Philida Read online

  I never know what a blarry long way it will be, Labyn!

  Don’t forget about Moses and his people going on for forty years! he say. I tell you, once we get to that Gariep and we see the land of Canaan, it will all be worthwhile. Just grit your teeth and go on.

  So on and on we go. Sometimes we make a halt. For a day or a few days or a long week. The first time it happen we are on a farm where somebody just died, a child that drowned in a dam, and then the people find out about Labyn’s work and they ask him to make a coffin. This happen a few more times. And once the farmer is so pleased with his coffin that Labyn is asked to make coffins for everybody that live there. It’s good to have your coffin ready before they dig you in, and in the meantime you can use it for raisins or dried apricots, or peaches, or for buchu and even dagga, it is such a good smell for a coffin and it must feel good for a dead person to lie in it, and if the people pay for the coffins we have another handful of rix-dollars to take along with us.

  Getting to the Gariep, say Labyn, must already be like a halfway station to heaven because listen what Al-lah say about it in the Koran: He who obeys Al-lah and his Prophet will live for ever in gardens watered by running streams. This can only be the Gariep he talk about.

  Still we go on and on. Often it feel like another desert we are moving through, like the one Moses go through, or even worse. They call it Bushmanland, they call it the Richtersveld, this desert got many names. But somewhere, somewhere you must come to its end. Somewhere anything and everything come to an end.

  It is not an easy way, God know, Al-lah know, it is an uphill road. Even when it seem to go downhill it is still uphill.

  And I have a hard time. The children are small and they are skinny with their chicken legs, and they are like stones that get heavier and heavier as you carry them. And it is not just Willempie and Lena I must carry. There is also Mamie, but the heaviest one is KleinFrans. He is not just in my arms but deep inside my body.

  There isn’t a day, not an hour, that he is not with me. He is inside me like the taste of bitter aloe in my mouth, in every breath I breathe in or out, in every step, even in my standing up or in my lying down. KleinFrans. KleinFrans. KleinFrans. Who come out of my body and who Frans want to drown. And who I got to smother in my arms to save him from a life of slavery. There is nothing else I can do. LordGod and Al-lah, help me to carry him. Help me to believe there was nothing else I can do. How can I leave it to Frans to kill him? He is mine and he is Frans’s too. But first of all he is mine. Just believe me, Philida, he say to me. Allow me to take you and let us make a child, then I shall make you happy and I shall buy your freedom. And we shall both walk with shoes on our feet, for ever.

  And so he make sure. And so what else could I do?

  And now we shall be free anyway, whatever he did or did not do, whatever he promised or lied to make me lie with him.

  I know now that I am free, not because somebody said that on such-and-such a day I must be free. I am free because I am free. Because I myself take my freedom. I take it and I choose it. It is, I think, a freedom like the sun and the moon and the other stars. The sun do not rise because somebody tell him to, but because coming up is its nature and because nobody can tell him not to. This is my freedom and this is who I am and what I am. I kill my Little Frans and I set him free. We are both free now.

  We shall all go through that Gateway to Paradise together, he and I and our children and everybody.

  Frans. Frans. KleinFrans.

  This will be the last night we spend on the road. I know, because one can already see the dark green of the bushes and the trees that mark its course. If the children were not with me, I don’t think I will have stopped. But now that we are here, I am glad to have this last night. It is not quiet. In the distance there are many voices, all the time. Lots of people talking, some shouting, some fighting, women’s voices crying. This is what it mean to be with other people again. If I think of it, I must admit that perhaps it was better when it was just old Labyn and me and the children in the desert. That silence we hear there. The stillness of the night and of distance that go on and on, for ever. I am glad, of course, to know that we are here now, that this long, long walk is over. But perhaps I am a bit scared too, because I am not sure what is going to happen in this place, if one can call it a place. When old Labyn talk about it to me in Worcester, before we set out, it is only a cross on a map and it seem like a real spot one can reach, where perhaps one can rest or stay over, and from where one can set out again. But this is not a map where we are walking. It is sand and hard earth, and scorching hot underfoot. It is as if this whole land is stuck to the soles of our feet. It will go with us wherever we go. We can never get away from it again. Nor do we want to.

