Philida (18 page)

Around me the leaves are rustling and whispering. The stems are scraping and grinding against each other, the whole night is filled with sound, the ghosts are everywhere, wherever the flickering light does not reach. The night is lukewarm with what is left of the day’s heat, warmth curdled like dirty water in an old encrusted basin in which too many feet have been washed over too many years, but I cannot help a trembling moving into my arms and legs. It must be because the ghosts are running wild.

In a rush of panic I start hacking down bamboos for what I have to do. Nice thin ones, straight ones. From time to time I stop to make calculations. Until I have everything I need. Now the real work can begin. Even if it takes me all night till the coming of the dawn. Hacking and hacking away, wiping off the sweat, then hacking some more. I want to wear myself out, to get so tired that I can forget where I am and what is going to happen, forget about the ghosts that wander in the dark, hacking and hacking in a wood swarming with errant shapes and shadows, whining spectres. Ghosts with outstretched arms and long bony fingers that grab at me whenever I turn my head, wherever I’m not looking.

The light starts wheeling before my eyes, the stems become long thin skeletons, the leaves turn into avid whispering in a thousand voices, everything is infested with danger, the whole night is one endless nightmare. I find
myself
chopping faster and faster, and must keep ducking and jerking my hands away to avoid ripping off my own fingers.

And then something terrible happens. Afterwards I come to think that I must have kicked over the lamp, but when I first see it I have no inkling at all of how it happened. All of a sudden everything around me is just turning to fire. I smell the oil, I smell burning, and I see the flames, arms and fingers and shapes of fire, it’s like something that Pa could read from the Bible, all those hissing and dancing tongues of fire, flickering and dancing as they try to grab me, to lick me up, to consume me as if I’m in the middle of hell itself and there’s no chance of getting away, all those trunks of fire, branches of fire, ghosts of fire, devils of fire.

Who would have thought that a green bamboo copse could go up in flames like that? Almost in a single flash and whoosh of flame everything around me is transformed into fire. Yellow, orange, blood red, grey, pitch black. Bright, blazing, burning, translucent fire. In the first moment of shock I think: Tonight I’m going to be burnt to a cinder, it’s like hell itself, the oven of Nebuchadnezzar. But after some time, which feels like a whole night, I find myself tumbling out of it. From the outside I can only stand staring at the flames. The Dwars River isn’t far from here, but I have nothing to scoop up water with, only my two blackened hands, and the flames are too fierce to do anything. JesusLordGod, what do I do now? I can’t even run back home to fetch Pa, he will kill me on the spot. Once, a long time ago, I saw the mountains in the distance burning, high up against the cliffs, near the shallow cave with the little dancing men and the elephants and the big elands and the praying mantis. It looks like what Pa read so many times about the Day of Judgement, the fire and brimstone, the
weeping
and gnashing of teeth. And in my madness I think: May the whole bloody Zandvliet burn to soot and ashes, let the Devil himself come down from heaven to take the lot of us away from here.

And it is only very much later that I come round again. I still cannot piece it together. All I know is that my throat, my chest, my whole body is burning as if I myself have been changed into flame, while in fact I am standing there shivering in a cold fever. All I can think is: I’ve got to get to Old Petronella, she will help me. There’s no one else who can.

Without really knowing what I’m doing I burst back into the burning wood. And it’s only some time afterwards that I find myself walking in the narrow white moon-road, back to the longhouse, with my heavy load of bamboos on my shoulders, churning up the dust, breathless and quite exhausted. And when at last I can think back, still later, I find I have no idea at all of what has happened or how it could have happened. Some time during the next day, after Pa and the others had already left for Worcester, when at last I could pull my thoughts together and start picking my way very carefully along the dusty path back to the river and the bamboo copse, I could find no more sign at all of the shock and confusion of the night before. Nothing. As if there had never been a fire. All I still knew, and still know today, is that the whole copse had gone up in flames in front of my eyes and that I myself had nearly burned to death.

I worked right through the night and only finished in the early dawn. It wasn’t easy. I got so sleepy I could barely stay on my feet. What kept me awake was knowing that Philida would be leaving at first light. And God alone knew
what
would happen to her afterwards. Or to me, to all of us.

