Philida (36 page)

At first I am not so sure, but Labyn insist that we must go. Too many ghosts around this place, I think. I know about ghosts, but the ones that haunt this place, I feel, still carry fresh memories of death inside them, and I’m not sure
that
it will be safe. But then I remember Kleinkat and her flower, and that make me decide to risk it after all. We follow the thin path to the farmhouse that squarely block it as if it don’t want anything to do with the outside world. As we draw closer, a lot of dogs in the farmyard start barking furiously. The back door open and a woman come out. She is thickset and carries a long muzzle-loader in her hands. Her hair is tied back in a long, loose plait. She is still quite young, yet her hair is completely grey.

When we are still some distance away the woman put the gun to her shoulder and call out very sharply: Whoareyouwheredoyoucomefromwhatdoyouwant?

This get on my nerves, but Labyn quietly take me by the arm and that make me feel calm again.

Morning, Juffrouw, I say. I first wanted to say Nooi, but that is something I will no longer do.

The woman give no answer. The rifle keep pointing at us.

We are free people, Juffrouw, I call out. I am Philida of the Caab and this is Labyn from Batavia. We have a pass and we’re on our way to the Gariep.

The Gariep do not run this way.

We know where it run, Juffrouw, and we know it is far from here, but we are on our way. We just come to hear if Juffrouw got something to eat for the children.

The woman look angry and scared, but more tired than anything else. I don’t think I ever seen any other person look so tired. She wiggle the gun tighter under her arm and say: I got nothing for layabouts. Get off my farm!

We came to bring you news, Juffrouw, Labyn say.

What kind of news? the woman ask with bad weather in her voice.

It’s about Ontong, Labyn say calmly. He died.

Well done, say the woman. Glad to hear that. I wish they’d all die.

Ai
, Juffrouw, say Labyn.

You can stuff your
ai
up your backside! All of a sudden her eyes are full of tears. It’s not that she is crying, the tears simply streaming quietly over her hollow cheeks.

There is a wild expression in her eyes as she start talking and cannot stop. My son Nicolaas and Galant grew up together, she say. They were inseparable, like two lambs of one ewe, a brown one and a white one. How could he do a thing like that?

I have no idea why she talk like this to a stranger like me, but Labyn put his hand on my arm to hold me back. I am very sorry, Juffrouw, say Labyn, as if he is to blame.

Voertsek
off my farm! she suddenly shout. Or I’ll shoot.

Behind her, leaning over the kitchen’s stable door, a big man say: What’s the matter, Cecilia? What is this scum doing here?

Without warning, she pull the trigger. Not over our heads but straight at us. About ten paces to our left a small cloud of dust fly off the bare earth.

We do not wait any longer. Labyn grab me by the shoulder and pull me out of the way. Little Lena start screaming like a little pig. The dogs barking like things gone mad. By the time we reach the road again, a second shot go off, but this time it is far off target.

I want to shout something bad at the woman over my shoulder, but Labyn keep dragging me away until we are well out of reach.

He mumbling beside me. I don’t even try to listen, but by this time I know his words well enough to make out what he saying:
Al-lah leads the hearts of those who believe in him. Al-lah has knowledge of all things
.

And so we move on from Houd-den-Bek. Only Lena keep on sobbing. But Labyn give her Floris’s chameleon to hold and that make her feel better. A few more deep sobs, and it is all over.

The children slow us down a lot. But why must we hurry? We know where we are going and we know we’ll get there, even if take a lifetime. At least it isn’t a treadmill like the one old Ontong knew. Step by step, day after day, we move on. Now and then another cart or wagon come along. Sometimes there are long days in between. On a specially busy day there may be two. Some of them stop to offer us a ride, which may be for a very short way, just to the next turn-off, or sometimes for much longer, for days and days.

Once it is a very rickety little wagon, coming from behind. It don’t look as if it will get far before it collapse. On the front chest sit a small man, all shrunk from age and weakness and possibly hunger, as small and thin as a praying mantis, grey with dust and years. Next to him is a skinny woman in a worn chintz dress.

