Philida (2 page)

He take me.

How did he take you? I have to know all the particulars. The law demands that I must find out everything that happened. So that it can all be written down very precisely in this book.

I tell him: He
naai
me.

The tall thin man with the bald head give a cough, as if his spit is now dried up. After a while he ask: Did you resist?

Grootbaas, in the beginning I try to, but that is when Frans begin to talk to me very nicely and tell me I mustn’t be scared, he won’t hurt me, he just want to make me happy. If I will let him push into me, then he will make sure to buy
me
my freedom when the time is right, that is what he promise me before the LordGod of the Bible, he say he himself will buy freedom for me. But I remember thinking, how can it be that a thing like freedom can hurt one so bad? Because it was my first time and he didn’t act very gentle with me, he was too hasty, I think it was his first time too.

And then what happened?

When he finish, he get up again and tie the
riem
of his breeches.

It is just as well the man don’t give me much time to think, because the questions start coming again and they getting more and more difficult.

Philida, I want to know what happened
afterwards
? ask the man with the ploughed field on his forehead. Did you … I mean, were there any consequences to the intercourse you had in the bamboo copse?

I don’t know about that intercourse thing and the consequences, Grootbaas.

This thing you did in the bamboo place. Did it
lead
to anything? He getting very red in the face. What you did together in that bamboo place …? Did anything happen inside you – to your body?

Not right away, Grootbaas. Only after he lie with me a few times, I start to swell.

How many times?

Many times, Grootbaas.

Two times? Three times? Ten? Twenty?

I fold my hands around my shoulders. And once again I say: Many times, Grootbaas.

Unexpectedly he ask: Was he the first man that was with you?

I just shake my head because I don’t feel like answering. I already told him
mos
it was my first time.

He change the question a little bit: Have you had a lot of men?

I tell him, It’s only Baas Frans I come to complain about.

Look, if you have a complaint, you’ve got to tell us everything now. Otherwise you’re wasting our time.

Once again I say: It’s just about Baas Frans that I am here.

Did he hurt you?

No, Grootbaas. It was a bit difficult but I can’t say it hurt me too bad. I had badder things happen to me.

Then what are you complaining about?

Because he take me and he promise me things and now he is going away from me.

What did he promise you?

He say he will give me my freedom.

What did he mean when he said he would give you your freedom?

He say he will buy me freedom from the Landdrost. From the Govment. But now instead of buying my freedom he want going away from me.

How is he going away from you?

They say he want to marry a white woman. Not a slave or a Khoe but one of his own kind. So now he want to sell me upcountry.

How do you know that?

I hear him talking to the Ounooi about it. They want to put me up on auction.

Why would they want to do that?

Because they want to take my children away from the farm before the white woman come to live here.

What can you tell me about your children?

That’s
mos
why I am here, Grootbaas.

How many children do you have?

There is two left, but there was four altogether.

What happened to the other two?

I think by myself: Now it is coming. But after a while I just say: They die when they are small. The first one didn’t have a name yet and the second one was Mamie, but she only lived three months, then she also went.

Who is their father?

Frans and I made them.

Baas
Frans?

Baas Frans.

He keep on asking: And the two who are still alive? Where are they?

One is at Zandvliet where we made them. She’s Lena. My Ouma Nella look after her. The last one is this one I bring on my back with me.

For some time he say nothing more. Then he get in a hurry and he ask: When did the other two die?

I don’t look at him. All I can say is: When they was small. One was only three months old.

And the other one?

I have nothing to say about the first one.

Why not?

He die too soon.

He look hard at me, then he sigh. All right, he say. What can you tell me about this one you brought with you?

I don’t say anything. I just turn sideways so that he can see the child in the doek on my back.

I tell the man: He is my youngest. He was born only three months ago. His name is Willempie.

And you say it is your Baas Francois’s child?

Yes, that is the truth, before the LordGod.

Can you prove it?

I ask him: How can I prove a thing like that?

If you cannot prove it I cannot write it in my book.

The Grootbaas must believe me.

To believe something, he says, does not make it true.

Grootbaas, I say, there are things about you that I also cannot see, but I believe they are there and that make them true.

He laugh and I can hear it is not a good laugh. He ask: What you talking about?

It is getting more difficult to breathe, but I know I have no choice and so I ask: Will the Grootbaas give me permission to say it?

He say: Look, we’re getting nowhere like this. So all right then, I give you permission.

I nod and look straight at him and I say: Thank you, my Grootbaas. Then I shall take that permission and say to the Grootbaas that I am speaking of the thing on which the Grootbaas is sitting.

Are you talking about my chair?

I am talking about the Grootbaas’s
poephol
. That is, his arsehole.

I see him turning red first and then a deep, almost black purple. He pant like a man that climb up a steep hill.

Bladdy meid! he say. Are you looking for trouble?

I am not looking for trouble, Grootbaas, and I hope I won’t find any.

For God’s sake, then say it and have done with it.

Then I shall say it with the permission the Grootbaas give me.

Well, what is it?

I just want to say, that thing the Grootbaas is sitting on: I never seen it and with the help of the LordGod I hope I never will. But I know it is there and I believe it, and so it is true. And it is the same with my children. I know Frans made them.

Very slowly he get up from his big, beautiful chair with the armrests that I can see is carved very carefully by hand. Now he is trembling. And he say: Meid, your cheek will land you in more trouble than you have ever been in.

