Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
Without waiting to see any more the women hurry back round the
walls of the fort to the entrance. Behind them the shooting and the
shouting continue. Both Gisela and Katja have to stop along the way
to vomit. Hanna doesn’t, but tears are running down her cheeks. She
makes no sound.
You see, we have no choice
, she tells Katja once they are
back at their cart inside the enclosure.
These men have no right
to live. Do you agree?
Katja sits with her knees drawn up, hiding her face in her arms.
“They will kill us all,” she says. She looks up. “But you’re right.
We have no choice.”
With strange detachment Hanna discusses her strategy with them.
It is desperate; but they cannot come up with anything better. Koo
and Kamma are brought into the discussion; Kamma silently starts
working on her potions. Before the men return Katja goes to the
heavy door of the detention cell to talk to Kahapa inside.
Shortly before supper, the sun already down, the men return. The
sullenness they have shown during the day seems to have lifted; but
there is a kind of desperation in their exaggerated jocularity. It
is, Katja whispers to Hanna, like singing an obscene song at a
funeral.
Unlike the copious meals they have been served by garrisons
elsewhere, this supper is frugal. And not very well prepared. Not
one of the women is in a mood for talking, but they grimly try to
swallow their hostility, although Hanna offsets it in a gesture of
dangerous defiance by taking Kahapa’s hat with her to the mess and
putting it on the table next to her place.
The lieutenant tries to ignore it. “It seems the ladies were too
delicate to enjoy our target practice?” he sneers.
They remain silent.
“You must not try to compare it to life on a mission station,”
he persists. “It is not souls we are trying to save but our
country.”
“Perhaps there are other ways,” says Gisela icily.
“We are at war,” he points out. “Don’t forget that.”
“In all the time we have been trekking through the desert,” says
Gisela with a hard edge to her voice, “we have heard many soldiers
talking about the dangers of this war. But we have never seen it.
We have only seen peace and quiet.”
“You are women,” he says in a patronising voice. “You do not
know what to look for. I cannot expect you to understand the world
of men.”
“There you are quite right,” snaps Gisela.
The evening seems headed for disaster. But then, to the surprise
of the others, Katja turns to the lieutenant, her eyes unnaturally
bright. “I think it takes a very brave man to survive in conditions
like these,” she says. “Of course we were shocked this afternoon.
But it is because we cannot hope to understand what you have to put
up with. Without men like you there would be no Germans left in
Africa.”
It seems amazing that he should fall for this. But for the rest
of the meal he ignores Hanna and Gisela to focus all his attention
on the young woman. And long after the table has been cleared and
the soldiers have withdrawn to their sleeping quarters he is still
in earnest conversation with Katja. Which gives her ample
opportunity unobtrusively to lace his beer with old Kamma’s
concoction. He must be far gone, she thinks derisively, not to
notice the bitter taste. But she puts away all thought and feeling,
hardly even glancing towards Hanna and Gisela in the shadows on the
far side of the table, as she concentrates only on what is at hand,
on the flow of their conversation.
More and more unevenly it moves on as the men on their bunks
begin to snore. The officer is turning maudlin, telling Katja about
his family, his wife, his three adorable children – just look, here
I have a photograph of them, don’t you think they’re beautiful? I
cannot wait to see them again. To get out of this goddamned place,
back to civilisation, to decent people, musical evenings, bands
playing in the park of a Sunday, visits to good friends, green
green trees and manicured gardens. Gardens. Children. Gardens. So
green, so green. And then he is gone.
Katja feels sick again. But this is not the time.
From the breast pocket of his uniform she retrieves the key to
the detention cell. In a minute the two prisoners are free. The hat
with the band of leopard skin is restored to Kahapa.
There is a near-full naked moon. Which helps them. But it will
also help the two sentries on the front and back walls.
Like shadows they flit across the courtyard. Kahapa and Himba
creep up the stairs to the sentry posts. With surprising ease – but
they are so used to this by now – they garrotte the two guards and
throw the bodies over the wall. Now the women can move about more
easily. They open the stable doors and begin to lead out the
horses, two by two; their own and those of the garrison. To make
sure they cannot be pursued later. Down in the valley below the
horses are tethered to the thorn trees.
Afterwards, the Nama prisoners in the kraal behind the fort are
freed. Later, Hanna may find it difficult to explain this impulsive
decision. Everything else she has done has been so lucidly planned
and executed; whence, then, this one moment of rashness? It can
only have been prompted by the excess of rage stirred up in her by
the treatment of the prisoners at the hands of their captors that
afternoon. And even when they are set free the wretched Namas are
in such a state that they seem incapable of realising what is
happening; most of them simply cower, trying to cover their heads
against the blows they take for granted. Some do not even move.
Only a few of the strongest seem to grasp the unbelievable and
stagger to their feet in the dull moonlight.
They do not have too much time. What they are waiting for is the
relief of the guard at midnight; this information, with everything
else they need to know, Hanna has elicited, through Katja, from the
lieutenant on their first conducted tour. With the two new sentries
out of the way, the garrison will be down to thirteen. Still an
uncomfortable disproportion, but the risk will be lessened.
Once all the horses are outside, they pull the cart to the
entrance. This will allow only one or two persons at a time to go
past. And none at all if Hanna’s strategy succeeds.
Kahapa, Himba and Hanna return to the sentry posts on the wall.
They are all armed with guns and pistols now. As soon as the new
guards have been killed, Himba will go down to join the other women
in the courtyard below.
But that is where it all goes wrong. Just before the new
sentries are to come on duty the silence of the night is rent by
noises from behind the fort. As the reality of their release has
begun to dawn on more and more of the prisoners in the kraal,
shouts of surprise and jubilation grow from a series of low
uncertain separate murmurs into a chorus of amazement and
celebration. Soldiers, befuddled with sleep, some naked, some
partly clothed, come stumbling and tumbling from their quarters,
spilling into the courtyard, not knowing what the hell is going
on.
