The Monster's Daughter (4 page)

Black farmworkers were rounded up, herded like cattle behind the British supply wagons, mothers clutching half-naked infants, hardened men bowing their heads. Andrew searched for the Richter children in the chaos. Anna had managed to push the dowry chest to the edge of the field, where they huddled together. How much they looked like English children, fair and healthy, Andrew thought. He prayed that Maundin and the others wouldn't notice him as he went over to them. Hansie, too distraught to watch, had buried his face in the folds of Anna's dress. A big sunbonnet lay forgotten at her feet, a
kappie
, the Dutch called it. Andrew bent down to pick it up. Dirt clung to the white cotton and he clumsily tried to dust it off.

“Your name is Anna?” Andrew held the bonnet out to her. When she didn't react, he lay it down on the chest. He noticed its craftsmanship: someone had put a lot of love into making the box, carving an intricate pastoral scene into the lid. Andrew remembered his father doing woodwork like that when he was a boy, sitting up late at night until everything was just so. Those were the happy days before his mother died, before his father succumbed to grief and liquor, the memory of a dead wife more real than the heartbeat of the son in front of him.

“I am Corporal Andrew Morgan.” Andrew tried again. He knelt next to Anna. “Do you have somewhere to go?”

Anna pointed at the neighboring farmhouse, a white flag hanging from the beams on the porch, signaling that the occupants had signed an oath of neutrality and would not take part in the war.

“Go there now.”

Anna's knuckles turned white on the dowry chest. “I can't carry it.”

Andrew looked back at the blazing farmhouse. “Leave it.”

“It's all we have left.” Tears pooled on Anna's eyelashes.

“You have to go,” Andrew pleaded. The first raids had been conducted with civility, but the facade soon wore thin, giving way to manic violence, the frenzy intensifying with each burning building. The faces of men Andrew knew grew distorted as they plundered the farms. Things were done to the women. Their cries banished Andrew's sleep. He couldn't live with his part in that, for allowing it to happen, for thinking, even for a moment, that it was justified, the helplessness he had felt for so many months giving over to a rage that scared him. Looking at the two children in front of him, he knew he had to help them, if only for his own salvation.

Andrew took Anna's hand, her light-blue irises boring into his soul. “It is not safe. Understand? You have to protect Hansie. And yourself.”

Anna nodded, pulling her hand away from his. She picked Hansie up and hurried toward the next farm without a word. Andrew watched her go, his heart racing, praying that she wouldn't be noticed. Halfway up the hill, Anna stopped and glanced over her shoulder, like Lot's wife looking back at the carnage. Fire burst forth from the windows of the house as the panicked neighing of a horse rang out from inside the burning barn. Andrew knew he'd never forget the image of
Anna standing there, watching their barbarism, a shadow against the darkening sky. He felt ashamed.

The two small figures melted away in the twilight—safe, at least for now. Andrew pulled a small journal from his pocket. He tore a page from among the tallies of family names and seized goods. Crouching down so the others wouldn't see him, he used the chest as a writing surface, his pencil denting the paper. He slipped the note between the folds of a blanket in the chest and walked away. Leaving it was a risk, but after all he'd seen, he no longer cared if his name was found among Boer things.

The approaching storm rose like the hand of God, turning the sky vermilion. The wind lifted earth from its resting place, ripping at the bell tents of the Bloemfontein concentration camp, which were squashed together in misshapen rows like white ant heaps. A graveyard, littered with crude markers, lay a few hundred meters from the camp. Its border had crept closer with each passing day. Emaciated figures stood next to an open grave, bracing themselves against the cold, the sound of a hymn dissipating over the veld.

Anna squinted to keep dust out of her eyes, trying to focus on the reading. There was no minister, so people looked to Aunt Kotie, the oldest person in the camp, to pray over the dead. Aunt Kotie read from the Bible, mostly from Job, and recited ill-remembered sermons. Anna wiped sweat from her upper lip. She had woken up that morning with a fever, an ache creeping through her body as the day wore on, burning slowly, her skin clammy and tender, fighting nausea with every breath she took. She wasn't sure how much longer she could hold down the sloppy porridge she'd made from the last of the ration meal, but she needed to stay strong for Hansie. She needed to see him laid to rest.

