Philida Read online

  Inevitably the spectators soon start getting rowdy and the Commissioner has to make a serious effort to ensure that the proceedings can unfold in a more orderly manner.

  The first slaves brought to the table and instructed to clamber on it are a family – father from Macassar, mother from Java, three children whose ages are given as fourteen, eleven and eight. Comments and remarks are shouted from all sides, and very soon all three children are crying. The two oldest ones are girls, the youngest a cross-eyed boy. Their Baas, Petrus Jacobus Conradie from a farm near Gouda, feels obliged to belabour them with his sjambok before the noise subsides. By now, both Baas and family look rather the worse for wear. The farmer is as skinny as a biltong, with somewhat bulging eyes that sit very close together in a bony, sunburnt face with a stark white forehead above the line of his hat. Some of the bystanders start scurrying out of the way of his two long knobbly feet that give off an ungodly smell which sends both humans and dogs scampering out of reach. He remains surrounded by a cloud of flies.

  The bidding starts slowly, but then the drink takes over and the procedure moves more smoothly until at last the whole family goes for four thousand two hundred rix-dollars. The only disturbance is caused by one of the bidders who pushes through to the very front line, presses himself right up against the table, where he demands that the older girl first open her mouth so that he can study her teeth. It takes a long argument and a resounding slap from the Baas before she complies. After that she grows even more obstreperous, when the bidder instructs her to lower the top of her dress so that he can see more of her. The Commissioner, recently promoted to his rank after years as a field cornet in the district, and who presides ex officio as auctioneer with the help of a long-winded interpreter, asks rather reluctantly whether this is strictly necessary. Of course it is, insists the prospective buyer, identified as one Stephanus Gotlieb Maree. He explains that he wants to use her for breeding purposes, so it is obvious that he must make very sure she is properly equipped for the task. The girl tries to resist and only after the dress has been practically torn from her can the auction proceed. A few of the women in the crowd are now mumbling in tones of sullen annoyance, but the men are growing more and more vociferous before at last everybody calms down and the child is silenced with a blow to the face.

  Now comes Philida’s turn. With her cat in its bamboo cage, the baby in an abbadoek on her back and the small girl held by the hand, she takes her place on the heavy table. Her eyes are fixed on a spot in the distance as she stares up towards the remotest blue mountains, a blue that almost disappears in space, like ink spilled on a page in a big book with names inscribed in the hand of a Cornelis Brink.

  Afterwards she tells Ouma Petronella how it felt, and in this way her story spreads through the Brink family. It was, she recounts with a shrug, as if she wasn’t there at all, as if it was a story told by someone else. As if she stayed behind when the mule cart rode away from Zandvliet. She saw everything – Cornelis Brink and the driver, and Ouma Petronella, herself with the two children and the cat in the cage made by Francois. She saw herself on the cart, for more than two full days, but at the same time she could look at everything from a distance. The whole road with its many curves and bends, the mountains with their tall cliffs and boulders and ridges, the high and slowly wheeling bateleur eagles, the watercourses, the little waterfall that had dried up in the hot summer, a troop of baboons right against the road just after the first of Paarl’s huge round boulders, followed by other troops, as well as by many more mountains and plains, a few fords, and at last Worcester with its few dusty streets and its large Drostdy. She was there, and at the same time she wasn’t. I felt, she explains, like a ghost trying to get out of a mirror. From there her thoughts ran far and wide. Hadn’t it always been like that, she wondered, as if she’d never really been exactly where she was? Except on a very few occasions, and those were times she could remember more clearly than others. For instance, there was the day she had gone on the wagon to the Caab to see the skinny slave hanged – and what made that even worse was that she wasn’t only there to see what was happening to the skinny man, but she could see at the same time how she changed places with the man, felt how it was to be hanged, the first time when the rope broke, and later all the way to the end, even feeling the life spurting out of her, everything. And back at Zandvliet afterwards, that first time with Frans in the bamboo copse. And also, months later, the day KleinFrans was born, and what happened then. Still later, there was little Mamie’s birth, and Lena’s, and finally Willempie’s. On those occasions, yes, she was there. And at a few other times when she didn’t really want to be there at all, like when the Ouman wanted her to go down on her knees in the bamboo copse. And now this time, on the long road to Worcester, to the open space in front of the Drostdy. She can remember everything, but still it doesn’t feel as if she really was there. Somebody else must have seen it and turned it into a story one could choose to believe or not. A story is after all a story, it all depends on who tells it.