My Ouma Nella always tell me that will happen to me one day. But I only say this to the Grootbaas because you ask me and you give me permission.

What the hell do you expect of me now? he shout.

I can only ask the Grootbaas to do the right thing that Frans promise me.

Baas
Frans.

Baas Frans.

The trembling man move his books and papers aside, put his long feather pen on top and get up.

Willempie start wailing and I smother him with my breast.

Is that all now? I ask.

What makes you think it’s all? ask Grootbaas Lindenberg. We haven’t even started. All you have done is to lay your complaint. We still have to investigate. Now we must wait for your Baas to come and make his reply.

I feel my chest go all tight. So what do I do now? I ask.

We will let your Baas Frans know. You can wait here in the jail behind the Drostdy until he comes.

My whole body feel numb, but I can see there is no way out.

He call one of his helpers, the ones they call the Kaffers, who do all the dirty work here around the Drostdy, to take me to the jail at the back.

Once again I ask him: What do I do now?

You don’t do anything. You just wait until your Baas comes. The Protector will send a messenger to your farm.

When we go out on the back stoep I ask the man who
is
come to fetch me: What do I do about food? That can take a long time.

They will look after you here in the cells, say the Kaffer. He look like a Khoe man and his face is wrinkled like a sour plum.

Thank the LordGod, I am now taken to a cell with five or six other women. They act friendly to me and make room for me and give me some of their food. From that first day the women share with me all of the little bit they got. There’s dried fruit and aniseed bread and sometimes a few fresh apricots or early peaches or a dried fish. In the beginning I feel scared, because I got no idea of what is going on and what can happen to my child. But I soon find out that they look after me well in that place. Once a day the Khoe man with a face like a sour plum come to take me round the big white building to the backyard to stretch my legs. It is a long wait and I soon get tired of having nothing to do except to think, but it give me good time to make sure what I want to say if the day come.

What keep on going round and round in my head is everything that happen to bring me here where I am now. Was it really worth all the trouble? Because it wasn’t just the long walk, and not knowing, and feeling scared, and wondering about what is going to happen. It was the being here.

Because it’s not just deciding to come and complain, and then to walk to this place and get it done and go back home. I know only too well what it take and that’s a lot. Everything that ever happen to me is here in my two hands, and for all I know it’s for nothing. It’s not much of a life I had at Zandvliet, with the beatings and the knitting and the working day and night and always doing what other people tell you to do and everything else. But it’s all I got,
it’s
all I am and all I can ever be. It’s my whole blarry life. Because after this, coming to Stellenbosch to complain, it may be over for me. If this do not work out it’s to hell and gone for me. But there is nothing else I can do.

What have I got at Zandvliet? You can’t really call it a life. It’s not clear like day or night, or like sun and moon, it’s somewhere in between. If I can be sure of Frans, that can make things different, but I’m not. Today, there’s nothing sure about anything for me. But this little chance I got to use, otherwise it may be gone for ever. I mean, you can say the law give me the right to come and complain. But if you ask me, it’s not the law that speak the last word in this land. It’s everything that happen behind the law, and around the law. That is what matter for the big men of the Caab. Ouma Nella already told me about slaves that went to complain with the whole law in their hands, and then afterwards, when they get back to their Baas, they get beaten to death or they get hanged upside down or they get starved to death, and there’s no cock that crow about it, no dog that dare to bark. There’s many ways to kill a cock or a dog or a slave. Even Ouma Nella tell me to stay out of it, but for once I do not listen. Because no one can tell me to let go, not even she. For once I cannot listen to her or to anybody. Now it’s heaven or hell for me. To hell I refuse to go. And to the kind of heaven I got to know at Zandvliet, their kind of heaven, I swear to God, I will not go either. Not now. All I got is to sit here in the cell and wait, with the baby on my lap.

II

Philida’s Thoughts wander back to the Secret that did not drown and the Promises left unfulfilled

AT ZANDVLIET IT
all begin. Almost as far back as I can remember, it always been the farm, nothing but the farm. I remember an earlier time when we were still living at the Caab. But mostly I think about the farm and its people, its early people and later people, all the way from the beginning to today.

I remember my Ouma who always been there. And everybody that come afterwards. All of this Ouma Nella tell me. She got stories for everything, and many of them come from a long way back. Because Ouma Nella keep her ears open for everything that sound like a story. And she talk to everybody. I often hear her talking even to God. Most people, the Oubaas and them, go down on their knees when they want to talk to him. But Ouma Nella can speak any time she want to. She speak to God the way others speak to a man you know well and don’t quite trust, because she keep saying he’s a bit of a cheat and he’ll tell a lie if it suit him.

My head remember this and that and lots of other stuff as well, but the thing that really remember is my body. Everything leave its mark there. Some you can see, others you can’t, but they all there. Burns and cuts and bruises. The scrape marks on my knees and my elbows and my heels, all kinds of marks. The beatings and the falls, the icy water of early winter mornings, mud on my feet, chickenshit or rotten figs between my toes, I remember Frans’s hands
on
my body, on my shoulders and my back and my buttocks, my feet in his hands, I remember him hard and swollen between my legs, and I can hear him talking softly in my ear: Come and lie with me, Philida. My body will make yours happy. It will be good for you, you’ll see. I shall buy you free, I shall go to Stellenbosch and speak to the Landdrost, I shall walk all the way to the Caab if I have to, and pay whatever they ask so you can be free, then you can walk everywhere you want to. With shoes on your feet.