Philida Read online

  Mijnheer Brink, he says. A pleasure and a privilege. To what do I owe the honour of your visit?

  I have an important matter to discuss with the slave girl Philida, says Cornelis, feeling terribly ill at ease in the man’s company. His whole prepared speech has dried up in his parched mouth.

  I hope it isn’t illness or death? asks Bernabé de la Bat.

  No, no. It is much more serious.

  Then it must be very bad. Shall I accompany you to my house?

  Over the last stretch Cornelis feels as if he is on his way to his own funeral.

  At Meester de la Bat’s house the homeowner invites him to sit in the voorhuis; his wife appears to greet the visitor, half suspicious, half inquisitive, and quickly leaves again to fetch tea in spite of his protests – these people prefer tea to the potent bitter root brew that here in the interior passes for coffee – to hear Cornelis’s unexpected story.

  By the time she returns with the tray Meester de la Bat has already enquired about the business that has made him come so far.

  Actually, he has come to see Philida, Cornelis explains again, embarrassed. He starts in a very long-winded way as is his wont, by asking about the slave woman’s health.

  For that, says de la Bat, you should ask my wife. It is for her that I bought the meid.

  We don’t have any complaints, Anna Catherina says laconically. Nor does she have any, I should think. She is the best knitting girl I have ever had. Nowadays she is giving rather a lot of time to knitting the baby’s and children’s clothes, but that doesn’t interfere much with her other work, so I’m not complaining.

  This Philida, says the Meester, is doing such good work that we have started hiring her out to other people too. In that way she earns a few pennies which she can put away for next year, when the slaves are freed. We don’t want her to end up on the street.

  That won’t happen anyway, says Cornelis. If I got it right, the slaves will stay booked in for another four years.

  Exactly, confirms de la Bat. But one has to make provision, not so? Otherwise they end up with nothing, and you can imagine for yourself what will happen in the Colony after that. He gets up. But let me go and call her, Mijnheer Brink, then you can speak to her yourself.

  A few minutes later Philida returns to the voorhuis with a half-finished piece of multicoloured knitted baby clothing hanging from two ivory needles in her hands. She is wearing a faded green dress, a doek and a red-chequered shawl over her shoulders. From her doek protrudes a fringe of her dark hair. And of course she is barefoot, as behoves a slave.

  She looks flustered. And before she has crossed the threshold she asks, What’s the matter? What has happened?

  Nothing has happened, says Cornelis curtly. I’ve come about what may still be happening.

  What is that?

  It looks as if my son Francois may not get married after all.

  Philida draws in her breath deeply and very slowly. Then she asks, What’s that got to do with me?

  If he doesn’t marry Maria Magdalena Berrangé we’ll all be down the drain. His face flushes a very deep red. And then it’ll be all your fault, Philida.

  You come all this way from Zandvliet to tell me that?

  It’s very serious, Philida. You’ve got to come back to Zandvliet with me. You’ve got to talk some sense into Frans. He will listen to you if you tell it to him yourself. Afterwards I’ll bring you back here again. Or if you prefer, I can buy you back.

  That is not what he has meant to say. But now that it has come so far there is no turning back.

  You must be mad in your head, she says very quickly.

  Philida, please think about it. You don’t know what you’re holding in your hands today. It’s all our lives. We’ve made a hell of a mistake, man. You must go with me and help me to make Frans understand reason.

  You know it’s not about Frans. It’s not even about the Berrangés. It’s all about yourself. You want to make me kneel in the bamboo copse again, and that I’m not doing. Not for you and not for nobody. They say that next year in December I’ll be free. But here inside me I’m already free. It’s no longer for you to say do this or do that. You understand that, Oubaas?!

  Please, Philida. For God’s sake, please!

  What use will my talking be? she asks shrilly. It’s you, the white people, who tell us what to do. But now we saying no.

  I’m talking to you about my whole family, Philida. About our future. So it’s about your own future too. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise you, I swear.

  That’s what Frans also said to me when he tried to make me lie with him the first time. I shall make it worthwhile for you, Philida. I shall make you free.

  Don’t you understand? he asks in a rage.

  No, I don’t understand. I understand nothing about you people. When you want to use me, I got to kneel before you. But today your balls are hanging in the sand, so now suddenly you want me to help you?

  The words break out of her: I swear to you today, Ouman, I swear to Al-lah!

  You swear to what? He gawks at her. For a long time he cannot utter a word. At long last he manages to force it through clenched lips: I can see what is happening here. You’ve landed among the heathens here. Look, I want to bring you back home so that you can live among Christian people the way you were used to, the way we brought you up. We want to save your soul!

  Why you suddenly care about my soul? Here in this place I got to know Labyn. He taught me different.

  Who is this Labyn?

  He is a slave like me. But on the first of December next year we shall both be free, that is what he tell me.

  What shit are you talking, Philida? What kind of a man is that Labyn? What kind of a weed in our garden?

  Labyn is a Slams. I am with the Slamse now.

  Cornelis gasps for breath. Philida, you got mixed up with the Slamse now? That will take you straight to hell.

