Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
“I know all about it,” says Katja.
He ignores the tartness in her voice. “Every day patrols are
sent out,” he continues. “This way, that way, everywhere. To make
sure the land is safe so that people like you can sleep
peacefully.”
“I’m sure we are very grateful to you, Leutnant.”
He prepares to say something, then thinks better of it and turns
away to oversee his men at their tasks.
Back at the oxcart Kahapa comes up to Hanna and Katja. He is
clearly upset, “You cannot do this,” he says. “Six soldiers with
guns and two others. It’s too much for us. They kill us,
Hanna.”
We cannot miss a chance like this
, she says through
Katja.
Can’t you see?
“I can see. That is why I want to stop it. This is big
trouble.”
Leave it to me
, she conveys to him. In transmitting the
message, Katja’s voice trembles with eagerness; but there is dread
in it too.
Bring the medicine woman to me
, Hanna signals.
She
will help us
.
While Hanna and Katja confer with Kamma, the soldiers bustle
about. They are still busy when the sun goes down; the west becomes
gaudy with the approaching night. Then, gradually, the activity
slows down. The men have made a huge fire. It must be visible all
the way from the horizon, flaring up into the sky, the hard dry
wood exploding from time to time, sending showers of sparks through
the dark.
Overhead a shooting star briefly blazes through the sky.
“That is not a good sign,” mutters old Tookwi.
“Just wait, you’ll see,” says Katja. She watches very closely as
Hanna does the rounds dispensing roasted venison to the young blond
men who sing her praises; they have not seen her without her
kappie.
They are all grouped around the fire; only the two Nama batmen
keep their distance. Himba has joined them, ostensibly to keep them
company, though he clearly bears them no amicable feelings. (“They
don’t even have their Nama names any more,” he told Kahapa, who
duly reported his sentiments to Hanna. “They’re Lukas and David
now. That’s white names. They go over to the other side.”)
The women are trying to keep the conversation going. But behind
the politeness of their efforts they are only waiting for Kamma’s
medicine to take effect.
Hanna sits with her chin resting on her drawn-up knees, staring
not at the men but into the fire. Something lies in the hollow of
her stomach like a heavy lump. Tonight it will happen. And tonight
will decide whether they can go on. If anything goes wrong – and at
this stage anything may – not all of them will see the sun rise
from its own blood in the morning. For once she almost wishes there
was someone, a God, a Jesus, a Mary, a star, the wind, to pray to.
Little Susan of the faraway beach
, she thinks,
if you are
somewhere there, intercede for me; tell them what I have gone
through, what blood I have waded through, to arrive at this dark
still moment
.
Much sooner than she has expected the first of the soldiers
start complaining of drowsiness, rise dully to their feet, stagger
off towards where their batmen have unrolled their blankets on the
far side of the fire. Two of them remain for longer, the lieutenant
and one of the smiling youngsters. Without his military cap he
looks like a boy.
Lieutenant Auer is the first of the two to get up. With
determination on his face he starts walking stiff-legged towards
the back of the cart. Hanna sits up, her body tensed, like a
lioness preparing for the chase. But halfway to the cart he stops,
yawns, stretches, grins sheepishly in the direction of the women,
and then changes direction towards his blankets.
The young private is the only one to remain behind. He will be
on sentry duty for the first quarter of the night. But already his
head is lolling. Katja moves closer to his side and starts chatting
to him, very gaily, seductively, her voice low and inviting. After
a while he reaches clumsily towards her, half loses his balance,
slumps against her.
She moves away. He rolls over like a bundle of washing.
“Kahapa,” the girl says, almost too softly for anyone to
hear.
It happens with such amazing precision and swiftness that it
seems like an unreal action taking place somewhere at a remove,
from which they remain detached. A hallucination, a mirage in the
dark, something they are dreaming. And yet they are involved in it,
in the most immediate and urgent and bloody way. Looming up above
the collapsed boy, larger than life in the flickering light, Kahapa
brings down the heavy kierie he is clasping in both hands. The
youngster utters something like a sigh, no more. In the same
instant the others move to the positions Hanna has mapped out for
them and communicated through Katja and Kahapa. The agile warrior
Himba remains with the batmen to make sure they will not interfere
or abscond. T’Kamkhab sets upon one of the sleeping young soldiers,
old Tookwi on another. Koo and Nerina take charge of the third,
Katja and old Kamma of the fourth. It has been decided that Hanna
will dispense with the lieutenant on her own, but as she moves into
position she discovers Gisela beside her. There is no stopping
her.
