Philida (10 page)

The way he looked at me from the gallows that day. With those bloodshot eyes which I shall see in front of me for the rest of my life.

On the road back home we never outspanned and only stopped a few times just an hour or so for a short rest; otherwise we drove on, night and day. I
had
to get home. My farm with its white walls surrounded by so many greens of vineyards and orchards, my farm, my hold on this world, my Zandvliet. I had to get back to the animals that knew me as their Baas. And once we had entered through the wide gate in the ring wall, it was as if the LordGod himself was once again folding his arms around me.
He shall cover you with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler
. I don’t know what the hell a buckler is, but if it stands in the Bible it must be a good thing, and that was why I so badly wanted to be back on my farm, with my shield and buckler. I felt I could breathe again.

Every evening when we open the Bible and turn to my favourite chapter, that Abraham comes back to me. He had such a way of leaning back against the wall near the front door, closing his eyes to listen more attentively, even though I knew he couldn’t understand a bladdy word. The part where the Prophet talks about Aholah and Aholibah and their paramours
whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses, the Egyptians that bruise thy teats for the paps of thy youth
. It is a passage that comes back to me whenever at random moments on an ordinary day I open the Bible. And no matter what I do, sooner or later Abraham’s red eyes
return
to pester me. All those years of yes Baas, no Baas, and just look at him now. Where did it get him? I really can’t understand any of it. I treated him well, didn’t I? I looked after him. I was always ready to give the shit an extra
dop
of wine, wasn’t I? I knew he was good at his job, pruning in winter, getting rid of everything we didn’t want or need, and cleaning neat paths in the vineyard, then watching the new growth appearing in the spring, all the colours of twigs and twirls and everything, from green and yellow to lilac and red and purple, through the time of swelling and growing in summer, trimming the bunches that grow too heavy, scaring off the birds with tins and pots and scarecrows, until it is time to harvest in baskets and bags to carry to the cellar, to the big vats where the treading is done, then waiting for the fermentation in the buzzing barrels, opening the scuppers, there’s nothing that makes a farmyard smell of life like new wine and must, with a touch of sourness at the beginning, going on until it’s just right, my God, until everything starts again as if it has never happened before. Not a drop to drink in August, because that is when the wine is weeping in the bottle. Soon it is time for tasting, for running it off into the bottles. Step by step, moment by moment. That, you may well say, is my life.

And all that long time Abraham used to stay with me, he was always the one who just knew what to do and how to do it. Until the time comes to transport the huge vats on the wagon, two by two, like elephants going into Noah’s ark, the oxen straining in their yokes, dragging the freight along the rough road up the narrow Drakenstein valley to Klapmuts, then to Stellenbosch, and across the Cape Flats to the Caab, four days there and back. And it takes fifty loads to transport everything, you can calculate for yourself what a hole that makes in your time. For all of that I could
always
count on Abraham to help me. Until he went mad and the gallows took him from me.

All of which just confirms why I have always figured that with a slave or a child nothing works as well as a good thrashing. And I speak from long and bitter experience. In Philida’s case the decision was taken very quickly. Frans returned from Stellenbosch in the late afternoon. His horse was exhausted, I thought he was going to collapse. That’s the way I know Frans and I’d told him before that if he ever does that again I’ll kill him with my own two hands. The little shit mustn’t think that because he’s twenty-two he is too old for a thrashing. He was also dead tired and just wanted to go to bed to sleep it off, but I fetched him from the room he shares with his brother KleinCornelis and took him to the
voorhuis
so that he could tell us everything that had happened in Stellenbosch. I’m his father, I am the Baas of Zandvliet, I got to know. So that was where I heard the full story about what Philida had said against us. Everything, about how Frans had lain with her since he was only fourteen and she some three years older. And about the children they’d made together. That’s Mamie who lived only for a few months before she died. And Lena, who is two. And the little monkey she still has on her breast. Of course I suspected something like that but on this farm it wasn’t anything to be talked about openly. Nothing was ever known officially, and that is how the Caab has always worked.

Frans told the Protector, a man called Lindenberg, about the two slave youths that had been with Philida and that, he said, was how the man recorded it. This is all that matters in the end: that it was recorded. One day in the future, when no one of us is still around, that is all the world will know, and all that needs to be known. We came to this land white, and white we shall be on the Day of Judgement,
so
help me God. If anybody is still in doubt, I always tell them: Just follow the coast up to the Sandveld, then you will see with your own eyes how we whored the whole West Coast white. God put us here with a purpose, and we keep very strictly to his Word. For ever and bloody ever, amen. Do we understand each other?

But from what Frans told me about what had happened in Stellenbosch, one thing was very clear: that this slave girl had become a threat to us. We Brinks are a boat that has always hugged the coast, no matter what storms have come, but Philida has now cut a hole into it and we may sink if we don’t watch out. That is something we just cannot allow to happen. It’s the whiteness of our boat that proves we are the children of the Lord. We won’t have any truck with Satan’s offspring. If we sink here, then everything will sink. Then everything will have been in vain. And that I’ll damn well not allow. Over my dead body.

This was how I came to my final decision. What used to be a possibility in the past has now been sealed. It won’t be enough just to punish Philida. She has to be removed from among us. The easiest, I’m sure, would be an accident on the farm. A dead person won’t talk and a dead slave even less. But Philida is a grown woman in her twenties, her name has been written in the government’s books, she can’t just be here one day and gone the next. Which means she must be sold, as deep into the interior as possible, so no one can pick up a trace of her again. Books are dangerous things and we must take great care to get past them. Do you understand what I’m saying, Frans?

