was their naughty transgression of the hypocritical boundary between pious abstinence and the fun of boisterous sinfulness. It was only at night that they could slip away, after the eight o’clock curfew insisted upon by the management. On their first night out, Joey had already known the way: first through the tidied, sparkling clean kitchen, out the back door, down the lane and then into the pub by the back door, the kitchen door key in his pocket.

Perhaps he should have known better, thought the major, for in the pub Joey was welcomed like an old friend and immediately informed that no further credit would be extended to him. Without the major’s prior consent, Joey indicated that his companion would pick up the tab for him, because his money from the mine would be arriving any day now. Was there ever any such money? The major doubted it but did not blame him: why should he, sitting in Bloemfontein so many years after Joey’s death, be bothered about a thing like that? Joey had been kind to him — that the old man freely acknowledged. Joey’s camera was not the only way of remembering: Joey himself had been part of the memory. For the major, at any rate.

In her nocturnal guise, the stern day-matron, Williams, was loud and half-paralytically tight, with her hair piled high and 385

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her neckline cut low, powdered even more heavily than by day and now heavily made-up and bathed in clouds of perfume..

“And her?” he asked Joey on that first visit.

“Drinks like a fish. And when she knows you know, you can just carry on. The pious face is only for the Board, the Bishop and the Donors. Their kind don’t come in here.”

So Brooks knew that he would be paying for both of them.

But it was cheap enough. As always, he himself drank sparingly and Joey’s liver and lungs did not allow him to process very much nowadays. He had reached that blessed stage where getting drunk happened quickly and did not cost much. That suited the major because inebriation served the cause of honesty and openness, though it did make the trip back after closing time rather difficult, even when Matron Williams was weaving alongside them, holding onto Joey’s other arm.

How would he describe his nights with Joey Drew? Trips down memory lane? Pilgrimages back to South Africa? They never talked about anything else. It came back to them all over again: the war, regret, Magrieta van Wyk, Fienatjie Minter, Betjie-the-Whore, the people of those times. And conscience, too, for as the nights wore on and maudlin melancholy welled up in his squint eyes, even in the midst of his recounting of the injustices done him by Fate and his fellow-man, Joey sometimes showed signs of conscience. Especially about his complicity in all that that photo revealed. They did not, of course, have the photograph with them then, but Joey gave so accurate a description of it that the major was in no doubt that it was the one he now had before him.

The photograph showed the Van Wyk family in the camp.

He recognised them all: Magrieta, obviously, the old grandfather, the elderly spinster whose piano he had played, 386

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the mother, as well as the woman who had poisoned the turncoat. He recognised the younger woman holding the baby, too. And here was the little girl that Joey was so smitten with.

Joey knew all their names. He did not.

He drew the museum lady’s attention, showed her the picture and asked: “Do you see anything odd about this photograph?”

She looked but did not notice anything unusual, but asked him please to call her by her name.

“And that is?”

“Joey,” she said. “Joey Wessels.”

“Curious,” he said. “That is curious.”

“Major?”

“The photographer’s name was also Joey.”

“Oh! Is it a man’s name, too?”

“Occasionally. What is odd about this photograph, Joey?”

“I can’t say I see anything, Major …”

His aged fingernail moved across the photograph to the face of the little boy on Nellie’s lap: “That child is dead,” he said.

“It was a very long time ago … How old did he get?”

“He was already dead when the photograph was taken.”

She looked at him and he was grateful for the interest in her young eyes.

“Shall I tell you how I know?”

“Please, Major, if you don‘t mind — I’ll make a note of it.”

She turned the photograph over: “The names are on the back.”

The major looked. That was not Joey’s scrawl.

“It’s her handwriting. Magrieta van Wyk’s.”

She realised: that must be the woman he spent so long staring at. She could not help fishing a little: “Can you still recognise her writing after all these years! Have you written to 387

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each other?”

“No, she wrote me only one letter. It’s a long story. I prefer not to talk about it.” He could not really tell her that he had read that one letter a thousand times. And sometimes still did.

It was lunch time. They were sitting outside on one of the benches on the museum lawn nd he was telling her about the dead child in the photograph. He had let the cup of tea in his sound hand get cold. She saw that he could not stop his recitation, so she went on listening to the stream of details from the old man. Why had the memory of it all been dammed up within him so long? What wall had suddenly given way? It was only days later, after many conversations and newlyrecalled details, that he confessed: “No-one is interested any more. One simply bores them. So I stopped talking. You’re the first one who has wanted to listen.” He told her about Joey, the squint photographer, and of how well Joey had known the Van Wyk family. About the days after Magrieta’s confinement, when Joey had spent days sitting with her in front of her tent, hearing all about these people.

After her confinement? “Did she have a baby in the camp?

You said she was a widow …”

“Stillborn.”

The major looked away, suddenly distracted. Joey Wessels thought: he’s staring into the past. There’s more here than he is prepared to say. Was the baby his? She would find out.

They returned in silence to their worktables in the museum and the major did not resume his tale till they were back there again. Now, though, he was speaking rather faster, as though trying to steer the talk away from the dead baby. He mentioned the young mother, Nellie, whose name he had only just learned, and her baby, little Jakop who had now also acquired a name. Joey Drew had said the Van Wyks had summoned him 388

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urgently to come and take a family photograph.

As in a military communiqué, the major gave his account with measured, abbreviated precision.

The photographer had duly gone. The young mother herself was very ill. They had dressed the little body and opened his eyes for the photograph. Drew had later asked Magrieta why.

Her response was that Nellie had insisted. Her husband needed to see what his baby son looked like. They had asked Drew a couple of hours earlier to come and take the photograph. The baby was already dying but not yet dead. So the child in the photograph had only just died. The body was still limp. Look, the mother was having to support the little head. The young mother had known the child was dying when she arranged for the photograph. She herself died three days later and she and her baby were buried alongside each other.

She had been too ill to attend the baby’s funeral. Beside the child’s grave they kept the next one in the row open for her.

The Van Wyks had enough influence in the camp for that kind of concession to be made. The major neglected to mention that that influence had come from him. Instead he said: “That extraordinary grave is still there.”

“Extraordinary?”

“I’ll get there, if your patience holds out,” he said, “because that was where I was personally involved.”

Joey Wessels could see that, for the first time since she had met him, the major ’s military reserve was crumbling. His unexpected word resounded in the open space of the Museum room: “But it’s all so cold! Everything is so damned cold!”

Brooks got up so abruptly that his chair fell over backwards.

He picked it up with his good hand and banged it down on the floor.

“Major!”

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“Everything gets cold! Like a corpse! Everything decays in the silences of forgetting! Everything, everything, everything … everything we tire ourselves out for, everything we believe and hope and care about! Everything disappears into the void.

We don’t know what that young mother, Nellie, felt. We don’t know, and so we don’t care, or we try to tell ourselves we understand. As time passes, memory and compassion fade away into nothingness … the distances stretch out too far. Who the hell cares what happened to a single lump of flesh with a brain on top and a heart inside when only the hollows in the dry skeleton are left? In the Egyptian campaign we stoked the trains with mummy fires! And cooked our food on what remained of people who had once lived and striven and felt.

Do you know what? I set fire to homesteads, had livestock slaughtered, destroying everything I could, and carted people away to their deaths — Why? Because somewhere, authorities sitting round a table decided I should. They felt nothing — and they didn’t think for a moment what their victims would feel, because they were sitting looking at maps and reading cold reports. But we … we had to look them in the eye, until we learned, pretty quickly, not to, else our work would have become intolerable and we would have been rotten soldiers.

I’m telling you now about a young mother holding up a dead child in front of a camera so that her husband would one day see what he had looked like. But we cannot even begin to imagine what was going on in the depths of her soul. We cannot. Everything has got cold … And I may just tell you: it was Magrieta van Wyk who opened my eyes to the sufferings of other people … She did!”

With the assuredness of someone who had done it often, he extracted Magrieta’s photograph from the pile. “She!” “Was it her arguments that convinced you?”

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“No, her eyes …” He fell silent, feeling he had admitted too much, but he could not help adding: “And her pain …”

The old man recovered his composure, apologising: “Please forgive my outburst … but perhaps you will better understand my complicity in what happened to yet another member of the family after I had discovered among my enemies the highly sophisticated culture of the Van Wyks and Magrieta van Wyk’s beauty.”

Tentatively, she asked: “Was there a … relationship?”

“Not really …”

Which is what Joey Drew had persistently tried to find out.

The major’s old eyes were looking elsewhere now. Joey Wessels left him to his silence and returned to her table, without enquiring any further for, even if he had not said as much, the major was now back in the pub with Joey Drew. They were talking about the deaths in that war. Joey told him about the photograph, the sick young woman and her dead baby in front of his camera, and about the rest of the Minters. Joey said that Fate was involved in many human lives in wartime, but that it had sunk its fangs more deeply into the Minter family than in any others he knew of. Fate seemed to be picking on the Minters. Why, he could not say, but just about the entire family perished in the war. There was Nellie, the young daughter-inlaw, the little boy in the photograph, the two little girls, the old dad — and other members of the family as well, like the one in whose death he, Philip Brooks, was complicit. Suddenly the major had a clear memory of what Joey had told him. During Joey’s last visit to the farm after the war, Magrieta had told him that, according to her father-in-law, the old Minter fellow had died because of a single word. A word? He recalled that that was what Joey had said. Because of a word. Why had he not enquired further? He must have been too obsessed with 391

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Magrieta. One word? He would never know. *** On that day when a single word imploded fatally in among them, they had been compelled to watch the activities of the English soldiers from a considerable distance away. Petrus Minter had fixed the brass telescope that he had taken off a Tommy officer firmly on a rock and was watching what was going on. The Khakis were erecting wire fences.

“They’re setting up more and more camps,” he told Danie, beside him. We’ll have to get some wire-cutters. Where we used to be able to get through, there are now two block-houses.

Within sight of each other.”

“We’re on the wrong side of the wires. They are coming down the line from behind.”

“Then once it’s dark, we’ll have to slip through between them. They are sure to lay out their little piles of bedding so they can sleep. This whole bunch, front and rear, seem to be footslogging. I was hoping we might be able to take a horse or two from them. Our poor animals are reaching their end; it would be good for them to rest and graze for a bit. But all this lot have are draught mules.”

Danie looked at his son-in-law. They were all threadbare, all of them patched and dirty. Thin from eating very little and hard riding. Like their horses. They had not been into a shop in months, because the towns were all under occupation and the English had manned every possible place where they might have been able to obtain provisions. The landscape they rode through nowadays was a desolate one. Nowhere had any farmhouse or even a thatched hut been left standing. The coffee they drank was made of dried roots; they smoked dried leaves 392

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— more out of habit than desire. Only Petrus knew where the dynamite was hidden. He regularly fetched fresh supplies when his ran out or when he had to find the commandant to hear what was happening and what they should be doing. He carried the dynamite only in his own saddlebag because he said it was too dangerous for the others. He had returned the previous day from a meeting with the commandant.

“The commandant had plenty of orders for us but no food or tobacco,” he said when he returned. “Even they are struggling. Their horses are in even worse shape than ours.

They are all shooting with English guns now.” The night before, he had slipped through the long file of Khakis who were on their way towards them, like a bunch of beaters on a hunt. Just how he managed to do so was something you did not ask Petrus Minter.

There were only seven of them together: Petrus would not hear of a larger corps. Too many makes you visible, he said, and Danie, despite the fact that he and Jakop Minter were among a group doing the work of young men, managed to keep up. Doggedly. For even if Danie walked with a bit of a limp because of the wound in his hip, could still ride and shoot with the best of them. And it was his duty to write the reports of their reconnoitering trips. As and when they could, they sent these through to the authorities, their centurions-overhowever-many soldiers. But now the net was closing in on them: in front of them the Khakis were stringing yet more wellmanned fences from blockhouse to blockhouse while behind came the line of beaters. The “drive” they called it, so said the Boer spies among the English. That is what Petrus had heard at the last officers’ meeting. The strategy was apparently to drive them up against the fences and capture them.

They waited till dark. The low ridge they were on was part 393

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of a strip across the flat landscape of the plain and Petrus had chosen well. No-one would be able to see from far that there was a hollow on the top of the ridge. The horses could graze there unseen. But that night they would have to move because there was no water for the animals: they would first have to get down to the stream to water them. The stream lay between them and the railway line that Petrus had in mind. When he went to set dynamite, he generally went alone, or else took one of the young burghers with him, for creeping up on a railway line was a furtive business of stealthily moving in, setting the explosive, and stealthily moving out again — once the coming and going of the line sentries and the passage of the trains had been calculated as carefully as possible. The others would just have to wait for him at the stream.

Does Petrus simply not understand danger? Danie wondered. For behind them came the drive, and in front the fencing party was guarded by what seemed as far as they could tell about twenty men. But Petrus was calmly assembling his explosive machine: an old Martini-Henry, sawn off short, fore and aft, so that only the lock section and a short piece of the barrel were left. The train would set off the mechanism that pulled the trigger, so that the blow would ignite the dynamite.

Danie asked: “What do you need the line for?”

“Got it at the meeting, Pa. They say the Khakis have come up with a new thing now: they hitch a truck with Boer prisoners in it in front of the engine. Blow up the engine and you kill Boers.”

“Bastards!”

“So when it is set off, the explosion should go off under about the second or third carriage. But my difficulty is that a line as long as this one will stretch. The detonation must be delayed and I’m afraid that if the line stretches, it won’t pull 394

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the trigger. If you pull it taut, you detonate the dynamite at the spot where you’ve set it, because you’re just not going to know how taut to draw the line.”

“Wire?”

“Wire’s got all kinds of twists that will show and might just draw tight. This old Martini is very stiff.”

Danie cocked the piece of the rifle and tested it. “It is very stiff. Must be its age, and we haven’t got any oil. What about a short fuse?”

“I got a few short pieces with the detonators, but I don‘t know how to light the thing once the train has detonated it … I haven’t got any kind of spring-like thing that could make a little bundle of matches scrape against a strike-patch.

Nowadays the trains all travel by day, so the match-heads should be hard enough again after the dew dries.” They sat pondering, trying to devise something that would start a fuse burning once the train had detonated the mechanism.

Jakop Minter sat to one side, pounding some white-salted dried springbok biltong for their lunch. He would bring it to them in a moment or two. That, and water from the stream in English water bottles, was all they had to eat. They did not even make their substitute coffee because fires caused smoke.

So they were thankful for the water from the stream which helped quench their thirst after the salty biltong. Their maize meal was finished and they had been riding around for over a week with the ten-pound bag of coarse-ground meal that they wanted to bake bread with but the drive left them too little time to stop and make anything other than hasty scones baked in the hot ashes of twig fires. The English had difficulty killing game and even though the herds of antelope had been seriously thinned out, the English were simply not capable of shooting all the panicked antelopes. They were driving more 395

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and more of the game up against the fences, though, and shooting numbers of the poor things there. Still, there was something for the pot here and there, provided you could find a spot where a rifle shot would not bring the entire British Empire charging down upon you. Petrus had kept two food stores in burnt out ruins to make biltong in, but this was now the last of it because someone had discovered one of his places and stolen all the biltong as well as their little bag of salt.

Petrus and Danie were alone when the fatal word was uttered, because the other four members of the corps were on sentry duty up on the ridges. The two of them were discussing the detonator mechanism, while Jakop Minter sat apart on his own. Jakop was always a loner. No-one ever really knew what was going on in his mind. Nobody ever thought that anything could be going on in his mind. Without a word he would do what he was told to do. By his son. But it was Danie, not Jakop, that Petrus would speak to in the long nights on horseback as they were riding to keep out of the Khakis’ way. No-one doubted Petrus’ authority any more. The words he spoke softly and never from a distance were never questioned. Not by Jakop Minter either.

After Jakop’s loud voice had landed them in a difficult spot one night, Petrus no longer took him along when they were going to carry out some covert action. On the night when they were going to creep through the barbed wire near where a Khaki patrol was camped, they had asked Jakop please to whisper very quietly. In order to establish whether the Khakis were patrolling the fence, they always crept up to the wire between blockhouses in a long line, with the horses a little way farther back. The first one to notice where the sentries were posted or where they were patrolling would whisper: “Left” or “Right”.

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Petrus cautioned Jakop: “Please, Pa, whisper quietly,” but what went thundering into the night was “LEFT!” Then the shots rang out.

They had had to pull back then, but that was the first time that Danie heard Petrus laughing uncontrollably. Right through their flight that night Petrus kept chuckling and spluttering, wondering what the English must have thought of this strange word echoing through the hollows of the night.

Whether Jakop became even quieter after that nobody noticed. That he was now given the responsibility of holding the horses at a distance, like a young scout or a batman, while the others were creeping up to the fences — and whether he might have found the task demeaning — was something nobody even considered. He said nothing, just did it. That was what they had come to expect of him: the rough, heavily bearded man with wild hair under the wide-brimmed hat that he had contrived out of raw springbok hide and thin leather threads. There had not been enough salt to treat the skin properly, so the hat had to be rubbed with whatever came to hand to stop it stinking too much. In every shower of rain, as the raw hide absorbed water, the brim sagged and drooped over Jakop’s face, but nobody would risk commenting on it.

Because of Petrus. Everyone remembered what had happened at Magersfontein between Petrus and Pollie Sevenster. Jakop Minter, the tall man with the broad hands and strong shoulders who, like his son, seemed to fear nothing and who would roar out only a single word at a time, went on his way among them, never looking anyone straight in the eye — not even the youngest of the scouts.

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he had asked Petrus whether he ever got frightened, and that Petrus had said: “No, Pa, I’m not actually frightened, but these days I get scared that I might start becoming timid.”

