Philida Page 4

Each one of those ghosts got its own story to tell and they walk along all the roads and paths and trails of the land. Perhaps my own story will also learn to find its way. In the end it’s only the road itself that stay behind and a road don’t talk much to anybody. That’s why I’m not expecting too much from this road to Stellenbosch. The most I can do is to go as far as I can, writing my own story in the dust with my two feet, word for word. All the way, from the longhouse to here where I am waiting for Frans to turn up.

  And when it’s finished I’ll go back home. Back to our house and to our room. The room where Ouma Nella live, and I with her. It’s not an outroom like those of the other slaves, ours is part of the house. If you go through the wide front door into the voorhuis, you turn left and then keep on to the end. There you’ll find our inside door. We got an outside door too, but that’s just for the two of us and people who visit us, nobody else. Not even the Oubaas. Because Ouma Nella was a slave once, but she’s a slave no more. She was set free. And only the LordGod and the Oubaas can tell how that happened.

  And then at last, one day, the door of the cell is opened and I am called out. And there I find Frans waiting. Hurry up now, they tell me. Your Baas Francois is come to see you, move your backside.

  V

  In which Ink and Blood are spilled

  NOW PHILIDA HAS gone and lodged this complaint against us and everything is a terrible mess, just because there wasn’t time enough before she left to arrange and discuss the situation properly. I was shocked when I heard what Pa and MaJanna were planning for me, but I thought they would see reason and talk about it first. Then, before any of us knew what was going on, we heard that she’d gone to Stellenbosch to accuse us. Accuse me. As far as they were concerned, everything was already agreed and done and my whole future was planned without me. It came like a jug of water in the face when the messenger arrived from the Drostdy to demand an answer to the accusations she had brought against us.

  At least I needed to get to know this woman they had decided I had to marry, Maria Magdalena Berrangé. All I knew about her was from the day Pa took the whole family in to the Caab, to the Oranje Street where she lives with her family, and now things have to go as they must, there’s nothing I can do to stop or help them along any more. I can say that she is a fine young woman, dressed like the top ladies in the Colony, long dresses and shawls, one over the other, giving one no hint of what may be going on underneath. But she showed a glimpse of ankle once and that didn’t look bad at all, a bit bony and very white, but enough to make one curious. It’s just that she looks rather uppity, her small pointed nose in the air, with a spread of freckles where the sun of the Caab has got to her. As it happens I quite like freckles, although MaJanna can be vicious about them.

  If only I could have spoken to Philida about her before she left for Stellenbosch, just so that she could know and I could hear what she thought, but she was gone before I ever knew about it. And then the summons from Mijnheer Lindenberg arrived out of the blue. A bad time for that, it is summer and the fruit are getting ripe, the early apricots, and the plums, and the grapes beginning to cluster, they need attention all the time. But the folk at the Drostdy cannot care less about a farmer’s time and seasons. If they say the word one must jump. And talk is not enough either, everything has to be in writing. In English, mind you, even though I know Mijnheer Lindenberg is an Afrikaner just like me. Not English nor Dutch like most of the other officials at the Caab, but born and bred here in the Colony, so he should know better.

  When it comes to writing the officials at the Drostdy are the worst, but of course they get all their orders from above, all of it in writing, it’s the English government’s way of doing things. Even Philida has caught the bug. For weeks and months she went on pestering me to show her the names and things written about my family at the back of Pa’s big black State Bible. Not as big as the one Oom Daniel inherited from Oupa Andries, because Pa is only a fifth son in the line, not the eldest. But this Bible is big and heavy enough.

  Over and over, whenever we find a moment without anyone else around, Philida gets me to show her the pages at the back of the Bible, where Pa wrote our names in ink. Starting with Andries Brink from Waarden or Woerden, nobody is quite sure about the name of the place, followed by a date, 1739, and all of that I explained to her. Then in a long row all his children with his two wives. Four of them with the first, Sophia Grové, followed by nine more with Alida de Waal. And from his seventh son, a Johannes, there came fifteen children, of whom the fifth was my father Cornelis. And that is how we got here.

