The Other Side of Silence (27 page)

I think you were forced to be a grownup much too
soon
.

“They did what they could. So did I.” Her voice is infused with
a new passion. “When we came to this place – I told you before – it
was, in a way, like coming home. I remembered so many things from
the time we were all together: Father, Mother, Gerhardt, Rolf,
Gertrud and me. Mother’s singing and everything. Mainly because
this man, Reverend Maier, reminded me so strongly…” She chokes,
takes time to compose herself. “My father was such a gentle man, he
meant everything to me, I loved him. Then the other night when I
saw what the good missionary was really like…Hanna, it was as if
all my deepest memories suddenly became lies. Suppose the father I
knew was not the same man other people saw? Suppose he did the same
things as the other traders the Hereros feared and hated so much –
giving them credit and credit and credit, all the time, until they
couldn’t pay any more and then taking their cattle, their land…How
will I ever know? All I know is that I cannot trust my own memories
any more. Everything that used to be good, and important to me…Now
there’s nothing I can be sure of. And I’m just angry. I’ve never
been so angry before. I want to do something. But what could I
possibly do that would make any difference?”

Hanna looks hard at her. After a long time she starts moving her
hands again to ask,
Are you sure you made the right choice when
you came with me?

Katja sniffs angrily, wipes tears across her scorched face. “I
couldn’t stay in that place.”

But now that we have left it
…?

“Where are we going, Hanna?” Katja asks with sudden
directness.

Hanna makes a gesture towards her scarred face, then lapses into
silence again, trying to order her thoughts.

“You want to take revenge on the man who did that to you, I
know. I understand that. But that was more than four years ago,
wasn’t it? What are the chances he’ll still be in Windhoek? And
even if he were…Once you’ve taken your revenge, what then? Will it
be over? Will you have made peace with yourself?”

Hanna puts her hand on Katja’s to silence the girl. For a moment
she looks round, searching, anxious to find a way out of her own
muteness; then she sets to preparing a small square patch of
ground, stroking and patting it with the palm of one hand. She
finds a twig and starts scribbling hurriedly. But the cover of dust
is too spare, the earth too hard, and the scratches remain
near-indecipherable. In a rage of frustration she looks about her
again, then notices the Bible Katja has dropped on the ground and
picks it up, puts it on her lap. Feverish with eagerness she takes
out the pencil still stuck between the pages of Genesis and begins
to flip through the heavy book, past the whole of the Old Testament
with its bloody histories and its genealogies and its bleak curses
and exhortations and imprecations, and past the New (which is not
nearly as dog-eared and fingered and worn as the Old), past all the
dire prophecies and visions of Revelations, to the blank pages at
the very end. She glances up at Katja, and begins to write:

Why do you keep on talking about revenge, Katja? It is not
just revenge
.

That too, of course. He cannot he allowed to get away with
it. But it’s so much more. You must believe me. You’re seen for
yourself, in Frauenstein, and even here in this place, how many
have been maimed. Not necessarily in the same way, not always so
visible, but all of us harmed. Scarred. And for as long as we bear
it in silence it will go on. There will always be new ones to
suffer. There has been too much suffering already. There comes a
time when one has got to say No. Someone has to stop it. And the
world must know about it, they must learn what has been done to us,
they must know our names
.

She shoves the book across her knees for the girl to read. Her
fingers are stiff and cramped, she is no longer used to writing.
But she hasn’t finished yet. When Katja looks up, opening her mouth
to say something, Hanna grabs the book back, tears out a single
page, and resumes on the next.

It’s like what you said about the piano, remember? Those
sounds are still somewhere
. We
are somewhere. And someone
must find out about us and hear our sounds
.

Katja has risen on her knees to read over her shoulder. Hanna
stares out across the desert, makes a wide empty gesture towards
it, and starts writing again, pressing so hard that the point of
the pencil stabs holes in the paper.

Look at this desert, with its stones and its little bushes
and its silences. It does not need me, it will be here long after I
have gone. But I don’t want it to forget about me
. I was here!
You are here. I want this place to know about us. That is why
we’re going to Windhoek, don’t you understand? And we must take
with us all the others who have also suffered and who have also
forgotten the need to say No
.

She drops the pencil and pauses to pick it up.

So you see, it is not just the one man we are looking
for
, she writes, the letters now thicker and smudgier than
before as the point grows blunter.
Our hunt is on now. To find
everybody who has joined forces with that man. Everybody who has
made him possible
.

