1999 - Ladysmith (8 page)

Outside, beyond the makeshift straw huts in which he and the other Africans stayed, were the guns and wagons of General Joubert’s camp. Through the opening in the hut, Muhle could see Dr Sterkx, the man who had helped him. When the Boer guards had found him lying on the ground the morning after the accident, they had been ready to shoot him, convinced he was a spy. Eventually, he had persuaded them that in fact he was there because he had been pulling the guns, and they had turned to go off—leaving him lying there on the slope of Bulwan, half naked (he had lost his kaross and his cooking pot), nursing his injured leg. Only the intervention of this doctor, who had ordered that he be brought into camp, had saved him. In the days that followed, Sterkx had come into the hut from time to time to rebind his ankle and to give him some food. Muhle had gathered from the doctor that the splints would have to stay on for at least a month.

This morning was the same. Sterkx—a small, stooping man with gold-rimmed glasses and thinning hair—came in and bent over him in the semi-darkness, readjusting the pieces of wood and wrapping the bindings ever more tightly.

Muhle gasped at the pain. “Why are you helping me?”

Sterkx pulled at the fabric again. “The week before we found you, the British burned my farm—the wagons, the house, the furniture, everything gone…They even burned my piano and music…”

The doctor stood up, and looked out through the oval gap that served as the hut door. His voice was strained with feeling. “But that was nothing, for they also took my wife into Ladysmith as a prisoner. I fear for her safety there, and thought of her when I saw you lying there on Bulwan.”

Muhle didn’t understand. “But I am a black man. You don’t usually give us charity.”

Sterkx turned towards the pallet, and looked down at him. “You are God’s creature. Since my Frannie was taken from me, I have been full of anger and bitterness. And then a calm came, and I prayed to the Lord, and I realized that I must offer kindness to others, in the hope that the same will be offered to Frannie in the town there.”

“My family…” said Muhle, and then paused.

“What?”

“My family are missing also.”

“Then you know what I am feeling, in spite of being a kaffir. Here, have some biltong.”

Sterkx reached into his pocket and, pulling out a long strip of the dried meat, handed it to him. “This war is a terrible thing. Even though we are on the side of right, even though the Germans and the French and the Americans are on our side also against the English oppressor, I regret it, for whatever happens it will come to no good…”

Muhle sat up and chewed on the tough meat. He felt its goodness seep into him as the Dutchman talked on, and he reflected that never before had one of this race talked to him man to man—that is, as if he too were a man—and then, as Sterkx continued, he slowly understood that this Dutchman was really talking to himself, wrestling with his own pain even as Muhle’s ankle throbbed on the bed beneath him. And yet he was also kind, saying that he would have one of the Xhosas bring him a pot of water…

“And once the bone has set, I suppose we can get some crutches fixed up for you too.”

“Thank you, nkosi,” said Muhle.

The Dutchman turned to go.

“Wait,” Muhle said. “When I am able to walk, they will let me look for my family, yes?”

Sterkx stopped by the doorway. “I am sorry. I do not think we can let you go now—in case you fell into the hands of the British, you see.”

“But you understand—about my wife and my son. I must find them!”

“I am sorry,” said Sterkx. “They would not let me.” And then he left.

Muhle stared at the oval of light in the doorway. The ragged edges of it, where the straw stuck out, represented to him the pain and anger he felt—pain in his ankle, anger at being forced to stay here, a prisoner of his body and the hateful Boers. For even the good doctor had become hateful now, as did everything he saw through that hole, from the horsemen, as they came and went, to the guns looming behind them.

In the days that followed, the commando in which he was held fought a number of battles with the British. The rattle of Maxims, the crackle of Mausers and other small arms could be heard in the hills around the camp, underlaid by the deeper echo of field artillery. Going out, the Boer horsemen were an impressive sight: the men cool in the saddle, bandoliers of ammunition across their chests (the beards of the older ones flowing down over the belts of shining cartridges), Mausers in rifle buckets on their saddles or slung over their backs, boots of soft hide pushed into their stirrups, and assorted kit—bedding rolls, tin pots for cooking—strapped to their saddles. Their clothes were mostly grey or brown, home-made, except for those of the officers, who favoured more formal black suits: coats with claw-hammer tails, and half top hats.