It is over in barely a minute, two at most. It’s been almost too
easy. There is a sense of anticlimax when they gather at the fire
afterwards. For a while they avoid each other’s eyes. Hanna finds
release in going to the back of the cart first to untie the thongs
that bind the two scared Nama girls. Katja, glancing up as they
approach, hurries away to fetch blankets for them.
Himba, joined by Kahapa, escorts the two trembling batmen to the
fire. One has soiled his trousers; everybody else moves a few yards
away.
“You stay with us now, or you want to go back to your fort?”
asks Kahapa.
They seem to realise what the second choice will entail.
“Please, we want to be with you,” they plead in breaking voices,
their legs collapsing. One grabs Kahapa’s knees, the other Himba’s.
Both men impatiently kick them out of the way.
A deep silence, like a large black blanket, folds over them. The
crackling of the long logs that feed the fire sounds like bursts of
gunfire. As each looks at the others, one unspoken thought takes
root in all: It may have been quick, but it wasn’t clean. They are
all spattered and smudged with blood – clothes, legs, hands, even
faces.
“We’ve done it,” says Katja at last, a sob in her voice.
Hanna puts her arm around the girl, but only for a moment. Then
she gesticulates; and Katja, regaining her composure, transmits the
message to Gisela:
How did you manage to do it? We said you could stay out of
it
.
“But I wanted to. I
had
to.”
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” says Katja.
Involuntarily, the thin woman raises her bloodstained hands and
gazes uncomprehendingly at them. With a kind of wonder in her voice
she says, “Yes, I’ve done it. I just imagined it was my husband.
Then it happened by itself.”
Hanna silently places a hand on Gisela’s shoulder and presses
it. She proceeds to Katja and repeats the gesture. And to each of
the others in turn. They stare at her with new respect, some with
awe. Slowly the tension subsides. In reaction, a few of the men
become jocular. But Hanna rapidly puts an end to it.
Through Katja she says,
The place is a mess. We must clean
up
.
“It wait for tomorrow,” suggests Kahapa.
It will be done now. We don’t want to attract predators. And
we don’t want anyone to know
.
Reluctantly at first, but with increasing energy, they start
digging a trench in the now accommodating earth. When it is big
enough for the six bodies, Hanna orders them to strip the dead
soldiers. They all help. Like six skinned animals the dead are
piled into the trench.
That is when Kahapa wants to take over. The backs of the bodies
must be broken, he says. The spines must be shattered into small
pieces, otherwise their shadows will come back to haunt them and
slay them in their dreams. But Hanna will not allow it. There is an
angry argument between them, with Katja interpreting.
“You take no chance with enemies!” Kahapa argues.
Killing is enough
, she counters.
We’re not jackals or
hyenas
.
“What you know of this land?” he challenges her. “We have our
own customs.”
Before we took on these soldiers you said it was
impossible
, she reminds him.
Was it I who said we must kill
them, or was it not?
“It was you,” he concedes, crestfallen.
Then you will now do as I say
.
Kahapa hesitates for another moment, then shrugs and yields.
The burial resumes. The brass buttons and the buckles torn from
the uniforms and the belts are put in a canvas bag to be buried
elsewhere, tomorrow, on Hanna’s instructions. Even if the bodies
are discovered it should be impossible for anyone to identify
them.
Hanna notices Katja staring at the naked dead men in a troubled
fascination she evidently finds it hard to conceal; and only when
they are covered with earth does the girl turn away. The mound is
covered with stones, and the huge fire is moved, log by log, to
resume on top of the grave. The whole camp is swept with branches.
Afterwards, when the fire is flaring up again, the uniforms are
thrown into the flames. They give off an awful, suffocating, smoky
smell; but after some time it dissipates in the stirring of the
wind.