Aunt Kotie bowed her frail head and recited a prayer, her liver-spotted hands clutching the Bible. Anna peered down into the shallow grave at Hansie's small body, its outlines visible through the threadbare sheet, the toes of his small bare foot sticking out the side. Wood was scarce, a coffin a luxury. Her mother had been wrapped in a
rough gray blanket, and Anna still wondered if she had received a proper burial. She had died in an open cattle truck, too weak for the two-day journey to Bloemfontein. Anna had had to sit with the body while the other women complained about the stench, threatening to throw it over the side. The Khakis ordered her to leave her mother at the side of the tracks when they arrived in Bloemfontein. It shamed Anna that she had felt relieved to be rid of the burden.

Aunt Kotie ended the prayer with a solemn, “Amen.” Her sunken eyes filled with fervor, her lips peeling back from her sparse teeth. “Have faith in the Lord, my people,” she said. “For we do not know His plan for us.”

Older boys shoveled dirt into the grave. Women dispersed, moving back to the camp to seek shelter. They kept their heads low, letting their eyes linger on the graves of their own loved ones, wondering how long it would be until they too lay there. In the camp, shadows flitted as children moved furtively in the twilight, helping to secure tent flaps and tie down ropes. Anna stared listlessly at Hansie's grave, her thoughts incoherently skipping over the days and weeks gone by. The Khakis and black joiners had herded Anna, Hansie and the other women the three miles from the train station to the camp that night they arrived, jeering and prodding. Anna carried Hansie when he became too tired to walk, trying to comfort him as best she could.

At the camp, they were assigned to share a tent with fat Mrs. Botha and her daughter, Hester. Hester was a year older than Anna and moved through the world with passive sloth, her gaze fixed on the ground, “
Ja, Ma
,” her only words. Anna had tried to talk to her, but the girl only gave monosyllabic answers. The Bothas had money. Mrs. Botha kept it tied in a handkerchief to her underskirts and bought fresh vegetables and supplies from camp authorities, storing them in a trunk that she and Hester took turns guarding. Anna sometimes fantasized about breaking the Botha trunk open with a rock and devouring everything inside, the dried fruits, canned goods, especially the coffee. The coffee they got in their rations was undrinkable, diluted with sawdust, not even enough for two cups. But she knew her parents would have been ashamed of her for even thinking about it.

Anna had approached Mrs. Botha a few days after they arrived, her palms moist as she stated her case in stops and starts. Hansie was
hungry, crying himself to sleep every night. Anna had shared her rations with him, but it wasn't enough. “My brother needs milk,” she pleaded. “We'll pay you back.”

Mrs. Botha's porcine eyes narrowed. “With what, my dear girl?”

“Please, Mrs. Botha. He's only little.”

“Everybody here is hungry, girl. If I give to you, it won't be long till the next one comes begging.” Mrs. Botha turned her back to Anna, waving her off. “Don't ask again.”

The humiliation had stung. Anna knew she was in one of the “lower classes” that Mrs. Botha referred to in the letters she dictated to Hester in the afternoons, a nuisance to be tolerated, like the fleas that infested their rough straw mattresses. Anna's only solace was that the camp rendered them all equal. Mrs. Botha might have thought that she was better than them, piously reading from her Bible while she fondled her money, but she too had to endure the smell of her own excrement sunning in the overfull slop buckets. If the wind blew in the right direction, you could smell the sewage all the way to town, an inconvenient reminder to the British that the Boer women were still here, still alive.

Hansie caught fever a week later. The authorities made daily inspections of the tents, hauling the sick away. Hansie was given a bed at the camp hospital, under the care of English doctors and nurses who couldn't understand Dutch and had little sympathy for their patients. Anna wasn't allowed to visit, even though she walked the mile to the hospital tent every day to find out how he was feeling. Yesterday they'd told her she didn't need to come anymore. Anna almost hadn't recognized the skeletal body when they laid him out. She imagined his last labored breaths, a small frightened boy alone, crying for comfort. Anna hoped he had it now.

