March 1901, Goshen, Orange River Colony (Have I given up on our ‘free’ state already?)
Dear Wolf,
Oupa Jakob always told us that reading and writing would be more valuable than shooting, riding, or making a fire. Everyone used to shake their heads at him. How could it possibly be true when you lived in the veld where those skills would keep you alive? Most people only have the family Bible and most cannot read it anyway. I never understood what he meant until now. Now this ledger is most precious to me.
I think of Oupa Jakob every time I take it from my blanket. I think of the lessons on the stoep at home, squeezed between our chores. Oupa Jakob’s insistence on the lesson time every day, even though Ma wanted us to help more. Especially me. I can feel that sideways guilt of knowing I should be stirring the washing rather than sitting there with you. You, peeking at my slate, copying my answers. Me, keeping my arm clear to give you a good view. I loved every moment of sitting next to you.
I tried to work harder, faster, to make up the time for Ma. I heard her tell Ouma Anna it would be trouble teaching me to read. That Oupa was spoiling me for work – what good could come of giving me ideas? But he loved me. He said I was clever and quick. And he was the head of the family. Who could cross him? I can see him cajoling Kristina to sit with us too, but she danced away from him, laughing and tossing her curly hair. Even Oupa’s stern look behind those bushy eyebrows wasn’t enough for Kristina. Six years old and she had all of our hearts on a string, didn’t she?
I want to write and write about our family, as if I could write them into life, to stand in front of me like before. I fear so much that I will forget their faces. I thought, if we were compliant and quiet and careful, then the British wouldn’t bother us. I had no idea what was coming.
Groups of soldiers began coming to the house more. What happens when men are in a group? How does an ordinary man on his own turn ugly in a group? They became more demanding, not satisfied with a simple parcel of food. They wanted information. They wanted liquor. They wanted anything valuable in the house. They shouted and demanded. Ma started to hide the little girls when she saw riders approach. They called us undesirables because you and Pa are on commando fighting. They said that if you surrendered, we would be looked after. We must tell our menfolk to give up, they said. Ha! If only they knew Ma like I do. I saw her eyes harden, the signal to get out of her way. Her lips, compressed and silent, but I knew how angry she was.
I was in the fort in the hedge, hiding from Ma, when the British came to the house for the last time. I heard their shouts and stamping horses. I kept hiding. I am a coward. I just couldn’t come out. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, Wolf. I could see Ma and the girls running, grabbing what they could, coming out the house with blankets, pots, and what warm clothes they could find.
The soldiers took all the food. Even the jars of konfyt we’d worked so hard at last year were loaded into their carts. Two Boer men herded all the cattle together and drove them away, their shame sneering like dogs, tails between their legs.
Then the worst – the soldiers went into the kraals and shot everything – the pigs and goats, the chickens. Wolf, they shot Lofdal. He and Sokkies came to the fence to greet them, and they just lifted their rifles and fired. And when the horses tried to get up, they shot them again and again. They chased the dogs into the stable and shot them till they were quiet. Kristina’s dogs. Like a nightmare, those shots ringing off the stone kraal walls and Kristina screaming.
Little Lizzie had her head buried in Ma’s skirt, and Ma just stood with her eyes distant and cold and hard as stone. Ma and the little girls were loaded onto our wagon.
Oupa Jakob stood in the yard, turning in a slow circle, looking for me. I knew he couldn’t call me, didn’t want to give me away, but his eyes were desperate, searching, searching. He looked like a crazy old fool, turning around and around. I couldn’t stop the tears or the sobs which seemed to come from so deep, my stomach hurt. Then I heard his voice. He was too far away for me to see his lips move, but I heard it as clearly as if he were crouching next to me in the bush, a whisper, ‘You’re strong and clever, Rachel. Think on your feet and make yourself useful, make yourself indispensable.’ To this day I don’t know how I heard him whisper.
The soldiers bundled him into the wagon, another old man crazed with grief. Kristina was quiet now and sitting on Oupa’s lap with his long arms wrapped around her. I remember her big eyes, shocked and staring. Lizzie clung to Ma, her face hidden from me. And me, trying so hard to be brave for Oupa, but I could feel my eyes stinging and my mouth twitching like it wasn’t mine. I watched them drive away from me – and that was the last time I saw them.
The soldiers were finishing up now, and they set fire to the house. They smashed our lamps against the walls, the oil running down the white-washed walls, its stringent reek reaching my nostrils across the yard. A soldier had been slouching against a wagon and now he took one last deep pull at his cigarette before tossing it into the paraffin. Blue flames flared tall, stretching for the roof. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, waiting for the thatch to catch, and suddenly it was a snapping, cracking roar. Then the white lattice on the stoep buckled and collapsed. That sweet smell of grass fire, which I always loved, now makes my stomach clench and brings before my eyes the furious fall of our house.
They found me eventually, hauling me out of my hiding place and dragging me over to the officer in charge. He cast disinterested eyes at me until his gaze rested on this book. Pulling it from me, he opened it and threw it on the floor. He gestured towards a wagon which was being loaded with sacks from our barn. I just managed to scoop it up before I was pushed into the wagon. I knew those sacks were full of our potatoes and cabbages. As the wagon began to trundle out of the yard, I asked the driver where we were going. He was a black man, dressed like a burgher, and he spoke Afrikaans to me. He told me they were taking me to the camp close by, the one called Goshen. I asked if the others were going there too. He looked at me strangely and shook his head. ‘No, child. You are now alone. They’ve gone to Winburg.’
Hannah sat back in her chair, her thoughts skittering around what she had found. She knew there had been concentration camps in the South African War. They were run by the British as refugee camps for Boer women and children displaced by the British farm-burning policies. She remembered her fierce ouma saying that, though the Nazis took concentration camps to another level, the British had used them before Hitler had been out of short pants. Hannah had never taken it any further, never read or researched that part of South Africa’s history at all. More than that, it had been local; it probably happened within a hundred kilometres of where she was sitting. Bethlehem, where the box of books had come from, was the closest town to Leliehoek, after all.
Closing the ledger and carrying it to the shop desk, she typed into the Google search page, concentration camp, South African War, Goshen. A thrill of anticipation bubbled as the page loaded. A list of options appeared, references to the war, to the camps, but all had the search word Goshen missing. Underneath these came references to Goshen, but they were unconnected to the war. She changed the search words to Goshen, Orange Free State. A link appeared at the top of the list and she clicked on it. A scenic shot of fields with red-gold sandstone cliffs in the background. The page was titled ‘Goshen Farm, farming for the future by restoring the past’. Below this banner were posts about game auctions and stock sales. She clicked on ‘Contact Us’. Farm telephone numbers below the name Alistair Barlow. The address, a post office box in Leliehoek.