Hanna’s depleted troops are caught just as unprepared. From her
post on the wall she sees Kahapa jump down the outside of the wall
to join the others at the gate.
She knows that she has to follow. But surely the wall is much
too high. Still, the only alternative is to be caught. She closes
her eyes, and jumps into the darkness, to her certain death.
K
oo, who is supposed
to watch in the courtyard for a signal from Hanna, panics in the
sudden confusion that engulfs the fort and rushes forward to put
the cart to the torch. Immediately the whole load of gunpowder
explodes, taking her with it. Not a shred of clothing, not a bone
of her body, will be left. The night turns a furious red as if
Gaunab, the god of darkness, has come down from the sky.
Hanna does not fall to her death. Inexplicably, almost
miraculously, she lands on her feet outside the wall, and goes down
on hands and knees the moment the cart explodes in the courtyard.
Purely by instinct she starts running. Kahapa, she assumes, will be
doing the same.
But the angry giant has landed, swearing and cursing and
bellowing, on a heap of loose stones, and has broken his hip,
collapsing in agony. At the front entrance Himba and the others are
thrown back by the impact of the explosion, but manage to scramble
to their feet to shoot wildly at anyone who tries to break past the
burning cart through the gates of hell.
When at last they reach the thorn trees where the horses are
supposed to wait, they find that most have snapped their reins and
bolted, obviously terrified by the explosion. Two others have half
strangled themselves and broken their legs; they have to be shot at
close range. On the remaining three Hanna and Katja and Gisela,
Himba and Kamma succeed in making their escape. At least they
cannot be pursued with any effect. But they have no idea if it has
been defeat or victory.
From a safe distance, shaking with shock and rage, they watch
for a long time the fire blazing in the night, eclipsing the
tentative stars.
We have to go back
, Hanna urges Katja.
We must find
Kahapa, we cannot leave him there
.
But they may all be killed if they do. Both Katja and Gisela
physically hold her back. Even so she might have broken free; but
Himba joins them in restraining her, leaving her sobbing with
powerless rage.
Throughout the long day that follows they have to wait in the
distance, hidden among trees. There are still signs of life at the
fort, a few soldiers moving about, appearing on the walls to scour
the veld through binoculars, emerging from the front, setting to
work on mending the gate and a caved-in portion of the wall before
dark.
Katja is anxious to continue on their way while they can; even
if the fort has not been wiped out, they must have decimated the
garrison. There is reason to be content. But Hanna refuses. They
will not budge until Kahapa has been found, she insists with quiet
fury. They have never seen her in such a state. No one dares to
counter her. And through the long hours of the winter’s day, white
with piercing light, they wait for night to fall.
As it turns out, they have no problem finding Kahapa. Though it
is not easy to recognise the man they used to know so well. The
body has been thrown out, like garbage, right in front of the gate.
It seems barely human, more like the carcass of a large slaughtered
animal. It has been flayed. Not a tatter of skin remains on the
bloody mess of flesh and sinews and bones, the eyes gouged out.
And then the shooting starts. Surely they should have been alert
to mat. The body has been thrown out as bait to lure them close.
But the discovery of Kahapa is so terrible that for some time they
can do nothing but stand and stare. It can only be the treachery of
the moonlight, or the excessive eagerness and rage of the few
attackers on the walls, that prevents the total, swift annihilation
of Hanna’s army. All around them bullets thud and zing past,
ricocheting, sounding from close by like angry bees. But they do
get away.
Except for Himba, who refuses to mount his horse. Making no
attempt at all to hide, or even to duck, he storms the gate on his
own and takes up position right in front of it, his chest heaving,
his legs planted into the earth like tree stumps, his gun pressed
against his barely healed shoulder. It is likely that he brings two
or even three of his attackers down from their high perch on the
wall (there is no time to make sure). But then, inevitably, with a
smothered groan, he himself goes down.
Before the end of the night Kamma disappears. No one has seen
her go. It is as if she has simply vanished, without sign or sound,
leaving nothing at all behind. The desert has reclaimed her.
And the following morning Gisela takes what has remained of the
potion prepared for Lieutenant Muller, and dies very
peacefully.
Only Hanna and Katja remain.
K
atja no longer
bleeds. She is pregnant.
T
he vultures are the
first sign of life they see as they approach the hills above the
town. In intricate, interwoven spirals they descend to the rubbish
dumps on the far side of the hollow in which the small, tidy town
with its four thoroughfares is set.
And then the palms. Palms everywhere. Along the axis of the main
street – the Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse, Katja informs Hanna, with an
unexpected catch in her throat – and in small clusters among the
sprinkling of homes, around the fort and the few sprawling
administrative buildings on the opposite hillside, and on the
outskirts. An emerald oasis in the harsh brown landscape. It could
be a place of dreams, nestled deep in the whorl of a shell.
“How strange,” says Katja. “I almost cannot believe that it has
taken us so long to get here.”
The Israelites took forty years to cross the desert from
Egypt to Canaan
.
“You think this is our Promised Land?”
It has palm trees
.
“Shall we go down now?”
Hanna nods quietly.
They tether the horses to a tree and start the descent on foot.
Now that at last they have arrived, they are reluctant about
covering the final lap. It takes a long time to go down.
Hanna remembers, wryly, her childhood dream of leading a
procession through the streets, a woman arrayed in purple and
scarlet colour and sitting on a scarlet coloured beast, with seven
heads and ten horns. It was supposed to be Bremen then, certainly a
larger town than this Windhoek.