Philida Read online

  And yet, he says at last, a kind of weary pride in his voice, I learned to bear it. I lasted. A reed can bend without breaking like a stick, you see. It’s just that I’m getting old so quickly now. Will there be any life left in me by the time I get out? The white people know very well how to wear a man out before he’s dead.

  Philida listens with a kind of awe to what he says, because in his voice there is something she has never heard in anybody else. It makes her think of what Ouman Cornelis Brink used to read from his Bible about the man Lazarus that rose from the dead and came back to his people and how at the time she always thought of how weird it must be for someone like that to come back among the living. Because Lazarus had been on the Other Side. He’d been dead. And even if he comes back to life, it must always feel to him as if he is looking on from very far away at what is happening on this side. It’s like that with old Ontong. What he has seen, what has happened to him, must make him unlike other people. He must know more. Everything must look different to him. It must feel as if he has been to hell and come back through the flames to be here again. A here which can never be quite the same as other people’s here. In a way he must look at his world like that Galant’s head stuck on the pole in the Bokkeveld, staring through the empty hollows of his eyes, at everything that happens around him but which is no longer part of him. Fire he has seen, and murder, and killing, the things that people do to people, things that should not be seen or known about but which go on happening all the time. Every bloody day of his life. Every bloody day for which he, Ontong, is still sitting here breaking stones until they turn into gravel and disappear into dust under his blunt chisel, every day they chain him up here on the treadmill where he’s got to tread and tread and tread and tread and tread, day after day until time no longer exists, past the ends of the earth, every day they go on beating and beating and beating him, without ever stopping. Every day – may Al-lah hear him, Al-lah the Compassionate, Al-lah the Merciful – every day he must remember those people, their eyes and their hands, their mouths that go on shouting and shouting in his ears, in every muscle and bone and sinew and drop of blood in his tired old body. Jirre, Ontong! You must be older than all the other people in the world. Older than Al-lah or the LordGod himself. You know too much. You know more than any living person ought to know. You could have been my grandfather. You could have been my father. I who don’t even have a father to know about.

  To Ontong Labyn hands another of his small flour bags with food and rolled tobacco and a cardigan which Philida really meant for Meester de la Bat. For the guard, too, Labyn has brought a pasella: a jug of wine, tobacco, meebos, dried fruit.

  There isn’t much time left, but they must visit another part of the Drostdy yard inside the ring wall, to look from a distance at the other rebels who were with Galant: those sentenced, not to fifteen years of breaking stones, but to life. The three Khoe men. The young Rooij who at the time of the revolt was still a child and only went with the others from curiosity, and then was persuaded to stay with the grown men and to shoot and kill the farmers. Hendrik who arrived from the Karoo with his Baas at the farm only in the late afternoon of the murder, in search of a runaway mare. Klaas, the mantoor on the farm, who intervened to save the lives of the women, but who didn’t hesitate at the critical moment to unlock the front door of the homestead for Galant and his co-accused Abel.

  It is as if another world is opened to Philida like a strange and terrible book. At the same time it is a world she knows only too well. It may be true that the night of murder and violence stands between them like a wall: but at the same time it does look like her own world. The rhythms of work during the summer or winter days, as precise and orderly as a knitting pattern, the bell that rings in the early morning, the farmyard coming to life, the seasons following one another, cold and hot and everything in between, rain and drought, food and beatings, slaves and masters. Then, one day, suddenly, everything is disrupted, a murder happens among them, and nothing is the same – and they discover that this frightening violence has been hovering among them all the time, pretending to be asleep, like a dog on the back stoep, but never really sleeping after all.

  And now? Is that dog still lying there, pretending? How tame these men seem today when you look at them, how ordinary, how everyday, how subdued, how torn and tattered. All violence and will drained out of them. And yet –!

  Are we all like that? she wonders. Is it lying in wait for all of us? And what will it take to make it break loose again? What do we really know about ourselves?

  Labyn is getting agitated. The guard has warned him that they mustn’t stay too long, or he will get into trouble. And soon, too soon for her liking, they must go on their way to the de la Bats’ house in the Church Street. They do not talk much. The day lies heavily on them. Philida already knows that this morning will not readily let her go. Yet something happens upon their arrival which changes the feeling of the day for ever in her mind.

  A horseman arrives from the Drostdy in Stellenbosch with a message for Meester de la Bat. Something about the preparations for the first of December, the day the slaves are to become free. Well, not completely free. Everybody knows by now that each will remain indentured with her or his Baas for four more years. But it does mean that something has started happening and that the Caab will never be the same again.

  But that is not all the visitor has to say. He has a special message for Philida. It comes from Zandvliet.

  Ouma Nella has died.

  Quietly in her sleep, just over a week ago. Philida has always expected it to happen in a different way. It has never been in Ouma Nella’s nature to allow anything just to happen quietly, almost unnoticed. She would always put her foot down, and resist. Yet now this has come to pass and suddenly there is only an emptiness that remains. An emptiness surrounded by wind, a wind that seems to be coming from all sides and has no beginning or end. But in a strange way the wind is also comforting in its wild dance.