When it is all over they return to the fire, their faces
blackened by smoke and streaked with sweat.
Kahapa takes off his hat with the leopard-skin band and
violently dusts it with his free hand. “You are a good fighter,” he
says to Hanna, replacing the hat on his head. The others murmur in
approval.
This is only the beginning
, Hanna replies through Katja.
It will get harder as we go on
. She looks slowly from one to
the other in the crazy light of the fire.
Is there anyone who
would like to back out now? You will not have another
chance
.
No one comes forward.
Old Tookwi glances up at the sky, half-obscured by the haphazard
movement of the smoke. “I still don’t like that star,” he mumbles,
more to himself than to them.
I
n the night, as
usual, Hanna and Katja lie together, close to the fire. Hanna
cannot sleep. She lies watching Kahapa’s broad back as he sits
keeping watch. She feels an urge to go and sit with him. But she
senses that she cannot leave Katja. The girl is not sleeping
either. Rigid, tense in every limb, she lies pressed against Hanna,
her breath shallow and uneven. And later she starts shivering. It
turns into an uncontrollable trembling; Hanna can hear her teeth
chattering. She isn’t crying, only shaking. Hanna holds her as
tightly as she can. Once Katja utters a muffled moan. Hanna
responds with an unarticulated sound in her throat, perhaps a
question, perhaps a sound of soothing.
“They were all so young,” whispers Katja suddenly. “They looked
so innocent.”
Young, yes
, answers Hanna with her fingers on the girl’s
body.
But not innocent. They brought the war here. You have seen
the Nama villages they destroyed. You have seen those
girls
.
Katja shivers. Hanna presses her open hand against the girl’s
mouth. For a moment Katja struggles against it, biting into the
palm; but gradually she begins to relax. And now she is crying, but
soundlessly. Then she drifts into sleep.
T
hey have travelled
for a day and a half, on horseback and on the oxcart, and now they
are approaching the fort from which the military patrol set out.
The landscape is more uneven here and the fort remains obscured
behind a series of high koppies. The two batmen, Lukas and David,
have shown them the way. A few of the others in the group were
reluctant, initially, about considering such a move. There used to
be thirty men in the fort, according to the batmen, which means
there will be twenty-four left. It sounds redoubtable, if not
foolhardy. But Hanna is adamant. If the six soldiers do not return
within a reasonable time their fellows are bound to go looking for
them; and there may be a greater risk in encountering several
patrols, probably coming from different directions, and
unexpectedly, than having the whole garrison herded together, she
argues. Besides, it is a challenge she cannot resist.
She spends many hours along the way, with Katja as her
interpreter, interrogating Lukas and David on every detail that may
in one way or another be relevant: the size and layout of the fort
and its fortifications, the roster by which the guard is changed,
by day, by night, the nature of its provisions and equipment, the
extent of the arms and ammunition at its disposal, its supplies of
fresh food and water (there is a well inside, she learns, and a
vegetable garden; information which more or less rules out the
possibility of a siege), its contacts with Windhoek (dispatches to
and fro once a fortnight, the last having occurred just a day
before the ill-fated patrol set out). She insists on hearing
anything at all they can report – facts, anecdotes, gripes,
suspicions, whatever – on the command structure, even on individual
members of the garrison, their morale, their interaction in the
barracks, their response to discipline, and the nature of that
discipline, the length of their postings, their experience or
inexperience in the army, their ages, the towns they come from,
what they think about their enemies and how they treat prisoners.
Sometimes David and Lukas can only shake their heads. Why, one can
almost see them thinking, would this woman want to know whether the
commander – Captain Weiss, a feared and respected man in his
fifties – is reasonable or unreasonable in his demands and
expectations of his men, whether he is married, and if so whether
his wife lives in Windhoek or in Germany, and whether they think he
misses her, whether he is a religious man, whether he reads before
he goes to bed at night, whether he rises before his men in the
morning or prefers to take it easy, whether he has a passion for
his job or merely does his duty, whether he really cares for his
soldiers or simply commands them…? And then the second in command,
Sergeant Vogel. And the third. For sure, she cannot be in her right
mind.