“You?” “You don’t understand what has happened to me, Pa.” “You mean Nellie?”

“Yes … and my child. I want to see little Jakop, and hold him. He and Nellie are all that I am.”

“I often wondered …” Danie asked, because he had wondered about this a great deal, “… whether you had your eye on Nellie during all those years on the farm.”

“Since our childhood. But you know I didn’t even think of that, Pa. I was a Minter, and a Minter dare not even dream about a Van Wyk like Nellie. You may think I was supposed to be so brave when we were under fire, but I was no such thing — it was nothing but recklessness. Because I was a Minter, I had nothing to lose. Nothing! Except insults. Many a time I wanted to run away from the farm, but I couldn’t just leave my folks.” Petrus could not bring himself so far as to mention Daantjie’s part in his humiliation.

“Are you bitter about it?”

Petrus thought for a moment, and then answered indirectly: “I’ve now got the most precious thing in all the world. I don’t want to lose it. If I were to lose those two, I would lose myself all over again. It’s not easy to love someone, knowing that she is not for you. Even when you can see how much she cares for you …”

Now it was Danie’s turn to change the subject and step out of his sense of guilt: ‘Did you really want to be killed?”

“I didn’t want to be killed, no, but I probably didn’t care as much as the others about dying. It’s tough when people look down on you, Pa. If the pain is bad enough, dying doesn’t 398

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matter all that much. It’s hard to see people treating your mother like a maidservant, sending her to the back door, not inviting her inside. It’s bad when you are made to feel ashamed of your mother.”

The rock that Jakop Minter was pounding biltong with stopped, elbow-high, in mid-air above the meat and hung there.

“She always waited at the back door so timidly, servile as a dog, and oh-so-grateful for any hand-out she was given. She would talk for days about every kind word that may have come her way. What I wanted was a front-door mother, and permission to use that same front door to go courting Nellie — but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t nearly as bold as you think, Pa.” There was a sudden vehemence in Petrus’ words: “No, I was not afraid of death, Pa, because I had already died like a dog hundreds of times when people treated my mother like a servant and laughed at my dad because he could only utter a one word at a time and couldn’t look people in the eye. Like a dog.”

Jakop Minter’s word ripped through the afternoon: “DOG!” Jakop shoved the powdered biltong off the flat stone he had been pounding it on. It fell and lay on the ground, pink.

Petrus hurried over to him, trying to say: “That’s not what I mean, Pa!” But Jakop Minter forced his eyes upwards and looked his son straight in the eye as the word burst from him a second time: “DOG!” He shoved his pleading son aside and walked over to Danie.

In front of him, Jakop forced his gaze level, direct and sharply into Danie’s eyes. His five words to his wealthy brother-in-law revealed some of the pent-up emotion within him: “YOU’RE 399

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STEALING MY CHILD TOO!” Jakop spun round and grabbed his water bottles. As an afterthought he took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and dropped it on his bundle of blankets and other necessities. He left everything just like that, took only the water bottles and his saddle and bridle under his arm and walked towards his horse.

Petrus walked beside him, trying to explain, but Jakop walked on, saddled his horse and then undid the hobble tether. Before he put on the bridle and mounted, he emptied his two water bottles into his rawhide hat and held out the water for the horse to drink. Then he rubbed the horse’s head, almost as a gesture of farewell, cast the water bottles aside, put his wet hat on his head, mounted and rode off.

Danie, dismayed and guilt-stricken, stood watching, realising that now he was the outsider. What was emerging through the son’s pleading and the father’s fierce silent resentment was years and years of humiliation. Petrus kept on trying to talk to his father, always in soft, gentle words. Their sound seeped away in the spaces between the two Minters and the Van Wyk. Only once, when he had swung his right leg over the horse’s back, did Jakop Minter roar out another five words.

For Danie, since he did not know what Petrus had said in his pleading with his father, the booming words overlaid a mystery.

“YOU SUCKLED ON HER TIT!” As Jakop started to ride, Petrus hung onto the stirrup, trying to run alongside in a last attempt to calm his father, but Jakop urged the horse into a gallop with his knees and, a short distance on, rode down the slope of the ridge.

They all ran up to the top of the ridge to see what he was going to do, because there were Khakis both in front of and behind them.

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In full view of the English, Jakop first rode down along the side of the ridge as the loose stones allowed short gallops and trots, but then he and the horse went sliding down the slope, charging straight towards the English.

The Khakis did not know what to make of the strange apparition: the horseman was clearly on his own. Could he be bringing a message? Surrendering? Fleeing from something?

Surely not a charge — unless he was mad. Over the ready barrels of their Lee-Metfords, they watched Jakop approaching.

From high up on the ridge Danie and the others watched in silence.

Down on the flat plain Jakop Minter was not aware of how the wind in his gallop had split his thick beard in two and how his wild hair was standing up on end in the wind above the springbok hide hat held behind his head by its chin strap. The thunder of his horse’s hooves passed him by and he was unaware of the horse’s neck and laid-back ears in front of him.

At three hundred paces he lifted the heavy, wooden-butted English rifle with one powerful hand and fired his first shot. As if it was a pistol. As he rode, he cocked the gun again and fired a second shot. The bullet hit the ground in among the Khakis.

They shot back at once. The first volley brought down his horse but Jakop got up unscathed and started walking towards the English, loosing another two shots at them. He did not lie down; he did not try to take shelter; he neither ran nor charged at them — he marched on to death and stared it straight in the eye. Because death is not a human being.

In among the gunshots he thundered out a single accusation: “CUNTS!” Too many bullets hit him simultaneously. He spun round, struggled up again and with his uninjured right arm fired a final shot. Then a head-shot sent bits of his brain and skull 401

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smashing into the bowl of the hat behind his head and Jakop Minter ceased fleeing from the bank.

At first, Danie could not bear to go over and speak to Petrus, where he sat behind a rock, sobbing like a child. He believed that remorse contained only empty excuses, and there was no comfort in confessions of guilt. Eventually he had no choice but to go across: Petrus, the man who was afraid of nothing, was still sobbing.

He must have heard Danie’s footsteps approaching, for he spoke to the hard ground of the ridge in front of his downcast eyes as he told Danie: “He’s paid for everything now. My father will be able to look God in the eye.”

Nothing more. He rose, picked up the watch that Jakop had dropped on his bedroll and looked at it for a long time before attaching the chain to a buttonhole and slipping the watch into his pocket.

When night fell, they made their way down to the stream to water the horses. Petrus left on his own to set the dynamite for the next day’s train. He did not return till very late that night to lead them through the English drive.

Only once they were many miles away and the sun was coming up did Danie notice that Petrus was wearing Jakop’s springbok hide hat. There was only one hole in it, so it must have been on the back of Jakop’s head. The bullet must have gone straight through from the front. He was loath to probe, but Petrus explained of his own accord: “I went to see if they had buried my father properly. They had. They made a decent mound over him, put a wooden cross on it and hung his hat on the cross-beam. I carved my father’s name and “Thanks” on my own hat for them. I had to know where he was lying and whether he had been properly buried. And people had to know who it was that lay there.”

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Early in the morning the silence was broken by the sound of an explosion a long way away. “How did you get the shot to go off?” asked Danie.

“My watch spring. I tried to set it in such a way that the dew would not affect the heads of the matches.”

Petrus took Jakop’s watch out of his pocket and looked at without opening it. It was a fine watch with a gold lid, dating from before Jakop’s bankruptcy. In the days when they were constantly on the move, before their arrival on the Van Wyk farm, Petrus had often wondered why his father was keeping the watch when he had to sell off more and more of their possessions just to keep alive. It bothered him so much that he asked his mother about it. She was quite emotional when she replied: “Maybe your dad wants to hold onto something that will remind him of the man he was before we had to flee from the bank.”

To Danie, Petrus said: “Every time I click it open, I’ll think of what it was I did to my father. Let this precious heirloom of my dad’s count down my regret as it counted down his humiliation.”

It was two days before Fienatjie told Gertruida she had dreamt that her father was dead. Gertruida did not tell the others though she knew, as they all did, that Fienatjie never dreamt untruths. *** The major searched though Joey Drew’s scorched notes, trying to find the word, but then gave up. The word had not been noted down. It was gone. After the fire, Joey had made no more notes. Only later did the major hear of the fatal word, from Magrieta.

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“I shall just have to remember the rest as accurately as possible. Like Joey’s pangs of conscience about the photograph, for instance.”

Without shame or excuse, Joey told how he had had contact with Danie van Wyk and his son-in-law during the conflict and that when the women in the camp had wanted to communicate with the men, he had carried letters to an agreed spot and hidden them under a rock. Including the letter about the deaths of Nellie and her little boy, but that letter was never retrieved.

Joey had gone back to see if there was any reply, but the only thing under the rock was the letter that he had placed there. He concluded that the men were fighting somewhere else, no longer near the camp.

It was about then that the developed prints of the photographs that Joey had taken were returned. Among them were the one of the child and the goat and the mad woman, the slightly blurred one that he had taken of the sleeping Daantjie van Wyk that morning, and then the family photograph with the dead child.

It was at Magrieta’s request that he had had duplicate copies of the family photograph printed. The major now knew of two: Joey had carried one around with him, in case he met up with the men in the course of his wanderings; on the back of the other one Magrieta had written all the names.

The one of the slovenly Daantjie asleep must also be in the bundle somewhere. Perhaps it was one of the badly scorched ones at the bottom of the pile. It didn’t really matter one way or another. Joey Drew told how when he showed Magrieta the photograph of Daantjie van Wyk, she told him straightaway that he was mistaken: that was not her husband. It was too blurred and anyway: she knew her husband: he would sooner die ten deaths than walk about scruffy and dirty. She scarcely 404

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even glanced at the man in the photograph, but her beautiful eyes were sharp when she looked up from it. Just as sharp as on the day he had first met her. Accusingly: her husband was dead! The bearded man lying there with his mouth open looked half-starved: her husband was well-covered. She had held his knife with his lifeblood on it in her hand; his blood had also been on the last letter that had been found beside his body. What did Joey mean by distressing her with this kind of thing? Joey took back the photograph without trying to convince her, even though he was in no doubt. No doubt at all.

The picture he sketched of Magrieta’s husband that evening in the pub when talking about the photograph was not a pretty one. Arrogant, Joey said. A smooth liar who couldn’t care less if he made others suffer. He added, with a certain malicious satisfaction, that by means of a few pointed insinuations he had caused that same conceited bastard to throw up with jealousy.

However, he flatly refused to say exactly what those insinuations had been.

So some things had remained unsaid between him and Joey.

Despite the drink and their confidences. He, for instance, never alluded to Magrieta’s rape or pregnancy. And now that he came to think of it, nor did Joey. Would he have known about the rape? Unlikely. He understood his own reasons for keeping silent about Magrieta’s pregnancy, but what Joey’s might have been he could never figure out. But then of course, Joey had always spoken about Magrieta with the greatest respect.

In his annotation, the major recorded that the photographer had travelled around with the family photograph for a few months (approximately Feb. to May 1902) before he met up with the men again when they laid down their arms. (Please see Drew’s photographic documentation of the occasion in file F17/2 and copies of his written notes in N5/3.) There the 405

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photograph of his little son was handed to the young father.

He remarked again to Joey Wessels: “Everything has become so cold.”

She came up to see what he meant. “At the surrender, the photographer handed the young father a print of the photograph. His conscience had been troubling him about that photograph.” “…because he photographed a dead child?”

“Partly, yes. But more because of what he neglected to do when he met the young father.”

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Thirteen It was the end, and it had come. The end of the war itself. Of the official hostilities, but not of all the human repercussions that would trail after them in the years that were to follow. But at that moment all they could think was that it was the end. Of everything.

News of the peace negotiations reached Petrus Minter’s corps when they were summoned to the main commando. “It’s over, Pa,” he told Danie on his return from seeing the commandant. “We’ve got to go back to the commando tomorrow. The commandant says we can ride in the open and crawl through the wire freely. It seems they have agreed to keep the guns quiet till the talking is done.”

“We’ve been brought to this because our own people have betrayed us and because of the enemy’s vicious cruelty that has destroyed the country and killed the women and children.

They started with greed and they won with cruelty. Does God sleep?” The emotion in Danie’s eyes made him turn his head and look away as he asked: “So was Wyand right, Petrus?”

“I don’t know about right or wrong any more, Pa, but bitterness and hating one another will be our downfall if we keep blaming and accusing. If we want to move ahead, we’ll have to forgive. We’re all just human. That’s how we’re made and that’s how we are. Judas was the same.” “ … I gave my son — and this is what I get!” Danie walked away and Petrus could see that he was not trying to hide the 407

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crippling effect of the wound in his hip as he usually did. He felt sorry for his father-in-law. And guilty. Was it right to allow a good man like Danie van Wyk to suffer for a supposed loss when he, Petrus Minter, knew full well that it was all for nothing? But Nellie! Nellie! Nellie and little Jakop. Nothing must drive a wedge between them. For their sake. And it was nearly over: Daantjie’s resurrection was approaching. But he should never have allowed Daantjie’s lie to swallow him down as well. On that issue, his conscience was perfectly clear.

It was only at the place of meeting that Danie saw the appalling condition of the other die-hards. If Petrus’ corps were threadbare and shabby, the other burghers were in an even worse condition — many were dressed in hessian sacks and any other covering they had been able to lay their hands on.

Even this early in the winter, after a good summer, their skinny horses’ heads were drooping with exhaustion. Why had Petrus not told him about all this when he had returned from seeing the commandant? Or was it that he had not been willing to listen? Maybe his son-in-law had wanted to spare him the inevitability of the eventual result of the strife.

Their general had come, described their circumstances, said they had no other option since flesh and blood could stand no more: the nation was dying. His bitterness was evident in his words as he mentioned the perfidy and rottenness in some of their own. Strong man that he was, he was deeply emotional as he spoke of the loss of their freedom and the injustice done to them. Danie, standing at the edge of the assembled burghers, listened to him, swallowing back his own tears. He had sacrificed a son for freedom! For nothing. He listened to the conditions of surrender and realised that in the morning they would be laying down their arms. The struggle was over.

There was a wagonload of food at the meeting. Bread flour, 408

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salt, sugar, English rusks, tins of tea, coffee, tinned fish, bully beef and a number of rolls of tobacco — for what was left of their pipes. With the compliments of the enemy? Charity? Well, when you’re hungry enough, nobody gives a damn.

The next morning, their stomachs full, they rode to the designated place of surrender. They threw down their guns on a pile in front of the Khakis and walked across to a small table to sign their names. What? Most of them did not even read the paper they were signing. Was it an oath of allegiance to Victoria’s son, Edward? Who cared? Everything was lost.

They said very little — their words, too, had dried up. Each man was muttering sounds of his own: swearing and cursing under his breath, occasionally sniffing back tears, an occasional brief outburst of resentment or some complaint which nobody paid any attention to. A silence hung over the few words that were uttered, a silence that smothered all other sounds because it was the faint sound-quenching silence of speechless bewilderment; of the misery of loss; of the humiliation of defeat. They had been beaten and were now having to acknowledge it. The realisation was sinking in: so this is what it meant, having to stand there, powerless.

Then, singly or in pairs, occasionally in a group, they rode away and fanned out across the plains, each one now on his own: feeling naked and defenceless without their weapons.

Their means of resistance — the guns that they had so faithfully borne across their shoulders or in gun pouches attached to their saddles — they had been made to cast on a heap at the Khakis’ feet. The firearms that had been their last defence, the Khakis had bundled up and thrown onto a wagon. The grim prospect of a home-coming and the fear of what might be found there accompanied them all the way. Each man’s decisions were now his own. The last commands from above had become requests.

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Volunteers were called for to assist with finally clearing up what had not been completed and to ensure a measure of organisation in the transition to peace. It was necessary to plan for the immediate future, like providing help where it was most needed. People had to be helped to get back to their homes, because means of transport were inadequate. Whatever help the Khakis offered had to be accepted. The women in the camps had to be taken care of — the widows and orphans and those whose menfolk were still being held in prisoner-of-war camps all over the world. Essential supplies had to be given to those who now had nothing. They had to attempt to create some kind of order in the shattered society.

For the most part, that request fell on deaf ears because everybody just wanted to go home. They had been hungering for months to see what had happened, what had become of their property, what was left of their shattered lives. They needed to scrape together and mend whatever remained. There were not many volunteers, except a few who had heard by letter or rumour that there was nobody and nothing left for them to return to. Men like that did not want to go back.

“This is my last duty of the war, Pa,” Petrus said to Danie, as they said good-bye. “I’m also burning to get back, but I can’t ignore the urgent need. I’ll help out for a few days and then come home. You go along to the camp. Tell Nellie I’m coming and give her my letter. She’ll understand.”

Danie was moved by Petrus’ difficult decision. “The war took my son, but it has given me another in return. Do your duty, Petrus, and come home, my boy, you and Nellie have a beautiful life ahead of you.”

Joey Drew saw the two taking leave of each other before Danie joined a group and rode off. Probably towards the camp, because Danie was one of those who actually knew where his people were.

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*** The major remembered the night when Joey had told him about the capitulation and the photograph. And the photographer’s self-reproach. He even remembered the time when it happened: late at night, with the pub doors closed and all the regulars long since departed. The pub owner and Matron Williams had been leaning across the counter between them, keeping up with each other, glass for glass, and swapping ancient off-colour jokes. On nights like that the owner always helped to get her back as far as the kitchen door.

Getting herself from there to her room happened by grace alone, since neither he nor Joey could be of much assistance.

Joey was describing how he took the photographs. At first he lied about how the officers had kept him so busy that he had not had time to pay his respects when he saw Danie van Wyk and Petrus Minter among the Boers. Actually, Joey admitted later, he could have, but he felt embarrassed, because when he had arrived on the farm it was he who had been ragged and dirty, but now they were the ones in patched and dirty clothes, torn and in tatters. He knew how proud Danie van Wyk was.

