Philida (35 page)

And what would that be?

That no baas can ever be a baas again.

How do you get that?

Because a baas without a slave cannot be a baas, I tell him, which is what Ouma Nella say to me long ago. But today I
know
it for the first time.

I don’t think
they
know it, say Labyn.

It don’t matter if they do, I say. You and I know it, all of us that were slaves until yesterday.

I’m not so sure, he say with a frown of deep thought on his forehead. A man needn’t know that he is a baas. He just
is
.

No, Labyn, I argue. It can only come with knowing. A thing isn’t something before you know it. And that is why I’m happy about today, and why the next four years is not important.

You better watch out, say Labyn. For these four years and all the other years that still lie ahead. Remember, a man can only step as far as his legs are long. And they keeping our legs short.

You forget one thing, I say. We can
jump
. And I’m not going to step carefully if I know I can jump. Remember, I wearing shoes now.

Labyn sit in silence for a long time, looking down at his feet. This Floris knows about making good shoes, he say. That’s for sure.

I look at the work he been doing in the light of his oil lamp. And you, I say, you know about making a good coffin.

He grin. This is for a baas, he say. Don’t forget, when
we
die they just roll us in an old blanket.

When I die one day, I say, I want
you
to make my coffin.

Inshallah
, say Labyn.

Outside it is still afternoon, the kind of afternoon that happen only in Worcester: a heat that push you down against the ground to burn all the wetness out of you, here among the mountains, where nothing can get out and no air can come in.

If we stay here we all going to burn to death, say Labyn.

I stay quiet for a while, then I say: Well, then it must be time for us to go away from here. There is nothing in this place for us.

Where can we go to? he ask.

Between here and the Caab they’re pushing us against the sea, I answer. But you hear what Floris say: if you go far enough in this direction, you come to the river they call Gariep. From there, the land is open and everything is free.

And how do we get there?

With our feet, I say.

You got two small children with you, Philida.

Nothing is pushing us. We got time. We got all the time in the world.

Meester de la Bat will never let us go, Labyn assure me.

Nothing stop us asking.

He paid a lot of money for us. Not so long ago either, for you. To white people money is important.

Then we buy ourselves free.

How?

You with your coffins. And I can knit.

You will knit yourself to hell and gone. And I got to go on making coffins until long after I’m dead myself.

We can start now. My Ouma Nella always said that from a few drops of rain at a time the dam get full.

He shake his head. I notice how grey he is now. But I don’t want to give up. I know that from giving up too soon one’s wool start unravelling and then the stitches no longer stay in neat rows and the knitting get loose and tatty.

He say, You know, Floris says we must just make life so difficult for them that they’ll be happy to let us go, for then they will be rid of us.

But I shake my head. No, Labyn. If you ask me, it will be harder for the white people than for us. We can still manage, one way or another. But what will become of them? We are like the foundation of their house. Their lives and everything is built on us. This whole land is built on our sweat and our blood.

They just got to learn to get on without us. We all of us still got a lot to learn.

If we don’t try we won’t get anywhere, I tell him.

But how do you want to start?

By talking to them straight.

How?

I’ll go to the Meester and ask him to let us go, and then we go.

So easy?!

I’m not saying it will be easy. But we got to see what that Gariep look like. We got to find out for ourselves. The way Floris tell it, I don’t know if it’s going to be all good and wonderful. But unless we make sure in time, we’ll still be here when we die.

And you think you can go and speak to the Meester?

Yes, I do.

And the very next afternoon, when Meester de la Bat comes home from his office, I go to him.

Yes, Philida, what do you want?

I tell him about what Labyn and I discuss. That we must go to the Gariep to see what it look like. Then we can come back here and talk again.

It turn out like Labyn say: the man will not listen to anything. When I tell him we need a pass to go to the Gariep, he look at me as if I am now mad in my head. But I keep on: Before we know what is for us at that far place, we can’t do nothing and we can’t go nowhere.

He sound ready to get difficult: And what if I say no?

Then we shall just have to go without a pass, I say.

Philida!

I shrug my shoulders. This is not how we want to go, Meester. We want to stay with the law. But we got to go and that is how it is.

How do I know that you’ll ever come back?

I shall give the Meester my word.

And you want me to just believe you?

Yes, I say. Why not? Did I ever lie to the Meester?

Then he say what Labyn told me was coming: Do you know what I paid for you and your two children?

Yes, Meester, I say. One hundred and twenty-three pounds two shillings and sixpence. That is my price.

He stare at me, blinking his eyes. Yes, that is so. I see you kept your ears open at the auction.

I do not answer.

And suppose you go away and stay away, how will I ever get my money again, Philida?

I told you
mos
I will come back, Meester de la Bat.

We will talk again, he say quickly and he turn round and go into the house.

In the early evening we can hear him and his wife arguing in the kitchen. Their voices get loud. But Labyn and I and Floris and Delphina remain sitting very quietly on a bench in the backyard, listening but not talking. The children are lying like little mice, Lena with a small stuffed doll I make for her, Willempie with two short offcuts of wood. Kleinkat is with us too, playing with a cricket she catch.

So ordinary, so everyday, I think, it is when one’s whole life is decided by other people. And that is precisely what I got enough of.

