Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
Windhoek.
A
ll her life she has
lived on the fringe of her own story, she thinks. Now at last she
is taking charge of it herself. She makes it happen. She also
sees
it happen. Sees how through the last months of their
wandering through the memory of the desert, as they move from ridge
to ridge, from one armed patrol to the next, from well to well and
fort to fort, their numbers increase. In the beginning, when she
left Frauenstein, only Katja was with her. Then they found Kahapa,
the man as massive as the omumborumbongo tree. From the farm of
Albert Gruber they brought the monkey man T’Kamkhab who is no
longer with them, and his strong wife Nerina enraged by her
barrenness. At the mission station the woman of death, Koo, joined
them, burnt up inside by the urge to find the bones of her child.
And the medicine woman Kamma. And the warrior Himba, now still
recovering from his wound. The rainmaker Tookwi. And Gisela, who
has finally begun to avenge a lifetime of bitterness at the hands
of her husband by killing men.
In the first fort every living soul was annihilated. But from
the next they recruited five more followers; from the one after
that, twenty; then thirty, then more. Whole garrisons who have
somehow learned – from the wind, avers Kahapa – of their advance,
come over to their side. Young men in the prime of their life, with
the bloom of youth and arrogant innocence still on them. Whole Nama
villages through which they pass, abandon their huts and goats and
pots and mats to follow them. Travellers,
smouse
, farm
labourers trekking in search of grazing, explorers, prospectors
lured by tales of fabulous treasure waiting to be discovered,
gun-runners, once the entire population of an unlikely brothel
flourishing in the wilderness – everybody comes flocking towards
them.
A day’s journey from Windhoek they reach one of the vast
concentration camps von Trotha has had constructed before his
departure to contain the hundreds and thousands of indigenous
people rounded up as a protective measure in the war: the
populations of whole villages are siphoned into them, women and men
and children indiscriminately, to ensure the safety of the
hinterland. At the approach of Hanna’s army the garrison in charge
surrenders without firing a shot. Eight thousand detainees flood
through the gates, famished and wasted but jubilant, to join the
new army. Stretching from horizon to horizon, they move on,
triumphant before they have even engaged in battle.
And not only the living, but the dead as well, come flocking to
Hanna’s standard of buckram and silk, in blue and silver and gold.
Graves open as they pass and yield up their humble occupants, some
still with skin and dried flesh on them, others skeletons with
rattling bones and invincible grimaces. The numerous ghosts from
the corridors and empty spaces of Frauenstein return to Hanna to
show their solidarity. A host of ghosts, from all over the country,
from the distant south where the great Gariep runs into the
Atlantic and washes out its diamonds on the sand to the far north
where the Kunene winds its tortuous way through mountains and
forests, spilling over its banks to leave whole plains inundated,
brilliant in the moving sun. And still they come, from all times,
all layers of time. The black women stolen by Diaz from the coast
of Guinea, the hordes of slaves gathered in the House of the Dead
on the isle of Goree off the coast of Senegal and who died even
before they boarded the ships for the New World, all the
innumerable ghosts of the wastelands on the great continent. The
hei nun
, as the Nama people call them, the grey-feet; the
sobo khoin
, the people of the shadows. Throbbing and
thriving, grim and grey, they advance from all sides to clamour for
their liberation, at last, God, at last. A horde so great that not
even the light of the sun can penetrate them. Like a vast cloud
they come sweeping across the landscape, a shadow of death claiming
the life they have been deprived of, over centuries and centuries.
Moving with Hanna and her host, an army like no one has ever seen
or dreamed of, growing, ever growing, like a silence trapped inside
a shell suddenly starting to swell into a whisper, a drone, a boom,
an exultant triumphant roar that demolishes everything before it, a
huge wave breaking over the ruined land to bring hope, and life,
and life, and life.
This is what she sees, what she dreams of.
In a mirage the trees are always upside down.