Coming back in after an engagement, officers and men alike looked sorry creatures: slumping in the saddle, soaked with rain and blood and mud, the wounded piled up in ox carts behind. In other carts came the dead, their staring eyeballs fixing on Muhle through the ragged gap. He saw in those eyes images of Nandi and Wellington, and knew more deeply than ever that as soon as he was able, he would flee this place and find them.

In the meantime, the oval of light played on: from where he lay, Muhle could see the big gun he had helped pull up the hill. Its spoked wheels were huge, glittering with steel plate and rivets; in between, the dark grey of the barrel stretched up high against the sky. In front of the gun, Boer and African diggers had built up a great mountain of earth, to protect it from British fire. Soon, Sterkx had said, they would start the bombardment of Ladysmith.

“And then,” the doctor had said, “God preserve my Fran-nie and any other innocent shut up in that town.”

Around the emplacement scurried the gunners of the
Staats Artillerie
, their blue uniforms and gold epaulettes sharply different from the country clothes of the ordinary horsemen. Now and then, Muhle would also see striding around the tall, broad-shouldered figure of General Joubert, his iron-grey hair and white beard making him a natural man of authority. His headquarters was a large marquee in the middle of the camp, over which fluttered the
vierkleur
of the Transvaal. As the Zulu gazed silently upon the flag, wagons crossed to and fro, obscuring his field of vision. From these, as the oxen snorted and moved about in the shafts, men unloaded sacks of sugar and coffee and corn, all brought in from the surrounding farms. The sight of the food made Muhle feel hunger again: the biltong Sterkx had given him had taken the edge off it, but he craved some maize porridge, something to fill him up. Thought of maize made him wish he was at home, back at his kraal, watching the fields of bright green ears swaying in the wind, or watching Nandi drying the kernels on a mat, or Wellington shooting at a chicken with his sling, to frighten it away from the glossy white pile on Nandi’s mat.

But these were all lies. These were images of his own childhood. Since Wellington had been a young boy, Muhle had worked down the mines in Johannesburg, sweating and cursing with the others in the galleries, swinging pick against rock, sparks flying up, or pulling gouts of red clay out of the wall with the big hoes. Then every night back to the dreadful shanty with its stinking water and thousands of inhabitants from all over southern Africa. Every day, in the mines, he had longed to be back in Natal; every evening, in the shanty, Nandi had said to him how she hated their life and he had promised to bring her back as soon as they had saved enough money. Now, by force of circumstance, they were in Natal, but apart, and far from home.

Later on in the week, once Sterkx had brought him his crutches—home-made, they were little more than two branches of thorn tree—Muhle was able to get up and move around the camp. It was important, he knew, that he get himself fit enough to slip past the sentries one night. He was often challenged about why he was wandering round the camp, but usually his explanation—that he was an injured labourer—was sufficient to allay any suspicion. He was wise to be wary, however, since the Boers were shooting any African who had worked for the British: already he had seen some twenty killed by firing squad after having been captured at the battle of Elandslaagte, had watched the Xhosas go to bury them where they lay in a heap afterwards. From their appearance, it was clear that many of the dead were also Xhosa, and one man from the hut let out a terrible wail when he saw that a relative was among the corpses. It was a sound that cut Muhle to the core, as he thought about his own family, and where they might be.

Once during his wanderings, on the morning of a great battle, Muhle encountered his saviour.

“I have to go and wait for the wounded by the ambulance,” Sterkx said. “Why don’t you come with me? You ought to keep that leg moving.”

But there were few wounded—few Boer wounded—in that battle, and for most of it the ambulance wagon stood idle. Together they watched, black man and white, from the high hill. On the plain below, men moved like ants, sweeping hither and thither in waves, great clouds of dust and flame spurting up as shells dropped among them. Sterkx let Muhle use his spyglass to watch for a while, and on the ridge beyond the plain (its English name was Nicholson’s Nek) the Zulu saw the Boer sharpshooters creeping on their bellies, and the British soldiers lifting their heads cautiously above their fortifications. Nearly always, a Boer bullet found them. Dead soldiers lay behind every earthwork or pile of rock.

