Philida (25 page)

For me it isn’t, Pa, and it never will be.

Frans, you’re not too old to get properly thrashed, Cornelis warns him.

Just you try!

Cornelis pulls back his shoulders and stares at him. He smothers a half-formed growl deep in his throat and turns away. Let me get out of this place before I strangle somebody, he mutters.

This is only the first of several quarrels. The words spoken or shouted at Zandvliet in these days are not what one
would
expect of good Christians. And it gets worse. But Kleinkat stays. Soon she starts catching mice again, and puts on some weight, and her brindled coat becomes smoother and glossier. But Francois continues to sulk. One can see plainly that there is thunder brooding in his head, but he refuses to speak to them.

The stories that have been doing the rounds become darker and gloomier. Strangers make their appearance on the farm, from Stellenbosch, and even from the Caab. With each visit Cornelis Brink’s smouldering temper gets closer to the surface. And then, one day, it breaks loose. Everybody starts talking openly about it. Among the neighbours, in the district, among the slaves, wherever you turn: Cornelis Brink is bankrupt. He has to sell out. There will be an auction and he will be stripped as bare as the day he was born.

On 5 and 6 March of that Year of Our Lord 1834 Mijnheer Johannes Marcus Knoop makes his appearance at Zandvliet to draw up an inventory of every man and mouse and turd and slave and sickle, every wagon and wine barrel, every table and drawer, every chamber pot and bottle of muscadel, every cupboard and coffin, every featherbed and fishbone, every spoon and knife and fork, every shirt and hairpin, every cotton-reel and calabash in the longhouse and in the yard and in every distant corner of the farm, signed at the bottom, ready for the death blow.

And four months later, on 7 and 8 and 9 July, the inventory is followed by the auction itself, the whole farmyard churned to dust under the feet of buyers and would-be buyers, the curious and the know-alls and the know-nothings and the bastards and the
moerneukers
who have turned up to relish the downfall of someone else.

The one person who is not prepared to face the shame
and
tries to stay out of sight of the snoopers, is Janna Brink. She would have preferred to withdraw to her bed with a blinding headache, but nowhere is there any hiding place to be found: everything has to remain accessible to the public which moves in a solemn procession from
voorhuis
to passage, from stoep to kitchen, from room to room on the heels of the chubby auctioneer. The only meagre refuge she can find in the throng is in Ouma Petronella’s room, in her bed, under the
bulsak
. For Ouma Petronella is
mos
a free woman, not a member of the family, most certainly not a slave, and consequently not involved in the auction. And here Ounooi Janna herself, as she will repeat afterwards, over and over, to whoever is prepared to listen, or not to listen, as the case may be, is able to withdraw into a sanctuary out of sight and hearing of the vultures. A disgrace to God and man. This is what comes from marrying a Brink. This she will never be able to wash from her hands, this taste of gall and vinegar she will never get rinsed from her mouth. For her, the worst is not the inventory and the selling and the bidding and the carting away of every possession. No, the worst by far is the exposing of everything that has been hers and her family’s, the denuding and baring and stripping away of all protection, leaving one naked in front of the full congregation so that they can stare through you like looking through a windowpane covered in dust and dead flies, or right into you as into a cracked mirror, unwrapping and laying bare every hole and gap and hollow. And the slaves gazing and staring with just as much glee. The slaves who are to be sold later in the day with the rest of the household belongings, the cows and sheep and pigs and beds and spittoons and chamber pots, but who are now free to stare as if they don’t care a damn. As if, to tell the truth, they are thoroughly relishing what they are gawking at so fearlessly and blatantly.