Hokaai!
the little man shout at his four thin oxen as he pull them up next to us. My brother, my sister, my children! he call in a voice like a thin little cicada. Where you going to?

To the Gariep, I tell him. Is it still very far?

For us it is far, he say. For the Lord nothing is far.

And not for All-lah either, say Labyn sharply. He is everywhere.

I don’t know anything about this Al-lah, say the small man on the wagon chest. But I know a bit about the Lord. If you like to know more, you can all get on the wagon, then we can talk, because the Lord called me to speak about him.

For the children’s sake we can get on, say Labyn. But
don’t
talk too much, because they’re small and they get tired quickly.

What about you? the driver turn to me. You women usually make better listeners.

To tell you the truth, I answer, I hear more than enough about the Lord from the bloody Ouman I worked for on the farm called Zandvliet. I want to hear more about
you
. Please tell us who you are and what you doing in this Nothing-from-Nowhere?

I am Cupido Cockroach, say the stick man. I am a missionary of the LordGod, on the other side of the Gariep, on the other side of Kuruman, on the other side of almost everything.

And I am Philida of the Caab, I tell him. This is Labyn from Batavia, and these are my children, Willempie and Lena. We are on our way to the Gariep.

I can take you in that direction, say Cupido. Not all the way, mind you, because I must turn off to go and look for a few of the members of my congregation that ran away. But perhaps a day or so.

It turn out different. Because before we rode another hour there is a grinding, gnashing sound under the sad little wagon and we find it is a wheel that broke and fell out. There is no more time for talking about the LordGod and Al-lah. Just as well, I think afterwards, otherwise this little Cupido Cockroach would have talked us all the way to hell. All we got time for is to get down from the wagon so that the children can play with a dead
toktokkie
in the thin shade of a thorn tree while the woman Anna and I give a hand to the men to repair the wheel. This take us right through the hot afternoon to nightfall, when we prepare to sleep.

Until the break of day, and then we get up again to go on working, searching for wood to make spokes and patch
the
wheel together. In a way it is a good feeling to see the two men work together. Labyn, with a sore back, because he is not young any more, and the spidery little man with the stick legs. The stranger passes on the spokes for Labyn to fit. And by the evening of the second day the wheel can start wobbling again, following the oxen.

First we got to test it to make sure that it work. Then the two men go off into the veld and return, a miracle, with a steenbok that the driver has shot with an arrow, and Anna and I skin the little thing and roast it on a fire and one way or another we all share the bit of meat. Afterwards we sleep in a circle around the dying fire, our filled stomachs turned to what is left of the flames and the embers, until it get light again. At the first light of the dawn we get up.

We women embrace. The men shake hands. One of them say, May God go with you. The other one say, May Al-lah go with you.

Then we go our separate ways without needing to talk any more – Cupido and Anna on the shaky little wagon, following the oxen that are so thin it seem the daylight must shine right through them; and the two of us with the children, towards the Gariep.

After a while I start laughing quietly to myself.

Why you laughing, Philida? ask Labyn.

And I say, No reason, Labyn. Just about you two men.

What so funny about us?

Nothing, Labyn. It’s just that when the two of you meet, it was just God and Al-lah all the way. I thought there was a hell of a lot of talk coming to us. But in the end it was only the fixing of the broken wheel.

That is Al-lah’s way of working, say Labyn.

And I suppose if you ask Cupido he’ll say it’s the LordGod’s way of working.

As long as the wheel turn, he say with a little laugh. Then we all get to where we want to be.

Who know? I say.

And then we move on again.

On our long walk Labyn talk about many things. Sometimes I wonder about his stories. But in the end it always get back to the Gariep that we are going to.

You can say it’s our Promised Land, Labyn like to say. You remember that Al-lah showed Moses how to trek through the desert? We just got to go on and not give up.

I never know what a blarry long way it will be, Labyn!

Don’t forget about Moses and his people going on for forty years! he say. I tell you, once we get to that Gariep and we see the land of Canaan, it will all be worthwhile. Just grit your teeth and go on.