After most of the Boers had left, with just a few remaining behind, Joey went back to his cart, fetched the photograph and went up to Petrus Minter. He was a handsome young man, one of the few Boers who was clean-shaven. He always spoke softly.

Major Brooks remembered that soft voice — he would never forget it.

Joey related how he had hesitated about taking the photograph and the sad news to the young father, but how he had done so anyway eventually. They had greeted each other 411

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and Joey had handed the photograph to Petrus Minter without first telling him that his wife and his little son in it were both dead.

It was the young man’s exuberance that did it for Joey — the way his eyes lit up — how he showed the photo to everyone, expressing his total delight in that scratchy language. So much pride and joy and love and such unbounded prospects! — what prospects, Oh, damn it! — came bubbling up out of the young man ... Joey could not understand a word of what Petrus Minter was saying to his mates, but he could see! He could see!

That was why. How could he possibly have brought himself to tell him? He should have, yes, he should have, he knew he should have, then perhaps the other thing might not have happened, but he couldn’t. He was a coward, Joey Drew admitted it. He couldn’t. He didn’t have the guts to smother so much joy and pride. His conscience told him he could have.

His common sense told him he could have imparted the sad message before handing over the photograph. In between his photographing he could have made time to tell Danie van Wyk first, so that he could give Petrus Minter that message from hell. But he held back, merely on account of some slight embarrassment and because he was afraid to have to tell a father that his daughter and grandson had died in the camp.

He wanted to put it off till it was time to leave, but Danie van Wyk had suddenly left on his own and Joey was afraid Magrieta would take it amiss if he didn’t deliver the photograph. It was not easy to lie to that woman or to come up with false excuses, and he had promised.

“The truth is a bastard. And when photographs lie, their lies are terrible because they always look so true! That’s why I hate cameras. Petrus Minter was a fine young man, I liked him. And his young wife, too.”

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With his hand-and-a-half, Major Brooks was searching through the pile of photographs. Right from the start, when he was planning his annotations, he had already made a list of headings according to which he could sort the photographs while working through them. After all, he himself had kicked the pile to pieces on that day.

Camp — May— June 1902.

He was able to find only one photograph from that period, but the greater part of the camp had still been intact when Drew documented it. All that could be seen on that one photograph were that a few tents were now out of step with the rest, and one hospital tent that had collapsed. Drew was not present when peace was proclaimed — he was at the surrender.

Brooks had missed him, because the photographer was the only one who could interpret for him the comings and goings of the people — and particularly of the Van Wyks.

But the turmoil, and even sometimes the silence, that spread throughout the camp when peace was proclaimed, even he could understand, however wide the gaping ravine of hostility between them. *** As in other years when a snowy day had revived the 10th of June 1901 in Magrieta’s mind again, the white blanket had begun to melt by the next day, leaving only small drifts in spots that the wintry sun had not reached and on the shadow side of buildings and walls.

It is never going to melt, she thought. It will always lie on my shadow-side.

Who was it that had asked her whether they were glad when the war was over? A grandchild? Well, were they?

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Magrieta realised that she no longer remembered, but the day after the rumours of peace appeared to be true, and were then officially confirmed, that day kept coming back. It would, because that was the last time she would speak to the midwife Hester Strydom. About the snow which refused to melt — what else?

She could not recall how they were assembled, but virtually the entire camp had gathered in the service area. The head of the camp climbed up from a chair on to one of the butchery tables which they had carried outside for him so that he could look across the whole small crowd of women.

Somebody near her remarked: “A bloodstained creature like that belongs on a slaughter table.”

Today the man was all friendliness and charm. The tips of his moustaches kept curling up as he tried to smile. His turncoat interpreter, standing on the chair his master had used to clamber up onto the table, had a kind of cautiously friendly expression on his mug and an ingratiating tone in his voice, like a hypocrite asked to pray aloud in public. It was now peacetime, said the man through his interpreter. He talked a bit about reconciliation and went on about the benefits the British Empire brought to its colonies. Then, as though casting open the portals of heaven, he added that the gates were open.

Everyone was free to come and go as they wished. The authorities would do all in their power to help them get back to their homes.

Someone shouted out: “What homes?”

The crowd of women burst out laughing! Laughter? How far gone were they, then, that they could see a joke in their losses? Was their relief as great as that?

The officer asked his interpreter what they were laughing about. When it was explained, he went blood-red in the face 414

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and stopped trying to preach about reconciliation — just announced that it was official and that the document would be posted on the notice board. He handed the proclamation — or whatever it was called — to his adjutant and walked back to his office tent.

The turncoat, hammer and tacks in hand, was about to nail the paper on the notice board when Martie waylaid him.

“Hand over that paper!” She grabbed the document out of his hand. He wanted it back.

“Let go the thing — I have to stick it up!”

Martie turned her back on him and passed the paper to the woman nearest her. Soon the document disappeared into the crowd.

“Give it back. It’s got to be posted!”

Martie shouted loud enough for all to hear: “The war is over, you swine! Do you think your English bosses are going to help you now? They despise you just as much as we despise you! Call the Khakis! Go on, call them! There they are! Tell them to come and help you get the paper from us, the filthy rag that you helped them murder for!” The man seemed confused, as though a new realisation had hit him.

“Put up that damned proclamation where it belongs! On the door of the mortuary. Give it here, I’ll do so myself!” Martie took the hammer from the man’s almost limp hand. “Where are the tacks?” He handed them to her without argument and walked off to the camp commander’s office tent.

What would he have reported there? Magrieta recalled that she did not see him emerge again. She was one of the small group of women who did not go to the mortuary. Most did, probably because they wanted to be part of the last bit of protest, that gesture that would have to express something of what had been done to them. But not all. The wives of the 415

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traitors and the collaborators with their white arm bands stood around looking sheepish at first, but then wandered back to their tents.

Before her eyes Magrieta could see the rift opening up, the enmity that would divide the nation for so many years to come. From where she was standing she heard the faint knocking as they hammered the peace proclamation onto the door of the mortuary. Strange: the camp authorities allowed it to stay where Martie had nailed it — upside-down, deliberately. Neither the soldiers nor the turncoats took it down, turned it right-way up or moved it. Probably because they did not want to disturb the peace again: could they have quelled a riot without violence? The camp folk who had collaborated with the English, however, kept their mouths tight shut and swiftly removed their white arm bands. They did not look at all victorious.

Hester Strydom had not gone with either of the groups. Like Magrieta, she stood at a distance, watching.

For Magrieta the temptation was simply too great. The tiny voice that she had recognised that night, like a ewe hearing her own lamb in the midst of the flock, lingered in her ears, woke her at night, trailed through her days like a sweet, tormenting reproach and yearning from inside her body. When her milk came in and she bent forwards and expressed it in thin white streams from her sore breasts onto the ground, as Hester Strydom had said she should, the small voice made a strange heartache pulse within her. Even though she tried to convince herself that those children’s voices in the night were just her imagination — because after the horror she was not quite right in the head — she did still want to know. Just to know, even though the midwife had forbidden her.

When they suddenly found themselves alone, she could not 416

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resist any longer. She approached the woman and greeted her.

“I have to thank you.”

“I told you not to. Nothing happened.”

Magrieta seemed to be seeing the woman for the first time.

Hester Strydom had a placid face. She was not unattractive: full lips, thick hair, brown eyes that seemed to be looking into different realities. She was not the liberating demon from Horst’s books, hunched over Magrieta’s abdomen; she was not the dark premonition of an horrendous deed who walked alongside her in patches of lantern light in the snow, and stopped beside her when her waters broke. Her voice and movements now had no cold objectivity in them. She was a woman who would be able to love and be loved. Only the furrow between her eyebrows betrayed the fact that the smooth mask of her face would sometimes warp — in all likelihood at night, when she was alone, reliving her rape and the act that her condition had forced upon her. Like her, Magrieta.

Hester Strydom seemed to know what Magrieta wanted to ask. Others had probably tried to do the same. “I told you not to come asking,” she said, without preamble.

“What was it?”

“I don’t look. I don’t know.”

“I want to know what colour it was.”

“I can’t feel colour.”

“Please.”

“It’s better to lie and forget. Let’s just go forward into peacetime. What we were driven to do then is murder now, don’t you understand?” Hester Strydom kept quiet for a moment, her eyes distant, as though she was thinking. What she then said came obliquely, out of the blue, half out of context. She must have spent a long time worrying and brooding about justice, about the “necessity” of taking the law 417

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into one’s own hands. In her voice, compassion and bitterness were intermingled; resignation and rebelliousness in every word: “You are too beautiful, more’s the pity … Don’t let necessity tether you like a mare when they bring up a jack donkey to breed mules out of you. Or maybe you’ll be lucky … perhaps you will be able to give away in love what necessity is going to take from you in any case, against your will and without your consent.”

Hester Strydom was walking away, but Magrieta wanted to follow her. “Leave me now. We don’t want to know each other, else we’ll see it all happening again in each other’s eyes every time.”

“Please, what was it?”

Hester looked at her for a few moments, as though weighing what she might dare to say. They were bound by a shared horror. The altar of lust on which both had been spread-eagled, and also their shared involvement in an atrocity, had drawn them close, as only dark secrets and shared suffering could.

Gently and compassionately, she said: “All I could feel was a little boy. That’s all I know about what never happened.”

Magrieta stopped when she saw Hester’s back and thick hair bending to enter the tent where she had gone to call her on that night of snow.

A little boy. That’s what it was.

It was only long, long-drawn-out years later after the war that she would understand Hester’s strange words about necessity, the tethered mare and the jack donkey.

She walked back to the tent she shared with Gertruida.

Oupa Daniël was sitting on his folding chair outside Dorothea’s tent. She knew about the endless hours he had prayed through — “wrestling with my God” — as he put it.

About freedom. About justice and injustice. About the 418

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unfathomable ways of God. About the deaths of children.

Doggedly and unceasingly, he had persevered in his faith that after so many burnt offerings had been sacrificed, God would not permit such injustice. How would he handle this peace?

Magrieta noticed that his eyes were open, but that they were not following her movements. It was as though nobody had passed before him. She also saw that he was not praying and that he did not have his Bible with him.

“Have you heard that it is peace now, Oupa?”

He did not answer, so she stood a little closer: he was hard of hearing and might not have heard her. “Have you heard that it is peace now, Oupa?”

It was as though she was not there when he put his counterquestion: “Where’s God?” *** Magrieta was trying to unravel the tangle. She spent a lot of time these days, walking, and thinking back to the war, because Daantjie was sulking again and feeling injured and aggrieved. He complained about everything, forever reproaching her: today, yesterday, the day before, and so down all the years back to the war and his return from the dead in the wake of all his heroism. And about how his father had treated him — and of course about her and the Englishman. When his moaning became too much for her, she would ask: “So where were you during the war?” At that he would yell at her, but keep his bitter mouth shut for some days afterwards. That helped, but he always set her memories going again. Which was why she could not now undo the tangle in her mind about the days after the signing of the peace.

The whole camp had been such a shambles in those first 419

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days of peace. Nobody tried to enforce order any more, or say “Do this” or “Don’t do that”, or prescribe anyone’s coming and going. It seemed that the beginning of petty freedom was chaotic in every way. They had been defeated and were therefore no longer free, yet everybody now claimed the freedom of movement which had been granted to them. The disagreements about transport were particularly vehement.

In what they called the wagon-yard, there were several vehicles, ones the Khakis had not destroyed or had even used for themselves occasionally. There were identifiable horses and oxen among the animals brought into the camp by the troops and these their pre-war owners now claimed. But, whoever the owners were, and whoever managed to convince the Khakis that these animals were indeed their property, there were altogether too few. One might have been able to claim an ox or two — another a wagon but without oxen. “Necessity”, as Hester Strydom had called it, enflamed emotions. The same necessity led to a great deal of negotiation: “If we take your ox and his ox and try to get away in my cart, we could first offload my few things and then drive on to your place and then…”

Magrieta heard so many exchanges like this.

Then Kerneels Davidson came out from the town with his ramshackle wagon for hire. The same Kerneels who was beaten up seven times after the war and never once dared go to the authorities and lay charges against his attackers. On most of these occasions, men simply knocked him about with their fists or open hands, but three times he was properly thrashed with a rawhide bullwhip — because during the war he had played the dirty trick of striking a deal with a turncoat or a Khaki officer or whoever to be permitted to follow one of the Khakis’ slaughter-and-burn patrols. As soon as the farm folk had been carted away from the farm, he would load up his wagon with 420

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the best pieces of furniture, paying only a fraction of their worth, before the Khakis set fire to the rest. But even in wartime there are watching eyes, so when news of his activities became known soon after the peace, many people went straight to his warehouse in the town and claimed their property.

Beating him up after that almost became something of a habit.

Eventually he did not even argue or try to fight back — he just returned the furniture. He was deeply distressed when the Church Council imposed ecclesiastical censure on him. His defence was that he had wanted only to save the people’s possessions from being burnt. Nobody believed him and he was driven away from the town disappointed, penniless and under censure.

The camp soon looked like a rubbish dump: the immaculate rows of sharp-pointed tents collapsed and lay around like scraps of discarded paper. These were the tents of those who been able to get away early, though there were not many of them. The turncoats’ wives generally had an easier time of it because the soldiers helped them to obtain transport first, as far as possible, lending tents to those who had lost their homes anyway. They were relieved to get away from the accusing eyes all round them. Some of the others waited for their menfolk — those who still had husbands and those who hoped they still had husbands. The women who had heard that their husbands were being held in prisoner-of-war camps somewhere beyond the seas realised that the wait would be too long — they would have to fend for themselves. Many of the women waiting were therefore still at the mercy of the Khakis. They could not get away. Here and there, some obstinately tied up their possessions in bundles and started the journey away from hell on foot, taking with them whatever children they still had left.

Mortified, children left orphaned had to join relatives: another 421

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mouth to feed, not always welcome. Some orphans had no blood-relatives at all left: they simply had to stay behind, growing ever more aware of how much more alone they were becoming as everybody else left. Their only hope was that maybe a hand from somewhere might reach out and rescue them.

It was all too broken to try to mend it now, Magrieta thought. Her family and Daantjie’s were also shattered; the Minters had been almost completely wiped out. Nellie and little Jakop were lying in the graveyard, together with two of Sannie Minter’s little girls. She recalled the time when she herself had been a widow. And then Martie, of course, Martie without her only Drienatjie and with her hatred of Wynand.

On the day after the proclamation, Wynand van Wyk pitched his tent right at the gate of the camp. He arrived with a Cape cart and two very serviceable horses to try to load Martie’s stuff and take her home. Also in the cart, to Martie’s added fury, were two live sheep, some fowls and a quantity of groceries — all of it, said Martie, traitors’ loot. Magrieta did not actually see Martie chasing him away, but she heard about it — everyone without shouting distance could testify that he was indeed chased away. So Wynand set up his camp at the gate and waited for his wife to come to her senses. Martie refused to give in. Instead she complained to the authorities that the man was pestering her and that she would not be held responsible for what might happen to him if he did not stop bothering her with his pleading. She forced them to give him a warning.

Wynand waited.

When Dorothea tried to talk Martie round, all she could get out of her was: “Let him wait and go mad sitting there with his English sheep and poultry and his stolen cart and horses.”

On the third day, Danie arrived. He refused even to 422

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acknowledge his brother when Wynand saw him and tried to confront him. On the fourth day, Martie tied up her bundle and set off for home on foot. Later, Martie had plenty to tell about her journey home. Wynand did not. Magrieta had always thought it must have been quite a sight: Martie, stiff-backed with her bundle on her head; Wyand with his cartload of livestock and provisions trundling along behind her. Martie said that when she could not stand his endless pleading, she would yell at him: “Where’s my child?” Then he would shut his mouth for a mile or two. Magrieta knew that was not the whole truth: Martie would have shouted a lot more. A whole lot more. Wherever there was a ridge to be crossed, Martie would take a short cut over it while Wynand had to take the long way round. She had to spend two nights on the road, but each time she slept up on a hill. When she woke up in the morning, there, a short way away, sat His Nibs, keeping an eye on his livestock. He had tethered them less tightly, so the poor animals could stretch their legs a bit. On those last two days of walking, neither wet nor dry crossed Martie’s lips, for even though her water was finished after the first day, she refused to accept any succour from a traitor.

How long was it before Wynand began to leave her alone?

After almost a month on the farm, with her staying in the ruin of what had been their house and Wynand camping some two hundred yards away? The whites of Martie’s eyes were yellow: she had eaten nothing but pumpkin, since that was all that had grown wild that summer. There were still pumpkins lying around behind the stock pen. But by threatening to murder him at night, she made sure that Wynand slept very lightly.

And she kept taking him pumpkin and saying: “There! Gobble it up! I nearly killed one traitor — a second wouldn’t matter.”

After that he did not eat.

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After a month he left the groceries, the flour and the animals there for her and moved away — to put up a hut of his own near the spring at the far end of the farm. The pile of stuff he had unloaded for her she left to rot. Only later, for pity’s sake, did she tend to the poor animals, since it was not their fault that they had fallen into the hands of a traitor. On the second day back on the farm she took precisely half of their money that she had kept in her underclothes right through her days in the camp and threw it down in front of him where he sat waiting. Exactly half.

“There!” she said. “That’s the only part of you that doesn’t have the blood of women and children on it.”

He left the money lying there almost all day but eventually did pick it up. Weeks later, when she set off on the day-long walk to Danie’s farm for a lift to town so that she could buy the absolute necessities, he followed behind her at a distance, like a dog, keeping an eye on her. A mile from Danie’s homestead, where two tents had been pitched in front of the burnt-out ruin, his courage deserted him and he sat down to wait again.

