“Fought?”
“Brothers always do. . . . The younger always wants to overtake his older brother, so Sarel always tested your father. . . . It was good for them. . . . I encouraged it. And then Sarel grew jealous of him, of course.”
His story was interrupted with pointing and then wordless scanning of the bright pinpoints.
“Enough,” he said, taking our cups to the kitchen to wash and put away, to hide the evidence of our secret ritual. Back in bed, I considered Oupa’s stories of our family and realized how much I didn’t know and how little I understood. From the life of the adventurous ship captain all the way to our living on the remote veld, the message was this: There is a giant and exciting world out there, but we seem driven to get as far away from it as we can.
4
October 1900, Concentration Camp
Oom Sarel slouched in without sound or statement. He was smaller and bent, as if his bones had gone soft. He looked twenty years older than the man we’d seen eagerly ride to war a year earlier.
“Out,” Moeder shouted, rising and pointing to the tent flap so quickly it seemed a planned response.
Within our first few days in camp, we had heard that Oom Sarel had not only surrendered but was working for our keepers. Moeder declared him a traitor, putting him at a level of shame lower even than the British.
“He’s family,” Willem argued at first. “You always say family is the most important thing.”
“That, seun, is what makes it worse,” she said. “That’s beneath the lowest.”
“But—”
She slapped a red mark on his cheek and forbade the speaking of his uncle’s name.
Oom Sarel had not approached us in our few months in camp, nor had we seen him on our side of the fence. Not until this day. He instantly thrust a palm toward Moeder as if to hold her back.
“This is for you, Lettie, from Tante Hannah,” he said, handing me a small sack.
“Let me explain,” he said to my mother. “Give me one minute.”
Even the Huiseveldts quieted to hear.
“I was injured . . .”
“We don’t care,” she said.
“I was captured and they took me to their doctors.”
He opened his collar and pulled back his shirt to unveil a scarred and misshapen shoulder, still discolored, with knots raised like tiny fists under the skin.
“This is not a camp for prisoners,” she said. “You’re not a prisoner. We respect prisoners who were taken. . . . You surrendered.”
“I was injured,” he said. “This arm is almost useless now.”
He lifted his right arm like a broken-winged bird. It was withered to half the size of the other arm.
“Were you shot?”
“The doctors said they had never seen anything like it. Bones were sticking out of the skin. I got separated and was captured. I tried fighting with my left arm but couldn’t load my rifle. The pain . . . I can’t . . .”
“Are you saying that your father and brother left you behind? Of course not . . . they would never leave you.”
“I was scouting, and they didn’t know what happened to me.”
“And the Tommies brought you here?”
“This is where they could tend my shoulder.”
I had no idea how such things worked, but I was surprised that a fighting man would be taken to a camp for the families of those burned from their homes.
“Liar . . . you surrendered . . . didn’t you?” Moeder shouted now. “Didn’t you? You gave up . . . didn’t you?”
“I had to get to a doctor. . . . I was dying.”
“Nobody dies from a broken bone. . . . You signed the oath, didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t lift my arm.”
“But you surrendered.”
“I would have died.”
He paused, awaiting her next assault. She stared.
“I fought . . . but they have half a million soldiers. . . . We have a few thousand farmers.”
“And fewer once the cowards give in.”
“More Tommies are dying of disease than from our rifles. They’re bothered more by lice than by our commandos.”
“You lie. . . . The British lie.”
“It’s only a matter of how many have to die.”
“You disgraced us.”
He sagged, shrinking into his boots.
“I want this to end before everyone is dead. . . . The God of Hosts has turned against us.”
“That’s a sin . . . sinner.”
“We’re all sinners. . . . This is my redemption. . . . This is the right thing. You can see God’s will in all this. . . . His will is that we stop now . . . to save lives . . .”
“What about the others? Are they quitting? Your father, at his age? That old man you’re always trying to impress? Schalk, at his age, a young man, is he quitting? Is Matthys quitting, your brother, your rival? . . . Is he going to surrender? Never.”
“They weren’t wounded. . . . They weren’t captured,” he said.
The two were a foot apart; their breathing sounded like horses after a gallop. I inched forward to help my mother in case of blows.
“Men fight with arms shot off,” she started up again. “Matthys would . . .”
“I’m a farmer, not a soldier,” he said.
“There is only one reason to stop fighting,” Moeder said. “Because you are dead. I wish you had died out there so we could have been proud instead of ashamed. At least we would have mourned you. How can Hannah live with this?”
“She is my wife.”
“She vowed to marry a man . . .”
“When this is over, we’ll get our land back. . . . We’ll start over again. . . . They don’t want our farmland . . . just the gold mines. It will be like before.”
I knew that was the wrong thing to say to her.
“There are women who have escaped camps and are chasing down cowards like you . . . forcing them to go back,” she said. “And if they won’t go back, the women shoot them. . . . That saves their husbands from having to waste ammunition on them. There are even some women on commando, fighting to their death while you give up. Women fighting, but not you. Old men fighting, but not you. Young boys fighting, but not you.”
I had not heard of the women fighting but had no trouble imagining Moeder leading a column of avenging women. I knew of boys as young as twelve and men in their eighties who were on commando.
“I’m not . . . a soldier . . .”
“That’s an excuse, not a reason. . . . Get out of here. . . . Get out of here, coward. I can’t stand the sight of you. Don’t go near my children, they shouldn’t have to look at you . . . to be reminded you’re of their blood.”
“This is why I came,” he interrupted.
He held out a pencil and some paper. He explained in little more than a whisper: the women were being allowed to write to their husbands and tell them about life in the camp. “A man deserves to know what his family is going through.”
“How would you know what a man deserves?”
“They promise the messages will be delivered,” he said. “You can tell him how the children are.”