  I suppose I must now be happy. Is this not the end we been waiting for all along? Except that it don’t feel like an end. It don’t feel like anything. It is like that blue day when all the slaves got free and then the sky stay just as blue as it always was.

  And yet it was good too, and I feel happy because I could baptise my children. And now? What difference can it really make?

  We are here. We come a long way, an almost endless way, and now we are here. Where is here?

  I remember on that trip to the Caab when I ask Ouma Nella: Ouma Nella, where am I not?

  Am I here or am I not?

  Am I a slave or am I not?

  Am I Philida or am I not?

  Are these two little children here or are they not?

  Is KleinFrans here?

  If I lie very still and try as hard as I can, I think I can hear the river in the distance. This Gariep we been looking for all along.

  Now we are here and I still do not know where is here.

  It is while I am lying here, so still in the endlessness of the night, that I suddenly hear something. I cannot even be sure that I hear it, that it is really there. But it sound like a cat mewing in the dark. A small cat or a baby. I know it cannot be Kleinkat, and yet while I am here alone in the dark I can believe it is she.

  And that is when I know: This is why I cannot feel as if this place is here or there: because it is nowhere. Yes, it is the Gariep, it must be. They say it is. But this is not where I must be: this is not my place.

  Where is my place? Ouma Nella, where am I not? And where am I?

  I put out my elbow and I poke old Labyn in the ribs. He is next to me, as always. I don’t know if he asleep or not. But I can touch him in the dark, and I ask him very softly, because if the children are asleep I do not want to wake them.

  Labyn? I ask.

  And he say, as I know he must: Yes, Philida?

  Labyn, I think I hear a cat calling.

  Yes, he say, I hear it too.

  You think it was Kleinkat?

  I don’t think she could have come so far, he say. But if that is what Al-lah wish, then Kleinkat will be here.

  Do you know what that mean, Labyn?

  What do you think it mean, Philida?

  If you ask me, I think she want us to go back.

  Back where? he ask.

  Back to Worcester. Perhaps that is now our place. We only know that now because we come all this way, to the Gariep, to hell and gone. It is only because we come all this way that we know where we must go to, where you and I and the children belong.

  You know how far that is, Philida?

  I know every blarry step of the way, Labyn.

  And you say we must go back?

  We must go back, because now we shall know the place for the first time. Our place. I once ask my Ouma Nella: Ouma Nella, where am I not? And tonight, in this night under the stars, I know at last: In this place I am not. The only place where I am is back where I come from. And the only way to know it is to come all the way here to find out. The Gariep is the name of the place where one find out what one do not know before.

  We stay silent for a long time.

  Then I ask him: And you know what, Labyn?

  No, I don’t know, Philid
a. But you tell me and then we shall both know.

  We had to come here, Labyn. It was the only way to know.

  If you say so, say Labyn.

  I say so because that is what I know. I can tell you something about knitting: In the past I hate correcting a dropped stitch, or two knitted together, or a purl too soon, but now I know that one of the best things that can happen to you is to find a mistake in the knitting. When you find it you feel so happy because you can make it right. You unravel and you unravel until you get to the right place, and then you pick up the wrong stitches and you knit them right. Now you got a beautiful piece of knitting that is perfect. There is nothing, nothing wrong with it. Every stitch is just where it must be. Now you cast off, it is finished, everything is right. And now you can sleep in the night.

  I know this Gariep show us where we go wrong. So we can undo the wrong rows and go back and knit it right. Now we can be really happy, Labyn. To find what is wrong and then to make it right. There is nothing better than that, Labyn.

  And as I say it to him, this is what I know inside myself: In the brown waters of the Gariep I shall wash myself clean. I do not want to be whiter than snow as the Ouman use to say. Brown is what I am and brown is what I want to be. Like stone. Like soil. Like the earth. Brown like everything that is worthwhile. Brown I will wash myself. A new person I will be. Brown.