  The Commissioner with the tanned face proceeds with the auction. As the wine spreads through his body, he speaks faster and faster. He is not one of the new lot appointed by the government in England, all of them retired military men who don’t take nonsense from anybody, but a farmer from this rude frontier district. When he remembers about it, he instructs a pale grumpy official beside him to translate the proceedings from Dutch into English, but for long periods he forgets, and nobody dares to interrupt. Not that it matters much, for the audience is used to the ritual and the men put in their bids quite haphazardly, as they are wont to do.

  Right at the beginning there is one bidder who starts making a nuisance of himself. He pushes through the crowd to the front, up against the solid table, with a long kierie in his hand. This kierie, it seems, is not meant as a walking stick. In his small bullet head he clearly has other thoughts. His name, Philida learns from Ouma Petronella afterwards, is Magiel Christoffel Botma, but he is known to most only by his initials, Emcee. A few minutes after the bidding has started, he puts the kierie in between Philida’s ankles and starts pushing up the seam of her long dress. She takes a step back without shifting her eyes from the mountains in the distance. The man leans forward to stay close to her and proceeds to inspect her with the kierie once again, now between her knees. A few of the other spectators are sniggering by now, prodding one another in the ribs, as their comments become more and more voluble. After a while the Commissioner becomes aware of the rumpus and looks up. His slightly bulging eyes flutter furiously.

  Silence! he thunders from his chair. Stop this commotion!

  It sounds like an order to attack. Magiel Christoffel Botma starts violently, drops his kierie and bends over to pick it up; as he rises to his feet, breathing heavily, the back of his head slams against the edge of the table. From his mouth slithers a blob of spittle.

  The Commissioner puts out an arm to protect his pile of books. What are you doing, you clumsy lout? he thunders again.

  He just wanted to make sure the meid’s legs meet somewhere, somebody explains, collapsing with laughter. A man’s got to make sure before he buys.

  The crowd jeers and jitters.

  Stand back! the Commissioner orders in a stentorian voice.

  Staan troei! the interpreter translates unnecessarily.

  One hundred pounds, the Commissioner starts again. Do I hear anybody say a hundred and ten?

  One thousand four hundred rix-dollars, the interpreter translates. And hurry up, His Worship does not have all day.

  Philida keeps staring into the farthest distance and pretends to know nothing. She is no longer here.

  But by now Magiel Christoffel Botma is quite steamed up and not in a mood to take any more shit from an Englishman. He returns to the table and clasps the edge in his two hands. It looks as if he is aiming to move closer to Philida. A new commotion begins. Several people are urging him on, a few others want to intervene. The table begins to wobble.
r />   At this stage Philida can take no more and stomps on the man’s fingers.

  That is the moment when Ouma Petronella slides from the mule cart and moves in closer. You leave her alone, Duusman! she shouts at him from behind.

  He looks round, staggering on unsteady legs and clearly loses all control when he sees who is talking.

  Shut up, blarry meid! he says, raising his long kierie in warning.

  She is not your meid, you turd! Cornelis Brink joins the fray. He may be a small man, but he is evidently ready to fight. Before anybody quite knows what is going on, the whole situation threatens to get out of hand. Cornelis grabs the thin man by a bony shoulder and angrily shoves him aside.

  Why are you getting so worked up over a damn meid? whines Magiel, suddenly tearful as he tries to scuttle out of sight.