  Below the name Cornelis in the long row Pa wrote in the names of his own children: from Ouboet Johannes Jacobus, who is in Holland now, learning to be a dominee, and then I, Francois Gerhard Jacob, past KleinCornelis and Daantjie and Lood and the few who died when they were small, down to Elisabet and Alida and ending with Woudrien, the twelfth, who also died as a baby. Our whole family, it seems, has got this dying streak.

  And that was where Philida became a real pest. She kept on saying she also wanted to get into the Book. The more I told her it was a book for white people only, the more she kept on: It’s just a lot of names, Frans, it says nothing about white people and slaves.

  Philida, it doesn’t work like that, there’s nothing you or I can change about it, this is just the way the world is.

  Then we got to change the way of the world, Frans, she goes on nagging, otherwise it will always stay the same.

  No, I keep telling her, some things just cannot be changed from the way the LordGod made them.

  Then we got to start with changing the LordGod, she says.

  You don’t know that man, I warn her. He’s a real bastard when it comes to making trouble.

  I tell you I want to be in that Book, she goes on.

  I’m telling you, Philida, I keep insisting, it can’t be done and it won’t be done, and that’s the way it is.

  Then give the pen to me, she says in a temper one morning, when all the house people are busy outside, it is only her and me in the voorhuis. If you can’t or won’t do it, I’ll do it myself. And she grabs the pen out of my hand and the feather at the tip scrapes against the side of the Book, the shiny side, and her arm knocks over the brown ink jar so that the ink Pa had mixed himself from the powder he ordered from Holland, everything just perfect for writing, is overturned and a huge black-blue blot starts to spread right across the page where she has dreamed of her name written next to mine.

  Now they’re going to kill both of us, I promise her. But Philida only says, even though I can hear her own voice is getting thin and reedy: Nobody will ever know, man. For all they know, it was the LordGod himself that made this mess.

  Until today, as far as I know, nobody has seen it yet, because there’s been no need for anyone to turn that page. That will only happen, if you ask me, when MaJanna has another child, and I’m sure that won’t happen very soon, I don’t think it is likely if one looks at her, or if Pa decides to fill in Maria Magdalena Berrangé next to my own name. And by that time, if God wills, nobody will ever know or wonder about the matter any more.

  That isn’t a day I care to think about a lot. The mere idea terrifies me. To think that by that time Maria Magdalena Berrangé may already be at my side. With her fancy thin ankles. And Philida? Nobody will know about her any more. She’s the reason why I got that message from the Landdrost in Stellenbosch. And hard on the heels of the messenger it was Pa himself who called me to the voorhuis to talk about it. His tanned face looked like a thunderstorm. I had to listen very closely, he said. Because he is a notable man and in our own way I suppose we’re a notable family and he doesn’t want his name to be dragged through shit just because I’m too hopeless to deny something a damn slave girl did with me.

  Easy for Pa to talk, I said. There was a time when you yourself had a lot of good things to say about Philida. At that time everybody could see that Philida had her first child inside her and they knew it came from what she and I had done
. It’s the sort of thing most of the men at the Caab do, so you can’t pretend you don’t know.

  That was where he started breathing more heavily from being so angry. I’ve never had anything to do with a slave meid, he said.

  I was tempted to ask him: And what about the thing everybody keeps talking about? That it was our own grandfather Oupa Johannes who first took Ouma Petronella nine months before you yourself were born, and that that is the reason you later bought her freedom? But I knew that it would be asking for trouble if I dared to talk about it. I myself had heard him say openly that if anybody on this farm, big or small, slave or white man, ever tried to gossip about that, he would be thrown into the shithouse pit to choke in kak. Did everybody understand? So I rather said nothing. I didn’t want to lead him into temptation.

  What I did ask him very cautiously was: But what if the man at the Drostdy starts asking me questions? What do I say then?

  Then you just tell him what you saw with your own two eyes, said Pa. About those two slaves of Izak Marais who naaied Philida. That’s where her last baby came from, not so? And her previous ones too, as far as we know.

