Philida Read online

  The great sadness comes soon after they went to the Bokkeveld, and nobody can find out why or how. It takes days before they realise what has happened, because at first Philida thinks she has just hidden somewhere in the house or in the yard, there are so many hiding places or spots to play in. But after Labyn has once asked, What’s become of that little cat? Philida starts getting worried. Everybody is questioned, but no one has seen her. Not even Meester de la Bat, and everyone knows that his writing desk is the spot where Kleinkat prefers to nest among the papers.

  Apart from her children it is about the only thing Philida still has with her that came from Zandvliet. If she wasn’t so busy she might have tried to ask permission to walk back along the road to look for Kleinkat. But even though it is midsummer, Nooi Anna has decided that she has to start her knitting for the winter early, because in these parts the cold comes with a vengeance and it comes early. So Philida has to swallow her sadness. Which isn’t easy, and many times, especially at night when the children are asleep, it creeps up on her like a searing pain inside, as if the skin has been chafed away to expose the tender flesh underneath.

  All that helps to ease the hurt, is to keep herself busy with her knitting. Or to spend more time with Labyn. And one hot day Philida once again sits knitting on the bench near the door of the carpentry shop where he works. Lena is playing with small cut-off blocks on the floor. To one side Willempie lies fast asleep. The workroom smells of fresh sawdust.

  Labyn is talking non-stop as he usually does when she is around. All the shit we got in this Colony, he tells her, comes from the Christian people. He is planing a long yellowwood plank for a table. Every now and then he stops for a while to lift it up and aim with one eye along the side to make sure it is completely straight.

  You and me sitting here, working and working all the time, while the white people are sitting on their backsides in the sun or in the shade as the case may be, he says, it all comes from that Jesus of theirs. It is his fault. So I think it’s time for you to come over to the Slamse like me.

  But I don’t understand about the Slamse, says Philida. At Zandvliet the Ounooi always say one must stay away from them, with that lot you’ll go straight to hell.

  Did that Ounooi of yours ever say anything you could believe?

  No, you’re right, Labyn. But what can I do? That’s how I was brought up.

  Brought up for the fire that will burn you one day. My Slamse people are not like that. With us there is no baas or slave. We’re all the same. Just people. And it goes very far back, hundreds of years, to a man called Muhammad where it all began.

  I don’t know him, says Philida. What must I do so that he can help me?

  This is where it begins: with the stories. Labyn tells her about the Year of the Elephant, when a man called Abdallah went into a woman, Amina. And when she fell pregnant, there came a voice, saying, You’re expecting a child that will be the Lord of all his people, and when he is born, you must call him Muhammad.

  Philida immediately likes this, because she knows it must be the Elephant Trail along which she walked to Stellenbosch on that long-ago day to take her complaint against Francois Brink to the Slave Protector. And then the other Elephant Trail on which she travelled together with Ouma Nella and Ouman Cornelis here to Worcester. So if there is talk about elephants, she opens her ears.

  Well, in that same year, Labyn tells her, a Christian man called Abraha came from a far place with a herd of elephants to attack the town of Mecca where there stood a pitch-black church.

  Abraham? asks Philida with a small frown between her pitch-black eyes. Was that the Abraham of the Bible?

  No, man, this one was just Abraha. Not ham.

  Sounds a bit blunt to me, says Philida.

  You want to listen or you want to argue? asks Labyn.

  I’m listening.

  All right then. We still talking about the elephants that stormed the church. The name of that church was Ka’aba, and the enemies that came with the elephants through the desert, that was the Christian people of those days, they wanted to break down the black church to build their own church. But just when the elephants came there, a big thing happened. The LordGod, who was the Baas of every man and woman and child, they called him Al-lah, he sent a huge flock of birds, each one with a stone in its beak, and they started dropping stones on the elephants. There were so many of them, the sky was black from one side to the other. And the elephants got scared and turned round and ran back into the desert, and so the beautiful black church was saved. That’s the Ka’aba. And that was where Muhammad’s mother Amina brought him up until he was nice big boy.

  Now you must listen: One day when he was looking after a flock of sheep in the desert, two strange men in white clothes came to him with a big golden bowl full of white snow. And they pushed Muhammad down on the ground and took out his heart and washed it with the snow.

  That must have been blarry sore, says Philida.

  Not at all, says Labyn. He did not feel a thing. He just lay there watching how they took out his heart and pressed it until a small drop of pitch-black blood came out, and then they carefully put it back in his chest, and the next thing Muhammad knew was that the two men disappeared right in front of his eyes. But from that moment everybody knew this young boy Muhammad, who was then nine years old, wasn’t just any ordinary boy. He was very special, and everybody respected him.

  One day he met a very rich widow, Khadija, who was forty years old at the time, she could have been his mother, and she sent him into the desert with a herd of camels to go and buy and sell in another land, its name was Syria. And when Muhammad came home and Khadija saw how much money he made, she said she would marry him straight away. After some time they had a whole house full of children, and that was how Al-lah decided he was now ready to go with Muhammad.