Incredulous, dazed, Katja moves her palm across the page as if
to erase the words. “How can you do that?” she asks, almost with
awe. “One woman – against the whole of the German Reich?” She
shakes her head silently. “Against the world?”

Hanna tears out the second page, coaxing the pencil stub into
writing a few last words on the third:
If we move as an army
against them
, she writes,
they will destroy us. But there is
no need to fight an ordinary kind of war. We’ll do it slowly, bit
by bit. But in the end we shall prevail. Because I’m not alone.
Never forget that. We are not alone
.

They sit in silence for a long time. Then Katja reaches for the
Bible to tear out the last page. She picks up the book.

Katja takes it from her. “I must return this to the church,” she
says. “He will kill us if he finds out.”

Hanna crumples the pages she has torn out and stuffs them into
the bodice of her dress; she will burn them later.

Katja makes to go, then comes back, and bends over, and presses
her cheek against Hanna’s. Perhaps she has understood after
all.

∨
The Other Side of Silence
∧

I
n the late afternoon
they find themselves behind the stocky little church, where they
have fled to escape the incessant wailing of the sick baby.
Gottlieb Maier has refused the help they offered, arguing
emphatically that one is expected to show fortitude in the face of
adversity sent to test the faithful. “It is probably something
Gisela has eaten which has corrupted her milk,” he said, casting a
reproachful glance at his wife. “Now it is in the hands of God. I
shall pray, and he will respond as he sees fit.” He has also turned
away, much more testily, the Nama women who came to offer their
arcane brews and philtres: “Heathen superstition! Not only will
they harm the child, but they’ll offend the nostrils of the
Lord.”

Hanna has to let off steam.
That man is a monster
.

But Katja is more pensive. “You know,” she says cautiously,
“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. Why he is
always so frantically busy. It’s not just because it’s his work. Or
that he’s scared of himself, as you said. I think it is worse. I
think he’s covering up, he’s trying to
make
himself believe.
Suppose, like Gisela, he doesn’t really believe in God either. But
because of his vow he’s now got to spend the rest of his life in
Africa. And perhaps he hates every moment of it. But there’s no way
he can ever get out of it.”

That is no reason to make others pay for it
, Hanna
reminds her.
His wife. His children. Everybody. Perhaps that was
why he needed the story of Noah to control his grumbling workers
too
.

Kahapa appears round the corner of the church to join them.
There is a small group of people with him, nine or ten, men and
women.

“I bring this people,” he says to Hanna. “They want to go with
us.”

Do they know where we are going?

“I tell them Windhoek. I tell them it is to fight, it is a hard
thing to do.”

And why would they want to give up the life they have here to
go with us?

Kahapa nudges the first of the group forward, a tall and
somewhat surly young man. “You tell her,” he instructs the man.

He doesn’t have much to say, though. He comes from the far
north, the Kaokoveld – the only moments when he waxes eloquent is
when he starts talking about the great ana trees on the banks of
the broad river on its way to the cold sea, and the wild hills and
the dark patches of bush in the folds of the valleys, the magical
spring of Kaoko Otavi where the elephants gather to drink in the
moonlight; and his proud people who live there, the Ovahimbas,
their tall bodies plastered with red ochre – but the ripple effects
of the war these last ten years have disturbed the peaceful life
his tribe had known for centuries, so some of them started
trickling south, ever further, in search of employment; and unable
to find anything stable or permanent (how could a proud man be
content to work for strangers?), he ended up here at the mission
station. But he dislikes the pastor and hates the work, and now he
wants to go back to his own country. Windhoek will be a convenient
stop on the long road home.

Tell him I’ll think about it
, announces Hanna. But as
soon as the Ovahimba has left, she tells Kahapa through Katja,
No, this is not enough for us. He will go with us and then leave
us when it suits him. We need people who will stay with us all the
way
.

“I already tell him.” Kahapa nods approvingly. “But he will not
believe me.”

Several of the others are also turned down – among them a young
woman whose main purpose is to find a husband in Windhoek; two
pleasant and jocular Ovambos who have simply had enough of hard
work; a middle-aged woman anxious to visit relatives in the north;
a chronically smiling, very black Damara who can remember his
father and grandfadier meekly slaving for any master who came
along, whether Ovambo, Herero, Nama or white, and who is willing to
accept any new employment as long as he does not have to reason
why; a beautiful muscular specimen of a man (though not quite as
massive as Kahapa) who is eager to avenge a great number of
atrocities in his past on the German occupiers. This sounds
promising indeed, Hanna thinks. But then it turns out that while he
will be happy to take orders from Kahapa, he will not defer to a
woman. And that rules out his candidacy. In the end, after
consulting with both Katja and Kahapa, Hanna accepts only three of
the applicants.