  How can Pa say a thing like that? I asked him. When was it those boys lay with her? They could not have had anything to do with the baby because it was only a few months before little Willempie was born.

  That is in your own hands, said Pa. I don’t want to hear anything about it. All I can tell you is that if you want to drag the Brinks’ name through the mud you got to take responsibility for it.

  I will.

  You’ll just mess everything up. Like you always do.

  I won’t, Pa, I told him. It just came to me. A year ago, I would have stopped right there. But not after that day in the backyard. And I saw Pa waver, saw him look up at me, measuring me. Up and down. Then up again.

  This is for me to handle the way I see fit, I said.

  I shall go with you, said Pa.

  This is not your shit, I told him. It is mine. So I’m going to the Protector on my own. You stay right here at home.

  I am still your Pa, Francois, he said firmly, but very quietly.

  I said nothing. Just kept looking at him.

  And after what felt like for ever, he spoke again: When will you be going? he asked without looking at me.

  Tomorrow morning, I said.

  We didn’t talk any more about the summons. But all the way to Stellenbosch on the back of the big black horse I kept remembering what we’d seen that day behind the homestead in our own backyard. Pa’d called everybody on the farm together, the way he used to do when he thought there was something for us to see or to learn. It was like the day he took us all to the Caab to watch the hanging. This time it was to look at Philida and the two young slaves. Though I still keep wishing God would have chosen not to let me be there on the day the two of them were brought on the donkey cart from the farm L’Ormarins. It was Pa’s own idea to send the cart, after he’d discussed it with Oom Izak Marais, the Baas on that farm. The two slave boys had no idea of what was coming and they looked as scared as two chickens lost in the veld when they arrived at our place. None of us at Zandvliet had any idea either.

  First Pa goes to call Philida, who sits knitting on the back stoep.

  He is waiting in the backyard beside the flogging bench that he has ordered the outdoor slaves to drag out for the occasion, with a long sjambok in his hand while we all stand clustered together in a corner, trying to keep out of his reach.

  Take off your clothes, Pa tells Philida. And hurry up, I haven’t got all day.

  Baas? asks Philida.

  Take them off, says Pa, flicking the sjambok against the legs of his corduroy breeches. Today we need you kaalgat.

  But Baas?

  Philida, you heard what I said.

  Once more she tries to protest, but then the tip of that long sjambok swishes across her thin blue-grey dress: I’m not saying another word, meid.

  You can’t do that, Baas!

  Philida, take off that bladdy dress.

  That is when I also dare to speak up: But Pa!

  You shut up and stay out of this, Francois Gerhard Jacob! He only uses my full name when he is totally furious.

  Philida takes her time removing the blue dress, faded from many washes. I don’t want to watch, but something in me makes it impossible not to look. I see her. In front of all the others I see what has been meant only for me, ever since that first time I filled the wooden pail in the kitchen with hot water for her to bathe in. Her breasts that fitted so tightly into my cupped hands. Her stomach that was mine, with my child moving inside. Her narrow face with the wide cheekbones. Her big pitch-black eyes. I can see the little flicker beside her mouth. I know that flicker.

  Pa motions to her to lie down on the flogging bench. Flat on her back. There is nothing about her I do not know. And that is how he has her tied down.

  I can feel my hands clenching into fists. If he dares to hit her with that sjambok I know the LordGod himself won’t be able to hold me back. But this time Pa has a very different idea in his head. He motions to the two young slave boys who are still huddling together to one side. They may be as young as two-toothed lambs, but one can immediately see that Pa has had good reason to select these two.

  Move your arse! he orders the first one.

  Baas?

  Get up on her, man!

  The youngster clambers on top of her.

  Now naai her!

  Baas?

  The first blow slices open his buttocks as if they’ve been cut with a knife.

  Moerskont! Naai her when I say so. That’s all you bladdy randy goats are good for!