W
hat really happens
in the desert is very different. In retrospect, the moment of their
great triumph in the fort seems more and more to have been also the
beginning of a decline, an entry into darkness and adversity. It
begins with the death of old Tookwi. In spite of all Kamma’s
remedies (or because of them, Katja dares to suspect) the old
rainmaker never gets well again; and eight days after they have
blown up the fort they wake up to find he has quietly died in the
night.
“It is Tsui-Goab,” says Kamma with a knowing nod; as if they
needed the reminder.
And not even a week later they lose Nerina as well. The death of
T’Kamkhab in the ambush among the koppies has hit her harder than
they would have expected from someone as strong and angry as
Nerina. Often she has seemed more of a mother than a wife to him;
as if in looking after a man brought up to be the fool of others
she could express all the dammed-up love left in her after being
compelled to accept the fact of her own barrenness. She seemed,
Hanna sometimes thought, condemned to continue looking in the
desert for the children she’d lost by aborting them when she
couldn’t face the idea of bringing into the world the babies of
German soldiers. As if for the rest of her life she wouldn’t be
left in peace by their shadows. And now she is gone. One morning
when they wake up she is no longer there. Hanna is stricken. Her
first thought is that a predator may have come in among them in the
night and carried her off. But there are no tracks; and there were
no sounds.
It is Kahapa who tries to explain the inexplicable: “T’Kamkhab
is dead. Her children is gone. She must go too.”
“But she has nowhere to go!” protests Katja.
“So that is where she go. Nowhere. To find what she has not
lost.”
“How can we go on like this?” asks Katja, a hint of despair in
her voice. “There were ten of us. Now we’re only seven.”
It is not a matter of numbers but of will
, Hanna gently
reminds her.
But she thinks: We are all in search of what we have not had,
are we not? The children, the dreams, everything that was never
allowed to become what might have been. Everything which diminishes
what
we
are capable of and now will never know. But for that
very reason we cannot stop. The going itself is more important than
loss or gain. We are here because we must go on. We will go on
because we are here. As long as those of us who remain can stay
together we shall not give up.
She studies the others when they are not looking. Her army, her
sad menagerie. Katja, the gazelle girl, her early sprightliness
beginning to fade. Gisela, a pale beaked stork, withdrawing more
and more into herself. The toothless Kamma, a shrivelled little
baboon, mumbling over her herbs and smelly tufts of hair and bits
of skin. Koo, the owl-woman, whose eyes are ever on the distance
where she imagines the bones of her lost son. Kahapa the lonely
elephant bull. Himba the wounded buffalo. And she herself, the
morose marabou. They can make it. They must. They will.
Then comes their most calamitous day.
T
hey see the little
fort from quite a long way off, set on a low rise above a plain
covered in thorn trees. There are too few of them now to work out
the kind of battle plan that worked so well at the first fort: not
knowing how many soldiers are housed inside they would be foolhardy
to mount an ambush with only two or three of their own; and the
thorn trees provide less shelter than the rocky outcrops they were
able to use as a hideout the first time. So all they can do is to
approach as openly as possible and hope to devise something once
they arrive; if the odds are too big, as they have been on a few
more recent occasions, they will simply feign innocence and ask for
shelter overnight.
Their approach is closely watched from high up on the front wall
of the little fort: they can make out at least eight men, later
ten, several of them with binoculars, all armed with rifles. Hanna
leads her group on a relaxed trot so as to allay suspicion. As by
this time they have only five horses left, apart from the two
pulling the cart, Katja and Gisela share one mare, Kamma and Koo
another. Kahapa and Himba each has his own gelding; so does Hanna,
as befits a commander.
Six soldiers in uniform emerge from the wide front gate when
they draw up outside. Hanna reins in her horse. Her troops follow
suit.
“Who are you?” shouts the commanding officer, a man with bright
red hair and a red moustache. “What do you want?”
