Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
Not one of us has had much choice
, Hanna reminds her
through Katja.
Not me, not Katja either
.
“But now you are free to go as you wish.”
I am not yet free
, Hanna conveys to her.
“What do you mean?”
Hanna just shakes her head.
“When are you leaving?” Gisela presses her.
As soon as we have rested
.
“If only I could go away with you.” She shakes her head; the
ends of her straggly hair swing past her chin. “But what do I do
with the children? If they stay with Gottlieb, God knows what will
happen to them.”
“I’m sure he is a good father,” says Katja impulsively.
“What do you know?” Gisela says with listless reproach. “If only
they were not all girls. This is no land for women.”
It does not mean we can let the men have their way
, Hanna
makes Katja say. A difficult sentence to convey; but by now Katja
knows how to round off with canny intuition the gaps of
grammar.
“Anything must be better than staying here,” Gisela insists with
a kind of numb stubbornness.
If you knew what we’re going to do…
Hanna shakes her
head.
If we ourselves could tell…
She looks straight at
Gisela, her fingers digging into Katja’s arm with urgency.
For
all we know there may be no end to the bloodshed
. There is the
hint of a grim little smile around her misshapen mouth.
But at
least no one will stop us
.
A long shadow falls over them; the pastor approaches with the
sun directly behind him. They all look up, Hanna grimly, Katja with
an energy of expectation, Gisela with apprehension.
“What are the ladies engaged in? Woman talk?” asks the Reverend
Maier with as much dour lightness as he can muster. “Well, enough
of frivolity. Let our minds not wander too far from the things of
the Lord. It is time for the service. Shall we go and set an
example to the poor heathens?”
O
nce again Hanna
slips outside into the night to escape the oppressive closeness of
the narrow house. This time, as a precaution, and suspecting that
Katja is also lying awake, she takes the girl with her, mindful not
to disturb any of the sleeping children. It is another night ablaze
with stars. And again Kahapa looms up from the blackness; perhaps,
it occurs to Hanna, he stays close to the house all the time to
keep an eye on them. The thought is singularly reassuring.
“What are you doing here?” asks Katja, surprised.
“I wait for you.”
Hanna moves her fingers on Katja’s forearm:
He thinks this is
a bad place
.
“It is a good place!” Katja objects.
“You are white. For black people it is not good.” He adds with a
vehemence he has not showed before: “This land is a good place
before the white people is come. Then we live everywhere, with all
our cattle.”
“You said once your people also came from a far country,” Katja
reminds him. “And not all white people are the same, you know.”
He utters a guttural sound of contempt. Ignoring everything they
have said so far, and with an eloquence he has seldom demonstrated
before, he launches into a story. Long, long ago, he recalls, in
the time when there were no people in the world, there was only the
omumborumbonga tree in the middle of the world, at Okahandja. Then
the god of the heavens, Njambi Karunga, came to the omumborumbonga
tree and he called the first man and the first woman from the
hollow of the tree. The man was Mukuru and the woman was
Kamungundu. The cattle also came from that tree. Mukuru and
Kamungundu slept together and they slept together, and all the
Herero people came from them, the god’s elect. And when their
children grew up, they sacrificed an ox to the god. One of the
women took the black liver of the ox for her family and from it
came the other black people, the Ovambo and the Ovatyaona. And
another woman took the blood of that ox, and from it came the Red
People, the Nama. But the sheep and goats the god Njambi Karunga
called from underneath a big flat rock. There was a bad Herero girl
who ran away from her people and lay down on the flat rock to
copulate with it, and from her cunt came the baboons and the
Damaras.
Through the shimmering darkness Kahapa looks at them. “So you
see, there is no place for white people here. They come from
another place and just make trouble for everybody.”
“This is not the same story you told us last time, about how
your people came here,” Katja reminds him. “About the two brothers
at the big tree.”
Kahapa shrugs in the dark. “We have many stories,” he says,
unfazed. “And they are all true. You must learn to listen right.
What I tell you this time is about the trouble the white people
bring. Even among themselves. Look what they do to Hanna. Look at
that Albert Gruber. Look at the white people of this place.”
