Philida (33 page)

But that is not all the visitor has to say. He has a special message for Philida. It comes from Zandvliet.

Ouma Nella has died.

Quietly in her sleep, just over a week ago. Philida has always expected it to happen in a different way. It has never been in Ouma Nella’s nature to allow anything just to happen quietly, almost unnoticed. She would always put her foot down, and resist. Yet now this has come to pass and suddenly there is only an emptiness that remains. An emptiness surrounded by wind, a wind that seems to be coming from all sides and has no beginning or end. But in a strange way the wind is also comforting in its wild dance.

And so, on the day the message comes, Philida’s thoughts also slowly come to rest. In the heart of the emptiness she does not move until long after the messenger has left. She has no tears left to weep, all she can do is to remain sitting. But it is an emptiness that slowly begins to be filled with stories, all the stories Ouma Nella has told her over so many years. The children soon realise that their mother is not to be disturbed. And they quietly accompany Delphina when she takes them to where she is busy ironing. Even Kleinkat remains very quietly on Philida’s lap, her small striped head resting against a knee, quietly purring as if she is trying to comfort Philida.

Unthinking, Philida lifts a hand to remove Floris’s chameleon from her shoulder. The little creature sits quietly in her cupped hand. Only its eyes keep turning slowly this way and that as if it is watching something.

Ouma Nella’s stories, she thinks, are all that remain now. Perhaps, when the end comes, they are all that can go on living.

Look at that little creature. You know
mos
, people say it is through him that death came into the world, but that is not fair, Ouma Nella always said. That story is just not true, it was all a misunderstanding.

Then what is the true story, Ouma?

Philida allows free rein to her thoughts, letting them run like water in a furrow in the vineyard.

It was the Moon, the same Moon sitting up there now, showing off its bulging tummy, pretending not to know anything, but actually knowing it all very well: one day, the Moon, that was one of the chameleon’s two mothers, remember, sent the chameleon to give the people down there on Earth a message. Because the people were still new on the Earth, they didn’t know anything about dying and that kind of thing. So she told the chameleon, Go and tell them they got nothing to be scared of. Because look at me, I am the Moon: sometimes I am round and full – like now, as you can see for yourselves – and then the darkness starts gnawing at me and I grow smaller and thinner, until at last I just disappear. You are still looking at me, then suddenly I am no longer there, I’m just goner than gone. But after some time, before you know what is going on, I start swelling again, like a cow with a calf inside her, and one day I am full and shiny and full of life again. Well, this is how it goes with you people too. You also grow old and get thin and then you die. But not for long, because soon you get up again to start a new life. This is the message I’m sending to the people. What lives must die, and then life begins again, and nothing is ever past. A message of hope that never dies.

All right. So there the chameleon goes. Little step by step, very carefully, treading very softly.

Up in the sky the Sun is looking at what is happening down there. He is surprised by the chameleon that walks so slowly and endlessly without getting tired or hurried. And he gets so curious that he cannot take it any longer. First he makes sure that the Moon will not see him, and then he slides all the way down to the Earth to find out
what
is this story that is happening. He calls the hare to find out what is going on. The hare is in such a hurry that he catches up with the chameleon from behind, and he asks: Where you going in such a hurry?

He is joking, of course, but the chameleon is concentrating so much on his slow walking and walking and walking that he doesn’t even realise that the hare is pulling his leg. And when at long last the cha-me-le-on has slow-ly fin-ish-ed tel-ling his long sto-ry, the hare runs off in such a hurry that there is gravel and sand and dust scattered in every direction, until he gets back to the Sun and tells his story.

The Sun smiles in the light rays of his beard.

Look, he tells the hare. You are the one who is too fast. Calm down and listen carefully. Look at me. I am big and round and shiny and I burn like fire from morning to night. But tonight I lie down behind the mountains and then I’m dead and everything grows black with death. This is how it will be for people too: They are born and then they live, and then they die and the whole world gets dark.