It was another of those mornings when the rooster was late with its crowing and Pa had to throw his alarm clock at the bird to wake him up and get the farmyard back to life. On such days, I knew, everybody had to pay for it. And I was still tying the last few slender bamboo stems into place when I heard the thunder and lightning breaking loose in Pa’s bedroom. I began to work faster and faster. Should I finish too early, I might run into Pa, or Petronella could start shouting at me; if I took too long, everything would be lost. But in the end it just worked out. From the bridle room in the backyard I could follow the outside wall of the homestead to wait under Petronella’s bedroom window.

As I knocked on her door I could see straight away that there was shit ahead.

Old Petronella opened the door and asked immediately: Well? What good-for-nothing business brings you here?

I brought something to give Philida for the road, Petronella.

What road? she flew at me. You want to tell me that you knew it all along?

I came to tell you last night but then we were interrupted by Pa.

And now you’re here to enjoy our suffering, you little shit?

I’m sorry, Petronella. Honest to God, I did try to warn you, but it wasn’t possible.

I cautiously moved out of the way so that I could see past her and get a glimpse of Philida. She was sitting on the bed with Willempie at her breast. Next to her I could see Lena, quiet and scared, staring as if she’d seen a ghost. On Philida’s knees Kleinkat lay stretched out, purring as if there was nothing at all wrong in the world.

That gave me a chance to speak very quickly to Philida: I brought you something I made for you. It’s for Kleinkat. So you can take her with you on the wagon if you want to.

There’s nothing I want from you.

It seemed as if she was going to cry. But I couldn’t be sure. And just then Willempie started screaming.

I worked right through the night, Philida.

I stepped quickly past old Petronella to put the cage on the floor, as close to her as I could risk it, and then very quickly stood back again.

What she said then I couldn’t quite make out. Perhaps it was better not to hear it. But at that moment I heard something behind me and glanced up to see Ma in the passage behind me.

And what are you doing here, Frans? she asked.

I started saying: I just wanted – I. But then I decided rather to get out of her way. Still, there was something I wanted to tell her before she crushed me: I just brought Philida something, Ma. It’s a long road.

You have a bloody cheek, Frans!

Just leave us alone, Ma. It’s bad enough as it is.

Then I noticed Pa also coming down the passage and I had to run. But I did manage to get a last word in to Philida: I think I burnt down our bamboo wood, Philida.

There was no chance to say anything more. If only there was. But everything was over so suddenly. Nothing could be said or done, and that really was the worst of all. Perhaps we never stood a chance.

XV

The Day MaJanna is beached

WHERE ARE WE
going? When I ask, all I hear is: Upcountry. Upcountry. What the hell of a place is that? How far? How many days’ travelling? How do one get there? I know we on our way to an auction, but will that be anything like the games Frans and I used to play? And what will become of me after that?

At daybreak, when the Ouman come to tell us, he must think that Ouma Nella will stay behind, that only the children and I are going. But she tell him very firmly, I’m going too, otherwise Philida stays right here.

The Ouman is furious, and soon the Ounooi come to join the talking, in that voice that sound like the cackling of a goose, but once Ouma Nella say No in that way she has, the no stay no. And so we get ready to go, before anybody say anything to me yet.

I keep on nagging her: I want to know how we going to get there, Ouma.

But all she say is: Man, if you don’t know where you going, any road will bring you there.

But will I ever come back, Ouma Nella?

She just shrug her two shoulders. And she say: It don’t matter how far a river run. It never forget where it come from. That is all that is important.

I say: I heard it’s a dry place, Ouma, this Upcountry.

No matter if it’s wet or dry, she grunt. As long as you
keep
a green branch in your heart, there will always be a bird that come to sing in it.

Just before we go off, while I’m still shivery with sadness and anger and the cool air of the morning, I get a thought in my head, and instead of climbing on the mule cart I first take my two children, Lena, who is two years old, and Willempie, the baby, and go to find Ounooi Janna in the longhouse. I am wearing the cast-off chintz dress I was given for New Year. We find her in the
voorhuis
drinking tea and eating rusks with crunching teeth, her big body folded into the couch like a
bulsak
. As I come in, with the baby on my hip and holding the girl by the hand, she half lift her huge body from the couch as if to have a go at me or to make room for a fart, but before she can speak I say very quietly: Ounooi, I just brought the children so they can say goodbye to their grandma. Because I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again very soon.

