Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
“It took months. Ever since I came here.”
“You are lying to me, Hanna.” A pause. “Is that so?”
This time the pause becomes almost unbearable.
“Yes, it is,” Hanna admits at last.
“Then what is the truth?”
“I earned the money with my body.”
Herr Dieter chokes on his beer.
“You did
what?
”
Hanna retreats until her back is against the wall.
“Hanna, talk to me.”
Hanna looks imploringly at Herr Dieter, but he avoids her
eyes.
After another silence Hanna says, so softly it is barely
audible, “You pay me so little, I have no choice.”
Frau Hildegard gets up. Her chair scrapes the polished wooden
floor.
“A thief
and
a whore,” she says, spitting each word out
separately. “I shall not have that in my house. We are decent
people. Tomorrow Herr Dieter will take you back to the orphanage.
With some luck you will end up in prison. It is a pity they no
longer send criminals to me pillory.”
T
he day after Hanna
returns to Frauenstein from the desert she calmly and deliberately
hacks off her long hair. When she enters the dining room for lunch,
Frau Knesebeck looks at her with stern disapproval, but soon
composes herself. All she says is, “Did you have to do that? Were
you not ugly enough as it is?”
L
ife in the orphanage
runs on as if she has never been absent. Hanna receives the routine
punishment for working girls who have been dismissed – rations
reduced to bread and water for a week, concluded with the public
exposure of the culprit to the collective, rehearsed jeering of the
assembled children and their overseers. Afterwards, through the
considerable skills of Frau Agathe who has a reputation for
inventing impressive references (signed by herself, by Pastor
Ulrich, and imaginary employers), she is dispatched to a new
placement. It is somewhat more distant than the first, but it is
still possible, with half an hour of additional travelling each
way, to continue seeing Fraulein Braunschweig; so Hanna can resign
herself to it.
The problem, as she soon finds out, is that her debts from the
Klatt household have not been written off but are carried over to
her new employment. Frau Agathe having paid the full account
produced by Frau Hildegard, without soliciting any comment or
verification from Hanna, the new employers, the Hartmanns, are now
required to reimburse the Little Children of Jesus.
They are a tight little family, but not a very happy one, as if
they occupy the same space without really touching each other. The
only child, Peter, who is twelve, has such a frail constitution
that he cannot go to school and has to be taught at home by his
mother, Frau Liesel, who was a teacher before her marriage. Herr
Ludwig works for a firm handling imports and exports in a large
brick building at the Europahafen. Hanna has been hired to do the
housekeeping so that Frau Liesel can devote all her time to
Peter.
Which does not prevent her from going out almost immediately
after her husband has left for work in the mornings and seldom
returning home before mid-afternoon, leaving Hanna to take care of
Peter’s lessons, an arrangement that suits everyone. It is likely
that were he to know, Herr Ludwig would not approve, but he is
studiously kept in the dark by his energetic wife, who draws Hanna
into the conspiracy with a wink, some dark threats, and sporadic
small rewards.
What Peter suffers from appears to be asthma, but Hanna is
tempted to believe that the parents are really over-protective,
following the loss of no fewer than three other babies before his
birth – two of them stillborn, one dead just before his first
birthday, as Frau Liesel never fails to remind her young
housekeeper in tones of hushed and dire drama. To Herr Ludwig the
survival of a son and heir is of primary importance, he himself
being the last in a long line of almost-notable men, most of them
in military service. (The only reason why he turned to commerce was
that his own health had never been robust; also, he already had two
older brothers in the army. No one could foresee that both would
die within months of each other, one on duty in East Africa, the
other in a duel not much spoken about in the family.)
Supervising Peter’s homework is for Hanna a way of resuming her
own lessons and her own reading. Her eagerness also brings a faint
glow to the boy’s pale face, though he remains weighed down by the
suspicion that he will never really be as brilliant as his parents
expect him to become. At least she can share with him her
enthusiasm for the sufferings of the young Werther, the exploits of
Jeanne, the far places of the earth.