Yes, Pa, I understand. But –

I don’t want to listen to your Buts. This farm has no place for Buts.

And that same evening, after we’d had our supper, I
ordered
the whole family and the slaves to stay right where they were. The only one, apart from Philida, who was missing was Old Petronella, but I preferred her not to be there. I know how she feels about Philida. So of the house women only Janna was there. Worse than a fly or an earwig, but that is how the Lord ordered it, so I have no choice. The same with the children around the table. And the empty chairs for the ones who died but who are still with us. The others, I must admit, all look a bit home-made, like one of Janna’s baked puddings that didn’t quite make it, not much to brag about. I ordered them all to stay seated so that I could tell them about Frans’s visit to the Slave Protector’s office in Stellenbosch. What was said, and what it led to. And on this blessed day, I concluded, my right hand still resting on the Bible, on this blessed day it is our will, in the presence of God and all his angels, that the maidservant that is within our gates, Philida of the Caab, should be cast out from our company, to the everlasting glory of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the highest heaven. Is there anyone here present who wishes to rise up against the will of Our Lord?

That was when Frans said: Pa, but shouldn’t we wait until Philida is back to tell us herself what happened?

You were there, Frans, were you not? I told him. You heard everything that was spoken, so we know exactly what happened in that unholy place. Is that so, or isn’t it?

Frans remained sitting without moving.

After some time his mother cleared her throat.

Frans, I said to him, do you want me to strip off the bladdy skin of your bladdy arse? What I said: was that true, or wasn’t it?

It’s like Pa said.

In that case we are united before the Lord. Let us pray.

I prayed for longer than I usually do. The little ones started fidgeting and after the prayer I had to tell Janna to send them to bed without supper and give each of them a proper hiding to make sure they understood the Word of the LordGod and would pay it proper respect in future.

That Word and I have come a long way together, we know each other’s boundaries and respect each other’s stone walls. I won’t ever do anything without first discussing it with the LordGod. His will be done. Whether it is a year of drought or one of unseasonal rain, I will always ask him first if he thinks the time is right for sowing and planting, for digging furrows, or pulling the husks off the fermenting grapes, for shortening hoops or fitting staves. And I follow his instructions to the letter. Which is why I have always prospered in his eyes.

After finishing the prayer, I knew exactly what passage to read, to make sure Frans fully understood why I try to keep to the Scriptures. It was the passage where God calls Abraham to take his son Isaac, who was his only son after he sent Ishmael into the desert with his mother Hagar, up the mountain of Moriah to bring a sacrifice to the Lord. Together with the boy Isaac and two slave boys they take to the road, and on the third day he leaves the boys and the donkey behind and goes on with Isaac. This is what the Book says:
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father, and said, My father; and he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place where God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on
the
altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said: Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son from me
.

The rest we know. When Abraham looked up, he saw a ram caught with its horns in a bush, and sacrificed the animal in the place of his son. By this time the girls at the table were in tears, so that I first had to send their mother to fetch the strap and give them something proper to cry about. Afterwards we all knelt around the table, and the slaves against the wall at the back door, so that I could confer with the LordGod. After all the others had left I went to confront Frans with a straight question: Do you understand now why I obey the Lord? He always sees to it that the right things happen. You see what a God-fearing father Abraham was.

But Frans was obstinate. You know what he asked? He asked, Who would want a father like that?

That was when I told him, That is exactly the kind of father you’ve got. And if that isn’t good enough for you, I’ll give you what you bladdy well deserve. After that we all calmed down again.

And so we came to the decision about Philida. That a simple thrashing would not be enough, but that the time had come to do what we had long threatened to do: to take her to auction and sell her into the interior. This was agreed the evening before she came sauntering along the dust road that descends from the mountains of Great Drakenstein and runs past Lekkerwijn. Even before I moved from the edge of the long stoep I pulled the heavy studded belt from my breeches and stood up. Moments earlier, I had seen Janna
slide
off the edge of the stoep and grab the basket in which she usually collects the eggs from the hens that avoid the regular nests in the farmyard to find more inaccessible spots. I know what pleasure it gives Janna to outsmart those devious chickens and bring home her booty like priceless treasure. But this morning, when she saw me getting up, she quickly changed course and went round the house past the well towards the kitchen door, leaving the rest of the yard to me. That suited me perfectly. I wanted that girl for myself.

Once more I became aware of the stirring inside my breeches. I could feel my breath pushing more strongly through my open mouth. There were dark spots flickering in front of my eyes. For a moment I felt panic-stricken. But this time it lasted only for a moment before a surge of recklessness overruled all other impulses. Who was I to resist?

I saw her on the dusty white path along the vineyards and realised immediately that she was heading towards the river. I knew why. Didn’t I know her since she was only a wisp of a girl? How many times over the years have I watched her skipping through the vineyards and orchards on her way to the river like a bright spot of colour among all the greenery? Already feeling my throat constrict in anticipation, tightening my hand around the belt, I went after her. On the grassy bank beside the Dwars River I found her baby lying in a bundle, fast asleep. Philida splashing in the shallow water. Her clothes folded neatly, that’s the way she is, always very tidy, fastidious.