“You!” The Khaki soldier spoke Dutch. The way his big frame moved through the dust toward her sparked a memory of hope giving way to despair, sharp as a knife in her stomach. “Come here.” He was one of their people, riding with the enemy. He had looked at her and Hansie with indifference that day their home burned, like they were nothing, taking what little they had and laughing about it.

“I said come here.”

Anna realized that she was alone in the cemetery. She backed away
from the joiner, straining against the wind, her feet giving way every few steps. The joiner lengthened his stride, closing in. Anna ran. In the distance, tents billowed like ghosts in the dark. Anna prayed that she would be lucky enough to reach them.

The dirt floor was damp beneath Anna, the smell of earth in her nostrils. A dull pain pulsed at the back of her head. She remembered the cemetery. Hansie's small foot sticking out from beneath the sheet. The joiner's hands closing around her shoulders as he tackled her to the ground.

“Get up.” It was him. The one who came to Vergelegen with the Khakis. The British soldiers had called him Jooste.

A sudden kick to her stomach forced her eyes open. She gasped for breath. Light beams fell diagonally from the holes in a concrete wall. She had seen buildings like this along the train tracks when they were moved to the camp, British blockhouses, guarding against Boer attacks. The joiner grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her face up. She looked into calculating gray eyes.

“Nice,” Jooste said. “He'll like you,
Suster
.” Jooste ran his thumb over her cheek. Anna tried to pull away. A small vein in Jooste's temple bulged. He brought his hand down across her face. The blow pulsed hot on her cheek. Anna scrambled to get away, still weak from fever. Jooste grabbed her and flung her to the ground.

“You will do as I say,
ja
?” Jooste forced her on her back and straddled her. Anna squirmed beneath him. “I see you need a little breaking in.” He pushed her legs apart with his knees and kicked at her ankles. She fought for breath under his bulk as he lay down on top of her.

Anna felt him tearing at her bloomers with his free hand, paralyzed as she felt his rough hand creep under her dress. She closed her eyes, biting down as he crushed her breasts in his hands. Jooste forced his hand between her legs. Then the pain. She cried out, the movement inside her tearing, stabbing, the smell of him rancid against her face. She tried to force the reality of what was happening out, but thoughts of her home quickly regressed to burnt-out buildings and camp graves. Jooste grunted as his body went into a spasm.

“Clean yourself.” Jooste pulled away. It was the first time she had seen a grown man like that. “And don't bother trying to escape,
Suster
. The nearest town is thirty kilometers away,
ja
. If the animals don't get you, the
kaffirs
will.”

Imposing stone steps rolled down from a wide
stoep
. An enormous door interrupted the house's pristine white facade and rounded gables. A vision of splendor, it was almost ten times the size of Vergelegen, its windows covered with thick wood panels, British soldiers standing guard at the gate.

But the bare interior of the building offered no opulence. No sunlight penetrated the thick walls, and the hallways were cold. Polished floors reflected the light from large oil lamps, placed sporadically on the floor. The room Jooste had taken Anna to was sparsely furnished, the floors scrubbed dull, the walls unadorned. A large desk stood in the middle of the room, books piled haphazardly on top. In one corner, a bed peeked out from behind a white screen. A strange object rested on a table next to it, copper coiled around a spindle, exposed wires attached to a black box.

“Damn it all, Jooste. I told you to be careful with them.” The man, who had introduced himself as Dr. Samuel Leath, dropped Anna's bruised wrists. Other than his white temples and trimmed beard, he was completely bald, dressed in a black suit with a cravat and polished black boots.

“She tried to escape, see? Had to be restrained.”

“Is she intact?”

Jooste shot a warning look at Anna. “If she's not, it has nothing to do with me,
ja
? I only catch them and bring them to you.”

“It's not all that important. I can still use her, as long as she's fertile.”

Jooste shrugged. Leath ran his fingers over Anna's face, inspecting her like a horse, with instructions to turn and look up issued in a monotone. He took Anna's head in his hands. A shudder ran through her. Leath had been civil enough, but there was something about the way he looked at her, his deadpan expression and indifferent eyes, that made him seem soulless as a serpent.