  This river, this Gariep: where do it come from? They say that if you want to know where it begin, you must first find out where the sky end and where the world begin. They say it come from everywhere: not here or there or somewhere else, but everywhere. They say you cannot count all the rivers and streams and brooks and watercourses and creeks and fountains that run together into it, it really is from everywhere, it bring this whole land with it, all its sand and stones and rocks and boulders and mountains, all its trees and bushes and forests and copses and coppices. It bring with it all the feet and all the bodies and all the people that ever walked and came and were and lived here, it bring together everything that never been before, it come from all places and all times, they say that on its way it run through Paradise itself, where Adam and Eve live and lie together and where they swim kaalgat, where God or Al-lah or both of them walk together in the evening breeze and eat of the fruit and give it to the people so they can also eat, where Adam taste Eve and Eve taste Adam, where everybody and everything is just fruit that can be eaten. They say it come from everywhere, it is the whole land and the whole blarry earth, they give it a name, they name it all the names that ever lived in a tongue, they call it Gariep, they call it Orange River, they call it Vaal River. To many people it is the Great River, the Always River, the Ever River, the People River, the river where wind and dreams are born, where the sun and the moon and the other stars all swim together, like the love of the LordGod and of Al-lah himself. For ever and ever, amen.

  This Great Gariep. My Gariep. To drink it into me so that it can for ever be part of me and I of it.

  We coming closer, Labyn. I don’t really know to what, but I know we coming closer. Old Labyn is here. And Lena is here. And Willempie is here. And Mamie. Deep inside me KleinFrans is here too. I am here. I, Philida of the Caab. This I that is free. The I who was a slave and who now is free, who is a woman, and who is everything.

  I

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In which a Professor and Vintner, a Historian, some Authors, two Film-makers, various Characters, a Lady, many Friends and a small Cat called Glinka, without whom this Book would not have been possible, are most profoundly thanked, and in which certain unspecified Critics are not mentioned

  I owe more to Mark Solms than I can ever say. Without him there could have been no book. It was Mark, Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, lecturer at the St Bartholomew’s and Royal London School of Medicine, director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuro-Psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and exceptional wine farmer of the farm Solms Delta, originally Zandvliet, who first introduced me to the slave woman Philida. She worked as a knitting girl on the farm from 1824 to 1832. The discovery that her master Cornelis Brink was a brother of one of my own direct ancestors, and that he sold her at auction after his son Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink had made four children with her, triggered this novel. In the remarkable little museum on the farm Philida’s history was first briefly narrated, and I am deeply indebted to the historian attached to this museum, Tracey Randle, for the incalculable help and information she provided, over many months and later years, with endless patience, unquenchable energy and great dedication, throughout her pregnancy with little Maya, and in spite of numerous other duties and obligations. She was always prepared to field questions, on topics as wide-ranging as details of Philida’s life story or the lives of other slaves and of the Brinks, the Berrangés, the de la Bats and other families, the fabrication of ink, wine prices (here Mark Solms also stepped in), slave prices, slave registration rolls, Day Books and Reports of Slave Protectors, travelling routes in the Western Cape in the nineteenth century and different modes of travel, mortgage bonds, the clothing of prisoners and methods of punishment – including the treadmill – in Cape prisons, exchange rates between sterling and the rix-dollar, water resources at Zandvliet and elsewhere, compensation to slave owners after emancipation, and much, much more. It is thanks to her that a demanding undertaking eventually developed into a project providing so much excitement, fulfilment and enjoyment.

  Through Tracey I could also become absorbed in the painstaking research of her colleague Jackie Loos, writer of the fine study Echoes of Slavery (Cape Town: David Philip, 2004). Among the many other illuminating studies of slavery at the Cape, particularly during the years surrounding emancipation, I became drawn into Nigel Worden and Clifton Crais’s Breaking the Chains (Johannesburg: WUP, 1994), Wayne Dooling’s Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule (Scottsville: UK-N Press, 2007), Robert C-H Shell’s Children of Bondage (Johannesburg: WUP, 1994), and many others. On the Gariep I am indebted to William Dicey’s exciting Borderline (Cape Town: Kwela, 2004) and, as in the past, Nigel Penn’s Forgotten Frontier (London: Swallow Press, 2006).