So on and on we go. Sometimes we make a halt. For a day or a few days or a long week. The first time it happen we are on a farm where somebody just died, a child that drowned in a dam, and then the people find out about Labyn’s work and they ask him to make a coffin. This happen a few more times. And once the farmer is so pleased with his coffin that Labyn is asked to make coffins for everybody that live there. It’s good to have your coffin ready before they dig you in, and in the meantime you can use it for raisins or dried apricots, or peaches, or for buchu and even dagga, it is such a good smell for a coffin and it must feel good for a dead person to lie in it, and if the people pay for the coffins we have another handful of rix-dollars to take along with us.

Getting to the Gariep, say Labyn, must already be like a halfway station to heaven because listen what Al-lah say about it in the Koran:
He who obeys Al-lah and his Prophet will live for ever in gardens watered by running streams
. This can only be the Gariep he talk about.

Still we go on and on. Often it feel like another desert we are moving through, like the one Moses go through, or even worse. They call it Bushmanland, they call it the Richtersveld, this desert got many names. But somewhere, somewhere you must come to its end. Somewhere anything and everything come to an end.

It is not an easy way, God know, Al-lah know, it is an uphill road. Even when it seem to go downhill it is still uphill.

And I have a hard time. The children are small and they are skinny with their chicken legs, and they are like stones that get heavier and heavier as you carry them. And it is not just Willempie and Lena I must carry. There is also Mamie, but the heaviest one is KleinFrans. He is not just in my arms but deep inside my body.

There isn’t a day, not an hour, that he is not with me. He is inside me like the taste of bitter aloe in my mouth, in every breath I breathe in or out, in every step, even in my standing up or in my lying down. KleinFrans. KleinFrans. KleinFrans. Who come out of my body and who Frans want to drown. And who I got to smother in my arms to save him from a life of slavery. There is nothing else I can do. LordGod and Al-lah, help me to carry him. Help me to believe there was nothing else I can do. How can I leave it to Frans to kill him? He is mine and he is Frans’s too. But first of all he is mine. Just believe me, Philida, he say to me. Allow me to take you and let us make a child, then I shall make you happy and I shall buy your freedom. And we shall both walk with shoes on our feet, for ever.

And so he make sure. And so what else could I do?

And now we shall be free anyway, whatever he did or did not do, whatever he promised or lied to make me lie with him.

I know now that I am free, not because somebody said that on such-and-such a day I must be free. I am free because I am free. Because I myself take my freedom. I take it and I choose it. It is, I think, a freedom like the sun and the moon and the other stars. The sun do not rise because somebody tell him to, but because coming up is its nature and because nobody can tell him not to. This is my freedom and this is who I am and what I am. I kill my Little Frans and I set him free. We are both free now.

We shall all go through that Gateway to Paradise together, he and I and our children and everybody.

Frans. Frans. KleinFrans.

This will be the last night we spend on the road. I know, because one can already see the dark green of the bushes and the trees that mark its course. If the children were not with me, I don’t think I will have stopped. But now that we are here, I am glad to have this last night. It is not quiet. In the distance there are many voices, all the time. Lots of people talking, some shouting, some fighting, women’s voices crying. This is what it mean to be with other people again. If I think of it, I must admit that perhaps it was better when it was just old Labyn and me and the children in the desert. That silence we hear there. The stillness of the night and of distance that go on and on, for ever. I am glad, of course, to know that we are here now, that this long, long walk is over. But perhaps I am a bit scared too, because I am not sure what is going to happen in this place, if one can call it a place. When old Labyn talk about it to me in Worcester, before we set out, it is only a cross on a map and it seem like a real spot one can reach, where perhaps one can rest or stay over, and from where one can set out again. But this is not a map where we are walking. It is sand
and
hard earth, and scorching hot underfoot. It is as if this whole land is stuck to the soles of our feet. It will go with us wherever we go. We can never get away from it again. Nor do we want to.