And Cornelis Brink stands gawping with them. He will not miss anything. It is, he keeps thinking, like a rotten tooth you are worrying with a sharpened needle, worrying and worrying, and the more it hurts the more you feel compelled to persist. The children who have turned up with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, keep to one side and pretend to be playing. But Cornelis himself keeps up with the auctioneer every goddamn step of the way, his cold pipe clenched between his blunted teeth, his eyes glaring ahead as if he is seeing nothing and nobody. But God knows, he sees everything. He
wants
to see it all. What is curious is that it feels as if he is both there and not there at all. As if every minute thing that happens, even the most fleeting and insignificant, he sees double. With his eyes he sees everything that takes place within his field of vision – every plate and cup and feather-duster and broom that is carried off – and with another, secret eye deep inside him he sees something like a vision, as if he is staring into the most distant future, and this eye sees not only his own possessions that are carried off, but a whole country with all the people inside it. He sees the vast plains stretching out from horizon to horizon, and the unbreakable chains of mountains stretched across them, and people trying to find under an empty sky some hiding place which they cannot reach. He stands staring at the slaves who are also standing and staring, and he can almost hear what they are thinking: Our turn will come.
Duusmanne
, our turn is coming. All that is yours will be carried away, to hell and gone, into the farthest distance, into nothingness, until no speck or smudge of you remains, not even a cloud as big as a man’s hand. Nobody will ever know that you have been here once. This is our Day of Judgement. You never wanted to admit it. You tried to hide it behind your vineyards and fields and
manors
and town houses and village squares. Your Drostdys and cellars and Company gardens and cobbled streets, your Constantias and Meerlusts and Zandvliets. But today all of this is turning transparent like an autumn leaf through which you stare to see the fine network of veins between yourself and the world out there, and now you can discover how all of it is teetering into nothingness, how all of it is already beginning to fall apart like an old wine vat crumbling to dust, while the heathens and savages are closing in from all sides, the living and the dead, all those already exterminated from this land, all those we
thought
exterminated, and who are now returning like dust-devils across a dusty plain.

In the footsteps of the auctioneer. The man with the wad of papers in his blunt hands with the tufts of reddish and pale hairs on the backs of the fingers. From room to room. Without skipping or omitting or avoiding anything. Until there is nothing left to skip any more.

In the
voorhuis
where the grandfather clock stands ticking and ticking, and where the four tables and the fourteen
riempie
chairs are displayed, and the barometer on the far wall, and the mirror in its heavy frame, and the tea table against the wall loaded with cups and plates, and the two spittoons, one white, one blue delft. In the bedroom on the right, another long mirror, and a large brass bedstead with a
bulsak
and drapes of glazed chintz and a bolster, and a narrow bed for when another child is born, and yet another table, this one with six chairs with horsehair cushions, and six spittoons and six footstools with fire-pans for the winter months. Then the bedroom on the left: a stinkwood bed again with drapes of glazed chintz, a bolster and four pillows and a blanket, another mirror and a small bed and a table and an enormous brass teapot. Followed by another bedroom, with a huge wardrobe in which a grown-up person
can
easily hide away, and an escritoire and a chest with six drawers, and six pictures on the walls. The
Broad and Narrow Ways
. Jesus with his curly beard, a row of blue Dutch windmills. And much, much more, too much to register. And all the chamber pots, enough for pissing through nights and days until the second coming of the Lord. And things and things and more things. All of it written down on Mijnheer Knoop’s list, for better or for worse, everything called by its own inevitable name, from Bible to commode.

And then the pantry, where Philida used to come as a child with her Ouma Nella, she was never allowed in there on her own, there must have been too much she could damage or break. This is the room that smells best, even though Mijnheer Knoop’s list says nothing about the scents. The shutters before the tall window are always half closed, which keeps the air inside cool and dusty, so it makes one notice the other smells more strongly. Camphor and dried peaches and raisins, and beeswax and honey, and ground coffee, and bags of tea dried in the outdoor oven and thrashed in the attic, there are rows of drying biltong, and green figs preserved in large round copper basins, and sugar brought from the Caab, and rolled tobacco and
beskuit
and
moskonfyt
, there are containers of paraffin and piles of blue soap and yellow soap boiled in big round cauldrons in the yard, and lemons and quinces and dried apricots, and flour and bran in wooden boxes, and breadloaves as hard as stone, and bags of
beskuit
with raisins and aniseed, and cloves and cinnamon sticks and nutmeg and water candles and wax candles, there are sweet-smelling things from all the far places in the whole world. And there is a deep shelf with crockery, 12 beer mugs, 12 wine glasses, 4 earthenware carafes, another 4 glass carafes, 9 glasses, a liqueur shelf with 4 bottles, another 18 empty bottles, 10 ceramic pots,
another
19 earthenware pots, 12 white dishes, 2 white soup tureens, 16 silver spoons. Then 4 more large silver spoons, a silver serving spoon, 4 brass candleholders, 5 copper candleholders, 2 flat brass candleholders, 1 food warmer, 2 snuffers with long handles and 1 snuffing bowl, 1 teapot, 1 oil stand, 6 jam jars, 12 small cups and saucers, 12 cups, 1 old tin kettle, 24 knives, 24 forks, 15 bowls, 2 baking pans, 2 shelves. Another food warmer. And 4 coffins, in sizes from large to small, polished with beeswax and honey, the inside upholstered with silk and chintz and decorated with bows, dressed up for a good long sleep, and temporarily filled with sweet-smelling dried peaches and apricots and quinces.