  I will rather burn in hell than sit in your voorhuis again with my back to the wall when you open your big black book in the evening to read all the names and things. And as soon as you finish reading it’s back to the bamboos and you know it. You know that book better than the bamboo place. What you don’t know is that the Slamse people got their own Book. His name is Korhaan. And he don’t talk to white people and shit. He talk to us.

  I don’t know what to say to you any more, Philida.

  Then don’t say it. I hear and see enough of you Christian lot. I got nothing more to do with you.

  Does Meester de la Bat know about this shit you’re talking?

  I don’t care if he know or not. My shit is my own and my soul is my own.

  Somewhere along the road you lost your way.

  Look here, Ouman. She holds up her hand when he tries to interrupt. Look here, she says again. I’m not clever like you. Right now I’m just learning from Labyn. I still got a lot to learn. But all I know is that I want to be with the Slamse, that’s where I belong. You Christians treat me like dirt.

  Cornelis shakes his head. I told you I don’t understand you any more. Philida.

  You never understand me, Ouman. It always just been you, you, you.

  A strange wailing sound slides into his voice. Today I’m on my knees before you, Philida.

  You used to make me kneel on mine. Now it’s your turn, Ouman.

  This is when he surprises her. Slowly and laboriously he goes down on his knees, breathing heavily through his mouth. Philida, look at me! What must become of me!

  She does not even try to answer. With the half-knitted baby cardigan in her hands – in many colours, red and white and yellow and green and blue – she turns round and goes to the kitchen.

  Cornelis slouches back to the front stoep, where he finds de la Bat.

  I’d better be going again, he says. That one won’t understand reason.

  You cannot go back like that, Oom! protests Meester de la Bat. You’re no longer a young man. At least stay over for the night. Things may look better i
n the morning.

  Cornelis still considers for a while before he reluctantly decides to accept the invitation. But he withdraws quickly into the bedroom assigned to him, keeping the shutters closed, and only ventures outside in the late afternoon again – just in time to see Philida coming past. It doesn’t look as if she has noticed him. Perhaps she doesn’t want to.

  At the back of the house she goes to Labyn’s workroom. He’s busy with his wood. Today, as so often in recent weeks, it is a coffin. Smooth pale panels, with fine stinkwood struts in between. Too beautiful, really, to be buried in the earth.

  He glances up and goes on with his work.

  Who was that man? he asks when she says nothing.

  He used to be my Baas, says Philida. It’s he who bring me to the auction.

  There’s many people who churn up a lot of dust these days coming after you.

  They want me to go back.

  And?

  I’m staying right here. This is my place now.

  What did he say about that?

  Said I must move back to live with Christian people.

  Labyn sniffs, but says nothing.

  I tell him I’m with the Slamse people now. That’s what I decided. I want you to tell Al-lah that when you see him again.

  Inshallah, says Labyn and goes on smoothing one of the darker struts between the pale panels.

  Another silence. At the best of times Labyn doesn’t say much.

  Now you got to help me, says Philida. I want to know more about this Islam of yours. I want to know what I’m doing here with you.

  He gives a crooked smile, but she can see his eyes shining. I shall tell you everything I know, he promises. The Koran says, Some of us are Muslims and some are wrongdoers. Those that embraced Islam pursue the right path; but those that do wrong shall become the fuel of hell.

  And as always, these first words open the roads to more. It is as if the smooth dark wood in his hands brings to life something inside him. He says: Consider the water which you drink. Was it you that poured it from the cloud or we? If We pleased We could have turned it bitter. Why then do you not give thanks? Always remember this, Philida: Indeed, Al-lah does not need you, but you need him. If you give no heed, he will replace you by others different from you. Whatever happens, remember what I tell you: Your God is one God. There is no God but him. He is the Compassionate, the Merciful.

  And then he says: If you wish, we can start with your lessons again tonight.

  XXIII

  In which two more Visits to the de la Bats in Worcester are narrated, both of which will have long-term Consequences for Everybody involved

  AROUND THE TIME of that unexpected visit two more visitors turn up at the de la Bats’ home in the Church Street in Worcester. On both occasions the visitors come to stay. The first, quite out of the blue, only a few days after Francois Brink rode off, is Kleinkat.

  She looks a bit dishevelled, somewhat rough at the edges, rather thin and clearly hungry, but her paws do not look worn. Because this occurs quite soon after Francois’s departure, the de la Bats come to the conclusion that the cat must have run away very soon after she’d left Worcester. Philida, who has had a very good look at her and discovered that her face around the mouth looks chafed and bloody, concludes that she must have struggled pretty fiercely to get out of the bamboo cage and most probably chewed her way through the thin slats. But she was not badly hurt. The only thing that rather surprises Philida, even though it is also cause for relief, is that she hasn’t chosen to escape to Zandvliet like the previous time, but decided to take the short cut to Worcester. Presumably Kleinkat has decided, after all her tribulations, that her real home is with Philida after all. And the slave woman welcomes the cat like a prodigal child from the Bible. She caresses her behind the ears and smells her feet and rubs her cheeks against the little pointed face and kisses her on the nose. And Kleinkat chirrups like a bird and quietly revels in Philida’s caresses as if her whole small life has briefly become concentrated on this moment of warmth and safety and pure bliss.

