Philida (14 page)

SO WE GO
the Caab. I and Willempie and also little Lena, because I’m not leaving my children behind. And Ouma Nella. Because she’s coming too, she say.

We travel on the wagon with the leaguers of new wine, for this time our feet must be spared. If I want work I got to look fresh. It’s like a big rock I carry with me from the time we leave Zandvliet’s farmyard and I see Frans among all the other people waiting in the yard, so tall, with his white hair, and so thin. Only Ounooi Janna isn’t there, she’s too fat, may the Devil take her.

The children don’t know what is going on, and at first they enjoy the ride. But as it go on and on they get bored and I can see the Oldman’s arse is getting itchy. It’s a long thing, this trip, like that business with knitting the tongue so long ago, but I can manage, don’t worry, and by the third day I can cast off. The Oldman first think we can stay over with his brother, but the house is full with visitors and family so he got to move in with people that used to be his neighbours, but Ouma Nella and me and the two children find a place up against the Boere Plein where she still know some of the slave people. She bring a letter from the Oldman with her to make sure we won’t get shit from anybody. But even so it’s not easy. Everybody turn away from us. There is no work, one after the other tell us. Some of them set
their
dogs on us, and at one place I get bitten on the calf. What make you think we need any more slaves? they ask. It’s just trouble and problems and money in the water.

So it go on. Later on we find a woman who keep asking Ouma Nella question after question after question: can I knit this and that and the other? I can hear she know what she talking about, and she look like a decent kind of person. But then she say: One thing, I don’t want a lot of screaming snot-nosed kids in my yard. You’ll have to leave your children at home when you come to work here.

My home will be where I work, Nooi, I tell her. If my children can’t come with me I can’t come either.

Right there she lose her temper. You people always want all you can get, as if you’re the Baas and we are the slaves. We give you a little finger and you grab us all the way to the
kieliebak
. I need a knitting girl, not a crowd of good-for-nothings that eat us out of hearth and home. You can go to hell.

The same thing happen at another house. After that it is no, no, no, all the way Ouma Nella and I go. Same story the next day. On the third day the Oldman tell Ouma Nella to her face: Look, this has now gone on for long enough, Petronella. It’s time we get back to Zandvliet. I’m not a man that can just sit around waiting for things to happen and you know it.

Just give us one more day, Cornelis, she say, because that is what she call him when there is no one else around. That’s all we asking.

Asking my arse, he say.

Nobody’s arse, Ouma Nella tell him. If you want to get rid of the child, then you do it properly, otherwise you got me to deal with.

I think he know very well what she mean, and that make him shut up.

The next day Ouma Nella and I are out in the streets before the cocks have even begun to crow. And from then till nightfall we go up and down every single street in the Caab. Because Ouma decide it’s the best way to do it, we start at the old stone castle on the beach. On the Parade right next to it everything is in commotion, even though it’s still dark, because it’s market. All night long farmers bring in heaps and mountains of fruit and vegetables, anything you can think of in heaps so big you have never even dreamed about. And it’s not just fruit and vegetables, but everything that’s made all over the whole wide world. It’s bread and sugar and rice and coffee and spices from all the faraway Dutch places and even from a land they call America, with lucifers and carved wooden toys from Germany, and large and small
karosses
from upcountry, and all the wools and cloths and doeks and muslin you can dream of, and the fur of beavers, and yellow cotton, and all kinds of foodstuffs in huge bottles and cans and jugs, preserved and dried ginger, citrons and oranges, dates, litchis and tamarinds. And lots of things you don’t see every day, like hops and agar-agar and smooth windowpanes and whale blubber and whale candles. Things that come by ship and got spoiled by the seawater and are now sold cheaply, and live animals nobody never set an eye on, and calves and lambs that come out badly, with five legs or three eyes or no eyes at all. There’s even horses and cattle and sheep on the market. It look as if anybody can buy or sell anything in the whole world on this market.

