I studied my parents, seeing how they behaved after this separation. These were the things they would talk of . . . the farm schedule? I suspected the personal things would take place in private, at night. Or maybe they each knew the other well enough that they did not have to put thought to word. They were man and wife, sharing the yoke. I wanted to know the secrets, but they allowed so little to be seen.
The moment Gideon finished the Bible reading that evening, Vader announced his fatigue and readiness for bed. He reached out for Moeder’s hand to help her from her seat. She looked at his hand and rose without taking it, putting her own in her skirt pockets. He kept his hand out, palm up. She followed him into their bedroom. I could not recall Vader offering a hand that way. I’m sure he didn’t know why she rejected it. I suspected he’d find out about the scabs on her hands soon enough.
OUPA GIDEON DOMINATED OUR Dingaan’s Day remembrances, filling the parlor with a story of treachery, murder, and the miracle of the Holy Covenant.
“We were the children of God led into the wilderness,” he started, patting his leather-bound Bible like an instrument, “off to find our own land, away from British tyranny, where we could honor our Holy Father.”
Oupa’s passion heated the still air.
“There were more than ten thousand of us on our Great Trek . . . following different trails . . . fighting savages, hunger, illness . . . tsetse flies killing our stock,” he said. “We traveled for months in jawbone wagons, over the Dragon Mountains through narrow passes . . . wagons falling over cliffs, dragging down a dozen oxen with each.”
Ouma Wilhelmina nodded, smoke threads rising in a loose braid above her pipe.
“Whole families drowned at river fords . . . but we followed God’s will. When our party reached Natal, our leaders sought a treaty with King Dingaan—the Vulture—who lured them into his kraal for a celebration of peace. As they raised their cups, the Zulus slaughtered seventy men, crushing their skulls with knobkerries . . .”
“And when they found the body of Piet Retief, he had the treaty of peace from the savages still in his pouch,” Wilhelmina interrupted. “The last time we shall respect promises not our own.”
Oupa paused to allow his impatience with her to register. This was his presentation. She interrupted every year.
“The Zulus then attacked one of our laagers, killing hundreds of women and children while they were asleep,” he said. “My family survived, but we lived for almost a year in hunger and in fear that the same fate would be ours.”
“Except for God’s great Providence,” Wilhelmina interjected again.
He paused.
“We prayed to God and vowed that if he would grant us victory, we would build a church on that spot and forever consecrate the memory of the day. And then the savages came, unaware that our vow to God had steeled us in our cause.”
He raised the Bible to his lips with eyes closed.
“There were twelve thousand of them against only five hundred of us in a circle of wagons beside the river,” he said.
“Four hundred seventy,” Wilhelmina said.
“Outnumbered twenty to one.”
“Twenty-five,” she corrected.
“My mother and sisters loaded the rifles for my father,” he said, beginning a rapid-fire description.
“The muzzles were so hot they burned their fingers loading them . . .”
He mimed the fast action of loading a hot rifle. Bible in his left hand, he sighted targets over it.
“So many shots were being fired that the sky was cloudy from the powder . . .”
He squinted.
“They surged in for hours . . . hours. . . . Screams filled the air . . . piteous moans . . . God’s great wrath upon them.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to hear death moans.
“And in the heat, the bodies of thousands of Zulus lifted a stench to the heavens. . . . Yet all but three of our men still stood . . . witnesses of God’s great blessing upon us . . .”
I felt that heat and had to lift Cee-Cee off my lap, the room was so tight and air so precious. I wheezed as if I had been smoking Ouma’s pipe, my head grown light.
“God’s will,” Oom Sarel said. “How else could four hundred burghers defeat the Vulture except for the Providence of God? The British are nothing to us compared to that. We should make another covenant, now, to defeat the British.”
I opened my eyes and inhaled thick air. The idea of a vow sounded so out of place in our time. The first was so long ago it seemed like a biblical tale. I wondered if God would be interested in causes purchased with the promises of men he created to be flawed and weak in the first place.
Oupa ignored Sarel.
“And that is why this day is holy . . . and why we must revere this solemn vow . . . and why those who forsake our covenant should be delivered to hell.”
18
May 1901, Concentration Camp
Willem and Klaas created private space beneath a blanket on the far side of the tent, perhaps imagining it a fort from which to fight their imaginary foes. At times we all pulled into small spaces of our own creation, which at first seemed another level of confinement: a cocoon inside an enclosure within an encampment.
I focused on my writing, having discovered the ability to wall out distractions almost regardless of the commotion. In time, the pressure of all the nearness seemed to squeeze words from me. But even with as many pages of rules as I could rip down, paper was dear. Instead of putting every meteor flash of thought to paper, I made them take form before they reached the page. The act of writing gave them substance, and they occupied space, and that made them real. I decided I should always write as if pencil and paper and light were scarce. When each word is valuable, you spend them with care.
Some things that went on were impossible to ignore. It wasn’t more than twelve feet across the tent, and in the right conditions, the sounds of even whispered conversations bounced off the canvas and arrived without distortion on the other side. The discussions between those high-pitched little-boy voices came across clearly, and when I heard Klaas mention my name, I listened.
It turned out that Klaas had taken a liking to me, an admission that sickened Willem and did me very little good. When Klaas returned to the matter, saying he would somehow come to my rescue and be my hero one day, Willem threatened to leave and never speak to him.
They talked of the war, cataloging the stories they had heard—atrocities by the Brits, bravery by our men, and the most gruesome descriptions of war wounds; men being shot in the eye while looking through field glasses, men being shelled while in the latrine, several men standing in a row being shot through with the same bullet.
Both decided they were ready to break out of the camp and join the men on commando. They were old enough and could ride and shoot better than the Tommies. Willem reported having killed a duiker as evidence.
“They’re fast and very tasty,” Willem said.
“You have to be fast if you’re tasty,” Klaas said, countering Willem’s duiker with his own claim of a bushbuck. After volleying tales of manly acts, they agreed they were both fit for duty.
“Won’t the Tommies punish our families if we escape?” Willem asked.
“Glory has its cost.”
“How do we get to the commandos with no horses?”