For almost a week. Eventually it was Danie who took her home again in his spider. He had forgotten her bed in the camp and went back to fetch it for her. He helped her buy what she most needed and brought it all home for her. She would not hear of staying with her in-laws. Wynand rode behind them. Ignored.

Martie van Wyk’s life had been split down the middle and she would not allow it to be mended or let the halves knit together again.

Magrieta remembered only one thing about Danie’s arrival at the camp. He greeted them and then heard about Nellie and little Jakop. All he said was: “Petrus … Oh God, Petrus.”

She was in the tent with the others when Philip Brooks came to speak to Danie.

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*** The Boer had a certain dignity about him. Captain Brooks had heard that Van Wyk had arrived in the camp. Joey Drew was still busy elsewhere, documenting the surrender, so there was no intermediary available. It would not assist matters to ask one of the women or one of the collaborators.

He first considered sending for the man, but decided against it. He was unwilling to have the meeting seem like a victor’s arrogance when the defeated was powerless. It was about Magrieta. Specifically about the beautiful young widow Magrieta van Wyk. For in his restless infatuation he had often dreamt of visiting her on the farm. Of again being received, as at the dinner. And of winning her love. Romantic dreaming is so daft … When he announced himself at the Van Wyks’ tent and Danie van Wyk came out, the dignified, lean die-hard refused the hand extended to him.

He introduced himself: “Captain Brooks,” and stood there, embarrassed, like a schoolboy in trouble. All he could do was say that Danie van Wyk’s spider had been spared. The two black horses had been taken care of in among the troop’s horses. Also, the white harness and reins were in one of the quarter-master’s storage tents. The wagon and Cape cart had unfortunately not survived.

In the precise accents of taught English, Danie asked: ‘Why have we been singled out in this fashion?”

What could he say? Blurt out something about the unprecedented dinner? Surely not mention Magrieta.

“You may borrow the tents in which your family are living until the house has been restored.”

“You have not answered my question.”

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“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“At the start of the war I would have had plenty of answers.

Now I don’t have any.”

“Better then refrain from answering. Thank you.”

That was all that was said between them. Danie van Wyk turned his back and went into the tent. *** When they heard the captain walking away, they sat in the tent silently, looking at one another.

When he came back inside, Danie immediately asked the question they were all sitting there dreading. “How come you have so much that the rest don’t? Why have my spider and horses been spared?”

He asked, though he knew the answer, because on the night of their meeting in the ruin, Joey Drew had told him about the dinner with the enemy officer. He wanted to hear it from their own mouths.

They sat there guiltily while Dorothea confessed: the dinner, the whys of the invitation, how they had misused Magrieta’s beauty, Greeff’s disloyalty, Martie’s rebelliousness, their shame and regrets that they had sunk so low before the enemy. It all came out. When she was done, Danie rose: “Then he burnt it all down anyway.” He went out. An hour later he stopped in front of the tent with the spider.

It was impossible to load everything onto it, so Danie piled their stuff high and tied on as much as he could till the vehicle began to wobble. He, Dorothea, Gertruida and Sussie had to sit crouched under the pile, with the tent pole like a slanting mast above them. He would have to do three slow trips, the spider 426

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piled high under loads that made its springs sway, behind two horses hauling hard.

After the packing had been done but before they left, Danie took Magrieta aside: “Please, my girl, we need your help. I know Petrus. Nellie and the little boy were his entire life. When he gets the news of their deaths, I don’t know what he is going to do. Please will you tell him gently and help him where you can …”

“How, Pa?” “Only God knows. But please try, and bring him back to the farm. He has become my son, like you have become my daughter.”

“Thank you, Pa. I’ll do what I can.”

They left. She, Oupa Daniël and Sannie Minter remained behind. And Fienatjie, too, but Fienatjie was sick.

Conditions had been better in the camp in the last few months of the war. Things were easier, the food was better and the tents were less crowded. “Thinned out by death” is how they described the additional space. Most of the diseases had run their courses; there were fewer funerals. But in the last days of the war and the first of the peace, another epidemic of measles raged through the camp, as though the war had wanted to get in one last blow. Some of the children who had not caught the disease during the first two bouts and were not immune now succumbed.

Magrieta was present when Gertruida’s adopted doctor visited Fienatjie in the hospital tent. The beds in the hospital tents were largely empty, so the doctor could keep the seven children with measles apart from the rest. Family members were allowed to visit them freely, so Sannie Minter and Magrieta did not need permission to sit with the sick Fienatjie.

“Malignant measles,” the man said. His eyes still looked half 427

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bewildered, just as they had on that first day when he had come to ask for their help with interpreting. So this was the “black measles” that she had heard about in the camp — the type that does not erupt externally, but shows as purple patches on the body. Racked with fever, cold and hot by turns, Fienatjie’s body looked bruised.

Sannie was silent. She simply sat there, as she had beside the death beds of her other two daughters. She just sat and watched. The two of them had died of dysentery within days of each other. Quickly. But in Sannie Minter herself something creeping and slow had been brewing like yeast in those days.

Magrieta noticed her becoming absent; saw how she was growing detached, a crooked smile playing permanently about her mouth. At the death of her first child she had cried like a bereaved mother, but not for the second one, and when Danie told her that Jakop Minter had been killed, she said simply, with that same smile: “I suppose that must be so. Why shouldn’t he now?”

“Jakop is dead, Sannie. Killed. Your husband has died.”

Sannie grimaced: “Jakop is just one more of the blood-andshit strokes that God paints his war pictures with.”

Words like that from the mouth of a woman, and a thought as blasphemous as that, were too much for Danie. At the first opportunity, when Magrieta just happened to be present, he asked Dorothea: “Has Sannie lost her mind? Gone off her head?”

“Yes,” Dorothea replied, “mercifully. I often wish we all had.”

Long before though, Fienatjie had already dreamt that her mother would eventually not realise what was happening, but when Gertruida told her about it, Magrieta remembered, neither she nor Gertruida had been able to make out what the 428

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dream could possibly mean. They had still been on the farm then. Yet it came true. Sannie Minter did not shed a tear. She showed no sign of heartache or regret. It seemed as though what was happening around her and what she heard lodged somewhere inside her but had no effect — some place where discarded thoughts were silenced before they became troublesome. Then she started coming out with her absurd nonsense. When Dorothea expressed her sympathy after Sannie’s second daughter died so soon after the first, Sannie’s smile played around her mouth like a grimace: “If you die before your innocence, you’re supposed to become a song.”

What could that have meant? Even now, after all these years, Magrieta still did not understand. She wondered why she had thought she did understand it at the time. For she had thought to herself: It’s too late for me to become a song. But that had been when she herself had been so confused. Maybe you understand abnormal things better when you are not normal yourself. Perhaps, inside them, there was already more of Dorothea’s wish that all of them should rather have lost their senses. Could it be that, without their realising it, some part of Fienatjie’s weirdness — what she must surely have inherited from her mother — had somehow filtered into all of them?

Perhaps it was something that you begin to perceive — about how appearances hang like a curtain in front of the truth, or about the meaninglessness of what you think you know? Or something similarly only half-comprehensible.

Surrounded by the silences of the hospital tent, they sat watching at the fevered child’s bedside. The children in the other beds were all sleeping. A mother reclining on a chair had fallen asleep with her upper body leaning forward. Fienatjie was restless, occasionally convulsive, but at other times she lay still. The sharp smells of disinfectant and medication were 429

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overwhelming. The dull odours of previous epidemics still steamed in the canvas of the tent. You could smell the measles.

Magrieta was distressed about so many things in that night vigil. What would she say to Petrus Minter when he arrived?

What should she say to Philip Brooks, now that the war was over, about what might happen between the two of them without causing either of them, him or her, embarrassment?

What about Fienatjie here beside her, in the feverish glow of black measles, the “malignant measles” which had claimed so many child lives? She was so deeply attached to the child because Fienatjie had always treated her with almost motherly kindness, as though she had known beforehand of the shadows that she, Magrieta van Wyk, would have to encounter. And it was Fienatjie who had been the one drop of comfort in the night of her deepest turmoil. Fienatjie must not die.

Then there was the devil that had got into Oupa Daniël early that evening. She herself had gone to fetch the old man.

To pray for Fienatjie, because she felt that after what she had done, she herself could no longer ask God for favours, and Sannie was beyond being trusted with anything.

When she asked him to help, he did not come immediately, as he always had, as though it had been his inescapable duty to intercede for someone with his God. Instead he was different.

He asked: “God is everywhere, so why do I have to go there to pray? He can hear me here if He wants to, and He knows perfectly well where the little one is that He has struck down.”

“Please, Oupa Daniël, she’s very bad.”

“Oh, all right then, let’s see whether going there will help.”

The old man’s actions were so different from what she had known. There was no sign of his — so often confessed — surrender to God and His ways unfathomable. Were these then signs, even in him, of the wartime madness that people were 430

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talking about? She had heard the expression so often: wartime madness — as an excuse for unacceptable behaviour; as an explanation for deeds committed. When somebody was acting strangely, they would say: “So-and-so has got wartime madness.” It was true. They had all changed, lost their sound judgement, gone crazy — and now Oupa Daniël, “a rock of the faith”, as a minister had once called him, had also caught it.

Magrieta thought she understood: you could not see death all around you every day — feel it right up against your skin, and inwardly shrink in humiliation — without picking up some or other malady. Or think you would be able to remain untouched yourself. She, too, must have been afflicted with the madness — how else could she have brought herself to do what she did?

She often caught herself trying to justify things — to convince herself that unusual, painful circumstances made your weak points fester under the skin, like black measles, leaving no more than an occasional sinful spot on the surface of your skin ... Wartime madness was perhaps the last excuse she could try to hide behind.

“When life squeezes you hard enough,” Dorothea always said, “strange things can pop out.” Nothing squeezes you like war.

She would never forget that prayer of Oupa Daniël’s. By then the old man found it very difficult to kneel. He had to be helped to go down on his knees beside Fienatjie’s bed. At first he closed his eyes, but there was in him nothing at all of the almost excessive humility with which he always approached his God, no hint of his usual praises and thanksgiving: “O Lord, this child is the eighty-seventh one that I shall have to bury tomorrow. I ask now, as I have asked every time before: be merciful to her and save her life. Through this child, prove to us that You are alive. Yet I know, before my very soul, that 431

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nothing will come of this plea, as nothing has come of all my other pleadings …”

Oupa Daniël’s eyes opened and he looked up into the top angle of the hospital tent: “I have pleaded myself blue for these children … and sometimes I really tried to believe that You would help. Sometimes not. But I have had to look down into eighty-six children’s graves. I have pleaded from my heart of hearts, and not once did You give ear ... Because I believed that You were a God of love and mercy. You did not save one of them, not one. You took them, and the freedom for which we sacrificed them You took away and You gave it to the Khakis …

Along with the name of Daniël Egbert van Wyk that has now been taken away from me and my posterity. We have trusted and we have pleaded in vain. We have paid with the lives of children and have received nothing in return.”

All at once the old man wanted to get to his feet. Magrieta had to help him.

“I was a bloody idiot to believe. You deceived me. You’re not there, and if You are there, then You’re a cannibal that eats souls and is never satisfied. What do You create them for, then?

Just to have them slaughtered? Why?” “You mustn’t say things like that, Oupa!”

“Well then, you go and pray, and see what happens. Go and pray beside the sick — and for drought relief — and for your precious freedom — and see what you get. A God, who causes the Khakis to flourish all over the world and allows what has happened in these camps, knows nothing about love or mercy.

Go and bury the child yourself.”

“She’s not dead, Oupa!”

“She will be, the way I know God’s mercy. I’m just saying: I’m not going to bury her. I’m tired of having children’s bodies sacrificed, covered with soil in their graves, while I stand there 432

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like a damned idiot defending God’s cruelty … and with praises and thanksgiving, too … for crumbs. What for? For the deaths of children?”

When he leant on his cane and started to walk off, Sannie Minter was still smiling: “The deaths of children are God’s little jokes. Here He’s just been telling them too often.” Oupa Daniël stopped and looked at her, almost with approval. Then he walked away.

Was that what they had been brought to? So far? So low?

Magrieta felt as though their innards, their guts, hearts, lungs — all had been turned inside out, and all the unsavoury stuff that had always been compressed and concealed under the skin was now on the outside, hanging loose and stinking.

Horst had always said that that was what it was like when Satan got the upper hand. It must have been wartime madness that had created such fancies.

Yet Oupa Daniël was right. Fienatjie, like all the others, was not spared. By morning, in her last brief rally, Magrieta saw the child’s lips moving as she tried to speak. By that time, Sannie had fallen asleep on one of the empty beds. It was very quiet in the tent.

Magrieta bent over Fienatjie’s mouth, the child’s feverish breath hot and fitful against her ear. Words were emerging.

Scraps of sentences. Bits of dreams. It seemed as if Fienatjie’s last dreams — perhaps with the last tiny fragments of the caul that might have been left in her — were being flushed out by the fever.

Down all the years, Magrieta had tried to make sense of what Fienatjie had said, in vain, because she was unsure about whether she had always heard correctly. The words were too soft, too sporadic. Fienatjie’s dying breath was too light. Too short. What Magrieta had sometimes been able to make out 433

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sounded disjointed. It was like looking “though a glass darkly” — that source text for so many sermons. Yet what the child said had remained with her.

Magrieta knew that Fienatjie had spoken about things to come, like little wagons with thick wheels not drawn by horses that ran about all over the land, and little boxes that people walked around in, and how people talked to one another from far away. But these were incidental — what Fienatjie was really dreaming were the times she would not live to see. Essentially, Fienatjie Minter was dreaming her self. Probably the self she would have been, had she lived. Magrieta was not sure, but she thought she understood it was about the loves Fienatjie would never love and the children whom she would never give birth to.

It was being deprived of living and growing up that had been raging though her fevered dreams. She had been dreaming her self. That Magrieta did know.

Then, as Fienatjie grew still and her last convulsive shudders ceased, she started to sing, as she had long ago dreamt she would sing with the little children, almost inaudibly, almost without any breath, and for no more than a few moments. But the song that her dead lips would so soon stop singing filled the whole tent. It was not Magrieta’s imagination.

She drew the sheet up over Fienatjie’s face and left her.

Outside the tent, a woman and a goat were still vainly waiting.

The song of the children was all over the camp, over the tents and the pathways and the fences; it shivered in the morning mist hanging low over the camp; the air was filled with it. It was the lamentation of dead children who would nevermore live.

As she walked towards her tent she saw other women 434

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coming out of their tents and stopping outside to listen. One asked: “Who is it, singing like that?”

“All the dead camp children,” she answered, “and Fienatjie Minter.” *** “His eyes went dead.”

“His eyes? Only his eyes?”

“That’s what she said. And when he asked me for the favour, I could see what she meant by it. They were dead … his eyes, I mean.”

The major was telling Joey Wessels about the only conversations he had ever had with Magrieta van Wyk. And about Petrus Minter.

It had taken some research in the museum to match Petrus’s first name with his surname and face, because although Magrieta might have mentioned Petrus’ name to Philip Brooks, he would not have been able to remember it today.

Like all old people, he said: “Old age is funny. The more clearly that images from the past come back to you,” he said, “the more easily you forget their names. But the face of that young man I will never forget. Not after what happened.”

Petrus was not in the Minter family photograph, but his face was there on his wedding photograph. The major recognised him immediately. And his name was on the back. In Magrieta’s hand.

Something on the wedding photograph suddenly caught the major’s attention. “Look!”

“What, Major?”

“My boot! Take a close look at the photograph. There is the print of my boot, where I stamped on it to put out the fire! Do 435

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you see?”

The old finger was moving across the image. Sure enough, there was the semi-circle print of a boot heel.

“I see, but really, Major, there is one thing which you keep saying: ‘Later’, or ‘We’ll still get to that’.”

“Do I?” “You keep putting off telling me why this collection of photographs was burnt. You keep speaking about the fire.

What fire?”

“The photographer’s fire. He was the one that wanted to burn everything. I am getting so forgetful. I thought I had told you. Some of my men called me, saying that the photographer had gone berserk and was burning his camera and photographs. I ran to the fire and kicked it open. Stamped it out, as far as I could.”

“Why did he do that?”

The major raised his sound hand: “Let me show you. From the beginning.”

He took a framed photograph out of a separate pile and held it out to her: “For her.”

There was no sign of scorching on the photograph. It was under glass and had been tinted. Taken good care of.

“It isn’t scorched.”

“No, this is the one he kept out of the fire. He kept it with him until he died. After his death they sent it to me. Along with his few other possessions. In fact, he didn’t have anything else left, but apparently that was his wish. The refuge for the homeless where he died included a note that he seemed to have written a few days before his death. He wrote that he did not have enough breath left in his calcified lungs to carry on any more and he could not pay back the money he owed me for drinks, so I should please accept what his journey through 436

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life had left him. I was moved, because he was never particularly honest about money.”

Joey Wessels did not understand, but was unwilling to let the conversation fly off at a tangent, so she did not ask. The major continued: “When I was coming out to South Africa, I thought I would bring the photograph for your museum.”

“Is this the little girl you told me about?”

“Yes, but you will have to pronounce her name, I’ll never manage it. The photographer thought he could.”

“It’s Fie-na-tjie: FEE-nigh-kee. She has very pretty eyes, but could they really have been as blue as they have been coloured?” Where Joey’s tinting had not reached, the sepia photograph had already become discoloured.

