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I was born just after the turn of the twentieth century and was already in my early eighties, when this thing happened to us.
Even from an early age a woman is modest about things like this. Ageing. We retain that modesty. But now, at my age, I am mostly grateful and rather proud of it. Eighty-two, thank you very much, and blessed with a clear mind.
I believed that in my lifetime I would get used to everything. From ox-wagons to people on the moon. The Beatles. And the mini skirt.
And then came the year of eighty-six. Nothing could have prepared me for it. We came face to face with the last of the Triple Terrors: the Black Terror! "Our country is burning," I heard them say over and over the past year. All I have to say is this: "I saw this thing coming right from the start." There were three Great Terrors: The Commies; the Catholics and now this one. The Blacks! The Terrorists!
We were brought up on a diet of Fear – to fear everything in heaven and on earth – and I spoon-fed it bottle by bottle to the children, and they did so in turn to my grand- and my great grandchildren.
You could get it everywhere. Along with the Terror came the Fear. So we closed our eyes and hearts tightly, and prayed that we would be spared and come out in one piece on the other side.
If you weren’t caught in the grips of this fear, it’s not so easy to understand. It’s hard to see beyond the blinkers put on by those who daily paralyze you with more and more fear.
And the stories. Everyone suddenly has a tale to tell. We pitied the Roman Catholics who would burn in hell because they had strayed off the path, and the Communists were, according to Heinz Konsalik, mostly in Russia, with spies watching their every move. The torture of believers and the banning of the Holy Book were known world-wide. People everywhere were equally terrified of the blackness of the catacombs.
Tonight people all over the world are sleeping with one eye open.
They also wanted to strip us of our freedom and beliefs, both then and now, they tell us. "Our freedom! Our beliefs! They want all our belongings, our homes, our cars. They just want to take-take-take. They want money. They want the right to vote. They want everything!" We get bombarded with this on every corner. And at night we begin to grind our teeth.
And then we are still God-fearing creatures on top of it all!
Selah.
But.
"There are some Commies loose amongst the natives," or whatever we call them at this point in time, "and they are getting restless," you hear whispered around. The hair on the back of the white’s necks stands up as straight as a die. And with this hair standing up dead straight, we form a laager. That’s what we do. We retreat further. We round up the ox-wagons to close everything else out. We overcame them before with a laager, a few Boer muskets and a covenant. Right there and then we started writing our own history. The thing about a laager is that what’s inside stays inside. And belongs there. Anything trying to get in from the outside looks like an attack.
Another terror. Heaven protect us. And we take off. We defend. We even start shooting at our own kind. It’s because one eventually can’t see beyond the circle of ox-wagons.
And then one day it happens right under your nose.
You see it, but you can’t recognize it for what it is...
Ester was playing with her dolls earlier while sitting and waiting for Paul. She wasn’t concerned that he was late. It’s part of what he does. His time away is her alone time.
But not tonight.
When a sound disturbs you out of the silence, and you start listening, it gets louder and louder drowning out everything else. That’s exactly the effect that the little one’s cry had on her. Firstly a far off sound in the distance and then drumming inside her head. The crying eventually drowned out Emily’s "Miss Ester, Miss Ester, take care of my child."
She loses her will and follows the sound.
She rushes out the back door, into the cold without her jersey. Crossing the yard in her socks, she stops outside the Xele’s room. Here she stands dead still and listens. She’s afraid that her imagination has got the better of her.
Once she is certain, she knocks tentatively on the door.
Nothing stirs. And the screaming continues.
She carefully pushes open the door.
Lying flat on his back is Amos with the child in his arms. He is passed out for the night. The child is screaming right into his ear and he hears nothing. He and the drink are sorry partners elsewhere.
She gently picks up the screaming child. Her attention is all that he needed.
She doesn’t even hear the Mazda arriving.
At the back door she walks straight into the thundercloud that is Paul.
"What’s wrong with you, Ester?" he plies, looking for reason, as she passes him with the child in her arms.
"Look," and she stops in her tracks right outside my door. She can feel his eyes boring through her back.
"The only thing wrong with me is that I could no longer bear to hear the wailing of the child." She says this loudly enough for me to hear as well.
She turns, looking straight into his eyes.
Ester’s strength lies in her short sentences.
"Have you forgotten about Veronica?" she asks.
And with the child in her arms she heads in the direction of the bedroom. At the door she turns again and faces him head-on.
"I told you before, and I swore before God, that this thing will never again happen near me or in my house." It is her self-confidence that gives her the strength to say it.
"You couldn’t do anything about it, Ester."
Paul realises that he’s standing at the edge of a bottomless pit.
"There was a lot that I could have done if I hadn’t blocked my ears to the screaming of the child. I should have known there was a problem. The child never stopped. But I kept telling myself that she was just the servant, she was black, so what did it matter?"
At that time Ester and Paul lived just two blocks away from me. Veronica came on a Saturday to do the washing and the floors. She didn’t live in.
This thing still had her in its grip.
"You asked her what was wrong and whether she had taken the child to a doctor. And?"
"She lied!"
Ester kept asking whether Veronica had taken the child to a doctor, and the answer always was: "Yes." Out of desperation this time she bundled Veronica and the child into the car and took them to the doctor. It materialised from the examination that the child was suffering from malnutrition.
Instead of buying food, Veronica had been drinking her money away.
"It’s not your fault," Paul said. He knows the story. He knows her pain.
Ester just looks at him. She shakes her head out of despondency.
"It’s not your fault that she squandered all her money on drink."
"I smelt it and I did nothing."
"I have been writing for the last how many years that our people spend more money on drink than on red meat." The journalist in Paul begins to spell out the situation for Ester. "Nine Million more Rand this year than last year. Alcohol is at the top of the groceries list. And fifty percent more on tobacco than on vegetables. Every day there are millions of children here, and throughout the world, that are starving and there’s nothing that we can do."
"Yes, Paul, people can read and write about the millions, but you have to experience it only once! That child died three days later. It’s not going to happen to this one. Not in this house."
She carries the child into the room and dumps him in the middle of the bed.
"Never again!"
Paul’s final words for the evening would ring in these passages for a long time to come.
"Who would ever have thought that a kaffertjie would one day land in my bed between me and my wife?"