When Frau Liesel comes home in the afternoon – often flushed and
with shiny green eyes – Hanna is called to run her a bath, where
she reclines for an hour or so, stepping out just in time to hear
the boy’s lessons. Sometimes, when Herr Ludwig comes home a bit
early, he joins the little gathering, invariably lavish in his
praise for the merest flickering of brightness demonstrated by his
son. Sometimes, when the boy falters, Hanna cannot restrain herself
from eagerly prompting him the dates of the Seven Years War, the
capital of Peru, the river that forms the northern border of the
new German colony of South-West Africa – and this attracts Herr
Ludwig’s interest. One late afternoon, the revision done, when
mother and son retire to Peter’s bedroom to pack away his books and
have their customary cuddle, he turns to Hanna and looks at her so
intently that she begins to fidget and drops the coffee cup she is
about to place on the tray.
“You are a bright girl, Hanna,” he says as she squats to pick up
the pieces. “Why didn’t you finish school?”
She puts the shards on the tray, causing a teaspoon to fall.
“I had to go into service, Herr, Ludwig,” she says, feeling her
cheeks bum as she kneels down again.
“You must try to keep it up.”
How? she wonders with a brief rush of anger. But she just nods
and mumbles, and gets up. In the process she nearly knocks the tray
off the sideboard, but fortunately manages to salvage it at the
last moment.
“Why don’t you come to my study tonight when your work is done?”
he says. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
Please, she thinks, not again.
“Hanna?”
“Herr Ludwig?” she croaks, not daring to look at him.
“I asked you a question.”
“I – I can’t, Herr Ludwig. Please. If you don’t mind.”
This time she drops the tray.
When she has finished collecting all the pieces and cleaning up,
he says quietly, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
After supper, having taken twice as long as usual over the
dishes, she sits down at the kitchen table and stares at her hands,
red from the hot water. In her mind she repeats all the questions
and answers she can remember from the afternoon’s lessons. Then she
looks up at the clock on the wall. It is almost nine. Now, surely,
he will have gone to bed.
Dragging her feet, she goes to the study. There is a sliver of
light under the door. Perhaps he has left the lamp burning.
But he is still working, comfortably seated in a large armchair,
a clutch of papers on his lap.
He looks up and smiles indulgently. “It took you a long time,”
he says.
“I’m sorry, I…” Her voice trails off.
“I must have a word with Liesel,” he says. “We cannot burden you
with too much.”
“No, no, please, it’s all right, really.”
Without any warning he asks, “How did you know about the Kunene
River?”
She stares at him blankly.
“The northern border of the colony of South-West Africa,” he
prompts her.
“I try to listen when Peter does his lessons,” she mumbles,
dreading that she will give anything away that might reflect on
Frau Liesel. She adds precipitately, “I like the names of faraway
places, Herr Ludwig.”
“My company’s ships go to harbours all over the world. China,
Africa, America, everywhere.” He takes off his reading glasses and
looks at her. “Perhaps, if you continue with your studies, you can
come and work for me one day and travel to some of those
places.”
“Please don’t mock me, Herr Ludwig!” she suddenly explodes. “How
can I continue with my studies?”
“To begin with, you can tell me if there are books I can get for
you.”
“I have no money apart from what I earn here, and most of that
goes to pay my debt.”
“We will have to see about that,” he says. Then he puts his
papers on a low table beside the chair and gets up. “But that is
not why I asked you to come to the study.”
This is it, she thinks. He comes towards her. She edges away,
trying to shrink out of reach. But he moves past her to a small
table with immaculately inlaid squares in pale and dark wood. Two
rows of intricately carved pieces, ivory and ebony, have been set
up at either end.
“Do you know what this is?” Herr Ludwig asks.
“Some kind of game?” she guesses. At the church
Messe
the
children were sometimes allowed to play draughts, but these pieces
are different, more various and more exquisitely turned.