  Cornelis pulls him back so fast that the spindly man gasps for breath.

  She’s nobody’s meid, warns Cornelis, bottle in hand, swaying on his legs and sounding for all the world like a growling dog. She’s nobody’s meid, you hear me? And once again he enunciates every word separately and very clearly: She is my mother.

  Suddenly it is deadly quiet on the dusty square in front of the Drostdy.

  Ouma Petronella lifts her head. I am a free woman, she says with tight lips, putting a hand into her dress to pull out a sheet of paper with an embossed red seal on it: I can say what I want. Now you shut your mouth or I’ll do it for you.

  The crowd is humming and rumbling like a bees’ nest, but nobody dares to come any closer. His face by now the colour of an overripe fig, the Commissioner wipes his cheeks with a very big white kerchief. Let us proceed, he orders. It sounds like a command to a firing squad.

  Magiel Christoffel Botma quickly slithers out of the way, enraged, and deflated, and broken, and sorry for himself, all at the same time, but too scared to open his mouth again.

  The bidding resumes, in fits and starts at first, but gradually gaining assurance and speed. Nobody dares to bother Philida again. Cornelis Brink returns heavily to his seat on the mule cart. Philida remains standing on the long table with the thick legs. The baby on her back, Lena squatting next to her, playing with a small wooden horse Frans once made for her. All the words and sounds sweep past Philida’s ears, but she doesn’t hear anything, nor see anything, just keeps staring into the distance, towards the farthest mountains. By this time nobody knows any longer what has happened to Magiel Christoffel Botma. (It will be late evening before, having drunk himself into oblivion, he will come home, stumble over the dog at the front door and into the passage, kick his wife and children, and tumble on his bed, snoring to make the yellowwood eaves shudder.)

  For a while the auction proceeds in its prescribed manner. As usual, there are a few people taking part for only a little while before they drop out. But three or four of them persist for longer. One, a Doctor Atherstone from Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, joins in the bidding several times. It seems as if something about Philida has attracted his attention. Once he turns to the man next to him and says out loud: Have you seen that one’s eyes? Pure obsidian.

  What is obsidian? asks his neighbour.

  Don’t you know? demands the doctor somewhat haughtily, stroking his well-trimmed beard. It’s a very special gemstone. Pitch black.

  One cannot see in Philida’s face that she has heard the exchange. But she has. And she doesn’t forget a thing like that very easily.

  Soon afterwards the doctor loses interest, which leaves only a single bidder. At one hundred and twenty-three pounds two shillings and sixpence the bid on Philida and her children is clinched and a somewhat breathless man called Bernabé Jan Gerhard de la Bat, who has arrived almost too late for the auction, takes possession of his new slaves. The formal announcement is read out by the Commissioner-Auctioneer in halting English, lengthily translated into High Dutch by his interpreter, then written down in the thick auction book, and signed with a flourish by the Commissioner’s quill, steel nibs not having found their way to an outpost like Worcester yet, and blotted with fine sand from a silver bowl. Afterwards slaves approach to carry off the table and clean up the square. Two of them collect the cow dung and horse turds on the square in front of the Drostdy in buckets. (They should have scooped up old Emcee as well, somebody remarks in passing. He belongs with all the other shit.) The people decamp in small groups.

  It is time for Ouma Petronella and Cornelis Brink to travel over the mountains and the more distant plains, for their few days on the road back to Zandvliet. But just before they can get the mules moving, Ouma Petronella comes back to Philida for one last time to hug her and her children against her ample body.

  You better hurry back home now, Ouma Nella, whispers the young woman. I can see the Ouman’s arse is on fire.

  You must watch out and take care of yourself, says Ouma Petronella. Remember, if you don’t do that I shall find out and come and give you hell in your sleep.

  Philida shrugs her narrow shoulders. It’s getting late, she says. You got a long way to go.