By this time they all know the story by heart, so Katja replies
without prompting, “We come from the mission station of Pastor
Maier. This is his wife. We’re on our way to Windhoek. Can you put
us up for the night?”
“What are these natives doing with you?”
“They’re escorting us for our protection. They are all members
of Reverend Maier’s congregation.”
“You three white women can come in.”
“What about our two domestic servants?”
The officer confers with his men. “All right then,” he
announces, clearly reluctant. “But the men must be locked up until
you leave. We can’t take any risks.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry, but I’m
sure you will understand.”
“Can’t the men camp outside?”
“No.”
If some of us are not allowed inside, we’ll all stay
outside
, Hanna angrily prompts Katja. But Gisela interrupts
her. They need a proper rest. And who knows, once they’re
inside…
After a moment Hanna consents. Kahapa and Himba withdraw into
themselves in sullen anger. They are disarmed by the soldiers and
roughly marched to a small dark cubicle attached to the barracks
inside the enclosure; clearly some kind of detention cell. In the
tussle Kahapa’s hat is knocked from his head. This so enrages him
that for a moment Hanna fears that he will break loose and attack
his captors, which will endanger them all.
She urgently jabs Katja in the side and the girl calls out,
“Please, Kahapa! Don’t!”
In the brief silence that follows Hanna rushes forward, picks up
the hat, dusts it, and presses it against her chest in a protective
and reassuring gesture. Several of the soldiers look at her in open
disapproval, if not disgust. The big man makes an effort to
restrain himself before he is bundled into the cell. From the low
heavy door he briefly looks back, smouldering.
Hanna waves at him with the hat.
It won’t be for long
,
she tries to signal; but whether he understands she does not
know.
The door is locked, the key pocketed by the lieutenant.
The cart, with Gisela on it, is pulled into the courtyard and
left in the care of Koo and Kamma, while the other women are
offered a corner in the barracks. A couple of soldiers rig up a
curtain to offer them some privacy. But from the way in which they
eye Katja it does not seem as if much store can be set by that.
It is not a happy place. The fifteen soldiers who man it have
not been relieved for months, their commander’s discipline is
strict, their food supplies are running as low as their morale.
I’m sure we can win some of them over to our side
, Hanna
tells Katja while the red-haired Lieutenant Muller, flanked by two
orderlies, takes them on a tour of the fort.
“We don’t have time,” the girl whispers anxiously. “For God’s
sake, don’t try anything rash.”
We cannot let them get away with what they’ve done to Kahapa
and Himba
.
“This is just a small stop on our way,” Katja reminds her. “We
still have far to go. Please don’t risk everything now.”
We shall see
. The square set of her jaw alarms Katja even
more than what she has said in her sign language.
But Katja has to reconsider when in the late afternoon they are
invited, with a suspect show of generosity, to attend a session of
‘target practice’ behind the fort. With the exception of two
sentries left on the walls, the whole garrison is in attendance. In
what looks like a cattle kraal a number of Nama prisoners, about
thirty or forty of them, are kept shackled together. They are in a
shocking state. It is obvious they haven’t been fed in days, and in
the open kraal, exposed to the blaze of the sun by day and the
fierce desert cold by night, they are clearly in the last stages of
deprivation.
Six of the prisoners are unshackled and dragged outside and
ordered to run. Only two or three make the effort to stagger to
their feet, the rest remain sprawling on the ground. Lieutenant
Muller makes a curt gesture with his head to his men. They need no
further instruction. Surging forward, they set upon the prisoners
with sjamboks and the butts of their rifles to beat them to their
feet. The Namas break into a pitiful imitation of jogging. That is
when the target practice starts.
“Stop them!” shouts Gisela, grabbing the lieutenant by the arm.
“For God’s sake, you can’t do that!”
“My men need to stay in shape,” he answers with a pinched grin
like the cut of a knife across his face. “You must try to
understand. It is the only diversion we can offer them to keep them
happy.”