Sterkx took back his glass and Muhle lay next to him, his crutches at his side. He listened to the Boer’s exclamations—
Geluk hoor! Los jou ruiters!
—and prayed that wherever they were, Nandi and Wellington weren’t in the middle of it.

“The English are bringing up their guns,” said Sterkx.

Muhle looked again, and sure enough the British gunners had limbered up and were riding in a column down towards the main site of battle.

“Surely they can’t come any closer?” Sterkx said, this time as much to himself as to the Zulu. “They will be cut to pieces.”

Even without the spyglass, Muhle could see that the column was too close to the hidden lines of Boer riflemen, who lay everywhere in the grass, some with their horses lying quietly next to them, as they had clearly been trained to do. The sixteen-gun column came on. Its horses, by comparison, were nervous and jumped in their traces as the crack of the Mauser bullets grew ever closer. Still they came on, and then the horses began to fall in their own tracks and the column became a jumble as guns and limbers jack-knifed; even from up here, the noise of the bullets striking the gun barrels was audible. It sounded as if a crazed blacksmith were at work down there on the plain. The horses and men around the column—there was no noise as the bullets found these targets—fell into a mess of harness and trace, wheel-spoke and steel. In the face of the onslaught, the column jerked and writhed like a wounded animal, and then, soon enough, lay lifeless.

“
Almagtig
,” breathed Sterkx. “Almighty God.”

The Boer riflemen moved forward, swarming over the wrecked gun teams, then moving up the ridge.

“Now we have got them.”

Horrified, Muhle watched as the Boers gained ground. Soon, the sound of a bugle was heard and a white flag went up on the other side of the ridge.

“Come on,” said Sterkx. “We’d better move down. It seems I will be searching for Boer bullets in Englishmen today.”

An hour or two later, at the bottom of the hill, Muhle watched the British prisoners march in, with dragging steps and downcast faces.

“They were mostly Irish,” Sterkx told him later, “and will be sent to gaol in Pretoria.”

T
he capture of more than a thousand prisoners, mostly Dublin Fusiliers, at nearby Nicholson’s Nek, the falling of heavy shells on a number of farms near the town, and the army’s shameful retreat were each in themselves cause for consternation. Together, they made a disastrous impression on the morale of Ladysmith. These events also had the effect of speeding up the ‘evacuation’, as the military were calling the rush from the town. That it was a shameful business was confirmed to Nevinson on a sticky, thunderous Natal evening, when he went down to the railway station. A strange and disturbing sight greeted him there.

In a yellow light, three trains were waiting, amid great confusion and congestion. Panic-stricken whites mixed with a vast crowd of Indians and Africans. The cause of the alarm was the Boers’ imminent closing of the railway line. Out of the windows of the carriages poked the excited faces of white children, and the anxious ones of their mothers; in the open trucks, the other races were thickly packed. The general idea amongst all seemed to be ‘save your skin’—plus the cloth-wrapped bundle of goods upon your head, if that was your unfortunate lot—and, whatever its colour, every one of those skins dripped with sweat in the oven-like heat.

Nevinson looked about, and was shocked by what he saw. The native police were hitting both Africans and Indians with knobkerries, or prodding them as if they were livestock. It was cruel and pointless, not least since the more they were beaten and prodded, the more they shouted, pushed and pulled. Thinking there might be some copy in the scene, Nevinson took out his notebook and shoved his way through the crush. As he was scribbling down some notes, he heard an Australian voice in his ear.

“Well, at least we’re clearing the town of its human refuse.”

He recognized the voice as that of MacDonald, his fellow correspondent, and a bit of a jingo. He carried a swagger stick and affected the more ostentatious kind of uniform. Many of the press corps wore khaki and other officers’ equipment—sword belt, sun helmet—in some combination, but MacDonald’s outfit, together with his wide-brimmed Australian hat, was so carefully calculated as to suggest considerable vanity.

“I think it’s rather sad,” Nevinson replied, levelly.

“Do you really? Myself, I have no doubt that the mass of Hindus and kaffirs will one day furnish Natal with its greatest social and political problem.”