Philida Read online

  Come on, Pa snarled at her. There were traces of snot on his moustache. Put on your clothes. And don’t you forget what happened here today. That comes from sleeping around. If you don’t know yet you will find out soon enough.

  At last he turned to face me again, glowering. Then without another word he left the yard followed by MaJanna.

  VI

  Which is as True as it is False

  THERE’S NO WAY any of us can deny it: that day changed the world. Before that day, whatever happened between Philida and me, concerned nobody but the two of us. If anybody else knew about it, that made no difference, it was not their business. To stand there with all the others looking on while those two boys took turns with Philida, the way she lay there exposed like a lamb brought to slaughter, that was unbearable. In the kitchen, when she had her bath in the barrel, or in Ouma Petronella’s room, or down in the bamboo copse, she was always mine only. Now we were a spectacle for all their eyes. And then the stories started, Ma and Pa’s stories about Maria Magdalena Berrangé, about what was acceptable and what wasn’t; it made me sick. There was nothing left that was only ours any more.

  And the last straw came the day Philida went off, with the child on her back, to lay her complaint, to make it known to the whole world that I’d promised to set her free. It was like something snatched away from me and dragged through the mud and shit of the pigsty where that old sow wallowed all day. And all the gossip, like that trassie of a hen that kept cackling about the eggs laid by other chickens. Now I had to go and explain it so that the man at the Drostdy could write it up in his book for everybody to see. How could they expect that of me?

  Nobody here on the farm had the faintest idea that this was what she was going to do. How could we? Petronella was the only one she’d told about it, because the old woman had to stay behind to look after little Lena, and Petronella of course told MaJanna, long after Philida was safely out of the way, and MaJanna told Pa. He was all for getting on his horse to go and fetch her back, but MaJanna stopped him. Let the bladdy hoermeid go, she said. And I hope she never sets foot here again.

  But Ma – I tried to say.

  Don’t you come and but Ma me, she snapped. You have nothing to say in this business.

  So when the message came I had no chance to protest or to choose or to think about it. When the Drostdy opens its mouth we’ve got to move our arses. I was still seething when I set out for Stellenbosch.

  Arriving at the Drostdy I was ready for a fight. And it didn’t make things easier when the tall sweating man in the office above the high stoep made me wait until he’d finished whatever he was doing. But at long last he was ready to see me and he asked a cheeky young clerk to show me in. Philida already stood waiting inside, with the child on her back. I could see his white curls sticking out from the abbadoek. Everything was open and exposed before us. It felt like when the slave bell clangs on the farmyard at daybreak every bladdy morning to get us out of bed and start working. That’s the way Pa begins his day. The moment the black rooster crows – everything still pitch dark, it feels like midnight on the farm, with only the smallest, dirtiest little smudge of red in the sky – he leans out over the wide windowsill to bellow: Ring that bell so the work can begin. Ring it!

  And if the rooster is the smallest bit late, not even a second – God knows how Pa manages to wake up just so he can check on the rooster – he tiptoes outside on the thick soles of his bare feet and I swear to God he pokes the rooster in the arse with the stick he always keeps beside the bed, and the poor thing gets such a fright that he nearly swallows the crow in his throat, and then it’s time for the bell, loud enough to wake up the dead on the Day of Judgement. The bell has often made me think that if the LordGod woke up on that morning and came to his window in his nightshirt to set us working, I’d just turn away and tell him to shove his work up his arse. I wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

  Philida stood looking away from me as I came into the office on the front stoep of the Drostdy. I also turned my head away. But I did hesitate for a moment to tell her in passing: Good day, Philida. Because I could feel my heart going numb inside me. Look how small she had become in the time she was away. How skinny. Her feet so thin. It wasn’t the child on her back that made me feel like that. It was she herself, Philida.

  The silence sat heavy between us. And when Mijnheer Lindenberg started questioning me, all I could think of saying was: There is nothing I know about this slave woman, Mijnheer. How could I have ever promised to set her free if she would lie with me? She is not my slave. She belongs to my father. It is not for me to say what must happen to her.

  I could feel Philida’s growing resistance in the room, but there was no turning back now.

  The tall man went on and on with his questions. And what about this child? he wanted to know. Are you not the father?

  How can I be the father? Mijnheer Lindenberg, I have never had anything to do with her. My mother would never have allowed anything like that to happen in her house.

  Then where do those children come from?

  I kept staring straight ahead, still avoiding Philida: That I cannot tell you, Mijnheer. All I know is that she lay with two of our neighbour’s slaves. I saw it with my own eyes.

  I couldn’t look the man in the face either, but told him without any hesitation: Philida whored with any man who came along.

  Mijnheer Lindenberg kept on: She told me that you promised her from the beginning that if you lay with her and a child was born you would buy her freedom and her child’s.

  And then I don’t know where those strange words came from, but they were all that made sense at the time: What the meid is saying is just as true as it is false.

  What is that supposed to mean? asked the man from the Drostdy.

  It doesn’t mean anything, I replied. It’s a slave’s word, and mine is a white man’s word.