  Not long after that Muhammad came to a high mountain, Mount Hira, as high as the Brandwag Mountain here behind our Worcester, and Al-lah said to him, Speak! And ever since then Muhammad has been speaking to his people. He speaks to the poor, he speaks to the slaves, he speaks to the old people and to the sick, he speaks to everybody that is in trouble and that suffers and that is hurt and that needs help. That is why I tell you, Philida, Muhammad is our man, he’s our Lord. They always say to us that the Lord looks after us, but that is not what happens. The LordGod looks after the white people, not us. Almost the first thing Muhammad did after the Lord Al-lah spoke to him, was to free his slave Zaid. For him there wasn’t a place for slaves in the world any more.

  But here at the Caab they also talking about freeing us, protested Philida.

  Some of them talk like that, I know, but not all, says Labyn and he slams his beautifully cut plank on the working bench so that the sawdust is sent flying in all directions and Willempie wakes up and starts screaming. Philida has to calm down the child before Labyn can go on: You hear for yourself what the Baas is saying, don’t you? Always grumbling and complaining and threatening. This thing I must first see with my own eyes before I believe it. Even if they free us, we’ll still stay booked in with them for years. Muhammad said nothing about booking in. All he said to Zaid was: Now you’re free. You can go where you want to. And that is what he wants for all of us. Now that is why I’m saying: He’s the man I stand with.

  And where do all this come from? asks Philida. Does Muhammad also speak in a thick book like the Ouman’s LordGod?

  Yes, he speaks in a thick book just like that. Only, it isn’t called Bible, its name is Koran.

  Philida grins. Korhaan is a funny name. It’s a bird like a bustard, isn’t it? Why would the LordGod want to have a book like that?

  I suppose it is because you can say it flies in its own way, says Labyn. It puts wings in your head. Once you read what it says you won’t think it’s funny any more.

  She sniffs. And how and where did you learn to read, if I may ask, Labyn?

  I shall teach you, he says.

  You?! Where did you ever learn?
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br />   I learned, I tell you, he says. I even went to school, before they sold me to a white man called Oubaas Harman Venter. Now that was a good man. He would have bought my freedom too, only he died of a bad pain in his chest and then I had to go and stand on the block in Stellenbosch.

  She remains silent for a long time before she asks, Will you really teach me to read, Labyn?

  My word is the word of a Slams, he says. Not the word of a Christian man that lies and cheats. If I promise something it is promised.

  And from that day Philida’s life is no longer what it was. Together with all her knitting and her other work, she is also the minnemoer of the de la Bat family, which means that she must look after the children, and these are a dirty lot that sometimes have to change clothes two or three times a day. The easiest way is to bring them up with her own Lena and Willempie. Feeding or bathing or putting to bed four children is not much more trouble than two. And when Anna de la Bat discovers how easily Philida handles it, she more and more often leaves her Gerard and Josef with the others.

  On Mondays, Philida goes to the Drostdy to tidy up the Commissioner’s office as they agreed after the auction. On most other days, when Philida isn’t busy with knitting or caring for the de la Bat brood and her own, one can find her behind the big house in the carpentry shed with Labyn. Sometimes she is just listening to his stories, more often than not about Muhammad, but mostly she is sitting beside him at the long workbench learning to read and write. He himself can write so beautifully that it looks like print in a book. That must be because he first learned to read and write Arabic script, which taught him to form his letters very precisely. She cannot understand how on earth he could have learned to tame two languages so different from one another, but when she asks about it, he usually just shrugs and grins.

  Most human languages are easy, he tries to explain. The really difficult one is the language of wood. And he offers to teach her that too, but at the same time he insists that she can only start learning after she has mastered the reading and writing of ordinary language.

  Word for word he teaches her. Many times she feels like giving up, because it is so difficult. But she has always been a determined and even hard-headed person. Once she has set her mind on something, it isn’t easy to make her waver. And, slowly but very surely, she starts shaping her letters and building her words, until the miracle happens and she can write the words she pronounces on the slate with the pencil Labyn has given her. Many nights she remains sitting on her heap of straw writing out her words. The children soon learn that when Philida is writing, she is not to be bothered, because if you keep on nagging you’ll get clouted.

  After a month or two she goes to Labyn to ask, Can you show me how to write Frans Brink’s name?

  Why do you want to know? he asks, annoyed. From what you’ve told me that man is a skelm.

  Just show me.

  That’s not a name you need to worry about, Philida. Forget about him. Shake him off.

  No, I got to learn. If I can write his name, I can send him to hell. Otherwise he’ll keep on haunting me.

  Labyn tries to argue, but he has already learned that Philida does not give anyone a chance to talk back. And so she learns to write:

  FRANS BRINK

  From there she can move on. She doesn’t try to explain to herself why it’s so important to write that name. But gradually she realises that by writing the name on a slate or a piece of paper, as on the last page of a Bible, she can get a kind of hold on Frans. She writes his name, and then she’s got him. Caught, as in a fist, and that is where she wants him. That is how writing works. Going a little step further and doing a little bit more every day.

  But a bit of writing and a bit of reading isn’t all she does with Labyn. When they have done that for the day he can start talking and Philida listens. Stories, mostly. About Muhammad and his wife Khadija. After the death of his uncle Abu Talib who always protected him against his enemies, and when Khadija also died, Muhammad felt like a thin little tree trying to remain standing against all the winds of the world.