She open her mouth like a fish on dry ground, but for the moment she cannot get a sound out. Then she start trembling and drop her bowl and put her big soft hand on her chest where it keep hanging like a huge white spider. It take quite a while before she manage to say: Huh – And then once again: Huh …

Must be a stroke, I think. Because I seen this once before when the de Villiers Baas at Boschendal got a stroke and died right in front of us. But Ounooi Janna isn’t dead yet. She support herself against the couch and say once more: Huh …

Just that, nothing more. So looking at the children I say: We also got to go and say goodbye to their father, Ounooi, before we get on the cart. We wish the Ounooi all the blessings of the LordGod.

When I look back for one last time from the broad front door, that beautiful door of orange-yellow yellowwood and
almost
black stinkwood, she still sitting there shaping with her small round mouth the sound: Huh. And that is how we take our leave, as the smart women of the Caab say.

This, I must say, make me feel a little bit better. Not yet fine, but better. And I think of something else Ouma Nella used to say to me and that help me to go on. It is this: It’s no use crying in the rain, my child, because no one will see your tears.

And as it turn out, we travel most of that long road on the small blunt cart in the rain. Not hard, but all the time. Enough to make tears unnecessary.

Enough, too, to keep my shadow away from me. So far away that after some time I start thinking I must have left it behind at Zandvliet. As if I never had no shadow at all. The funny thing is that riding on the cart actually make everything easier. As if there is now nothing left to hold me back. Now I can go wherever I want to. Just on and on, wherever the wind take me. The same wind that Ouma Nella used to talk about when she speak about the San people that painted those cliffs on our mountain: the wind that bring stories from far away, and blow away your footprints until there is nothing left. It is scary, but in a way it also make it easier to breathe. For now you are free to go just where your own thoughts want to take you. Just go with it, then it happen all by itself. You fall like an apricot fall when it is ripe, you needn’t resist. You just go. Easy as that. All the way to the Binneland, the Inland, where anything may happen. All that remain is the going itself. It’s no trouble at all. As Ouma Nella says: Don’t think you can climb two trees at the same time just because you got two legs.

And so I no longer try to resist. It feel like those last times when Frans and I were together: when I move the
way
he move, not against him, but along with him. As if we find ourselves inside a big, slow, steady wind, a wind that come and go like the sea. In and out. This way and that way. I am I and Frans is Frans, but together we’re no longer two, only one, like the sea, like the wind. Then I know once more what I am and who I am, even though he now throw me away like a mealie cob that he wipe his arse with. Into the Binneland. Into the deepest inside of everything. Into myself. Where I can only be what I am. A duck cannot lay chicken eggs. It is what it is, it lay what it must lay. And it is good like that. I no longer want anything to be except what it is.

This is how it came that I just stop resisting. What use would it have been anyway? I just sit there staring as we drive away from the farmyard, that house of cats and ghosts, looking at all the farm animals that come to say goodbye, the two stupid donkeys, the rooster that never crow in time. The mad hen that cannot lay an egg of her own, but keep cackling to high heaven every time one of the other hens do it. The pigs, grunting and squealing around the dirty old sow. The cats that come running to say goodbye. And me sitting on the mule cart with Kleinkat purring quietly in the bamboo cage Frans made for her. Usually she cannot stand being shut up in a small place, but today she is behaving very well. As if she know exactly what is going on. Perhaps it’s the way the cage is made. That man’s clever hands will always amaze me. I don’t want him to see me, so I refuse to look to where he stand, but I know very well he stand there watching us all the way. On the roof of the longhouse the pigeons sit cooing and kissing. And wild birds too, swallows and weaver birds and bead-eyes and
jakopewers
and mousebirds and bobtails and
bokmakieries
and
jangroentjies
and butcher birds and shrikes, many with names and even more
that
still wait to be named, also a couple of barn owls with wise and sleepy yellow eyes that blink now and then as if two handmade yellow curtains are drawn. All of Zandvliet is there, each kind in its place, only we going off: no longer here, not yet there. I and Kleinkat and the children, Ouma Nella and the goddamned Ouman who just sit there staring ahead of him and smoking his smelly old pipe, the pipe he always used to measure the floggings in the backyard. Past the small graveyard with its whitewashed walls where the dead lie waiting for the dark. Only my two children are not there, they were just buried in holes in the veld. Mamie, only a few months old. And KleinFrans of course, but we still not talking about him. Will there ever come a time when that will happen? He is dead, he is gone. And one day we shall all be gone for good. They here. I in that Binneland place, wherever that may be.