And off goes the hare, even faster than the first time, and he runs right past the chameleon until he comes to the people, and he tells them:

Listen to the message from the Sun. He says: Look at me! In the morning I am born and then I keep shining right through the day until evening comes, and then I die behind the mountains. This is how it will be with all of you.

The people believed the message, and from that day death lives among them.

A long, long time after that the poor little chameleon arrived with the message sent by the Moon. But by then it was too late. The people had already heard and believed the message, so it could not be changed any more, and now we are stuck with it.

Philida still remembers the first time she heard the story from Ouma Nella and how furiously she protested, and how Ouma Nella laughed and said, That’s how people are, my child. They always believe the worst, and if you’re born stupid you will die stupid. But let that be a lesson to you. If you get a message, make sure you understand it right. Otherwise you will just see your own backside.

For a long time Philida remains sitting in the backyard with the chameleon very peaceful in her hand. There is so much she wants to remember. How they used to work and talk together. How Ouma Nella taught her everything about knitting. All the stories, all the laughter. How they slept together at night in Ouma Nella’s
bulsak
, and how soft and warm and downy and happy and safe it was. How they picked the first crystal grapes of summer together, and the sweetest hanepoot at the end of the season. And the deep yellow loquats, and the purple Adam’s figs, and how rotten figs and chickenshit slithered through her toes in the backyard, and how day after day Ouma Nella got angry with the stupid hen Zelda that always cackled about the eggs of other chickens without ever producing anything of her own, and how nobody ever dared to disturb them when they were together in Ouma Nella’s room, and how on that last visit to the Caab they walked through the whole of the town in search of work after Frans had betrayed her and refused to acknowledge his own fair children, and how she’d gone to say goodbye to Ounooi Janna before she left for Worcester, and how her whole life through spring summer autumn winter has always been made true by Ouma Nella, and good and evil and everything else has been given their names by Ouma, and how the Ouman wanted to force her to kneel for him in the bamboo copse, and how he looked on while the two boys in the backyard were taking turns
with
her, and how all the pain in the world grew less painful when Ouma Nella was with her. And if she now has to be buried in a coffin like those made by Labyn, but never as beautiful and perfect as Labyn’s, it will be a whole life that is put away. For evermore. My poor old Ouma. Poor, poor me.

XXVI

A Chapter about a Day that is as blue as all Others while it is also completely different

FOR YEARS IT
has been hovering like a smell in the sky, a heavy smell that could make you drunk and light-headed. A smell like young wine or must in a farmyard. But even when hope turned to knowledge, it was not yet ready to be believed and accepted. For too long it has soaked into one’s flesh and blood and sinews and deep into the marrow of one’s bones. Now, suddenly, it is there and, God knows, true. Monday, the first of December, in the Year of Our Lord, 1834.

The slaves are free.

Well, not yet free in the way one can talk about swallows or even bobtails or sparrows or
janfrederiks
, because for four more years – that is, forty-eight months, one thousand four hundred and sixty-one days (including the leap year) for those prepared or able to count so far – each and everyone has to remain indentured with a baas. But still: free.

For Philida the day begins in an ordinary enough way with getting up early, feeding her children, and then going to sit in the back garden and watch how the street slowly comes to life. There are a number of revellers trying to dance or run about, people making bonfires in the street and cavorting wildly around them. The magistrate’s helpers try very quickly to put an end to it, but it soon becomes evident that no one will be able to douse the exuberance.
It
is like a New Year’s Day. From all sides slaves come running towards the Drostdy square, even from farms around the town, and soon the whole place is like a broken antheap. Many people have brought their own music, fiddles and ramkies, a few accordions known here as Christmas worms, the odd trumpet, and they all let go in an explosion of celebration.

In the de la Bats’ backyard Philida moves away for a while from the shade of the oak tree where she has been knitting since early morning, to stare, with her head thrown back, into the bluest blue of the sky as if she’s trying to prise loose something up there. There’s
got
to be something different, something new, something completely extraordinary, about a day like this. Something that would make one realise that this day is unlike any other. Not so? But the blue up there seems the same as the blue of any other day, neither paler nor darker. As if blue is nothing but blue. A colour like other colours. Like red, or green, or yellow, only blue. What she wants to see is a blue that will be bluer than blue. A blue that means: sadness. Or: happiness. Or: longing. Or: I. No longer just a colour.