“It seems that they were extraordinarily blue. Joey Drew could not stop talking about them. She must have been remarkable because Magrieta van Wyk also said that she loved the child more than anyone else. Apparently the child’s dreams always came true ... The photographer repeatedly launched into songs of praise about her and her eyes … saying things I would never have expected of him.”

“Major?”

“He was not someone whom you would have expected …

Oh, for instance, he said that when God made the child’s eyes, He still had a lot of beauty left over, so He put all of it into her eyes to make them the most beautiful beauty of all beauties.

That is what he said. It seemed that her Creator could not help making her eyes ever more beautiful. I remember, because it was so unusual to hear anything like this coming from his mouth — he was decidedly not romantic by nature.”

“He sounds like a lover.”

The major looked at her closely, as though trying to detect any possibility of suspicion about Joey Drew’s intentions.

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“No,” he said, almost sternly, “decidedly not. She was only seven … eight, perhaps nine. I believed him when he said he could love her like a child of his own … without any ugly ulterior motives. That was what made it so special for him.

That, and her kindness. He once said that only she had not cared that he was undersized, squint and ugly. Only she dreamt the truth about how lonely he was. That is how he put it, because he believed her dreams.”

Joey Wessels was sorry that the old man might have misunderstood her. She knew that Queen Victoria and all the taboos of her time would never die out in folk of the major ’s generation, so she was relieved when the old man continued and started telling her what Magrieta had told him during those few days when they had been able to talk.

It was Magrieta who had let Joey know that Fienatjie had fallen ill. She sent him a message by one of the soldiers who was on his way to the laying down of arms. Joey Drew hurried back, but came too late. He arrived late on the morning of her death, just after Danie van Wyk had left for the farm with the second load of stuff on the spider. Magrieta had already had the little body, bed and all, removed from the hospital and taken to one of the empty tents.

She said she had never seen anyone crumple up and collapse like the photographer did when she told him that Fienatjie had died early that morning. He was completely inconsolable. For a long time he remained standing beside the bed, trembling like someone unable to move or speak, not uttering a word. After a while he darted out of the tent towards his cart. The horses were still harnessed. He returned with his camera and tripod to photograph the child. He must have wanted to take something of her home with him, or else to make his camera remember her death. But her eyes would have 438

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to be open. Magrieta said she had helped him open the eyes and that they stayed open, but they were dead. Like Petrus Minter’s eyes were dead. What possessed the photographer, Magrieta could not explain, but he ran out to the cart and returned with castor oil in a blue glass bottle. Perhaps he wanted to make the eyes shine or to make them look alive for his camera, for he dripped a little castor oil into them. But they could not be made to look alive. A castor-oil tear trickled down one of the temples of the little body. Magrieta could not make out whether Joey had seen something in that castor-oil tear, or whether he had then realised that those eyes would never see again, but it was at that moment that a kind of smothered scream broke out of the man and he rushed outside. Magrieta followed and saw him drive away She went back into the tent to close the child’s eyes again. She did not realise that he was on his way to the cooking fires.

“He was possessed! Totally beside himself. He resisted when I tried to prevent the burning. I had to have him restrained so that I could save what there was to be saved. The cameras were apparently the first things thrown into the fire, but I was able to kick the photographic material and the notebooks out of the conflagration and extinguish the fire round them before everything went up in flames. You see what the stuff looks like. I confiscated the material because he had continually insisted that he was a regimental photographer.

Accepting his story, then — which was certainly not altogether true — the goods were the property of the Crown.

“I have thought about it a great deal, but even in our most confidential moments there was something I never enquired about: why, of all the clothes he had, was it only the long jacket with the shortened sleeves that he wore all the time, winter and summer alike, that he threw into the fire? After all, it had no 439

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connection with the photography that he was so suddenly rebelling against. Yet when the jacket began to smoulder he apparently had second thoughts and suddenly wanted it back, raving and swearing all the while.

“Except that later, once everything was calmer and I had refused to give the stuff back to him — because I still think it is valuable material — he asked for an embargo to be placed on its release until after his death. He said he never wanted to hear or see any of the stuff again for as long as he lived. I gave him my word, and I have kept it, both to him and to you. I saw to the developing of what had not been developed. You will probably have observed that the photographs of the surrender have no scorch marks on them.”

“Did he ever say why he wanted everything burnt?”

“I have grown too old to try to understand everything about other people. There is too much inside us that we cannot explain even to ourselves.”

“But what do you think, Major?”

“I can only draw conclusions from what I heard him say himself. During the burning, he was stamping his feet like a frustrated toddler. The soldier holding him had to pick him up off the ground and hold him.

“Then he started shouting all kinds of things: that the child had been the only scrap of honesty he would ever know — that he was all alone again … that sort of thing. And in between he cursed the camera that had led him to believe he actually amounted to something. That was one part that I still cannot understand. In any case, his shouting and crying were too incoherent to make sense.

“Years later, we were chatting in a pub and he was drunk.

He said he had wanted to make the camera remember, but that along with everything else the thing had lied. We should rather 440

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forget all that we had been and everything we had got up to.

We didn’t deserve remembrance.

“I don’t know what was going on inside him, Joey. I just don’t know. But since you ask … there was one night when he said something else in his drunken state which has remained with me. He said he had seen everything about us and about himself, because he had seen a drop of castor oil trickle out of something which had first been divinely beautiful and had then been destroyed. But don’t ask me to explain it to you — maybe he was just drunk.”

“Joey was present on the day of the child’s funeral. He had driven to town especially to buy her a coffin. Van Wyk was then carting his second load back to the farm, taking with him the child’s mother and the old man who always conducted the funerals. Magrieta said they had decided that it was not necessary for the mother to attend the funeral since she no longer understood what was happening around her anyway.

Magrieta conducted the funeral herself. In their language. The photographer also seemed to want to say something, but all he could say was “Thanks” before he was overcome. The child was the last — no: the second-last — to be buried in the camp.

Her grave was the last one in the last row. I’ll show you the angel when we go there.”

“And Petrus Minter?”

“Magrieta said her father-in-law was terribly worried about him … about what he might do when he received the news of the deaths of his wife and child. Petrus Minter had unexpectedly arrived at her tent and asked where they were.

Magrieta said he was as excited as a child. When she told him they were dead, he said nothing. But his eyes died. She took and showed him where they lay. He sat down beside the graves. He asked her please to leave him — he wanted to be 441

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alone. She took his horse for the soldiers to take care of, because she said he could not.” *** She was still trying to puzzle out how all these things fitted together. She had buried Fienatjie. That was the first thing. She had driven back from the graveyard with Joey Drew because he had insisted on conveying the coffin himself, so that it would not have to be transported on the black Scotch cart. Back at her tent, he asked her for Fienatjie’s particulars, because he wanted to have a gravestone made for her. He fetched the scorched long jacket with the short sleeves from the chest on his cart, dug in the lining and produced a handful of English pounds and a few Kruger sovereigns. He held out the money to her, asking whether it would be enough for a proper gravestone, and what it would cost to have letters carved on it.

They guessed that there would be sufficient for Fienatjie’s names and dates: STEFIENA JOHANNA MINTER Born 18 Aug. 1894 — Died 6 June 1902 But Joey insisted on having something more: some words on Fienatjie’s memorial that would say what she had been to him.

Magrieta thought back to what Fienatjie had meant to her, particularly on the night of her desperate trial, and the words that she had said that night when the child was such a cool drop of comfort on the fever of her guilt: “I will pay for the wording.” She said. “Underneath, we will put: A DROPLET OF GOD 442

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Joey agreed that that was just what Fienatjie had been to him, too. Also, he asked, could Magrieta please have it written in her own language, not in his that he had taught her.

Magrieta sat down and wrote out each letter for Joey, neatly and precisely, in block capitals. She gave him what she thought her share of the costs would be and he left to have the gravestone made.

When Danie returned for the second load, just before Joey Drew arrived, he and Magrieta both decided that Sannie Minter and Oupa Daniël should go back with him. Magrieta would have to stay and wait for Petrus to arrive and to bury Fienatjie. Danie was still very worried about Petrus, but Sannie took no notice of the dead child: she simply went on smiling.

Magrieta thought it better not to tell Danie about Oupa Daniël’s crisis of faith and his refusal to bury the child.

Danie then set off again with a tent and a huge load. He was in a hurry, because they no longer had any weapons and the women had been left alone. Also, there was an urgent need for him to see to certain things on the farm so that they could start their new life, but he did promise to return for her as soon as he could do so without overtaxing the horses.

“But please, my girl, promise me you will be gentle with Petrus.” She promised.

Petrus arrived the next day, so on that day she was the only member of the family in the camp.

She had spoken to Philip Brooks. Since she could not bring herself to traverse her path of shame from his tent again, she gave a Tommy a note, asking Captain Brooks if he would call on her. He arrived at her tent almost immediately.

Apart from her bed, a chair and a small cupboard for her cooking and toilet things, there was virtually nothing in the 443

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tent, but she invited him in. It was an almost audacious thing to do, for there were still watching eyes everywhere, but she did it, leaving the tent flap wide open. She wanted to talk to him. Since she had been sent out of his tent in disgrace on the night when Aunt Gertruida silenced her piano for ever, for planks for Driena’s coffin, she and Philip Brooks had not said a single unnecessary word to one another, not looked at one another, greeted one another only formally and stiffly, and avoided any kind of meeting — almost as if by prior agreement. But they both knew that there were matters between them which had to be clarified.

To break the ice, they spent a long time speaking about the photographer. She told him about Fienatjie’s death and Joey Drew. Their conversation circled round and round the thing which both of them knew had to be faced.

Eventually, after talking at length about war, politics, guilt, suffering, complicity, compassion, her family’s affairs, his wartime experiences and everything else they could think of — finally, they had to speak out. Perhaps their stalling was more than just hesitation about what had remained unspoken.

Perhaps they had been wanting to prolong their conversation so as to spend more time together; or perhaps one was afraid of how stating the truth might influence the other’s affection. The day was wearing on towards evening, so she suggested it would be better if they sat outside since the piano was no more. Philip summoned a passing soldier to bring another chair and two mugs of coffee. Only then could he bring himself to ask: “I don’t want to distress you, but what happened to the baby?”

Magrieta would never forget that moment of hesitation before she replied. Hester Strydom had said: “Lie.” Instead, Magrieta said: “I could lie to you, which would make 444

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everything easier, but I won’t. The child was stillborn, but the midwife saw to it. I am guilty, because I knew and I allowed it.

I bear a double defilement: I am innocent of one part of it, but not of the other part. I have to tell you and if you reject me, I won’t hold it against you. Now you know. It is up to you to decide whether you still wish to know me. But if you do still want to know me, you must never again raise the matter that I have just confided to you.”

“I do want to know you. From the very first moment I saw you, I have wanted …”

A vast relief swept through her. It felt as if her confession had purified something inside her; as though the gnawing worry about her defilement really was going to end; as though, at last, the torment of the guilt within her was going to subside; as though a tiny spark of new life had sprung up.

Then they became practical, like conspirators: the emotions that were still running high would have to calm down before they could meet again; she would have to decide whether to return to the Cape Colony, since after her husband’s death she no longer had any ties of blood to the Van Wyk family; to allow them to see more of one another in future, he would arrange not to go back to England but would remain in South Africa.

They would write to each other, but for fear that the letters might fall into the wrong hands, they agreed that they would first wait for a month and that she would write first. They exchanged addresses: his was an army address where he could be reached wherever he happened to be; hers for the mean time was a safe poste restante.

It was late before he returned to his tent and, for the first time since Daantjie’s death, Magrieta was able to light her lamp with a little joy in her heart, wondering what Fienatjie might have dreamt about her and Philip Brooks.

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Petrus Minter arrived the next morning. That afternoon Danie came to fetch her and the last load.

Danie went straight to Petrus and spent over an hour with him but returned alone. He went in search of Captain Brooks and brought him back to the tent. Philip helped to collapse the tent and load the last goods. When they had a moment alone, she told him how Petrus’ eyes had gone dead and asked him please to keep an eye on him. When he took leave of Captain Brooks, Danie did extend his hand. That was when Philip explained where he had re-buried the treasures on the farm where Greeff’s disloyalty would not have been able to find them.

They drove away to the farm. She did not ask her father-inlaw what Petrus had said nor what he had asked the captain for. Normally, Danie never showed that he was suffering. But that time he did, and she knew: this was not a time for words.

Many miles later he said: “The Minters have no fear of death.”

Later still, he told her that Jakop Minter had been killed by a word.

“And Petrus?” she asked.

“What he has decided to do, he will do. That’s how he is. I told him he was the only son I still have left, he must not abandon me. I don’t know what he meant but he reassured me that he would not do away with himself … Because when he left, he said: ‘Pa, you’ve got a son’.” After another long silence he asked: “And what about you, my daughter?”

“I’m tired of death, Pa. Sick and tired of it. Somewhere there’s got to be a little life left.”

“Whether there is or not, we’ll just have to go on living it, my girl. I pray that you will find that little bit of life somewhere not too far from us. In any case, I don’t understand what God is 446

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doing with us.”

That was when she was able to tell him about Oupa Daniël’s rebellion. *** “He came to ask a favour. Van Wyk said the man who was sitting between the graves had been deeply hurt. His young wife and the child whom he had lost in the camp had been all he that he had to live for. He added that the young man was the most fearless soldier he had ever encountered. He asked if I would kindly see to some food and water, and would I take care to see that the man was not left alone, so that the things raging in his heart might come to rest.

“I promised and sent the word through the camp that the man was to be left in peace. Late that afternoon I took him some food and water. When he thanked me, I was struck by his soft voice, but it was his eyes, the dead eyes that Magrieta had told me about, that I remember. He did not want to talk, so I put down the food and water and left him.

“Early the next morning one of the troops woke me to say that the man between the graves had got hold of a pick and shovel and was digging. They wanted to accompany me because they thought he might have gone mad and was trying to dig up his wife. I told them to keep away: I would go on my own.

“He was already shoulder-deep in the grave he was digging — between those of his wife and child. The food and water that I had taken him the afternoon before were untouched. When I asked him what he was doing, he laid the shovel aside, came to the edge of the grave and said in his soft voice: ‘All I ever had lies here. I want to lie beside them. Without them there is 447

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nothing left for me.’ Momentarily his face would become contorted, but with what must have been a will of iron he controlled himself and spoke rationally: ‘Lend me your revolver, Captain, it’s quicker than a knife.’ Something in him persuaded me that I would be powerless to refuse. He was not prepared to show any emotion, but his pain and his certainty about what he was about to do hung round him like a cloak: ‘I’ll dig deep enough. I’m asking for a single bullet and the bother of having the soil shovelled over me.’ Under the compulsion of his dead eyes … and the pain enveloping him … and the will of the strong man he so evidently was …That was why … I took my service pistol out of the holster and laid it down beside the hole. Then he gave me that beautiful watch and asked me to see that it reached Danie van Wyk. “I stood for almost an hour waiting for the shot. The troops heard the gun go off and asked me what was going on. I told them the man in the grave had committed suicide, four of them should take a blanket and shovels and fill in the grave. They went and did so, but, for soldiers, they returned in a strange silence to report that they had carried out the orders.

“With a kind of profound respect, they told me what they had seen as they filled in the grave. One of them must have noticed my holster and wanted to explain why they had not been prepared to retrieve the service pistol lying beside the corpse. There was a foul stench at the grave, he said, because down below the man had dug sideways and broken open the side of a coffin before shooting himself. He was holding in his hand the semi-decomposed hand of a corpse.”

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Fourteen There was nothing left in the farm, only destruction. The homestead was a charred and roofless ruin. Everything had either been broken or burnt, or had disappeared — except the things they were now unearthing. They had to start again from scratch, as though there had never been a homestead, a lifestyle or a farm at all. They did not even have water. The windmill had been knocked over, they could not trust the well and there was no dog to test to see whether its water had been poisoned.

Pa Danie had to open up the old spring with an iron bar and they had to carry water from it in the one undamaged bucket they still owned. They had brought enough food to survive for a week and in that week Pa Danie still had to transport people and loads of goods back from the camp. He also had to drive to town to buy tools and other necessities. Fortunately, they did have money — what they had carried on their persons during their time in the camp as well as what Ma Dorothea had buried with her jewels without Greeff knowing about it. What was to happen to people who did not have any money when peace returned was a mystery.

They slept in the English tents while Pa Danie erected temporary lean-tos between such walls as were still standing, using raw blue-gum poles and sheets of iron that had not been too warped by the heat. At night the winter cold was starting to bite, so they sat huddled close together, usually with their hands stretched out towards the cooking fire that Ma Dorothea 449

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kept going in the make-shift stove. The stove plates had been lying about outside, broken, so cooking pots and old iron had to be used to patch the holes. The stove could draw through a chimney, which by a mercy had remained standing. But there was no roof over their heads; the night sky was clear above them; the chill wintry stars looked down mercilessly through the night cold. Apart from the kitchen, which had a concrete floor, the rest of the house was virtually inaccessible because when the house was built, deep underfloor space had been created to prevent wood-rot. In every doorway they had to step up from the bare earth across the foundations. Oupa Daniël could not manage it. Pa Danie with his injured hip found it difficult.

For some reason a section of the wooden floor in the back room had survived. Pa Danie was able to us those planks to knock together the first doors and covers for the window holes.

What had been a home had now to be made into a shelter.

During the day Magrieta and Gertruida dug up the things which Brooks had had re-buried and started to clean them.

Everyone worked flat-out from morning till night.

There was no help available, so Pa Danie had to do all the men’s work on his own. Soldaat’s folk had been separated from the Van Wyks as soon as they had arrived at the camp. If either of his two wives or any of their children had survived in their completely unsheltered camp, who knows where in the wide world they might now have ended up? Whether Soldaat, after stealing the horse and rifle, would dare to return, was doubtful, and Greeff would certainly not show his face again. The work that required real strength would have to wait till Petrus Minter arrived.

