I tried to picture the scene, two armies so close that they could harmonize, yet knowing what the next day might bring. Danger did not seem so near in this camp. It was not easy for us, but we did not have to consider the flight of so many stray bullets.
“Faithful servants of the Lord,” I repeated.
“You know it?”
“Of course.”
“Of course you do,” he said. “That’s all we ever heard from the men we captured. God and duty. God will protect us . . . God’s will. A minute wouldn’t pass without thanking God and quoting scripture. Not a one could fight without a Bible in his pocket.”
“Our way.”
“But God offers a lot of different advice.”
I tilted my head.
“The Joiners in here . . . God told them to surrender; God told them it was the best thing.” He lifted both arms and looked to the sky. “God tells some to fight and some not to fight. Has anybody in this country ever done anything that God didn’t have a say in?”
“Just because your army is godless . . .”
“We are not godless. . . . It’s just that you are so . . . so bloody Godful.”
“A coward will cling to any excuse,” I said.
He nodded. I nodded. I looked at the sky; he looked at the ground. I was ready to move on.
21
May 1900, Venter Farm
We considered ourselves capable farmers in the absence of the men. Our only real problem arose when Moeder injured her back when we tried to rid the sheep of lice. The sheep had been clustering like clouds in a storm front, rubbing against one another, almost sparking from friction. Moeder parted a clear space on the back of one, and blue lice raced from the light to the safety of the thick wool. With a small growling noise, she announced that we would have to send them through the dipping tank.
The men had complained of the sheep for years at the time of dipping. Neither Oupa nor Vader cursed nor blasphemed, but their screams at the sheep made their frustration obvious. “Stupidest animals alive,” Vader yelled one time. “Sent by God to vex us.”
We found a bottle that bore a simple label in Vader’s hand: “Sheep.” There were no instructions for mixing. They had never foreseen anyone else’s having to take over when lice invaded. Bina and I filled the dipping pool with water, and Moeder poured in the dip mixture. Willem rounded the sheep up and drove them down the thornbush chute into the tank. The men were right: they were stupid. And stubborn in the chute. They shook and balked and protested in their crying-child voices. And they came up coughing after Moeder forced their heads under.
A fat ewe particularly objected and tried to back out the chute, getting hind legs caught in the thornbush wall. It panicked further and twisted against the binding branches. The ewe screamed in pure, ignorant fear as Moeder pulled it by the front legs. It kicked at her, crying like death into her face, its eyes flashing desperate white, and then it loosed a piteous wail.
Moeder reached farther to grasp the wool at its rump. The ewe twisted and raged, burying the thorns deeper in its hocks. Moeder bent lower, nearer the shanks, and lifted. Nothing. Lower, harder, with her back and shoulders and legs. When she screamed, it shocked the sheep into silence. She released the ewe and fell backward. When she opened her eyes, she gasped sips of air, teeth clenched. I jumped into the chute and pried the animal free from the other side with Willem’s help.
“Breathe, now, breathe,” Bina said, leaning over Moeder, trying to block the sun from her eyes. She inhaled with a catch and panted again, arms crossed tight at her stomach. She looked flushed and gave off heat.
“Oh, dear God . . . Matthys . . . ,” she yelled with more panic than pain.
“He’s not here,” I said.
“She knows,” Bina said. “Be still.”
She lifted Moeder’s head into her lap and spoke softly. “Are you carrying . . . is that your worry?”
Moeder nodded toward Willem and me. “I don’t want them to see.”
“Be still,” Bina said. “Then we get you to bed.”
Bina hummed low. The sound filled space and pushed away distraction, as when Moeder pumped the organ bellows with just one finger on a key. It steadied Moeder’s breathing.
“Take Willem and the little one and go to Tante’s,” Bina told me. “Spend the night. Your mother needs quiet. She hurt her back; she’ll be all right. Stay a full day. I’ve got muti for this.”
I wanted to stay and help. But I trusted Bina, and my duty would be to the little ones. Tante Hannah welcomed us and began telling us all the things we could do. I had to interrupt her to say that Moeder had hurt her back and we were sent to spend the night.
“Delightful,” she said.
The next morning I helped Tante Hannah make breakfast, and later she accompanied us home. It took Moeder two days to get back in the field, and she was slower, more deliberate, and very quiet.
22
June 1901, Concentration Camp
Water grew heavier, the buckets stretching my arms and fingers. I fetched for our family, for Ouma van Zyl most days, and now for the Huiseveldts, since Klaas had taken a cough.
The line formed before dawn. The cold reached down and chilled me from the inside, so that I could feel the exact shape of my lungs. I thought of the men on commando, wherever they were, and I hoped they had fires and blankets and a safe place to spend each night. I pictured them still with the coffee and rusks and biltong we had packed for them when they left, but I knew that was impossible.
The pump wheezed a three-note groan, up-down-up, coaxing the stubborn water upward when everything in its nature told it to go the other way. Some women brought pitchers; others, enamel basins. We had a bucket, and so did the Huiseveldts. I studied the water each day, admiring the way it adapted to its container, caring nothing about shape, only direction. Some days I could see through the water to the silver metal at the bottom of the bucket, and at the right angle, I could see my reflected image. Other days, especially after a storm, it was brown as a puddle in an ox path.
This day, it was near freezing, and my knuckles stung from the weight of the buckets. Maples leaned against the fence post and looked out to the east. Three women walked toward me. I put my water buckets down and retied my boots until the women turned up a row.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning . . .”
“Hallo . . . isn’t that what you usually say?”
“Bina, our native girl, says ‘peace’ . . . her tribal word for peace, at least. . . . That’s how they greet each other.”
“Peace?”
“Yes, the first thing she says when she sees me.”
“Peace,” he said.
“Right.”
“You’re wearing your apron again,” Maples said.
“Pinafore.”
“I’ll have to tell Betty.”
“Betty?”
“Betty . . . my girl back home,” he said.
“A servant?”
“No, my sweetie.”
“You . . .”
“Sure . . . haven’t I told you? I’ve told you how much I miss her. . . . That’s why I call this Betty.” He pointed to his rifle. “Whenever I hold her, I think about holding Betty.”
He pulled his rifle to his chest and petted the barrel as if he were about to dance with a slim, rigid girl.
“We write letters almost every day,” he said. “I’ve mentioned her to you.”