“Ma, can we . . . ohh!” I shouted at the sight of her and dropped my side of the basket. Her face was puffy, and one of her eyes was completely red where it should have been white. She had ruptured vessels in her rage.
MOEDER APPEARED TO HAVE calmed, but her anger still occupied space in the tent. She understood when I told her I needed to take air. I could not look at her for the dread of seeing that frightening eye. Neither Willem nor Cee-Cee noticed, somehow. I walked the eastern fence line in the afternoon again. It was a Tuesday but it felt like Sunday. So I didn’t even bring a book, just prayed as I walked, and hummed psalms that came to mind. At intervals, I turned quickly to see whether someone was following me.
“That’s pretty,” the guard said, surprising me just as I turned to look forward once again. He pointed at my pinafore.
“Just an apron,” I said.
“Nice . . . new?”
I did not answer. The garment wasn’t even dry from washing it that morning.
“How are you?”
“Me?” It was the first question about my well-being that I’d heard in some time. Certainly the first from a stranger.
“I haven’t escaped yet,” I said. “But it’s early.”
“I’ve got something for you.” He leaned his rifle against the fence, fidgeted with a button on his tunic, reached inside, and produced a book.
“I saw that you like to read,” he said. “I’m finished with this. . . . Thought maybe you’d like to take it on.”
“Dickens?” I asked, before I could see the cover. What else would a Brit be reading?
“Dickens . . . right . . . Copperfield.”
“David Copperfield?”
“Heard of Dickens?”
“Yes, but haven’t read any. My tante Hannah . . . my aunt on the Joiner side, has told me of Dickens. She loves him. She told me I should try to write myself.”
“Have you seen your aunt?” he asked.
“Just once. . . . She used to teach me. . . . We used to talk . . .”
“About Dickens?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, he’s my favorite,” he said. “They love him at home. He sold his books bits at a time . . . in the papers. . . . People would queue up all night to be there when the next chapter came out. You can have this.”
“Have it?”
“I’ve read it. . . . You can keep it. . . . Just taking up space in my tent.”
“This is for me?”
It was my second book. Third, counting the dictionary. It was three times as long as my other book. I held it with both hands and felt the heft of it.
“Ample,” I said. Then I immediately thought myself a fool for abusing my newest English words. “I mean . . . it’s long.”
“You probably have time to read, though, eh?”
I opened the book and skimmed the first sentence. I could not imagine anything so completely capturing my thoughts. I read the sentence aloud as if it could make the fences fall and the war subside: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . . these pages must show.”
“I wondered the same thing when I was young,” the guard said. “Where will it all take me? Will it be ordinary or something more? It’s already been something . . . being in Africa. You’ll see. . . . Little David gets by in hard times. . . . Inspiring, I thought.”
That one sentence, written decades earlier, somehow created the same response when read by a British soldier as it did when read by a young woman in Africa. That’s what Tante Hannah talked about and I hadn’t been able to understand. I wanted to race away and bury myself in the story. It would be a good way for me to learn about England and British culture. I might want to travel there someday, so this was educational. Tante Hannah would be proud of me. If Moeder ever let me speak to her again. Oh . . . Moeder . . .
“I can’t take this.”
“Yes, it’s yours now.”
“No, take your book. I can’t have it.”
“I’m finished with it.”
“No.” I shoved it back toward him, but he balled up his hands in his pockets.
“No one has to know.”
“I’ll know. I can’t even be talking to you. You might tell the commandant.”
“I probably dislike the commandant more than you do,” he said. “How’s this: you can borrow it to read. . . . It won’t be a gift from the enemy that way.”
That made sense. But not enough to those who might ask questions.
“No.” But I couldn’t help starting to read again. It was glorious. It was Dickens.
I started walking again; I needed to be away from the guard. But he kept talking, anyway.
“I worked in a mill until I got sacked, so I joined to serve . . . steady work . . . improve my station. Thought it would be an adventure.”
“Adventure?”
“Nobody said much about it being a war . . . not like the Crimea or such,” he said. “A month cruise and then a few months seeing Africa, and it would all be over. Came as a surprise your folks had much of an army. Been interesting, though, and beautiful . . . from the first day. Steamed into Table Bay at night and there were dozens of ships at anchor waiting to off-load troops and cargo. . . . The sight of all their lights reflecting off the water . . . I’ll never forget.”
“You were in Cape Town?”
“Two days. . . . Rode the electric trams, went up to that big, flat mountain,” he said. “Most amazing city I’ve ever seen. Truly. Every kind of people in that city.”
I was jealous. This British soldier had seen more of my country than I had.
“I’m a man of the world now,” he said, tipping his hat like a proper gentleman. “I hadn’t even been on a train until I joined. I’ve been on too many of them now . . . mostly hopin’ they didn’t get blown up.”
I turned, but he followed me again.
“Saw the giant smoking chimneys of the gold mines on the Rand,” he said. “You should see them at night. Like lit-up castles. The Golden Reef, they called it. Beautiful. The whole country, really, so bright, so vivid.”
I had not yet worked that far back in the dictionary, so I would skip ahead to vivid that afternoon. I finally broke away from him and was eight pages into the Dickens book by the time I entered our tent.
“Where did you get that?” Moeder asked.
“Janetta . . . she gave it to me before she left.” The lie came so easily.
“Wash your hands after you read it,” she warned. “You don’t want it to infect you.”
17
Mid-December 1899, Venter Farm
Schalk often told stories of my father’s uncanny horsemanship. But Vader never put on showy displays in front of us. It left me stunned, then, when the men came home from war the first time and Vader dismounted at a gallop and hit the ground like a springboard that thrust him onto the stoep for an embrace with Moeder. It was so speedy that it took several moments for the dust from his horse to arrive and envelop them in a cloud of privacy.