  For a moment the boy holds back, but spurred on by the sjambok he plunges forward and starts bucking furiously. It is over much sooner than I expected and then Pa steps closer to help him down again. From the thick, dark tip of his thing a drool of slime still comes trickling. Philida doesn’t move and makes no sound. For me her silence is worse than anything else. Previously, when she landed in trouble, all beatings were administered by MaJanna, and it always happened inside the langhuis, wherever the suspected misdemeanour was alleged to have taken place – in the kitchen or in the dispens, in the voorhuis, in the dining room or out on the stoep. Whether it was MaJanna’s decision or his, I don’t know, but Pa generally kept out of the way when any of the slave women had to be corrected. That was the word commonly used at Zandvliet.

  On that day I found it impossible to watch any longer. Without losing another moment, I made my getaway into the kitchen and from there through the voorhuis to Old Petronella’s room. She was the only person I could think of who might still put an end to what was happening.

  Petronella! I shouted. Petronella, come here this minute! We need you!

  Without waiting, I pushed open her inside door. But there was no sign of her. While I was still desperately trying to think of something to do, one of the house slaves, Sara, came in from the voorhuis behind me.

  What is Baas Frans looking for? she asked.

  I must find Old Petronella.

  She’s not here, everybody is out in the backyard.

  Only then did I learn that Old Petronella had been sent out at daybreak to deliver a karmenaadjie to Lekkerwijn. It took Sara a while to explain the situation, and even before she could finish I was on my way again, through the kitchen to where the unspeakable was taking place.

  But it was already too late. Through the throng in the backyard I could see Pa standing with the long sjambok in his hand. Philida still lay spreadeagled on the bench. Between her parted legs I could see the second of the young stallions from L’Ormarins huddled over her, his arse bucking and bobbing as Pa’s sjambok drew stripes of blood from his buttocks. Almost before he’d properly finished Pa was back to shoo him off from the bench.

  Pa! I screamed at him. How the bladdy hell dare you? The LordGod himself, I swear, could not have held me back. Then I saw Pa’s arm with the long sjambok jerk back and the blow struck me in the
face, just missing my eye. The pain was unbearable and I sank to my knees, covering my face with both hands.

  Stop it, you little shit! I heard him growl before I was blinded by tears and blood streaming down my cheeks.

  Pure rage took over. In one way or another I managed to stagger to my feet. I came up to him and to my amazement I realised something that had never penetrated my consciousness: how very small he was, half a head shorter than I, strutting about the yard like a little bantam cockerel. Until that day I had always thought of him as just my father, the Baas of Zandvliet, whose word was law, a man just below the LordGod himself. When he said something it was like one of the Commandments in Exodus, proclaimed aloud, straight from God on the Mount Sinai, which you had to obey or find yourself struck down into the fire, sand and brimstone of hell. And now, suddenly and shockingly, he had turned into a small and rather ludicrous person, shorter than me. How could I ever have felt scared of him?

  Get away from me! he shouted in a falsetto voice. You have no business in this yard. Why don’t you go and help your mother with her sewing?

  Shut up, Pa! I shouted, astounded by my own voice.

  Listen to me, Frans!

  I won’t ever listen to you again, I told him. What you are doing here today is an abomination in the eyes of the LordGod.

  Shut your trap, you little poephol!

  Who is the poephol here? I asked him.

  Francois Gerhard Jacob, today I swear I am going to kill you!

  Let’s see who gets killed, I shouted back, completely beside myself.

  That was when he swung up his right hand to strike out again with the long hippopotamus sjambok. But this time I was ready for him and I managed to grab the whiplash and jerk it away with such fury that he lost his balance and stumbled forward, landing on all fours next to me.

  Francois! he bellowed. Moerskont!

  And then I heard MaJanna saying: Now that’s enough, both of you. And somehow the pandemonium around us subsided and only MaJanna and Pa and I were left behind, everybody else withdrawing to a safe distance. He slowly got back to his feet. I was aware of my hands still clenched into fists. But what had happened, had happened. For months after that I would continue to be haunted by the memory. For months? For the rest of my life. I can still see the small blunt cart rumbling off through the dust towards L’Ormarins. I can still see Philida sitting on the bench in a small tattered bundle, her thin arms clutching her knees, her rough dirty feet drawn in under her. Those thin small feet I used to fondle in my hands.