I’d like to stay there for much longer, but Ouma Nella grab me by the hand and pull me along. On the corner of the Heerengracht and Strand Street she go to show me the shop of a man called George Greig, where one can buy chairs and tables and cupboards. And also materials and knitting and funeral clothes and umbrellas, peppermints and
lovely
stockings for women. Wherever we go Ouma Nella ask the people if they know anybody that want to buy a knitting girl? Or a slave woman for household work? Even outdoor work on a farm if it got to be? To everybody she tell how good I am, until I’m getting all shy and feel my whole face burning. But she keep on asking and enquiring. At last we move on down to the sea, to the place where the people go to empty their shit buckets, between the places they call the Amsterdam Battery and the Chavonnes Battery. It stink up to heaven, but Ouma say today I got to see all of it, so that I can know what kind of a place this Caab is if I really think of coming to work here.

Then we move on again to where we can see a ship coming in. The whole top of the ship, that Ouma Nella call the deck, is swarming with people. But they first got to wait, she say, until somebody can come from the land to inspect the ship’s papers. And all the time as we stand there watching, small boats come rowing from the beach with baskets full of fresh fish and live crayfish and all kinds of fruit, all of it still shiny and smooth of freshness. And up on the high deck the ship’s cook come out with a huge fire-pan full with glowing coals to cook the crayfish right there. The people on the ship are so hungry they grab the stuff straight from the coals. And the fruit and vegetables they want to gulp down without even chewing. It’s because of all the months they been on that ship with only old rotten food or salty food to eat, Ouma Nella say, so they stuff themselves with anything that’s fresh. And even while we still standing there on the beach with all the others she start shouting like a trumpet: Isn’t there anybody up there looking for a slave girl? Her hands can take on anything. What about it, Mijnheer? Take a look, Juffrouw! But they don’t seem to believe she mean it seriously.

Just once a woman come to us from the side, in a nice striped dress and a large floppy hat on her tall hair, and she say to Ouma Nella: If the price is right, I shall buy the girl. Just like that.

And what do the Nooi think is the right price? asks Ouma Nella.

A hundred rix-dollars, say the woman.

Ouma Nella laugh from deep inside her guts and spit a slimy white gob right past the woman’s face. Make it twelve hundred, she say, then we can talk.

You must be mad in your head, say the woman. I know what I’m talking about, I know all about slaves.

You don’t know anything, Ouma Nella snap at her. You townsfolk know nothing about nothing.

I’m not from here,
meid
! the woman shout back. Do you see those mountains over there in the distance? I have a farm on the other side of them. And there’s nothing you can tell me about slaves.

And what do the Nooi farm with? Ouma Nella press her.

Farm? jeer the fancy woman. It’s a hell of a big farm I got there, my
meid
.

I’m not your
meid
, say Ouma Nella. I got my freedom.

Free or not free, you’re a
meid
and you’re stupid.

Well, so tell me then: what do the Nooi farm with?

I farm with sheep and cattle, and I farm with slaves.

And what does that mean?

It means, you stupid
meid
, just what I said. I farm with a lot of sheep, some cattle, but above all I farm with slaves. And then she tell us that her whole farm is full of slaves. Most of them women. Then, from time to time, she get a few men from England whose only work is to make children. They are her studs. For every baby that’s born, she say, I get more money. So how about it? You must be too old for
that,
she tell Ouma Nella, but how about this girl of yours? She look young and strong to me, and ready to be plucked. I can see she’s already got two children with her. If we start now, we can have another one by Christmas. And again next year. Before you know where we are, that farm will be covered in children. Each of them worth a good bag of money. Listen to me,
meid
: for every one this girl of yours breed, I pay her fourteen rix-dollars. Just a few years, and she’ll be stinking rich, then she can buy her own freedom and retire in style. First she lie back and afterwards she sit back. What do you say?

Ouma Nella lift Willempie to her wide hip and she take my hand so quickly that it almost get lost in hers. Come on, Philida, she say. We don’t belong here with the studcows.