But Petrus did not arrive. An English soldier did, bringing Pa Danie Petrus Minter’s watch and a note from Captain 450

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Brooks: the man whom he was asked not to disturb had committed suicide and had been buried between his wife and child.

The news of the death of her eldest and last child did not cause Sannie to smile any less: “Well then, him too now. Now the whole lot are there.”

Pa Danie wanted to give Sannie the watch but she shook her head: “That’s stuff from before-the-bank.”

Joey Drew often remarked that Fate had it in for the Minters.

That must have been true, because only Sannie was left now, and without there having been any discussion, without any decision being taken, she just stayed on, did her share of household cleaning, making beds, cooking and washing dishes, and remained with them as a kind of useful charity case.

In all the years of her doubting that were to come, Magrieta could never forget Pa Danie’s words. When he announced the news of Petrus’ suicide to the women, he said bitterly, as though blaming Petrus for his action: “And Petrus assured me I had a son.”

What could have been in Pa Danie’s mind when speaking about Petrus? For these were the same words that he had quoted to her on the spider on their way back to the farm. In those first days, all Pa Danie did was work, drive to get what was required to establish some order, and not talk about anything. Everyone knew that the deaths of his two sons had affected him very deeply. He must have thought a great deal, and possibly doubted, too, for how else could Magrieta explain his behaviour when Daantjie reappeared? ***

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It was not until a week after the surrender that Bella Steenkamp heard that the war was over and shared the news with Daantjie and Soldaat. Daantjie, Soldaat and their horses had all gained weight under Bella’s care. On the night before their departure she heated bathwater and bathed Daantjie in front of the stove. His body sitting in the tub was almost the one he had had before the war began. She caressed him with the soapy flannel while slowly prolonging their togetherness, intimately washing him all over and making the bathing into a love-making. While the bathwater was heating, Bella had already cut off his long hair and held up the mirror and lamp for him to trim his beard and clip his moustache evenly. At one side, hung over the backs of her kitchen chairs, were the clothes for him to wear home, all clean and ironed. Bella ungrudgingly subjected her body to her “stroke of luck” when after the bath, still not properly dry and without any further foreplay he jumped her. Men are just stallions, she thought, and this might well be her last time. After all, Bella could not have known that she was merely a substitute and that what she thought was love was just a stallion’s jealous revenge on his whore of a mare. Koot Duvenhage had never told her about the beautiful woman for whose sins she had so readily acquiesced in his lust.

The return of Daantjie and Soldaat was both hasty and hesitant. They had no idea what was happening to the farm and its people. They had heard only a little about the camps from Joey Drew and sometimes from Bella when she returned from her shopping forays. The destruction of the farms they had seen for themselves in the last of their wanderings. They could only guess at how the war had affected their own folk.

And over it all hung the lie about Daantjie’s heroic death. They had been too thorough with that lie: the blood on the knife and the letter was horse’s blood; Soldaat and the rifle had 452

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disappeared — how was all this to be explained away?

To extend the lie further required a mutually agreed plot: Soldaat had made a mistake — it was somebody else who had been shot to pieces; the jacket and the letter had lain nearby and Soldaat had picked up the bloodied garment and assumed Daantjie was dead; he was wrong when he gave the minister Daantjie’s name to put in the bottle and told Pa Danie that Daantjie had fallen in battle; it was the commandant who had sent Soldaat to retrieve Daantjie’s horse and rifle, because he had seen Daantjie’s heroism and had sent him on a secret mission that very night.

They knew, before the sanctity of their souls that that lie was too long and altogether too improbable.

Soldaat reckoned: “If the skeins of shit you string together are too long, nobody will believe you. There is no way Pa Danie van Wyk is going to swallow this rubbish.”

Fine then, improve the lie: Daantjie was sent down to the Cape Colony with a despatch that very night and they kept him there carrying out espionage. Only that night did Soldaat realise he had been mistaken and that Daantjie was alive, but it was all terribly urgent, so Soldaat was sent to fetch the horse and rifle because Daantjie was in an emergency meeting that night. Daantjie had been wounded and Soldaat had not wanted to disturb him! That helped a bit! It had to do with an instruction which he was not permitted to talk about. Daantjie was half-way to the Cape Colony before he realised that his father thought he was dead. And he had tried to send several messages through to his family. War causes many messages to go astray.

All this was patent nonsense, but it was better than nothing.

Could Daantjie not have been captured? No, absolutely not — if so: where would the horse and the rifle and Soldaat’s own 453

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sudden disappearance fit in? He, Soldaat, was damned if he was going to take the whole heap of blame upon himself.

Maybe, just maybe, his father would be so happy to see him that he would be able to tell him anything. He could say very little, and that mysteriously, about things that were too painful to mention, and if his father started to look disbelieving, he could act angry and affronted because his own father refused to believe something good about his only son. His mother would believe him because she would want to. He could feed her the things he wanted his father’s ears to hear.

To make quite sure, he drilled Soldaat about all the places they had been in, how hard they had fought, between which generals they had carried despatches. With the exact days and dates. If his father started querying them, their accounts had to match. Soldaat was dubious: “If you lie and you don’t believe the lie yourself, you’ll be lying for nothing. And I don’t believe this one at all.”

“If my dad, or my mother, or Magrieta asks you, tell them only this and stick to the story. My dad won’t talk to them about “that business”. If Petrus Minter opens his mouth, we’ll both say he’s a liar and I’ll see to it that all the Minter scum are chased off the farm.”

“All you need to do is treat Petrus Minter properly and he won’t tell.”

“Well, he’d better keep his paws off my sister!”

“You’d better keep your mouth shut about him. He was the one who carried your father out of the battle, and I was there when your father gave his permission for Petrus to start courting Nellie.”

“So now you’re also on his side …”

At one point Daantjie reined in his horse and asked, for the umpteenth time: “How serious was my dad’s wound, Soldaat?

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Did it look as though he would survive?”

Spurring his horse on, Soldaat rebuked Daantjie with obvious contempt: “A man doesn’t wish his own father dead.”

The ride back took three days, three days with their discussion continually shifting this way and that way.

Although he was scared, Daantjie pushed on: he wanted to see whether Magrieta might have left with the Englishman and their child. The bitch was a married woman!

The houses they rode past were all more or less burnt out ruins. One was intact, with people and farm animals and all.

Daantjie was Daantjie van Wyk again and the woman of the house gave them food and told them more about the camps and the surrender. As they were leaving, the man said that if the English caught Daantjie with that rifle, they would shoot him — everyone had had to lay down their arms, it was the law now.

“Bloody traitors,” Daantjie said as they rode away.

“How can you tell?”

“Their house is still standing! And just see how much stuff they’ve got! And they had nothing to say about what they did during the war.”

Soldaat had a way of looking at him when he said things like that. Soldaat’s look said: “And where were you during the war, Daantjie van Wyk?” “Oh, go and get fucked, man! I had a damned good reason!”

Still, having the rifle meant their riding had to be stealthy.

But that they were used to. *** Magrieta often wondered what transpired between Pa Danie and Soldaat on that day when Daantjie came back from the 455

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dead, but she could never get anything out of either of them nor out of Daantjie.

The two horsemen came riding round the side of the hill.

She first saw them from where she was holding the halfrepaired but still dented bathtub beside the fire so that Pa Danie could repair the split seams with his new soldering iron and newly acquired solder. When she told Pa Danie there were people coming, he looked up: “I recognise those horses.”

He came upright: “I know those horses!”

It was impossible. She had also recognised the horses, but it couldn’t be them. Yet the closer they came, the surer it appeared: it was them.

Ma Dorothea came round the house and started running: “It’s my son, O God, it’s my child!”

What could she do? She was turned to stone. Her supposedly deceased husband had risen from the dead! She looked at Pa Danie. The skin had drawn taut across his jaw and there was an ominous threat in his limp as he started walking up to them.

Would it have been that walk of his that made Soldaat jerk his horse about and head off? It was certainly Daantjie’s voice shouting at him: “Where are you going? Come back here!”

Ma Dorothea had already reached Daantjie. He leapt off the horse and hugged his mother. Aunt Gertruida was soon there too, with Ma Dorothea, both clutching him and crying for joy.

She, Magrieta, stood quietly, watching it all from a distance.

Everything she was seeing and hearing seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Ma Dorothea was beside herself with joy: “Oh, my child! My child! Thank you, God, oh my child!”

Magrieta remembered clearly seeing Soldaat galloping away to his huts. Pa Danie did not even greet Daantjie — he jerked 456

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the reins out of his hand, mounted the horse and rode after Soldaat.

Now she had to approach. Daantjie’s eyes followed his father for a moment, but came back immediately, burning towards her over his mother’s shoulder. She heard his mother repeatedly asking Daantjie: “Where were you? Where were you?”

And his dramatic response, strong and full, as though he had practised it beforehand: “Fighting for my people! Suffering for my people, Ma! That’s where I was!”

And then he said: “And here’s my wife, looking as if she doesn’t want to greet me.”

Ma Dorothea loosened her embrace to give Magrieta a chance to greet him. She went up and gave him a dry kiss. She had no words to speak, she did not even say she was pleased to see him, or ask where he had been all this time. Had she mourned and grieved him right out of her life, then? Or had her defilement changed her? Or had she spent too long listening to the piano? How had it happened that seeing him alive again brought her no happiness? What could it be that had made her feel so alienated from him? Was it because, without letting them know that he was alive, he had caused her and all of them so much unnecessary suffering? These were questions she would never be able to answer fully, but the smouldering rage that would sometimes burst from her in the years to come had its origin in that moment: all the pain, the doubting, the hopelessness, the hellish nights of her body’s yearning for him — all of it nothing but a farce. All those agonising things deep within her were now laughable. Her widowhood had been a demonic black joke. Her mourning was nothing but a mockery. That must have been what had troubled Pa Danie when he set off after Soldaat. Throughout 457

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the surge of emotion at the unexpected reunion, only she and Pa Danie had realised what a travesty Daantjie had made of their deepest feelings — with a heartlessness that had never once, not for a single moment, thought about them.

“After all my sacrifices,” he asked, “is this how I am greeted by my own wife?”

“She’s just shocked, my boy. Like all of us. Come, come and tell me …”

“And where is my father in this moment of reunion?

Again, his grand words had the smell of having been rehearsed beforehand. To Magrieta their insincerity was palpable. She followed the two exuberant older women and Daantjie up to the house, and then watched Oupa Daniël taking Daantjie’s hands and kissing them, mumbling: “Daniël Egbert van Wyk … Daniël Egbert van Wyk … God has preserved our name after all.”

Pa Danie spent a long time at Soldaat’s huts. It was over an hour before he returned. *** Soldaat had decided it would be better to wait at his huts for Danie. There was no point in fleeing, since Daantjie’s horse was better than his and Danie van Wyk could get the best out of any horse on four legs. The huts round him were a desolation, the mud walls half weathered away by wind and rain. The cooking place had long since blown apart and been rainwashed. There was no shelter for as much as a rat.

Danie got down off Daantjie’s sweating horse and marched straight up to Soldaat. There was murder in his eyes. He opened the pocketknife as he approached. Like someone who knew exactly what he was about to do, he spoke softly: “Start 458

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with the knife.”

“It was the black snake …”

“Black snake’s arse, man! If you and Daantjie think you’re going to dump a load of shit in my ears, you’re making a mistake. Lie to me and I’ll cut your throat right now. Where were you? Tell me one word of a lie — one word — and I’ll cut your balls off and get the truth. Start with the knife.”

Soldaat was trembling as he started telling about the bloodstained knife, the horse’s blood, and came out with the whole story: “that business” of Daantjie’s again that led to him fainting and wetting himself, and how Daantjie could not help the black snake inside him … about Daantjie’s trip in among the corpses and the blow-flies on the cart at Driefontein; about their escape and flight, and about stealing horses and rifles. He had pitied Daantjie. That was why. He described how Daantjie had gone crazy hearing about Magrieta and the Englishman.

He told Pa Danie about Bella Steenkamp who had hidden them for months.

Danie recognised the truth of what he was hearing. He did not ask about the Englishman, though this was the first mention he had heard of him. Nor whether Daantjie had ever thought of Magrieta’s widowhood or of their pain as they suffered the loss of a husband, son, brother. He knew Daantjie would not have.

Once Soldaat was done, Danie sat down without a word on one of the stones round the cooking place.

Soldaat sat staring at the remains of his huts. Eventually he broke the silence of the afternoon: “Where are my people?”

Danie could see there was far more in him than only his fear of the lie that he had told for Daantjie. Soldaat’s moment of truth had not come about merely because of the knife in Danie’s hand. This was the man who had stood in for Daantjie in the 459

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battles. This was the man who now had to be answered, not the man of the horse-blood lie, the stealing of horse and rifle, nor the hiding away. Maybe it was pity for what he called the black snake in Daantjie. Maybe it was out of sheer pity that he had allowed himself to be misused.

Danie saw Soldaat’s worry about his own folk and closed his pocket knife: “I don’t know, Soldaat. I did try to find out what happened to them. I know they were in their own camp, but the English kept no record of black people. We don’t know what happened to them. We don’t even know what happened to ourselves. You will just have to wait. If nothing crops up, I’ll help you search for them. Bring your stuff and come back to the house with me. There’s food there.”

Full of far too many things inside them, they rode back together to the burnt-out ruin of what before the war had been a homestead.

“It will be better if people don’t hear about “that business” or about you hiding away. It’s better that Magrieta should not know, either ...”

“It’s better.”

Then Danie told Soldaat about all the others who would never return to the farm again. *** The first night with Daantjie after his return from the dead had a whole afternoon stretching out ahead of it — like the mouth of hell for what was to come afterwards.

Magrieta could not remember much about that afternoon: the first night loomed too large over everything. As was becoming her habit, Sannie Minter brought in coffee for everyone as they were sitting in one of the English tents. Ma 460

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Dorothea had given Daantjie all the news of the camp deaths.

She told him of his sister’s marriage to Petrus Minter and how both of them and their child had died. He listened to it all and made the right noises before telling his mother, Aunt Gertruida and Oupa Daniël where he had been and how he had waged war for his people. He probably wanted her, too, to hear of his exploits, but she was not listening. Instead, she just sat and looked at the man for whom she had mourned and grieved for nothing, the man for whom she had almost gone mad with yearning in the days after receiving the news of his death. All she felt now was revulsion.

They heard Pa Danie and Soldaat outside. Pa Danie appeared in the opening of the tent. He did not look at or greet Daantjie again — just instructed Ma Dorothea: “Give some of our food to Soldaat. He wants to sleep at his huts.”

“What’s going on with you, Danie? Our son has returned from the dead!”

“So I see, and you can tell him to go and see to his horse — I’m not going to do it for him. And tell him, while he’s about it, to throw that gun down the well — we don’t want any more trouble.” With that, Pa Danie walked out.

“Is that what I get from my own father after all my sacrifices” Daantjie asked, aggrieved, then flew up and went to attend to his horse. Magrieta went out and saw Daantjie beside the horses, apparently having words with Soldaat. She could not make out much of what was being said, but both were obviously furious. Before they noticed her and suddenly went silent, she heard some words from Soldaat: “You’re too rotten to fight me, Daantjie van Wyk, and the damned gun you had is at the bottom of the well. Go on fucking with me and I’ll tell her!”

What? And who was the one whom he would tell? She 461

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herself? Magrieta could never find out. Something was not right and it was being concealed from her. The gnawing question that would continue down the years in her mind had begun.

Then that night came.

They saw no more of Pa Danie that afternoon or evening. He had gone off somewhere, not come back for supper, just stayed away. When, late that night, she crept out of the ruined house, wary as a frightened bitch, to fetch water from the barrel beside one of the English tents, a lamp was still burning in Ma Dorothea and Pa Danie’s tent — yellow against the night, like the triangular tents during the death vigils in the camp.

Ma Dorothea heard her moving near the barrel and poked her head out of the tent: “Danie, what’s going on with you?

Come to bed.”

“It’s just me, Ma. Magrieta.”

“Where can your father have got to? Do you know what’s going on with him? Something could have happened to him.”

She did not know. She went back to where Daantjie lay sleeping.

Only later did they hear that Pa Danie had spent the small hours sitting with Soldaat beside his little fire. Where he had been in the earlier part of the night, they never dared ask.

When she went to fetch the water, the first hours of her hell were past.

In the afternoon she had helped carry the pieces of the bed into the ruin. In their old bedroom, on the bare earth under where the wooden floor had been burnt away, Daantjie knocked the bed together and went to fetch the mattress.

Without saying a word to her.

“Make the thing,” he ordered her, before stepping over the foundation in the doorway.

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He returned with sheets of iron to close off the doorway.

After that, he stood one of Pa Danie’s home-made window frames in the gap in the wall and went off. Probably to his mother.

Eventually the bedding on the iron bedstead with brass knobs on its bedposts, standing under the open sky, its head against one ruined wall, was ready. Round it were only the scorched inside walls where half the black plaster had flaked off. The bed stood square, neat and out of place on the earth floor among pieces of half-burnt floorboards and roof beams, surrounded by the weeds that had sprung up that summer. On one wall, dangling from a nail, there was actually a length of copper wire. That was where their wedding photograph and its frame had burnt away. A few gouts of melted glass were still stuck to the bottom of the wall. She spread two hessian sacks, one on each side of the bed for them to step on while they undressed, and then fetched a chair to drape their clothes over.

There was only a candle for her and Daantjie, so she fetched a few unbaked bricks from the fowl-run to serve as a stand and a piece of stove-plate to melt the candle onto. That was all, and — she often thought later — it was fitting, because that was the entrance to the rest of her life.