I still don’t know what would have happen then. For five, six days there is nothing from the big house. It is
mos
not for us to decide, is it? The way it always been, as if that Blue Monday never happen. But then there is something no one could have expected. Like when you sit fidgeting with a tuft of wool that Kleinkat unravelled: you struggle for hours, sometimes for a whole day, and nothing happen, but then suddenly
you
get hold of a loose end, and you pull at it, and everything unwind and your thread is untangled, all the way. What happen this time is that an unexpected visitor turn up from the Caab. A young man in a black broadcloth suit with a top hat on his bony head, as thin and yellowish white as a gut that got scrubbed for making sausage, and he look pretty sick to me. Don’t know him from Adam. But it turn out he is called Jan Fredrik Berrangé, and he is on his way to a village far inland, Driefontein, where he want to talk to the people before he travel away over the sea to study as a dominee.

A lot of talking to and fro until sometime in their discussion he ask about the slave girl Philida, which of course is me. At first I want to find out which way the wind blow, but I’m curious at the same time, so I go closer. That is when he take a whole bag of stuff from his saddle and give it to me. Not really a present, but things left to me by Ouma Nella. You can blow me over with a feather. A cardigan knit by Ouma Nella, more beautiful than anything my own two hands can make, all pale blue and yellow. And a pair of ivory knitting needles that I know since I was small, she always say she bring them from Java, and a snuffbox with a fine inlaid wooden lid. A heavy soup spoon she once find on the beach. A bolt of heavy red-and-white cloth. And a bamboo box half filled with coins: several handfuls of rix-dollars and seven gold pounds. Also a heavy golden ring that I remember from very long ago.

Surely all of this can’t be for me? I ask.

There was no one else she could leave it to, say the thin pale gutman. Francois Brink brought it to us when he heard I was on my way inland. I think you know he is engaged to my sister Maria Magdalena.

Are they still to be married? I ask without meaning to.

Yes, still, he say. But the Good Lord alone knows when.
She
keeps on putting it off, and nobody has any idea for how long.

I feel a smile tugging at my mouth, but try not to let them see it.

And how are things at Zandvliet? I ask.

He shrug uneasily. Well, I suppose, he say. I prefer not to ask them too many questions. I hear that Oom Cornelis has got a bad pain in his fundament, he says it is his old man’s gland, and now your grandmother is no longer around to help, of course, and Tant Janna grows heavier by the day, she can barely walk, but they are all still alive by the grace of God.

Then it’s good, I say. Now I’m in a hurry to look at the things he brought with him, but I don’t want the others to see how eager I am.

It is only afterwards, in my room after I put the little ones to sleep, that I count my money in the pretty little box over and over, and change the pounds into rix-dollars. No, I soon discover, it is no way enough to buy my freedom, and certainly not Labyn’s. Not even if we add the golden ring to it. But there must be more than enough to leave with Meester de la Bat until I come back, to show him I am serious. I don’t think he can object now.

Or can he? With white people one can never be sure.

Well, possibly, yes, say the Meester when I offer him the money the following day. Then he look hard at me with narrowed eyes, and he ask, But what about the children?

What about the children?

If you leave the children with us we may think about letting you go.

I can feel my mouth dropping open. All I can think of saying is: And will Meester give them a teat to drink? Or clean their bums when they shit themselves?

He stare at me as if I winded him. Philida! How on God’s earth can you –?

I just asking, Meester, I say. Now I begin to speak more freely, as I can see he is no longer quite so sure of himself.

Meester de la Bat pull himself together like a rooster getting ready to crow.

I think about it, he say very quickly and he get ready to go inside.

At last I can breathe more freely again. Because I can see that it is all over. There is no crowing left in him.

So the very next morning Labyn and I are told that we may prepare to leave for the Gariep. We can have the pass. The only condition is that we mustn’t lengthen the road by wasting time along the way, is that clear?

Very clear, thank you, Meester.

But what about Floris? I ask. We need him to go with us, he been there, he can show us the way. But when Labyn go to ask him, he say that he don’t want to go. Why should he? he ask. He been there, he know what he know. It’s up to the others who don’t know the way yet, to decide if they want to go or not. And Delphina don’t want to go anyway, she too scared, she will rather stay in a place she know well. She know she may be sorry afterwards, but for now she prefer not to risk it, this land is too big and too wild for her.

And so we go to pack our bundles, just the most necessary stuff, because the road is blarry long and it’s only Labyn and me, and we still have to carry the children. Meester de la Bat hand over the pass, and there we go. The greatest sadness is about Kleinkat who must now stay behind. But it won’t be for long, I tell Nooi de la Bat, because I’ll soon be back. In the meantime Delphina will look after her, they already know and trust each other.
What
make me feel better is that at the last moment, as we shoulder our bundles to set out on our way, Kleinkat come from nowhere to lay down a small yellow flower at my feet. She do that every morning, a flower or a small branch or a beetle or a half-dead mouse she catch. On this morning it make me feel a kind of peace inside me, because now I know she understand what is happening and everything will go well for us.

Just before we go, Floris come from the small room where he been working on some new
velskoene
, and offer me the little chameleon to take with me on my shoulder.

Look after him, he say. He’ll take good care of you too. And make sure you bring him with you when you come back.

Now we are ready to go.

At the last moment we decide to look in at the Drostdy prison to take our leave, but at the gate to the backyard the guard who let us in the last time come out to tell us that old Ontong is no longer with us, he die quietly a few days ago, and so we decide not to ask about Achilles too, it is too sad to find out that they disappearing like this, one by one. So off we go. Out of the village, where we are lucky to be picked up by the driver of a mule cart who is off to the Bokkeveld to fetch some wheat on a nearly empty wagon. Once again, in passing, we greet Galant that we met the last time. This time we do not stop, but drive on along the Skurweberge as far as the turn-off to the farm Houd-den-Bek. From there the mule cart go on while we must turn right to the farm.