  How will you ever manage on your own? asks Ouma Petronella, suddenly tearful.

  You teach me mos, Ouma Nella, Philida says quietly. And she smiles, a small and crooked movement of her lips. But then she adds with surprising firmness: Remember one thing, I now learn to say No.

  Once again Ouma Petronella presses Philida against her. Then she climbs on to the cart and the axles groan under her weight.

  XVII

  A very short Chapter in which Philida makes the Commissioner an Offer

  SOMETHING HAS BEEN bothering Philida ever since the day of the auction, something she remarked as an undertone to the tumult around the scene at the long table, which remained with her after the disturbance caused by Emcee Botma had subsided and the crestfallen man with his long cane had slunk away. And she realises that it has not been her imagination when three or four days later a well-dressed Khoe man in a tall hat arrives at the home of Meester de la Bat in the Church Street with a message for the slave woman Philida of the Caab from the Commissioner to summon her to the Drostdy without delay.

  Shall I go with you? asks Bernabé de la Bat who has just come home from his office. Perhaps it’s something I can help you with.

  No, Meester, says Philida. But she can feel a heavy lump in her stomach, as if she’s had too many green apricots to eat.

  It turns out that it is the Commissioner himself who wants to speak to her, the man with the long, tanned faced who had been in charge on the day of the auction at the Drostdy. When she arrives, he is seated behind a wide desk covered by a slew of untidy papers.

  Without beating around the bush he asks her: What do you know about the commotion we had at the Drostdy on the day you were brought to the auction?

  Meester? she asks. She has decided that in future, for safety’s sake, this is how she will address all the important men of the Colony.

  That man made a nuisance of himself, she says.

  He is a leading farmer in our district, says the Commissioner. You are a slave. I got the impression that you didn’t know your place.

  I always know my place, Meester, Philida says quietly. It is a slave’s place. That man was the one who was looking for trouble.

  How was he looking for trouble?

  He put that stick of his under my dress, Meester, says Philida. Where in that mess of papers and books on your table does it say that he got the right to do such things with me?

  You are a slave, the man says again. But this time he makes it sound more like a remark than an accusation.

  I know I am a slave, Meester, says Philida. But I am not his slave. What do your big books say about that?

  She feels the heaviness around her beginning to ease a little bit. And she goes on: If that is what the law say he can do, then the law must be wrong.

  To her surprise she sees the hint of a smile in his pale round eyes.

  And suppose I tell you that this is how it is?

  Philida is quiet for a
moment. She lifts her head to look him in the eyes and says: Then I must say No to the Meester and his law.

  I see, grunts the Commissioner, and he starts shuffling his papers like a hen trying to make a nest.

  So what is the Meester now telling me to do? Philida dares to ask after a few moments.

  The tanned man does not look at her. What I say, he says, is that it was a public auction. You did not have the right to interfere and step on the man’s fingers. You disturbed the peace and that is against the law. Only now does he look up, and he places his two farmer’s hands on the papers in front of him. Then he adds: But between you and me, I would have done the same if I were you. And if anybody does a thing like that again in my presence, he will rue the day. For much too long have we shown a lack of respect for the law in this land. The Meester gets up behind the big desk and his hands start shuffling and ordering all the papers again. Half raising his head he adds: It goes for that unruly man. A brief silence, before he pulls a straight face and says: And of course it goes for you too.

  Thank you, Meester, says Philida with an equally straight face. And if Meester want me to, I can come here one day to put all these messy papers straight on your desk. This is really looking very untidy.

  I shall appreciate it, says the Civil Commissioner. Can you start next week?

  Philida nods, turns round and quietly walks from the office into the startling white light of the summer’s day.

  XVIII

  Which informs the Reader about the Changes in Philida’s Lifestyle after her Arrival in Worcester and about Newcomers to her Acquaintance, notably a Man who is set to play a major Role in her Life, and a Ghost from the Past whose Legacy haunts the inland Districts