“There is nothing wrong with these people,” Katja protests.
“A father who only touch his children to beat them is a bad
father,” he says calmly.
“Kahapa!” cries Katja, flustered and angry. “How can you say a
thing like that?”
“You do not see how unhappy his whole family is?”
Katja turns to Hanna: “Tell him it isn’t his fault, Hanna.”
I’m afraid I believe Kahapa
, Hanna signals against the
skin of her arm.
“You, Hanna,” says Kahapa. “I understand what you must do in
this land. You do what I do to the man that kill my woman. I walk
with you. But when it is done you must go back to your home.”
Where is my home?
Hanna asks through Katja.
I have no
home, Katja has no home. We have only this land to live in.
Together with the other people from your omumborumhonga
tree
.
Kahapa shakes his head, but says nothing.
“You must go to sleep now,” Katja tells him. There is still
hostility in her voice.
Hanna puts an arm around her shoulders. They remain there for a
while, until Kahapa has disappeared behind the white blemish of the
house on the smooth black skin of the night. Together they turn
back.
When they slip through the front door, a black shape detaches
itself from the darkness like an errant ghost and comes towards
them. It is the missionary.
“I have just come to check that all is well,” he explains. “You
two really should not wander about in the dark.”
In an impulsive rush of emotion Katja throws herself against
him, her arms around his neck. “Thank God you’re here to look after
us,” she exclaims impulsively, her voice strangled with emotion.
“You are such a good man.”
He remains standing awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his
hands. In the faint light from outside only Hanna can see his face.
And what she reads there is unexpected: not pleasure, no hint of
tenderness, but revulsion, as if he has been assaulted by something
sordid and hideous.
“Take your hands off me, you little slut!” he hisses, so loudly
that all the breathing in the dark room stops abruptly. “I will
have none of this lewdness. You are a child of the Devil.”
His reaction is so out of proportion to what has happened that
it leaves both Katja and Hanna gasping with incomprehension.
Before they can recover he stalks away through the dark; they
can hear him tearing open the curtain in the doorway as he rushes
into the bedroom. Slowly, hesitantly, studiously, the breathing
resumes around them.
Hanna pulls the front door shut. The two of them lie down
together. Katja is shaking.
“I just wanted to…” she stammers. “I thought…I never meant to…It
was like hugging my father, but he…My God, Hanna, what is going
on?”
All Hanna can do is to hold the girl very tightly against her,
making low soothing sounds in her throat; but she is conscious of
her own heart beating.
“He thought I…” Katja begins again. Hanna covers her mouth with
her hand but she pushes it away. “Hanna, I’m not like that! I’m not
what he said…How could he…”
That’s enough now
, Hanna conveys to her with her fingers
moving across her trembling face.
I know you’re not like
that
. A silence.
But to him it makes no difference
. She
breathes in long and deeply.
I’m afraid he is just like those
other men who came to Frauenstein. And the ones that punished me on
the train
.
“I can’t believe it. He always talks about God.”
He has to. Because he is scared of himself. Deep down he is
no different
.
Next door, beyond the thin curtain, the now familiar rhythms of
the dark begin again.
H
anna cannot shake
off the memory of that German woman and her piano in the
wilderness. Was she brought out, like Hanna herself, in expectation
of a new life, a place to live, a place with palm trees? For a
piano to survive the voyage by sea, the train journey, the trek
through the desert – dear God, it must be almost more unlikely than
for a woman. When she herself came out she had her magic shell with
her; and even that she’s lost. Only the memory of a sound has
lingered, like something dreamt. That woman, now lost too, buried
in an unmarked grave, brought her sound with her. Now smashed to
pieces. They would both of them have fared better with Opa’s mute
instrument. This terrible land.
I
magine Hanna sitting
in the narrow shade of the wall, staring out into the arrogant
light which is beating down on the desert landscape as if it has
the sole right to be there; as if no shade or darkness has a
purchase on existence. In the distance the men of the settlement
are toiling, as they do every goddamned day, heaving stone upon
stone to add to the greater glory of God and his able servant.