That night would forever be coming back to her, in waves.

Black waves, as she imagined them.

They always start with her sitting on the bed and Daantjie making hideous scraping noises as he closes the door opening with loose iron sheets and props them in place with a green blue-gum pole. Two fire-rusted iron sheets from the formerly neat roof above them, and a crooked blue-gum pole. Flaking walls and a window made of floor planks enfolds them and the candle. The open sky closes off the night above them.

Then he turns round and she sees the hate in his eyes. He 463

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comes round to her side of the bed and stands on the hessian sack. So as not to be heard from outside, he hisses all his words: “Where’s the child?”

She replies. What, she does not remember. All she remembers is the question. She remembers that she was afraid of him; that she saw that he was possessed by a passion she did not recognise. She stands accused before his madness. She pleads. God, how she pleads — as though she was the guilty one! Of what? She tells him about being raped. He smirks, says she’s trying to justify the Englishman’s bastard. Through the gap in his front teeth he keeps hissing in her face that she’s lying. He calls her an enemy whore. Again and again. He carries on about the Englishman and his child. Where is the child? He’s possessed about the child. She says she was raped.

She goes on pleading that she was raped, she could not help it.

She says she was raped, raped, raped, but he’s not listening.

She says the rapist’s child was stillborn. He doesn’t listen. He will show her how he treats whores. He makes her strip. She is afraid and does so. She stands in front of him, bare.

Contemptuously he says her tits and cunt are drooping as a result of all her whoring. He undoes his trousers and pins her to the bed. He forces her legs apart and climbs on top of her. All the while he goes on and on swearing as if he wants to pound all his cursings right into her.

And then? There are parts her head just won‘t remember. He must have taken his clothes off and got into bed. He refused to allow her to put on her clothes: sluts sleep naked. Throughout, he went on and on talking. By now all his words had also become just fragments, scraps, splinters in her remembering, but that night a seething stream of self-pity, accusation, rage — and a pent-up dam of cruelty — burst from him. He kept going on about his sacrifices and heroic struggle. His privations. Her 464

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adultery. His father’s rejection. The proof of her unfaithfulness in the way she had greeted him. His friendship with the generals. They were the ones who had told him about her whoring with the Englishman, and of the bastard child she was carrying. The generals had spies who knew everything that happened in the camps. There was no point in her lying there and pretending to be innocent.

This was a man she did not know. He was an insane stranger being consumed by something that she was not permitted to know about. He loathed her. There was something he was blaming her for, something that his father had done to him that he was now taking out on her, but why Pa Danie was behaving that way she did not understand either, except that it had to do with that thing which she was not permitted to know about. What it was that had got into him she did not understand at all, but what he was using to torture her was a violent hate. She noticed that she was bleeding like a virgin because there was blood on his cock when he rolled off her the second time. He was taking revenge for something which she was could not identify. He did not hear what she was trying to say because he was listening to something evil inside himself.

He didn’t care. He had not even removed his boots.

Later, his rage spent, Daantjie began to snore. She rose, pulled on her nightdress, got back into bed and lay staring, open-eyed, out of the dark hole that was their bedroom, up at the night clouds moving in the moonlight, their image distorted by her tears, until thirst drove her to creep out for a drink of water.

She climbed back into bed. It was then, at that very moment, that she took a vow, before the God who would likely refuse even to acknowledge her now — before Him and before everything that she was, she vowed never again to allow fear 465

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of this new Daantjie to overwhelm her. Daantjie van Wyk would never again humiliate her in this fashion. Hester Strydom had said it, and Hester was a woman and not a slut.

She would not allow herself to be tethered like a mare.

Only later, years and years later, when the halter of necessity had unavoidably constrained her, did she manage to get it clear in her mind: the worst pain of all can grow like a cancer, a cancer growing out of something which you are powerless to prevent. That, then, is a most particular hell, because you know you are innocent of the source from which it all springs.

They were much older when, in the course of one of their quarrels, she shouted at Daantjie: “If you cannot help the start of something, if you are innocent of the root of the evil, how the hell can you be guilty of all the acts and suffering and hurt and pain which that first thing — which you were damned well innocent of — brought upon the world?”

He had suddenly gone silent, stopped quarrelling, looked straight ahead, and — she could not believe her ears — really did say, with tears in his eyes: “Yes … yes … yes … God knows that is true.” *** Joey Drew was passing the farm on his way back to the camp, so he came to say thank you and good-bye, before returning to England. Going home. There was nothing left for him here now. But before he left, he did want to see to Fienatjie’s grave first.

With all the work on the farm, they did not have much time to spend with him, but Dorothea did give him coffee. They did not invite him to unharness his horses. Soldaat unhitched them, gave them water and brought them round to the house 466

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again. Daantjie would not greet him: he said for the rest of his life he would never again greet an Englishman, so the bugger could get back on his cart and clear off — “Tell him there’s no booze here.” But the others, even Oupa Daniël, went out to see what he had on his cart: a marble gravestone angel, with Fienatjie’s name and dates chiselled on the pedestal, and: A DROPLET OF GOD “He really loved that child,” Pa Danie said, when Magrieta asked if she might stop work for a while so that she could accompany Joey to see what had happened to Fienatjie’s little treasures. He wanted to bury the caul and all her little valuables at the head of her grave.

“He says she was the only person who never treated him like a stranger, Pa.” “We are all strangers to one another, my girl.”

She wondered whether he was referring to Daantjie or to Dorothea because relations between her parents-in-law had clearly become strained. Because of Daantjie.

She and Joey climbed the hill to the hiding place he and Fienatjie had made there. They did not talk much, but Magrieta did tell him about Jakop Minter who, according to her fatherin-law, had died because of a single word. And about Petrus Minter, and about Sannie, who had gone out of her mind on account of it all.

Joey’s conclusion was: “Fate was always picking on the Minters.”

At the hiding place, Joey lifted the stone covering the treasure. The little trunk was largely rusted through — only the threads of its seams were left, like a prickly, brown skeleton.

The buttons and medals and all the other things that Fienatjie 467

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and Joey had collected had sunk into the ground. They had to sift them out through their fingers. Only the caul was undamaged, though the piece of his shirt that Joey had wrapped it in was starting to disintegrate. Joey kept turning his head to one side, so Magrieta would not see his tears.

“It’s the salt on the caul that caused it. Salt does that. I must make a little wooden chest to put in the grave.”

Magrieta held up her apron so Joey could place Fienatjie’s little treasures and the caul in the hollow. That was how they went back down to the house where his cart and horses stood ready. As they were walking back it seemed to Magrieta that Joey Drew’s grief for Fienatjie might have affected his common sense, for he kept going on about the castor oil tear, as though, for him, it was more than just castor oil trickling down from a dead child’s eye across her left temple. He said the castor-oil tear was the bitterness of beauty destroyed; beauty simply stolen by Fate in the fucking war. Something like that. He used the obscenity which the Khakis had introduced to the country along with the Mexican marigold weed which the Boers called Khaki-bush and which was already proliferating throughout the land. In front of a woman. His squinting eyes were burning with rage against Fate, which he always blamed for everything.

Once, he spoke of his little angel who had turned to stone. And of how Fate had sent him to this country only to learn to see.

Through the lenses of his cursed cameras, yes, but also through Fienatjie’s eyes. It was clear to Magrieta that he was no longer thinking clearly, so she let him ramble on.

The caul and the treasures were placed in the small wooden jewel box which Daantjie had given Magrieta in the days of their love, and which she had not been able to part with when she was taken to the camp. Joey would see to burying them.

Beside the cart, when the others had all gone back to their 468

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tasks, he spoke to Magrieta for almost the last time, about what was in his heart: “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but you’ve got the shittiest husband I know. Only Fienatjie’s eyes were more beautiful than you, and they were just as full of heartache as yours are now. I’ll give the letter to the captain.”

Joey said good-bye and set off on his final South African pilgrimage. He shook the reins and drove off. Magrieta watched the cart bearing away the angel, the erstwhile photographer and her letter. Joey Drew, thin and quite alone, was seated beside his marble angel.

She was moved by what Joey Drew was doing for Fienatjie, but her heart was in the letter that she had had to write, with so much difficulty and so secretly. *** The major was pondering. He had been to the stationer’s that morning for a strong envelope and sealing wax. For the embargo. Now he was wondering. In front of him lay the letter which he was loath to give up. Drew had brought him the letter on the day he arrived with the angel gravestone. He, the young captain with the dream of the beautiful woman in his heart, had retired to his tent to read it and his dream castles had collapsed then and there.

He knew every word of it: her husband had returned from his supposed death, he was alive, she had never been a widow.

That was how the letter began. Actually, that would have been enough, since it cut short any hope of anything further. But there was more: She was writing secretly and at night. She mentioned what only she, he and the two midwives knew about, the 469

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“unthinkable”. She was sorry if what she had shared with him might have destroyed what might have happened between them. He should not blame her. Not for what she had done, nor for burdening him with it. He should please try to understand how utterly alone she had felt on those precious nights when she had crept away to be with him and the piano. She wrote that she would be forever grateful to him and the piano for making tolerable something that was so utterly unbearable, even though it humiliated and made her cheap in the eyes of her own people. Then she gave him a spark of hope: she did not recognise her husband any more. He had returned from the war beside himself with suspicion and jealousy. The way he was now carrying on, she would not be able to stay with him, because he refused to believe she was innocent of her defilement. She was looking for an escape but it was difficult.

For safety sake, she had memorised his military address and would let him know what happened to her. Perhaps from the Cape Colony, since that was where she hoped to go.

She was grateful for having known him, she wrote, because he had made her want to be pretty again and not to feel defiled.

She had underlined “Thank You” above her signature.

At the bottom of the page, separately, in block capitals, she had printed the name of the spinster aunt whose piano it had been, with a note: she recalled that he had asked her the name but that with all their talking she had neglected to write it down for him.

That was all.

The old man hesitated for a long time before speaking to Joey Wessels, but eventually, when she came across to see how he was getting on, he began: “There are some things in old people, Joey, that should probably just go to their graves with them. What I am going to tell you now has no historical 470

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significance at all. Would you like to hear?”

“But of course! Please!” because she could see that he had drawn the photograph of the beautiful woman half-way out of the file again, and there was a letter in front of him in the handwriting that she could now identify.

“I am going to give you the letter. Under embargo till my death. But what your ears are about to hear is also under embargo. Is it against your principles to swear?”

It was not. She gave her word.

“In all my life, I have never spoken to anyone about this, not even to the photographer, but now that the war has come back to me so vividly, I think it may be good to tell at least someone.

Even if it is only to show that we, the British soldiers who came to destroy so much, did not emerge from the process unscathed ourselves.”

He drew the photograph of Magrieta van Wyk fully out of the file and held her up in front of them. The beautiful woman, held in his one-and-a-half hands looked at them out of Joey Drew’s meticulous tinting.

“I have to tell you about all the said and unsaid things between her and me. Then you may understand why, in the feasts of destruction, which is what wars are, it is not only the dead who are devoured … Often, they are the fortunate ones, because for them there is an end to it. A war drags on interminably and in many ways for those who survive …” *** Magrieta’s active resistance started on her second night with Daantjie.

Throughout the day she had been distant. So had he. Pa Danie had returned and with the assistance of Soldaat and 471

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Daantjie could now get on with work on the windmill. But he did not speak to Daantjie at all, passing his instructions to him through anyone within earshot. She was present when he silenced Ma Dorothea. She had wanted, for the umpteenth time, to reproach him about his attitude to his son: “Good God, woman, just stop it! I’ll talk to him if I have to, but he has made his mother and his wife and me suffer like fools, for no reason.

If that means nothing to you, carry on. But I’m through with him.”

“You can’t just abandon your child …”

“I’m not abandoning him, but I’m not going to forgive him for what he has done to us. His mother’s heart, his wife’s heart — and my heart, too — are not there for him to trample on.”

Magrieta knew that that was only part of the reason. After all, there was the blood on the knife. Somewhere there was a lie. There was the name in the bottle that her father-in-law had told her about. Pa Danie’s revulsion at the son whom he had always spoilt, and even defended, was altogether too fierce.

Something must have happened during the war.

Aunt Gertruida and Oupa Daniël also tried to talk to him, but he shrugged them off and went on working. Things had to be cleaned and set right because he wanted to finish repairing the house this winter so that he could go looking for livestock to start farming again. The windmill had to be fixed if they wanted to gather winter fodder. He had measured up the house, with her and Daantjie at either end of the measuring tape. In the last light that afternoon he made a start on the lists of all that would be needed.

Using rawhide thongs pieced together from sections extracted from the ruins everywhere, and with parts of the horses’ harness, the two black horses and all of them pulling together managed to right the windmill that morning. Held 472

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against a section of railway line, the bent shaft was beaten into shape with their new four-pound hammer. Then they extended it to the correct length with a blue-gum pole. Daantjie was instructed — in the round-about manner which had now become part of their lives — to climb up and turn the halfrepaired wheel. Water came up, so they could set the windmill square and secure it safely.

Daantjie wanted to go to bed early, but she dawdled in the kitchen with Ma Dorothea and Aunt Gertruida. Deliberately.

He went away, openly angry. When she came into the bedroom, he was already under the blankets.

“Put those sheets of iron across the doorway, get undressed and come to bed.”

She did not touch the iron, just undressed and put on her nightdress. He leapt up and shoved the plates in the doorway.

Without clothes.

He ordered: “Naked!”

She turned to him: “If you think you are going to do to me what you did to me last night, I’ll scream. If you touch me, I’ll call your father.”

What happened between them sounded pretty childish to her later, but she was fighting for the only piece of pride left to her after the humiliation of that first night. When Daantjie grabbed her again, she screamed: “Pa!” He blocked her mouth and waited.

From the tent outside Pa Danie’s voice came: “Yes?” “Thanks, Pa, we’ve found it.” He was such a quick, smooth liar!

“I’ll kill you yet,” he snarled, still blocking her mouth.

“Now you shut your mouth or I’ll smack it closed before my father even gets here!”

But he stopped and rolled over.

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She fell asleep with him muttering, accusing, blaming. The pattern of their marriage bed was established in those first few weeks. Daantjie’s urges assumed different guises and often kept her from sleeping: sometimes a hand that she could slap away, or him sliding closer while she was asleep, or even suddenly clambering on top of her with breathless kisses. She resisted it all. Then there would be his self-pity, or fury, or whatever it was. In a torrent of words, always the same topics that he kept raging on about: his sacrifices for his people, his father, the Englishman and his bastard child. The thread of all his grievances was the unfairness of it all. Night after night. But she kept him away from her body, because Daantjie was really afraid of his father. That was obvious every day as he went on cravenly attempting to win some approval in his father’s eyes.

He failed. Soldaat became her father-in-law’s confidant.

Thinking back to those first days after the war after so many years spent with Daantjie, she wondered just how she had managed to stay with him. But she had known in her heart that leaving him would be impossible: necessity had already put the mare’s halter round her neck.

Oh, she had dreamt of leaving him, both then and later, and if she been one of today’s women, she would have, without giving it a second thought. She sometimes had to remind herself that times were different then. Even just getting to the station was a problem. A divorced woman was an outcast; marriage vows were binding till death — instituted by none other than God. Submit thyself unto thine own husband, as to the Lord, irrespective of the hell he gives you. What would there have been for her anywhere else? She had no property.

Maybe an English officer who knew too much about her?

But still she did make plans. First was a letter to Philip while she pretended to be writing to her mother. Then a genuine 474

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letter to the Cape Colony to find out what was happening. She hinted that, now that the war was over, she wanted to visit her mother. Daantjie nearly went mad at the thought: if she went, he would take her. He would not allow his wife to go traipsing off to the Colony alone to see her family. That night, in what was still their bedroom, he left off the Englishman and started in on Horst. A trip to the Cape Colony in the company of an insane Daantjie and without Pa Danie nearby was unthinkable.

One thing she had learnt was that jealousy cannot comprehend reason.

As on the day when the piano arrived on Pa Danie’s wagon.

Philip had apparently traced the wagon and, for a reason that she hoped she understood, he had sent a piano as well. The note about the piano was addressed to Aunt Gertruida.

Aunt Gertruida was not pleased about the piano. “It could never be the same,” she said, when they offloaded it. The two black men who brought the wagon could not tell them very much. All they said was that Captain Brooks had said the Van Wyks could keep the oxen as well — they were paid for.

Somehow or other, Daantjie recognised the name Brooks, and the stream of conclusions and accusations he then unleashed made Magrieta’s next few nights a second hell.

To the world outside, Daantjie was soon a most devout Christian, a patriotic Afrikaner, a staunch National Party supporter. In his long, public supplications at prayer meetings, or whenever he introduced some political leader on a stage, or when rousing his fellow party-members, or — later — when he chased supporters of the South African Party off the farm, his voice was laden with clichés. He became chairman of more and more organisations, served on every board: Party Management Committee, church council, school board. That was probably what his life consisted of actually, since out there he was 475

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believed — not at home.

The first demonstration of his impeccable patriotism was delivered at the prayer meeting of their local church district.

How long could that have been after the peace? Probably a few months, because the house already had a roof — put up rapidly by grateful local men only too happy to do anything to earn a little cash.

Only a few folk were present at the meeting in the halfrestored schoolroom on the Prinsloos’ hill. Messages and transport were still rather difficult and not all the folk who had heard about the prayer meeting were able to attend.

Despite the preservation of the family name, Oupa Daniël was still at odds with God. He refused to go to church or to meet the minister who wanted to try to make peace between him and the Almighty. Danie tried to soften the old man’s defiance, but how, in the face of eighty-seven child graves, Oupa Daniël asked Danie, could he make peace? When they accepted his resignation as an elder, the church council agreed to ascribe the recalcitrance of the erstwhile so pious brother to senility and old age. Pa Danie then became the Area Elder in the place of his backslidden father. It fell to him to lead the prayer meeting.