  Then a new woman came into his life, the pretty young girl-child A’isha, the daughter of a very important man, Abu Bakr. When Muhammad first met her she was only nine years old. But that didn’t bother him, because they fell in love and soon they got engaged.

  That’s just plain stupid, says Philida.

  No it isn’t, says Labyn. Look, they were engaged but all that meant was that once she was grown up they could start thinking of lying together. Until that day came, they just didn’t.

  I’d like to see the man who can do that, says Philida.

  Well, I can tell you that Muhammad respected her, Labyn says curtly. Whether you believe me or not, that was how it was. A’isha was still a child, but they were together and they believed that one day it would get better. Wherever Muhammad went, A’isha went with him. He brought her up the way he wanted and slowly she turned into a woman. But then there came trouble. Because one day when she was again with him on a raid against his enemies, she slipped from her carry-chair to go and pee, and when she wanted to go back, she found that she’d lost a beautiful necklace he’d given her. That was proper shit, you can believe me. She started looking for it, everywhere, everywhere, but that necklace was not to be found, and when in the end she came back, the whole caravan had left.

  It was only the next day that the men discovered the lovely A’isha was gone. You can imagine how upset they were. But while everybody was still hunting here and there and everywhere to find Muhammad’s beloved wife, they suddenly saw a cloud of dust coming towards them from the desert, and when it came closer they saw it actually was A’isha on a camel, together with a young Arab man with whom she’d grown up, a man with the beautiful long name of Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal. They heard that he’d found her in the desert wandering around on her own looking for Muhammad. Even though she was wearing her black veil, because by then Muhammad had seen to it that all women wore veils, Safwan immediately recognised her. As was expected of a shy and decent woman, A’isha didn’t want to talk to him at first, but she did get on the camel with him and galloped through the night until at last they got to Muhammad in the morning.

  The problem was that people then started gossiping. You know what people are like. Especially when there’s a beautiful young woman in the story. Muhammad had no idea of what to do. He started behaving in a very cool and angry way to her. And when the stories did not stop, he went to her and told her, Look, I want you to go and tell Al-lah you’re sorry, then I’ll forgive you and everything will be all right again.

  But A’isha was furious, and she said to Muhammad, I swear to heaven I shall never tell Al-lah that I’m sorry for the thing you are accusing me of. And she turned round and ran out of Muhammad’s house in the city of Medina at the time, and went back to her mother, the way women do.

  You can just imagine how everybody then started gossiping. Poor Muhammad was shattered. He went to all his friends and followers and asked them, How come that everybody is saying such awful things about me and my family?

  Secretly, the people were all thinking that A’isha must be guilty. Such a beautiful young woman always gets the blame. But in order to get into Muhammad’s good books, they all pretended to think that this A’isha was a very decent and chaste person. There was only one man, Alí, who kept on saying that whether A’isha was guilty or innocent, Muhammad had to divorce her, because the story was too harmful to let it pass. A’isha’s father Abu Bakr was furious, but it didn’t seem as if he could make any difference.

  That was when Al-lah decided the story had now gone far enough. So he appeared to Muhammad and showed him a revelation that confirmed A’isha was innocent. Muhammad was in the seventh heaven. He immediately ran to A’isha to tell her: Rejoice, A’isha! Al-lah himself has just revealed to me that you are innocent. All of that is to his greatest honour, don’t you think?

  So what did A’isha do? As we know, she was a woman who never allowed others to
tell her what to do. And she pulled herself up and answered him like a slap in the face: Yes! she said. Perhaps it is to Al-lah’s honour. But it is to your dishonour!

  But at least that was the end of the whole nasty business.

  This story, like so many others, Labyn told to Philida while he was sawing and planing and hammering, making his benches and tables and chairs and shelves and coffins.

  But it was more than just stories. People say that Labyn also recited verses and passages from the Koran to Philida – he had a very deep, beautiful voice and she could never stop listening when he spoke, and he also taught her to recite verses from the Koran herself. Slowly, slowly, Philida became a new person.

  Sometimes she could listen for hours to Labyn’s voice when he read or recited to her, because she couldn’t get enough of his deep voice – how it got wild and violent like the sea when there is a storm coming up and churning up the waves, and how it grew quiet like when the wind dies down in the vineyards and only a few leaves go on rustling. With his voice he could do anything, specially when she closed her eyes: words of anger, and of caressing, and of dancing, usually preceded by those special words that used to resound in her ears:

  In the name of Al-lah, the Compassionate, the Merciful! Bismillah! Al-Rahman, Al-Rakim!

  Then it would be like a flood and a thunderstorm breaking over her:

  When the sky is rent asunder; when the stars scatter and the oceans roll together; when the graves are hurled about; each soul shall know what it has done and what it has failed to do.

  Oh man! What evil has enticed you from your gracious Lord who created you, gave you an upright form, and well-proportioned you? In whatever shape he could have surely moulded you according to his will.

  Yes, you deny the Last Judgement. Yet there are guardians watching over you, noble recorders who know of all your actions.