  I want to know what it means if you say that her complaint is just as true as it is false.

  It means exactly what I said, Mijnheer, I persisted. Her word means nothing against mine because I already told you she is a slave and not even mine. She belongs to my father. I have no say over her, my father is the only one who can decide about setting her free or not. So there is no way I could ever have promised her such a thing. There is nothing, good or bad, I can do for her. I have nothing at all, Mijnheer Lindenberg. I’m standing bare-arsed before you. The meid has already brought enough shame on me and our family. If I try to do anything more for her, it’ll be finished and klaar with me. I’m sorry to have to say this, Mijnheer, but you can see for yourself that she can no longer stay in our family after all her cheekiness and lies and the way she behaved to my mother and the rest of us.

  The man kept writing in his book for a long time. Afterwards he turned to Philida and asked her: If all this is true, how can you still expect your Baas to set you free? After all the lies you told?

  Philida said: I’m not asking to be set free any more, Grootbaas. I been lied to too many times by too many people. All I’m asking you today is not to make them sell me and my children inland. Please, Grootbaas. They’re too small and the inland is too far away.

  There’s nothing I can do about what happens inland, said the tall, bony man. After all the lies you told there’s nothing I can do for you anyway.

  Then the Grootbaas must maar do what he want, I heard her say. She leaned forward and untied the knot of the abbadoek. With a deft movement of her body she shifted the child round to her front and opened her arms to make him sit up in her embrace, as the man moved closer to look straight into those two bright blue eyes.

  She said, Here is the lie I told, Grootbaas.

  Mijnheer Lindenberg remained standing for a long time, peering at her. Then he motioned with his head towards the door.

  I pretended not to hear what she said, but I’m sure she knew very well that I was looking. And at that moment I remembered a passage from the Bible that Pa often read. About Peter who looked Our Lor
d right in the face when he said: I don’t know the man. And about the cock that crowed. But this time, today, it was right inside my own flesh and blood that I heard that blasted cock crowing. And it sounded worse than that trassie hen in the backyard, that Zelda that cackled about the eggs laid by the other hens.

  As I started walking away, there was something still trying to rein me in, to hold me back, in that office where I knew Philida must still be standing, waiting with the bundle on her back. Her bundle. Mine. Ours. What I’d done to her I could never wash from me again. I’d lied myself straight into hell. But what would become of me if I were to take back what I said? It wasn’t just about me and her and the child. What about Pa? What about MaJanna? What about our whole family, all the way back to Grandpa Andries who came on the ship? What about the Berrangé family I was supposed to marry into? What about every man, woman or child that was white in this godforsaken land? It concerned everybody and everything that had made me who I was.

  Outside the Drostdy I mounted my horse and turned back to the old Elephant Trail. I could feel his chest expanding and contracting against my calves, expanding and contracting, I could hear his wheezing, groaning breath coming and going. He was tiring. But I thought: Just let him. Let him collapse right here under me if he wants to. It’s Pa’s horse. Everything on the farm belongs to him. It’s his just deserts if everything that’s here begins to fall apart under him.

  All the time I could feel Philida seeping back into my mind, but then I urged the horse on. There was no time to think of her now. How she’d have to walk all this way with her small narrow feet to get back to the farm. But I thought: Good. Let her wear herself out and fall down in a small heap. Don’t let her ever come back. What made her bring this shame down on me?

  The horse was beginning to slow down all by himself, his breath rattling and wheezing in his throat.

  Until at last, at long, long last, we reached the aardvark hole where I had to turn off to the farm. I knew this hole. I was still a boy when soon after we came to Zandvliet from the Cape Pa showed me how to spot it: you look until you can make out where the animal positioned itself at the edge of the hole, its large hind pawmarks close together and the trail of its thick tail right between them, and on either side the hollows left by its balls. That was how one knew it was an aardvark, not a porcupine or a springhare.

  And right after the hole one turns left to where one can see the white walls of Zandvliet flashing among the many greens of vineyards and fruit trees and shrubs. The thick white walls that have been standing there for generations, more than a hundred years and for all eternity. But the sweat running down my brow and starting to burn in my eyes caused a strange thing to happen. I couldn’t see straight any more. As if I was no longer looking at things but at what was happening inside my eyes, as if the walls in the distance were becoming transparent, losing their solidness, like when you’re whitewashing a wall and adding more and more water to the lime, until everything turns thin and colourless, until nothing is quite the way it was before, and nothing remains. All the greens of the farm – the vineyards and the plum orchards, the peaches, the quinces, the vegetables crouched on the ground – everything begins to run together in a dull smudge, and disappears in front of your eyes, and nothing remains of all that has been sowed and planted here, until it all becomes void and without form as it must have been right in the beginning. As if there has never been any people around, as if everything we have built and made has been in vain, as if it’s only the wild world of the LordGod that remains, leaving no trace of people or animals, nothing at all.