Next, the kitchen: 1 table, 1 flour chest, 1 shelf, 1 butter pail, 3 buckets, 2 barrels, 1 water jug, 1 churn, 2 small butter vats, 7 iron pots, 4 chairs, 1 hearth chain, 1 water kettle, 1 copper colander, 1 fire iron, 1 three-legged pot, 2 iron forks, 1 skimming spoon, 1 small hatchet, 1 axe. This is without counting the storeroom next door, with 46 earthenware pots of various sizes, 42 bowls, 6 soup plates, 1 candle box, 1 barrel, 1 bread knife, 1 large chest, 1 old chest, 1 shelf, 4 chamber pots, 5 trays, 2 pitchers and ewers, 3 flat irons, 1 soup ladle, 1 bridle, 1 chicken coop, 1 slaughtering table, 1 small barrel with copper hoops, 1 large tea can, 3 flagons, 6 bags, 2 old frames, a bushel and its box, 4 flour chests, 3 flour pitchers, 1 vat, 1 long plaited sjambok.

Up in the attic there is more waiting: 1 tea jug, 1 kettle, 3 jugs, 6 bags, 2 old frames, 1 bushel, 4 flour chests, 3 flour jugs, 1 barrel. And more and more and still more, as if there will never be an end of it.

And this is only the longhouse. What about outside? The 8 stable horses, the 6 saddle horses, the 40 draught oxen for the wine wagons, the 7 pigs, 4 black and 3 white, old
Hamboud
the fattest and filthiest of them all and always grunting or squealing for more and never satisfied, the 2 headstrong mules, the coop with chickens, among them the useless hen that never lays an egg but makes more noise than 7 others, the 2 ox carts, the 2 Cape carts, the mule cart and the mule wagon, the plough and 2 ploughshares, the yokes and yoke-pins and thongs, 2 wine racks, 6 picks, 18 spades, 14 sickles, 8 pruning shears, the chest with assorted tools, 1 handsaw, 1 flourmill, a heap of old iron, a heap of wood, 8 scaffoldings, a heap of bamboo, 2 window frames and 1 door frame, 1 gate, 2 windows, firewood and assorted wood.

Down in the cellar: 10 leaguers, 2 fermentation vats containing 6 leaguers each, 14 stuck-vats (5 leaguers each), 2 leaguer barrels, 2 half-aums, 1 small barrel, 2 vinegar barrels with some vinegar in them, 2 funnels, 7 buckets, 1 threshing vat and 1 catchment vat with their stands, 6 broad barrels, 1 set of scales with its weights, 3 ladders, 10 bushel baskets, 2 copper potstills, 2 wagons loaded with hides.

Only one room in the house – when you come in at the front door, then left, past the
voorhuis
, to the very end – remains untouched with all its furniture. For this is where Ouma Petronella lives, where Philida used to live with her: because Ouma Petronella has announced very calmly that she is a free woman and that none of her belongings may be touched, she is not for sale. One day, when everything else has been cleared up, she will come back, she and her people, like the little bushes of the Karoo, like the sands of Zandvliet or the sea, and claim whatever used to be theirs, for ever and ever, amen.

While all this is happening, Cornelis stands looking at what is his, what was his, everything he no longer knows and which no longer knows him, and which will be blown
away
by the wind. Rooted to the spot, shocked and dazed, he remains staring while the auctioneer is calculating the sum total of his life, while the neighbours are watching and relishing what they see, and while the slaves are thinking: one day, one day.

Yes, let us not forget about the slaves.

There is Moses of the Caab.

There is Cupido of the Caab.

And look, Joab of the Caab.

Willem of the Caab.