Soon, she knows, she will have to move on. They could do with a few
more days of rest – Kahapa, in particular, has not quite recovered
his strength – but an uneasiness has been building up inside her,
and in him. Katja, especially, has been showing signs of distress
ever since the night she had the emotional encounter with Gottlieb
Maier. At the same time there is a shadow of reluctance in Hanna’s
mind. If the missionary has whetted her resolve, honing the hate in
her to an even keener steel, the knowledge of what lies ahead
cannot but contain a sad fear as well. Not because of what awaits
her
, for she has been prepared to face it since they left
Frauenstein, but for what it may demand of Katja.
It is not the violence as such that intimidates her, nor the
pain it inflicts. It is rather the denial inherent to it: the
threat it poses to whatever that strange, secret thing may be she
would like to think of as ‘human’. The horror perpetrated by that
man – those men – on the train: yes, of course it cries out to be
avenged. In the name of being human. But if she sets out to avenge
that, is there anything in herself which is not placed in jeopardy?
Is it possible to destroy another without destroying at least
something in oneself? Can blood be redeemed by blood alone?
She has not heard Katja approaching and looks up, startled, when
the girl comes up from behind, carrying a Bible in her hand.
Hanna raises her hands in a gesture of questioning:
What are
you doing here? I thought you were helping Gisela with her
classes
.
“I couldn’t stand it any more. Do you know what that man made
her teach the children today?” She opens the book where a pencil
protrudes from the pages. “The story of Noah and his sons. You know
the bit about Ham, the father of Canaan, who sees the old man lying
naked in a drunken stupor, and then telling his brothers about it,
and then they walk backward into the tent to cover him up?”
Hanna shrugs, vaguely amused.
Katja starts reading in a voice quivering with rage, stabbing at
the words with her pencil: “
And Noah awoke from his wine and
knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed he
Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his
brethren
.”
What is that to you?
Hanna gesticulates.
“The pastor ordered Gisela to tell the children that because
they’re black they’re the descendants of Ham or Canaan or whoever
and that is why they’ve now got to slave for us. If you ask me,
it’s because a few of the men started complaining about working on
this bloody wall. So now the wrath of God and all his angels have
to be called in to keep them in their place. Even if he has to
twist the Bible to help. I mean, where in this piece does it say
that Ham was black? Suppose he was, how did Noah manage to have two
white sons and one black? And who was the sinner anyway? The old
drunken bastard or the son who just happened to find him snoring in
his tent, covered in his own vomit, most likely? And if that really
was supposed to be wrong, why not go for Ham himself? Why hit on
Canaan who wasn’t anywhere near, as far as I can make out?”
Hanna reaches up to take the girl’s hand.
Why should you let
that bother you?
she wants to know, making small soothing
motions with her fingers.
Just ignore it
.
“But Gisela is upset too,” Katja insists. “And she has no
choice.” She shakes her head. “I suppose I should have stayed to
give her some support. But I just couldn’t swallow it any more.”
She makes an attempt to control herself. “I don’t know how she
manages. She isn’t strong. And all those children. Now her baby is
sick too.”
You’re working too hard
.
“It’s better to be busy.” She sits down next to Hanna and flings
the black Bible into the thin film of powdery grey dust which
covers the rock-hard earth. “Perhaps, you know, I’m trying to make
up for all the times I didn’t help my mother. Gertrud and I” – she
seldom mentions her sister; there is obviously much she still has
not come to terms with – “we were both very disobedient,
difficult. The trading post was such a lonely place for us.” A long
silence. “You know, my mother loved music. She had quite a good
voice and would often sing to us. Hymns and things, mostly. But
sometimes other songs, lighthearted and gay and sunshiny songs. I
thought of her that day in the Grubers’ farmhouse when they broke
the piano: it was such an incredible sound. Like an explosion. As
if all the sounds the piano had ever made, all the sounds it was
capable of making, suddenly broke out together. And then the
terrible silence afterwards. All that sound – gone. But where has
it gone to? It must still be somewhere. If only one could find it.
And Mother’s singing too. All the music of our lives. I often he
awake at night thinking about it, wondering, and I understand
nothing of it at all.”