  VII

  So they stand, without another Word, and with only the Silence brooding between them, like the Shadow of a Giant huddling there, and Philida feels the Words spoken by the tall, bony Man growing thick and swollen in her own Throat, and turning sour like curdled Milk, but there is no way she can swallow them, and then their Ways part, Francois to his Horse, Philida preparing to take the long Road back on Foot, with all the Thoughts gathered inside her

  BUT JUST AS I get ready to leave, the thin man behind me say, Not so fast, meid.

  I stop.

  The man say: You made your Baas come all this way just to listen to a heap of lies.

  How can it be lies? I ask. Didn’t the Grootbaas see the child for himself?

  Shut up, he say. You’re a slave and you’ve done a wicked thing to tell all those lies. There’s only one remedy for the likes of you.

  I keep silent, but I can feel everything settle in my stomach like a thick lump of porridge.

  He come past me to the door and call outside. Four of his Kaffers appear so quickly that I feel they must have been waiting right outside.

  Here’s the meid, say the thin man, rubbing his long hands with the thick knuckles together. She lied to the court. You know what to do about that.

  My voice find it hard to settle in my throat, but all I can say is: Grootbaas, what about my child?

  He call one of his helpers: You can give it to this man.

  I want to stop him, but I know that this will only make things worse. To make sure that Willempie will not get hurt, I hand him over, but very slowly.

  The two men in the doorway get ready to drag me off by the arms.

  But just as they start to move, I hear Willempie whimper behind me and that make me stand still, even though I do not know where this come from. I can only hear my own voice as it break from my throat like a bird flying up from a bush.

  Let me go! I shout so suddenly that it make them all stop. Don’t touch me!

  Behind me the tall man speak very quickly. What’s going on here? he ask. These men are acting under my orders. They will do what I tell them.

  Yes, the Grootbaas will tell them, I say, as if it is somebody else speaking in my voice. It is like a big juicy plum that suddenly appear on a branch in front of me, for me to pluck and stuff into me without thinking. I go on: And once they finish what the Grootbaas order them to do, yes, then we can all take the road to the Caab to find out what the Council of Justice and the Governor got to say about it.

  All I really know about that thing they call the Council of Justice is what Frans tell me on that long-ago day when we first talking about the people in the Caab who got all the power. But after that day I forget all about it and it never come back to me again. Only now, from nowhere, it return and all I can do is to pluck it like a smooth, naked fruit and put it in my mouth. I look at the tall man and this time I can hear my own voice speaking very calm and fast as there is no fear left in me. And from the Caab, I say, from the Caab we can walk all the way to that England place where the laws come from. Then we can talk some more. Because I hear the law is now there to protect us slaves.

  Where do you get that nonsense from? he ask.

  They say the law in the Govment’s books and the LordGod stand together, I tell him, but I still got no idea of how it got into my head.

  What on earth are you talking about? he ask.

  I just talking about all the walking, Grootbaas, I say. I know all about walking. The Elephant Trail and everywhere else where people walk. And I know the Grootbaas won’t like to walk in all those places, but we can walk together if we must.

  It is quiet for a very long time. I stand waiting for him to tell the men to get on with their job and give the bladdy meid what she deserves. But everything stay very quiet. Until I dare to look up to see for myself what is going on. And that is when the tall bony man say very softly through his teeth to his helpers: Just take the meid and let her go. Give her and her white child some food for the road and let them get out of my sight, otherwise I won’t be responsible for what happens here any more.

  It is a long way I got to walk home now, and it feel much longer this time than when I come here. I try to smooth out the wrinkles from the road by making up a story. It’s something Ouma Nella tell me that very first time we walk all the way from the Caab to Zandvliet. And every time I have to walk after that I tell myself my stories again,
so now I know them by heart. Ouma Nella’s story and the ones I keep on making up. The stories everybody at Zandvliet and on the other farms know. About the fountain up in the mountains where the Water Snake with the shiny stone in his forehead live. Or about the girls that play around after dark and then get caught by the Nightwalkers and are changed into Water Women who come out and catch the boys making clay oxen on the banks and drown them in the deep water. These Water Women have scales on their bodies and when they feel like it they can shed their scales and start again, naked and new and smooth.

  But not all the stories are about Water Women. There is one about the long-haired girl in the highest fountain, the one they call the Eye, high up along the mountains near the Elephant Trail, the one with the hair green as slime, and if she get mad with you she braid you into the long ropes of slime and drag you down, down to the darkest depths of the earth. There is another, about the Old Hag with the one shiny eye on her big toe. Or about the Mantis that changes itself into an Ostrich and then the Ostrich into a Feather, and then the Feather into an Eland, and so everything change into something else all the time. Or Ouma Nella talk about the wind that keep on telling his own stories from faraway places, the wind that take our footprints with him when we die, so people think we are not dead, because we all stick to our feet.

  There is lots of other stories too, stories that hatch in my head while I walk along the road that never end. Nowadays, when I walk from Zandvliet to Stellenbosch, I start telling myself about a girl that get ill, and every step I give bring me closer to death and hell. But on the way back it turn into a story about a girl who come back from death and open her eyes and come to know her world again until she find herself back in her own place, a story that make me feel alive again.