The woman in the striped dress is still standing there, shouting a never-ending stream of curses in our direction until we are well out of the way. Up the incline, back towards those huge barracks which they say used to be a hospital, but now they use it to care for slave women that land in trouble with the court. And here, next to it and further down, is the small clearing with the gallows in the middle, the gallows where years ago the Oldman took us to the hanging of the poor skinny man that shat himself so badly that they got to hang him twice. And next to the gallows are the stakes where they tie up the people for flogging. That is where they also have the wheel on which arms and legs are broken with iron poles. When we get to it there is a man hanging limp over the wheel. They must have broken him yesterday already, I see, but he must have died soon afterwards and then they just left him there, because it’s vultures wherever you look, squabbling and fighting among themselves for bits of flesh and making a racket like a bunch of drunken washerwomen, fluttering up
from
time to time to tackle one another in the air before they flap down again to go on eating. Willempie start crying because of the noise and I have to give him to Ouma Nella to take him away.

From there we go further. Through all the quarters where people live, the poor people and the ordinary working people and the free blacks, higher and higher along the mountain, past the woodcutters that come staggering downhill with huge bundles on their shoulders. But these people are much too poor for us, they cannot afford to keep slaves, I complain to Ouma Nella. I’m carrying Lena, Ouma Nella take care of Willempie. Even a baby grow heavy on a day like this. And I get tired of going from one house after the other, to the back door, asking if someone need a knitting girl. Or even an outside girl for the backyard.

The sun is almost down by the time we get to the Oranje Street, to a huge house where one can see that a lot of rooms have been added on over the years.

This is where we must ask, I tell Ouma Nella, because I think I remember the place from earlier days. These people must have lots of family, just look at all the rooms. Surely they must need a knitting girl.

They’re not our kind of people, Philida, say Ouma Nella, taking my hand very firmly in hers. They breed like mice.

But they must be rich to have a house like that, Ouma. And look there at the side, that must be the slave quarters. I’m sure people like that will have place for me too. I don’t take up much space.

I don’t want you to work in a house like that, she say. They don’t have proper manners.

How can Ouma say that? Do you know them then?

I know them. That is all she say, but from her voice I can tell she know more than she will talk about.

That make me go on nagging, like a fly that don’t know when to stop. Until she get impatient and snap at me: Philida, I know what I’m saying. And it’s not something I want you to hear.

Why mustn’t I know, Ouma?

Because I say so.

That’s not good enough for me, Ouma. I’m the one who got to find work. This is my life, Ouma Nella, not yours.

What make you think it isn’t my life too? Her voice is getting angry. But then she put her hand on my shoulder and squeeze it so tight I can feel pee running down my knees. And through tight lips she say: All right. I shall tell you what I know. But not now. Later. This is not the right time.

How will I know when it is the right time, Ouma?

You will know. I’ll tell you.

And that is that. The day grow old around us. And by the time the night come there is still nothing. It just feel as if I been walking a long uphill road, a road longer than the one that goes over the mountains to Stellenbosch, longer than to the Caab, a road as long as the whole world, longer than my life, and it feel as if I have now come to the last bend. But all the way there has been nothing. Just nothing. All the time, nothing. And now still nothing.

But I know it is not for nothing that this nothing look like nothing. Below all this nothing lies another world that you cannot see, but you know it is there. And it is full of the dead of years and years. All the children that died even before they were born, or when they were born, or after they were born, with crooked legs or no legs at all. With squinting eyes or blind eyes or bulging eyes, with holes in their palates, with bent-around arms or sideways necks, with hollow backs, with missing toes or fingers, all those that
drowned,
or died of measles or whooping cough or pocks or croup or fever, those that just died because they didn’t feel like living in this place. All the slave children, all the children that were not born white and were a shame on their parents, the Baas people who won’t live with that shame, a whole brood of ghost people that live just below the skin of the earth and now lie there waiting, or sit around quietly, or crawl about, waiting for the last trumpet that the Oldman always talk about, waiting to push the living aside to let them out, so that they are the only ones that are still there, a land and a world of the crippled and the maimed, the sick and the half-dead, the lame and the deaf, waiting for the Judgement. Why and for what? For what?