But at first sight this day, the first of December, 1834, is no different from any other day.

In the end Philida becomes tired of staring up at the sky. At her feet Kleinkat keeps on playing. This little cat can always find something to keep her busy. A ball of wool. A bobbin. A mouse. A cricket. A gecko. And when she cannot find something tangible, she may simply invent or imagine it. Something only she can see. Make-believe cats or story cats or ghost cats. On this Monday morning it may be a ladybird, the orange-and-black kind. Kleinkat stalks the little thing as if it were some huge animal, much larger than herself. A dassie or a mongoose, a leguan, a
pangolin,
a lynx, or even worse: a leopard, a lion. She creeps up on it, charges it, brings it down, throws it up, jumps on it with arched back, makes a somersault, growls deep in her throat and makes a sound that would scare off any intruding beast. While Philida is around, Kleinkat is prepared to take on anything. A hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, an elephant, a bugbear, a satan, a monster as big as the house, as a drostdy, as a Caab staggering under a southeaster. To Kleinkat this Monday is indeed no ordinary day. And in the end, just as suddenly as she began, she abandons it, curls up in a tiny bundle and starts purring. And falls into a deep sleep.

Then Floris approaches round the back corner of the house with an exuberant call like a fish bugle: I say, I say! Aren’t we also going to churn up a bit of dust?

Don’t be silly, man, Labyn scolds him.

But Floris won’t be stopped. Look what I got here! he shouts as he reveals what he has been hiding in an old folded jacket under his arm. It’s shoes, honest to God. Shoes he has made for everybody in this backyard: for Philida and Delphina, for Labyn and himself, even for Philida’s children, Lena and Willempie. Each pair cut and sewn exactly to size: one can see that he has taken every single measurement very precisely by screwing up his eyes. They all sit down on the ground and start trying on the shoes. Labyn and Floris immediately jump to their feet and start dancing a reel. Floris scoops up Delphina and Labyn and Philida, and the dust gets churned up as if a few dust-devils have come to life like ghosts in bright daylight.

Until Meester Bernabé de la Bat, in top hat and black suit, comes out on the back stoep and sternly demands: What is going on here today?

For a moment they all stop in their tracks, from sheer
habit.
Then Philida calls over her shoulder: Doesn’t Meester know then? We’re
mos
free today.

Free and happy, Meester! laughs Floris, showing all his teeth.

Meester de la Bat cautiously takes both his gloves in one hand, as if to prevent them from getting soiled. We shall talk again later, he says. His nose in the air as if there is chickenshit on his upper lip.

Usually, this would be enough to silence everybody. But today there is something let loose among the people.

And this is how it goes for the rest of the day, in the village of Worcester and everywhere else in the Colony, from the Caab to way beyond the farthest line of bluer-than-blue mountains. Another week or two, and they will get news of all that has happened on this day. On some farms, and in Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, and in the more distant Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet, it even got out of hand. Two or three farmers have been attacked, one stabbed to death at Tulbagh. And on the burgher side some of the men have taken rifles from the shelves in the
voorhuis
and started shooting. Two slaves killed in the region of the Twenty-Four Rivers, another seriously wounded at Trawal. In the Caab it even led to a brief general outbreak of violence, and the garrison had to be called out to restore the peace with force. Vrouw Magdalena Berrangé made it known that on the day in question, 1 December 1834, a drunken slave she didn’t know from Adam, arrived at their home in the Oranje Straat, and had the temerity to demand to speak to her personally; and when she appeared in a rage to tell him to go to hell, he made an elaborate bow in front of her and boldly announced: I been told that Vrouw Berrangé got a whole brood of daughters, so I just come to tell you: four years from today, when our time of indenture
is
over, I’ll be back to marry one of them. A nice chubby one that will just fit into the crook of my arm. And before she even had time to fetch her husband’s gun from the shelf, he was gone again. He could be heard laughing several streets away.