“It is a chess set,” he explains. “If you wish, I can teach you
to play.”
“What for?” she asks suspiciously.
He smiles. She looks at his face in the amber light of the lamp:
its finely chiselled features as if it, too, has been carved from
wood – keen eyebrows, high cheekbones, a firmly set chin, a nose
like the beak of the eagle preferred by Chancellor von Bismarck who
recently resigned in sullen deference to the new young emperor,
Wilhelm II. His hair is wavy, combed up high in front, then stroked
severely back.
“Just to see how good you are,” he says. “I’ve tried to play
with Frau Liesel, but she gets bored too easily. And Peter, I’m
afraid, has shown no aptitude yet.”
“And if I don’t play well I get punished.” It is a statement,
not a question.
“If you don’t play well, you lose. That is all. And then you try
again, until you get better.” He gives an almost boyish smile. “We
can make a deal: every time you beat me, you can ask for any book
you wish to have.”
“And I don’t pay for it? Not even afterwards?”
“Of course not. You earn it by winning.”
“And what will you ask of me if you win?”
“I want no more than the pleasure of playing. My evenings are
very boring.”
“Is your wife not waiting for you?”
He hesitates for a moment. “She reads, and then she goes to
sleep,” he says with just the slightest tightening of his jaws.
“What can be the pleasure of playing with someone like me?” she
insists.
“There is no one else. Liesel doesn’t like my friends to come
over.”
“You can go out.”
“I cannot leave her here alone.” Almost apologetically he adds,
“You see, after the children we lost…and with Peter so sickly…”
“Now I understand.” There is a slow, bitter twitching of her
mouth. “You want someone you can beat. You will only teach me
because you know I can never beat you.”
“Why don’t you give it a try? If at any time – tomorrow, a week
from now, a month, no matter when – you decide you don’t like the
game, we can stop.”
There is a prolonged silence. Even the light seems to defer to
it.
Then Hanna says, “Show me.”
It is midnight before he insists that she go to bed.
During the next day she finds time – makes time – between bouts
of other work, even when she is supposed to be with Peter, to slip
into the study and rehearse the moves of the pieces on the
chessboard. “Think of it as a military campaign,” Herr Ludwig has
told her. “Think of it as a battle plan. If your enemy makes
certain moves, there are others you can make to counter him: stop
him, waylay him, forestall him, lure him in a different direction,
pounce on him from behind. And for every move you make, you can be
sure he will think up something else in turn; so keep him guessing,
don’t let him see what you really have in mind before it is too
late. Always try to stay one step ahead, try to read what is
happening inside his head.”
Her first thoughts, last night, were,
I shall never learn
this, I’m just not clever enough
. But all through the night new
thoughts, possibilities, manoeuvres, strategies, moves, shifts have
been careering through her mind. Now she is exhausted, but she
cannot rest before she has tried them out. When Peter complains she
tries to draw him into her game, but he soon loses interest and she
has no choice but to give it up too.
That evening, after the dishes have been done, she cannot wait
to go to the study. To her chagrin she turns out to be so tired
that she plays worse than the night before, and Herr Ludwig insists
that she retire early. Those are frustrating weeks. Hanna is not
very good; but she will not give up, and she has endless patience.
One evening there is an unexpected crisis, when Herr Ludwig, in an
attempt to bolster her confidence, makes a silly move at a crucial
point, loses his queen and finds his king mated.
But instead of seeing her jubilant as he expected, Hanna erupts
in a rage that catches him completely by surprise. He never thought
this compliant, placid girl could be so angry. She pushes her chair
back and jumps up so furiously that it falls over; in a single
sweep she rakes all the pieces from the board, scattering them
across the floor.
“Why did you do that?” she shouts at him, her face red and
contorted. “You have no right to humiliate me like that. Just
because I’m a servant girl!”
“I’m sorry, Hanna,” he stammers, genuinely upset. “I lost my
concentration for a moment, I made the wrong move…”