  Philida has a bad fright on the day Cornelis comes to visit, for her first thought is that he has come to claim the cat again. But she quickly realises that something so ordinary would never have upset the old man so much. Even so, as a precaution she locks up the cat in the room she shares with Delphina and keeps her there for a few days. But she soon finds that there is no need to get so upset, and from then on she does not worry about Kleinkat any more, and she and Delphina, and the children, become inseparable from the cat.

  The second visitor is of an entirely different kind. His name is Floris and it turns out that he is a slave who previously belonged to Meester de la Bat, a man of forty or thereabouts, who absconded from Worcester about a year before and, when he couldn’t be found again, was completely written off by the de la Bat family. He has now unexpectedly decided to come back of his own accord.

  It is late on a Wednesday afternoon, when the sun is already sinking, that he turns up at the back gate to the property, a greyish man covered by what seems like weeks of dust, wearing a cap of dassie skins with a sprig of rosemary on top, a long buttonless shirt and a chameleon on his right shoulder. He is clearly exhausted and grey with hunger, yet there is an irrepressible spring in his step. When Delphina comes from the back door to offer him a bowl of water, he starts gulping it down like a horse. Afterwards he goes into the kitchen uninvited – which makes Philida realise that he is familiar with the place, that he belongs there – and dunks his whole head into the washing barrel, keeping it under water for so long that Philida begins to fear that he may never come up for air again, then shakes off the excess water like a frisky dog with an exuberant shout: Yooohooo!

  The noise attracts the two bull mastiffs from the voorhuis, and they tumble over each other to get to him first, and for a moment Philida, not knowing how they will react to a stranger, fears that they may tear him to shreds right there.

  Labyn! she shouts. Here’s trouble! Come and help!

  Labyn jumps up from his workbench where he is putting together a delicate table standing like a small steenbok on tall thin legs. But to Philida’s amazement he gives a broad grin, like a rising sun. She sees the two large dogs charging towards the visitor in a tumult of barking and taking a flying leap at him. Instinctively she closes her eyes. But when she dares to look again, she sees the stranger on his knees, exuberantly fondling the dogs as they both dance around him to lick his face from all sides.

  Just then Meester de la Bat makes his appearance like a large black bat with folded wings.

  He stops on the threshold. Floris …? he asks.

  Meester, he says, here I am. I been walking all over the place and now I got home again. You can go and fetch the riem and give me a proper hiding because I got a lot to talk about. But we can only talk after you beat the shit out of me.

  This leads to a long discussion, as Meester de la Bat is thrown quite off balance by Floris’s return, but the runaway insists he can only talk after all the formalities have been complied with – and that will only be possible once he has had his prescribed punishment. In the past this used to be completely in the hands of the Baas, but ever since the English took over there has been a rule and a regulation for every damn thing.

  We can talk about it tomorrow, says Meester de la Bat.

  If it’s all the same to Meester, I’d rather get it over and done with straight away, says Floris, meek but adamant.

  All right, then come with me, says de la Bat with a sigh. I don’t like it but the law is the law.

  Is what I also say, Floris agrees.

  They go round the house in the direction of Labyn’s workroom at the back, followed by the others. Labyn and Floris move the heavy workbench into the backyard. Only now does Philida realise that the workbench is also the flogging bench and that all the brown stains on the surface must be old blood. Low down on each of the massive legs are rusty iron rings to which Meester de la Bat and Labyn are now preparing to attac
h Floris with thongs from the stable.

  Lie down, orders Meester de la Bat. Floris removes the chameleon from his right shoulder, and stands looking around him for a moment.

  You come and take this, he tells Philida. Will you keep him for me?

  Won’t the thing bite? she asks hesitantly.

  No, he’s used to people, man. Just hold him gently so that you don’t scare him.

  She gingerly takes the chameleon from him, still not quite reassured. So far, she has cautiously kept away from the little creature because of Ouma Nella’s persistent warnings over the years: You better watch your step with this thing, my child, he brings death with him.

  Philida stands a few steps aside. Lena approaches with great caution to see better, but keeps ready to scamper off as the chameleon turns his big eyes in her direction.

  Delphina helps Floris to take off his long loose shirt. Then the breeches that reach down to his knees. His entire back and lean buttocks bear the dark criss-cross marks of old floggings. It is clearly not the first time Floris has had a run-in with the law. He tries to find a comfortable position on the flogging bench, on his stomach, letting his arms hang down the sides of the heavy bench. Meester de la Bat goes down on his heels to attach the wrists to the rings on the side. As he struggles laboriously his pale face flushes a deep red from the effort. Once he is satisfied that the arms are firmly attached, Meester de la Bat gets up again to take the two remaining thongs from Labyn. Floris’s thin ankles barely reach the foot end of the bench.

  Help me, orders the Meester as he passes one thong up to Labyn while he pulls the second one tight around Floris’s left ankle, closest to him. Now tie it properly, he orders.

  But Labyn turns out to be very reluctant. He makes no attempt to come closer and take the thong.

  Meester de la Bat looks at him with a frown. What’s up with you now? he asks irritably.