  And so, on the day the message comes, Philida’s thoughts also slowly come to rest. In the heart of the emptiness she does not move until long after the messenger has left. She has no tears left to weep, all she can do is to remain sitting. But it is an emptiness that slowly begins to be filled with stories, all the stories Ouma Nella has told her over so many years. The children soon realise that their mother is not to be disturbed. And they quietly accompany Delphina when she takes them to where she is busy ironing. Even Kleinkat remains very quietly on Philida’s lap, her small striped head resting against a knee, quietly purring as if she is trying to comfort Philida.

  Unthinking, Philida lifts a hand to remove Floris’s chameleon from her shoulder. The little creature sits quietly in her cupped hand. Only its eyes keep turning slowly this way and that as if it is watching something.

  Ouma Nella’s stories, she thinks, are all that remain now. Perhaps, when the end comes, they are all that can go on living.

  Look at that little creature. You know mos, people say it is through him that death came into the world, but that is not fair, Ouma Nella always said. That story is just not true, it was all a misunderstanding.

  Then what is the true story, Ouma?

  Philida allows free rein to her thoughts, letting them run like water in a furrow in the vineyard.

  It was the Moon, the same Moon sitting up there now, showing off its bulging tummy, pretending not to know anything, but actually knowing it all very well: one day, the Moon, that was one of the chameleon’s two mothers, remember, sent the chameleon to give the people down there on Earth a message. Because the people were still new on the Earth, they didn’t know anything about dying and that kind of thing. So she told the chameleon, Go and tell them they got nothing to be scared of. Because look at me, I am the Moon: sometimes I am round and full – like now, as you can see for yourselves – and then the darkness starts gnawing at me and I grow smaller and thinner, until at last I just disappear. You are still looking at me, then suddenly I am no longer there, I�
�m just goner than gone. But after some time, before you know what is going on, I start swelling again, like a cow with a calf inside her, and one day I am full and shiny and full of life again. Well, this is how it goes with you people too. You also grow old and get thin and then you die. But not for long, because soon you get up again to start a new life. This is the message I’m sending to the people. What lives must die, and then life begins again, and nothing is ever past. A message of hope that never dies.

  All right. So there the chameleon goes. Little step by step, very carefully, treading very softly.

  Up in the sky the Sun is looking at what is happening down there. He is surprised by the chameleon that walks so slowly and endlessly without getting tired or hurried. And he gets so curious that he cannot take it any longer. First he makes sure that the Moon will not see him, and then he slides all the way down to the Earth to find out what is this story that is happening. He calls the hare to find out what is going on. The hare is in such a hurry that he catches up with the chameleon from behind, and he asks: Where you going in such a hurry?

  He is joking, of course, but the chameleon is concentrating so much on his slow walking and walking and walking that he doesn’t even realise that the hare is pulling his leg. And when at long last the cha-me-le-on has slow-ly fin-ish-ed tel-ling his long sto-ry, the hare runs off in such a hurry that there is gravel and sand and dust scattered in every direction, until he gets back to the Sun and tells his story.

  The Sun smiles in the light rays of his beard.

  Look, he tells the hare. You are the one who is too fast. Calm down and listen carefully. Look at me. I am big and round and shiny and I burn like fire from morning to night. But tonight I lie down behind the mountains and then I’m dead and everything grows black with death. This is how it will be for people too: They are born and then they live, and then they die and the whole world gets dark.

  And off goes the hare, even faster than the first time, and he runs right past the chameleon until he comes to the people, and he tells them:

  Listen to the message from the Sun. He says: Look at me! In the morning I am born and then I keep shining right through the day until evening comes, and then I die behind the mountains. This is how it will be with all of you.

  The people believed the message, and from that day death lives among them.

  A long, long time after that the poor little chameleon arrived with the message sent by the Moon. But by then it was too late. The people had already heard and believed the message, so it could not be changed any more, and now we are stuck with it.

  Philida still remembers the first time she heard the story from Ouma Nella and how furiously she protested, and how Ouma Nella laughed and said, That’s how people are, my child. They always believe the worst, and if you’re born stupid you will die stupid. But let that be a lesson to you. If you get a message, make sure you understand it right. Otherwise you will just see your own backside.