Everyone was already seated when Wynand van Wyk came in and stood at the back against the wall. Martie got up immediately and stomped out. Daantjie followed her, but not without first addressing his father: “Mr Chairman…” Magrieta heard Aunt Gertruida next to her sniggering at the form of address. “Mr Chairman, after all our suffering, injustice and sacrifice I cannot approach the throne of my Creator in the presence of one who betrayed everything that was sacred to me and my people.”

He followed Aunt Martie. So did some others. Only a few 476

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remained. The two brothers looked at each other, Uncle Wynand fearing the rejection to come. Magrieta was certain that it was Daantjie’s walk-out that changed something inside Pa Danie from that moment on. It was as though he had come to new insights. He said something she would never have expected of him.

“You are welcome to share, my brother. In this place, where we are gathered in the name of God, I now declare before all present: you are welcome in my home and in my heart. Which of us can ever know where our salvation lies? Let us pray.”

Before she closed her eyes, Magrieta saw how happy this had made Uncle Wynand.

That was how Daantjie began, and from then on stalwart Boerdom became almost a profession for the heroic war veteran. He and his Aunt Martie spent whole days together commiserating with each other about pain and injustice. Later, when his children arrived, he raised them on his war stories, feeding them British perfidy and concentration camps till they were all fiery Afrikaner nationalists.

She must be getting old, Magrieta thought. All the children had left home and Daantjie was forever off to one or other of his meetings, so she was left alone too often anyway. Perhaps that was why she spent so much time nowadays thinking about the past. Strange, the war was clearer in her mind than the years in between. Could it be that it was because she was younger then? In any case, her memories seemed to be a story of one death after another: Aunt Gertruida had asked that her Bible and the notes in the Bible should be buried with her. She died with a strange name on her lips. Ma Dorothea lay on her deathbed in the town hospital with two unreconciled men on either side of her. Even then she continued to plead for peace between father and son. Pa Danie died out of doors of a 477

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sudden heart attack. Daantjie could not wait to take Petrus Minter’s watch from his father’s body and hurl it down the well. Oupa Daniël was the first to die after the war. On his deathbed he said he missed his God because dying was easier with him than without Him. It was while he was sinking that she and Pa Danie were in the kitchen, talking.

All the others had gone to bed. The two of them were sitting up, getting up from time to time to see to the dying man. The house was deathly silent. She made some coffee. They were sitting at the kitchen table when he asked: “What is going on with you and Daantjie?”

“How do you mean, Pa?” “I can see you’re unhappy.”

“Daantjie refuses to believe what happened to me, Pa.” “What did happen to you?”

That was when she realised that Pa Danie did not know.

They had never told him. He did not know about the thing that happened!

“I was raped during the war, Pa. And there was a child.”

She answered all the questions his shocked mouth put to her. One after another. Where? In this house, in my and Danie’s bedroom. When? September 1900. Who? I don’t know. Was he black or white? It was dark, his face was wrapped in a cloth, he fled. And the child? Stillborn. Spontaneously or with assistance? With assistance; Ma and the others don’t know about that. Yours? No, but I knew. Black or white? They said that if they looked, they would not be able to do it. What was it? They said they felt a little boy.

It was a very strange moment, that night. Now, just like on the night when she and Pa Danie had been together and deeply moved by the blood on the fallen Daantjie’s pocket knife, he came over and hugged her, something he would never 478

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otherwise have done. They were very close.

“I wish I could go away, Pa. Daantjie refuses to believe me.

He says it was an Englishman’s bastard. The generals told him so, he says.”

“In all his life he has never even seen a general except in the distance.”

“What happened to Daantjie in the war, Pa?” The kitchen clock ticked for a long time before he replied.

Perhaps the shock of what she had just told him was still percolating in his mind; maybe he was considering whether he should tell her about the whatever-it-was that was gnawing at her. The thing that might explain Daantjie’s insanity. But his answer, when it came, was gentle and evasive: “You’ve had a terrible time, my child, and still you had the heart to tell me about it. I don’t want to lie to you.”

“So there was …”

“Yes. But I think it would be better if I didn’t tell you. It’s something which only Soldaat and I and Daantjie know about.

But, please, don’t leave, you would only break my heart yet again. I cannot lose you, too. You are my child. Please stay.

Please.”

“I think I’m expecting another rape child, Pa.” He looked up: “What, again?”

She did not know how to mention to her father-in-law things which nobody spoke about, but he was the one who was beginning to understand: “Daantjie?”

“That’s exactly what it is, nothing else … because he refuses to believe me.”

“Regularly?”

“No, Pa. Just once. I threatened to call you if he jumped me again.”

He understood what she was telling him about herself and 479

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Daantjie. There was great love in his voice: “If you can’t endure it any longer, I promise to help you get away, even if it means taking my posterity with you.”

It burst out of her, she could not help it: “It’s God’s punishment, Pa.” “Daantjie?”

“No, this child. This second one. The one I’m now expecting. I think this is God’s way of punishing me for the first one, letting my second child be conceived in the same dreadful way. It has to be my punishment — a woman doesn’t fall pregnant just like that, first time. It’s impossible — this cannot have happened to me twice after only a single coupling.

It’s got to be punishment from God. I can’t leave now, Pa. After what I did to the first one, I cannot go away and raise the second without a father. God hasn’t got that much forgiveness in Him. I want to leave, yes. I can hardly bear it, but maybe that is the price I have to pay for what I did ... to the other child. I cannot drag this one into the world without a father. If God wants to make me pay, I’ll pay.”

That is what she actually believed: Daantjie was her punishment, and that was the only way for her to attempt to make atonement. Was it so? She didn’t know, but that’s what she thought then and that was why she had stayed.

That was probably also why she eventually did allow Daantjie to have his way with her body. But she let him do it without herself doing anything in return — she lay there and waited for him to finish so that she could get to sleep. Her unresponsive body told him every time that she felt nothing.

Whether he cared about it or not no longer mattered. She refused to be the whore he repeatedly accused her of being. But her passive acceptance did at least lessen the frequency of his constant reproaches and accusations, she got more sleep, and 480

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she felt each time that she was atoning for a little more of the guilt. Maybe that was silly? How would she ever know? Her married life was never anything more than a chain of instalments being paid off. But by the grace of God her coldness eventually led to Daantjie’s impotence in bed. Or that was what he believed. She did not care one way or the other and his nights of pacing up and down in frustration were not her concern. In any case, she was never part of the business.

But that came about many years later.

Her first legitimate child was born nine months after Daantjie’s return. She had just been washed and was lying with the baby when Pa Danie looked in. Daantjie was present.

Whether he thought the birth of a grandson would make his father more amenable at last, she did not know, but Daantjie announced proudly: “Daniël Egbert van Wyk has arrived, Pa.” This time Pa Danie did not speak through any intermediary: “The last Daniël Egbert van Wyk fell at Driefontein. I put up with you, but if you dare christen this child Daniël Egbert, I’ll have you driven straight off the farm and I’ll disinherit you.

Don’t get me wrong.”

When Pa Danie walked out, the silence that fell across the family was deathly.

They baptised the child Gideon, after Ma Dorothea’s father.

The other two were daughters and they were given family names in the correct order.

After Pa Danie’s fatal heart attack, Daantjie spoke very beautifully at the graveside. He inherited everything, except the cash which went to Sussie.

Yet down all the years, after her conversation with Pa Danie, one thing kept gnawing at her: Soldaat knew, but he would not tell her. She had asked him hundreds of times, she had persistently pleaded and begged, but all she got each time was 481

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a bunch of tales about Daantjie’s heroism — and she did not believe a word of them. She went on asking and Soldaat stuck to his story. Even on the day of that dreadful shock.

She had accosted him yet again and he had got angry: “Stop carrying on about Daantjie and the war. I’ve told you! Do you see this toe? If Daantjie hadn’t cut it off, it would have gone rotten and I’d have been dead.”

“My father-in-law told me that it was he who cut off the toe, not Daantjie.”

Her words so disturbed Soldaat that he stopped right there in the middle of a working day and went back home to his huts. But he still would not say anything. Yet she knew that he did think very highly of her. Particularly after the pale-skinned child.

Soldaat’s chief wife and their two children had died in the camp. His young, second wife, then still childless, had survived, but had run away after the war taking with her a Tommy’s light-skinned child. Soldaat would not have anything to do with her when he heard what had happened, and it was she, Magrieta, who had tackled him about it: she gave him a long lesson on necessity and survival. Afterwards Soldaat said she had been the first to understand what the poor woman had been forced to do, or else she would have died. Still, he could never quite fathom why she should have wept and pleaded so desperately on behalf of the woman and the child. And the way she kept on and on at him about them, you would have thought it was herself she was concerned about. Eventually he was glad he had taken the woman back: she was a good wife.

And he raised the child as his own, because as Magrieta said over and over again, it could not help being born.

He could not have known how close Magrieta felt to that woman, nor how envious she was as she watched the child 482

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growing up before her eyes. Nor how very proud she was when the child did so well at school. That woman had chosen the path of natural instinct; she had not. Magrieta envied her.

No, there was nothing lacking in Soldaat’s affection for her, but he still would not tell her what he knew. She could see that the business was bothering him more and more and that he and Daantjie must have been talking about it because Daantjie had started saying that nowadays Soldaat was imagining things and telling lies. After so many years she could tell exactly when her husband was throwing up defences against threatening contingencies. He kept her from speaking to Soldaat and would do anything to ensure that she was never left on the farm alone. Particularly not in the latter days of Soldaat’s illness. Daantjie insisted on accompanying her whenever she went to take him any medicine. He asked why the hell she needed to bugger off to the huts for every petty trifle. But this was not some petty trifle. Soldaat was sinking fast. *** “I managed to trace the Van Wyks’ wagon and there were a whole lot of oxen due to be distributed as compensation in any case, so I sent the wagon back to him, with four of the oxen. I used my accumulated pay to buy a piano and send that as well.

Ostensibly for the spinster aunt, but I knew that Magrieta would realise that it was also in remembrance. In circumstances like those, one becomes sentimental.”

The other people in the museum had already left, the front door was locked, and in step with the old man’s story, the patch of sunlight shining through the window had crept across the floor, climbed up the opposite wall, shrunk and faded 483

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away. She was sitting with the key to the side-door in her hand.

The old man looked drained. He glanced once more at the photograph of the beautiful woman and then slipped her back into the file.

“Have you never been back there, Major? Never seen her again?”

“Once, just before I returned to England, I rode to the top of the hill on the farm. The house had been rebuilt and the farm had come alive again. I saw her and what must have been her husband on the veranda. She had a baby with her. I turned round and rode away.”

“And now that you are back in this country? It has been so many years, the old emotions must now be so much … milder … Her husband may have died a long time ago. Do you still know where they live?”

He saw the direction in which her thoughts were moving.

“Yes, of course I know, but no, we are old now and I have been shot to pieces. Perhaps I should just keep the memories as they were then. But I will gratefully accept your offer of a visit to the concentration camp.”

They rose and walked outside through the evening silence of the museum. It seemed to Joey Wessels that all the evidence of a past surrounding her was pressing ever more urgently to be understood in the way that things had been: alive and real.

As the major said, it was only time that forgot everything. It was good that he had told her. It had awakened for her the other things that had been suppressed and not mentioned after the war. She began to understand how, through century after century, women had always been defenceless in the face of the violence sweeping around and through and over them. And every child that was born of such violence was a choice. Had things been even slightly different, she might have been one of 484

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them. She did not know what she would have chosen.

She felt guilty about deceiving the major. She knew precisely who the renowned Danie van Wyk was. It was he who had declined nomination as an election candidate three times because he was unwilling to leave his wife alone on the farm.

That is what the newspapers had said. Should she show him the centrefold photograph of the Van Wyk couple? For him to see just how beautiful the old lady still was? Or should she allow him to preserve his dream?

Perhaps, after the visit to the graveyard, and if he wanted to, she would drive him to the farm and see if he would like to get out. *** The knock on the back door was soft and hesitant. The wall clock in the kitchen showed a quarter to three. She got out of bed and went to see who it was. As she expected: Soldaat’s second eldest, Leah.

She should please come: Soldaat wanted to speak to her. He said he would not see the sun rise again. She fetched a torch and a warm jacket. She and Leah followed the patch of light to Soldaat’s huts. She knew that this morning she was going to hear.

The doorway was low: she had to duck. Leah disappeared, as if ordered.

Soldaat lay on his bed, in the light of a small lamp. The room smelt of old age and mortality.

“It’s me, Soldaat. Magrieta.”

“It’s you, Magrieta … I have to tell you before I go.”

Those were his words. He spoke weakly, but his head was clear.

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He told her. About the black snake in Daantjie that came out as soon as the shooting started, about their flight and the lie about the horse-blood, about how Daantjie would lie to anything as long as it meant she would never hear about it. He told her how Daantjie went berserk when the cross-eyed little man told him about her and the Englishman’s child. About how they lived with a woman up in the mountains. He told her, too, about that September night when they were back on the farm and Daantjie had smeared his face with soot and ridden off into the dark. This is what he had to tell her before he died: it was Daantjie who raped her in the dark.

Long after he had gone to join his ancestors, she was still sitting at his bedside.

At dawn Daantjie kicked open the door. She was still sitting there.

“What did the bastard tell you? I’ll kill him.”

“You can’t now …” She closed Soldaat’s dead eyes.

“What did he tell you?”

“Everything about black snakes, horse blood and why rape smells of paraffin.”

She swung past him and went out. Instead of going back to the homestead, she turned aside onto the path leading up to the graveyard. The gate was secured neatly, to keep the cattle out. She opened it and walked through the family graves to the row where the Daniël Egbert van Wyks lay: Great-grandfather, Oupa Daniël, Pa Danie. The rest of the row had been left vacant for Daantjie and his descendants.

To Pa Danie’s gravestone she said: “Pa, it was Daniël Egbert van Wyk I killed.”

Daantjie stood watching her from a distance. Then he started walking home. In front of her. Not waiting. Silenced.

Old. 486

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She knew now. But it was all too late. You cannot fight back a lifetime of lying. That is something that cannot be rebuked into non-being. Nor can you start life anew, because the actuality of what was always the truth had throttled the life out of any hope before it could utter its first cry.

She saw the old man in front of her walking homewards, his legs, hat, back, his cane. She thought: He must have run out of lies now. She was trying to understand something about the halter that he had had to strain against for a lifetime. The necessity — thrust upon him by his self-image and pride and self-esteem — that had ensnared him in a trench all those years ago and never eased off. She wondered why she did not hate him. She had cause enough, but it felt as if everything within her had turned to stone. Her innermost being was silent, like the stone heart of a gravestone with her name on it.

Daantjie was standing on the veranda, bent and discomfited, when she walked up the steps.

“God, Magrieta …” he said.

“Yes, God, Daantjie van Wyk!” She saw how frightened he was, how loath to talk, but as if in a last attempt to shift the blame, he managed to ask: “Who would we have been if the war had not overcome us, Magrieta?”

She went up to the front door: “We would have been ourselves, our untried selves …”

Opening the door she repeated: “Our untested selves … that’s who we would have been.”

Once inside the house she went to the remembrance piano and lifted the lid. She placed her finger on the D beside middleC and felt with her foot for the pedal that Aunt Gertruida had so complained about. She pushed the pedal right down and pressed the note. She listened to the vibrations sounding 487

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slowly throughout the house, fading away, dying.

One develops an ear for dying, she thought, as she closed the lid and went outside again because she had heard a car.

“There’s a car at the gate,” Daantjie said.

Magrieta saw an old man get out and walk up to the gate.

He did not open it — just stood there. For a long time. Was he looking at the house? Could he see them? They were too polite to beckon to him and too drained by what had just happened between them to go down and invite him in. Eventually he turned round and got back into the car where there were two other people.

The car drove away, trailing its dust and its noise behind it.

In the car, the major’s whole hand folded across the wounded one, like someone shaking hands with himself.

Holding his two old hands firmly together, he said to Joey Wessels on the back seat: “Do you know that when you lose a limb, some part of your head goes on believing that it is still there? … Your brain insists that the empty space must sometimes still feel something.”

The landscape sped past as the wheels jolted over the dirt road. Small quantities of dust filtered into the car and settled on them.

“Tiny shards of shrapnel left in old soldiers keep trying to ooze their way out of your body.”

The two old people on the veranda of the homestead watched the car until it merged into the distant landscape. All denials were dead; all attempts to argue had passed. The truth about the lies now lay between them in wordless silence, a silence that would draw ever tighter around them and lie like a shroud over their last years together.

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AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank the following persons: Colonel Frik Jacobs of the War Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein, for reading the manuscript; Leandré Hanekom who again drew my attention to an old hand-written document about the legend of the song of the dead camp children; my guides to battlefields and the remains of the camps. Also: Nic van Rensburg for the load of unpublished material; Jeanette Ferreira for the rare camp photograph.

I am grateful for having been able to listen to the long-gone storytellers of my youth when it was all still so fresh in their memories. My only apology goes to Louis Bothma for my having ignored his meticulous historical guidance about the interments at Driefontein and Abrahamskraal because, for the sake of my story, I did some slight violence to the facts that to him were so precious.

I must also express my appreciation to M-Net for commissioning and ultimately filming Feast of the Uninvited.

Above all, however, I am grateful that, during a Communion service which, for disparate reasons, neither of us attended, an elderly midwife took a young student into her confidence about something that could never be admitted. I here fulfill my rash youthful promise.

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