The first is a Nama woman of uncertain age, wizened and
emaciated, her breasts mere flaps of crumpled skin, flimsily
covered with a tattered cloth imposed on her by the rigid
religiosity of the place. Her name is Kamma, which, she says, means
‘Water’. She is introduced by Kahapa as a medicine woman. Her
tribe, Hanna learns, lives in a place called by the impossible and
beautiful name of Otjihaenemaparero, where she built a reputation,
like her mother and grandmodier before her, as a healer. No one
knows the herbs and secrets of the veld like she does. People used
to come to her from as far as two or three full moons away. She
healed them all. A few times, she assures them, and it is difficult
to doubt her, she even brought back to life people who had already
died. Then one day, about a year ago now, she – literally – got
wind of a sick German
smous
stranded in the desert with his
ox-wagon loaded with goods. He had been bitten by a snake and his
whole body had swollen up so badly that he was close to death. But
Kamma cut open the wound, sucked out the venom, and set to her task
with potions and unguents and chanted incantations. And within a
day the man could sit up and take his first food. He took her with
him to Otjihaenemaparero on his wagon and distributed most of his
merchandise among the tribe members.

Everybody was elated. Until he made it clear that he intended to
take Kamma back to Windhoek with him. In the course of long
deliberations that lasted through days and nights (the tribe’s
customary politeness practically prohibiting anyone to say no to a
stranger) it transpired that he expected to become rich through
Kamma’s professional skills. Whereupon his offer was turned down.
On learning this, the foreigner lost his temper and in an attempt
to cut the Gordian knot he grabbed his guns and started firing at
the tribe. They retaliated in their own way. Bristling with arrows
like a porcupine the German fell down.

Kamma set about repairing as much of the damage as she could.
But there was a sad end to it all. However much her services were
needed by her people, the tribe could no longer afford to keep her.
This kind of incident had a way of propagating itself, no doubt
with the help of the wind; some time, sooner or later, they
believed implicitly, a commando would be sent out from Windhoek to
retaliate. Kamma had to be banished before that could happen. Amid
loud lamenting from all sides she was expelled from the place with
the magical name of Otjihaenemaparero. And after moons and moons of
travelling, here she is. Safe, but burning with anger. All she
wants now is revenge.

She will come with us
, Hanna decides; and Katja and
Kahapa concur without protest.

Then there is the Ovambo warrior, Himba. He, too, has a
chequered career behind him. No longer a young man, he has,
however, a formidable physique; his whole body bears the scars of
innumerable battles and he walks with a slight limp, which Kahapa
swears does not prevent him from travelling faster than most men
can run, for days on end, without food or water. After the death of
his father in a skirmish with a German patrol when he was still a
youngster, he collected around him a band of hand-picked warriors
and took an oath not to rest before the last foreigner had been
driven from the land. But as the years went by he just saw more and
more foreigners making their appearance – from the sea in the west,
from the land of the Bechuana in the east, Boers from the south,
occasionally even from Angola in the north. One by one his men
disappeared from his side: most killed by the enemy, others falling
prey to illness or predators, a few deserting to find an easier
life elsewhere. Only when Himba was left behind on his own did he
grudgingly consent to retire. He took two young wives, fathered
several children, and seemed at last to succumb to the easy
pleasures of domesticity. But barely a year ago, soon after the
outbreak of the new war which is still raging in the land, the
remote settlement to which he had retired was overrun by the
occupying army. They had no specific quarrel to pick with this
village. But inspired by the merciless Lodiar von Trodia the
soldiers, heading towards the restive Nama armies in the south,
sacked the small place of peace, killing everything that lived and
breathed – dogs, chickens, pigs, cattle, goats and people –
including Himba’s wives and all his children. With only two
companions he managed to get away on a moonless night. For weeks
they wandered about, intent only on avoiding all enemies along the
way. One of his companions was killed by a scorpion, the other was
trampled by a solitary elephant bull at a water-hole. In the end
Himba reached the mission station on his own. But this will be no
more man a temporary halt, he assures them, an ancient fire
smouldering in his throat. He is just waiting for the chance to go
to war again. And this time only a knife, a bullet, or a bayonet
will stop him.