  For a long time Philida remains sitting in the backyard with the chameleon very peaceful in her hand. There is so much she wants to remember. How they used to work and talk together. How Ouma Nella taught her everything about knitting. All the stories, all the laughter. How they slept together at night in Ouma Nella’s bulsak, and how soft and warm and downy and happy and safe it was. How they picked the first crystal grapes of summer together, and the sweetest hanepoot at the end of the season. And the deep yellow loquats, and the purple Adam’s figs, and how rotten figs and chickenshit slithered through her toes in the backyard, and how day after day Ouma Nella got angry with the stupid hen Zelda that always cackled about the eggs of other chickens without ever producing anything of her own, and how nobody ever dared to disturb them when they were together in Ouma Nella’s room, and how on that last visit to the Caab they walked through the whole of the town in search of work after Frans had betrayed her and refused to acknowledge his own fair children, and how she’d gone to say goodbye to Ounooi Janna before she left for Worcester, and how her whole life through spring summer autumn winter has always been made true by Ouma Nella, and good and evil and everything else has been given their names by Ouma, and how the Ouman wanted to force her to kneel for him in the bamboo copse, and how he looked on while the two boys in the backyard were taking turns with her, and how all the pain in the world grew less painful when Ouma Nella was with her. And if she now has to be buried in a coffin like those made by Labyn, but never as beautiful and perfect as Labyn’s, it will be a whole life that is put away. For evermore. My poor old Ouma. Poor, poor me.

  XXVI

  A Chapter about a Day that is as blue as all Others while it is also completely different

  FOR YEARS IT has been hovering like a smell in the sky, a heavy smell that could make you drunk and light-headed. A smell like young wine or must in a farmyard. But even when hope turned to knowledge, it was not yet ready to be believed and accepted. For too long it has soaked into one’s flesh and blood and sinews and deep into the marrow of one’s bones. Now, suddenly, it is there and, God knows, true. Monday, the first of December, in the Year of Our Lord, 1834.

  The slaves are free.

  Well, not yet free in the way one can talk about swallows or even bobtails or sparrows or janfrederiks, because for four more years – that is, forty-eight months, one thousand four hundred and sixty-one days (including the leap year) for those prepared or able to count so far – each and everyone has to remain indentured with a baas. But still: free.

  For Philida the day begins in an ordinary enough way with getting up early, feeding her children, and then going to sit in the back garden and watch how the street slowly comes to life. There are a number of revellers trying to dance or run about, people making bonfires in the street and cavorting wildly around them. The magistrate’s helpers try very quickly to put an end to it, but it soon becomes evident that no one will be able to douse the exuberance. It is like a New Year’s Day. From all sides slaves come running towards the Drostdy square, even from farms around the town, and soon the whole place is like a broken antheap. Many people have brought their own music, fiddles and ramkies, a few accordions known here as Christmas worms, the odd trumpet, and they all let go in an explosion of celebration.

  In the de la Bats’ backyard Philida moves away for a while from the shade of the oak tree where she has been knitting since early morning, to stare, with her head thrown back, into the bluest blue of the sky as if she’s trying to prise loose something up there. There’s got to be something different, something new, something completely extraordinary, about a day like this. Something that would make one realise that this day is unlike any other. Not so? But the blue up there seems the same as the blue of any other day, neither paler nor darker. As if blue is nothing but blue. A colour like other colours. Like red, or green, or yellow, only blue. What she wants to see is a blue that will be bluer than blue. A blue that means: sadness. Or: happiness. Or: longing. Or: I. No longer just a colour.

  But at first sight this day, the first of December, 1834, is no different from any other day.

  In the end Philida becomes tired of staring up at the sky. At her feet Kleinkat keeps on playing. This little cat can always find something to keep her busy. A ball of wool. A bobbin. A mouse. A cricket. A gecko. And when she cannot find something tangible, she may simply invent or imagine it. Something only she can see. Make-believe cats or story cats or ghost cats. On this Monday morning it may be a ladybird, the orange-and-black kind. Kleinkat stalks the little thing as if it were some huge animal, much larger than herself. A dassie or a mongoose, a leguan, a pangolin, a lynx, or even worse: a leopard, a lion. She creeps up on it, charges it, brings it down, throws it up, jumps on it with arched back, makes a somersault, growls deep in her throat and makes a sound that would scare off any intruding beast. While Philida is around, Kleinkat is prepared to take on anything. A hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, an elephant, a bugbear, a satan, a monster as big as the house, as a drostdy, as a Caab staggering under a southeaster. To Kleinkat
this Monday is indeed no ordinary day. And in the end, just as suddenly as she began, she abandons it, curls up in a tiny bundle and starts purring. And falls into a deep sleep.

  Then Floris approaches round the back corner of the house with an exuberant call like a fish bugle: I say, I say! Aren’t we also going to churn up a bit of dust?

  Don’t be silly, man, Labyn scolds him.

  But Floris won’t be stopped. Look what I got here! he shouts as he reveals what he has been hiding in an old folded jacket under his arm. It’s shoes, honest to God. Shoes he has made for everybody in this backyard: for Philida and Delphina, for Labyn and himself, even for Philida’s children, Lena and Willempie. Each pair cut and sewn exactly to size: one can see that he has taken every single measurement very precisely by screwing up his eyes. They all sit down on the ground and start trying on the shoes. Labyn and Floris immediately jump to their feet and start dancing a reel. Floris scoops up Delphina and Labyn and Philida, and the dust gets churned up as if a few dust-devils have come to life like ghosts in bright daylight.

  Until Meester Bernabé de la Bat, in top hat and black suit, comes out on the back stoep and sternly demands: What is going on here today?