  In using historical sources it is of course necessary always to remain conscious not only of what is narrated, but also of what has been left unsaid. For example, in Francois Brink’s reaction to Philida’s complaint to the Slave Protector in Stellenbosch in 1832 about his relationship with Philida, what he says is that his own words are ‘just as true as they are false’. What, exactly, does that mean? Another example: in her deposition Philida alleges that she and Frans have ‘made’ four children. But in the Slave Rolls and other official sources only three children are ever listed. Surely a mother would not make such a mistake – especially if it concerns her firstborn?!

  Often in such tricky situations it is only through discussions with informed and caring friends that light can be shed on such puzzles. That is why I am so indebted to Ariel Dorfman for many unforgettable conversations, most especially one during a visit to the farm Solms Delta which helped to make many things fall into place. It sent me back to Cape history where slave infanticide regrettably was not uncommon. One of the best-known incidents concerned the Khoe woman Sara who had cut the throats of her two children to prevent their being returned to their ‘Nooi’, Christina van der Merwe. In another instance a slave mother drowned her two small children in the sea to save them from slavery. A most striking narrative based on such a historical event in South Africa is undoubtedly Yvette Christiansë’s novel Unconfessed (New York: Other Press, 2006).

  It is unknown exactly what role the aged slave woman Petronella Johanna Cornelia really played in the life of the Zandvliet Brinks. That she was manumitted and given her own room inside the langhuis of the Brinks’ (unlike any of the numerous other slaves in the household), and that her possessions were left untouched when those of the Brink family were sold, is historically true. Once again it seems to me justified to draw one’s own conclusions in the light of the relations
between masters and slaves as recorded in Cape history, as in the history of my own ancestors.

  A warm thank-you is due to Jean-Marc Giri and Jean-Marc Bouzou for an unforgettable revisit, in search of origins, to the Cedarberg rock paintings. Also to Imraan Coovadia (and through him to Saarah Jappie and Shahid Mathee) who helped with references to Islam and the Koran. In this respect Reza Aslan’s No God But God (London: Arrow Books, 2005) also proved invaluable. And special thanks to Karen Jayes for the enthusiastic and moving way in which she shared her own conversion to Islam with Karina and myself.

  Where possible, I tried to keep strictly to the available sources. The bankruptcy auction of Cornelis Brink, for instance, was recorded in extensive detail and has been incorporated here as an invaluable key to people and mores of that period at the Cape. But from time to time I took some liberties with the historical sources: in this way an alleged affair mentioned here, between Dominee Jan Fredrik Berrangé and a slave woman, was really inspired by an incident in the biography of another pious dominee. From the moment Philida is sold and almost totally disappears from recorded history, I had no choice but to rely on my imagination – but supported throughout, and meticulously, by what has actually been recorded in sources on that period at the Cape. Even an episode like the slave auction in Worcester and the case that preceded it, concerning the court’s attempts to investigate the death of the Khoe man Kees to establish how many blows he had been given before he expired, are based, in all the unbearable and macabre details, on historical fact.

  Names like Caab, Helshoogde and others are written to conform with spelling conventions of the time.

  The brief reappearance of some characters from the Bokkeveld uprising of 1825, on which my novel A Chain of Voices (1983) was based, is effected, not only because it was historically probable, but because the structure of Philida is a conscious corollary of the earlier novel, in order to highlight both the similarities and the differences between the two. And the fact that Daniel Fredrik Berrangé, whose daughter married Francois Brink in due course (after a delay which had to be accounted for in narrative terms), was indeed the secretary of the court that tried the Bokkeveld rebels provides further motivation for such a link.