Stones for My Father (16 page)

Chocolate. It took me several seconds to be sure that that was what I was tasting: real chocolate, slightly
chalky with age, but chocolate nonetheless. The last time I had eaten chocolate, my father had still been alive. After a few moments, the sticky sweetness was too much: I swallowed the chocolate with an almighty effort, feeling fresh tears form as I turned my face away so that Parsons wouldn’t think me ungrateful.

A few days later, I felt the sun on my eyelids.

The sensation of warmth soon transformed into colors — yellow and white blotches that danced across my field of vision like tiny fireballs — and slowly, painfully, through crusted eyes I began to make out the light reflecting off the steel foot of my hospital bed.

“Parsons?” I whispered.

I thought that it might be him standing there — it was a man’s figure that I could see, outlined against a window. “Pa?”

The figure edged closer, and I realized that he was leaning on crutches, with one leg tucked up in bandages. By the time he got to my bedside, I recognized the sweep of black hair, the neat mustache, and the leaf-shaped badge.

“Corlie?” he said. There was uncertainty in his voice, and — I don’t think I imagined this — fear. “Is that you, Corlie Roux?”

I rubbed my eyes. “
Wie’s daar?
” I asked.

There was a long silence.

“It’s me, Corlie,” he said at last.

W
hen at last I saw myself in the greasy reflection of a washstand mirror, it became clear why Corporal Byrne had not recognized me immediately. Where once my hair had grown in mousy curls was now only a thin layer of fuzz, sprouting like gray moss on my shaven head. My eyes were ringed with dark circles, and my lips were white. Watching the other children in the camp disappear into gaunt shadows of their former selves, I had not realized that I, too, had faded. My throat was always dry now, and my voice rasped; the words I mouthed rattled about in my head, making my ears pound and my eyes burn. My legs were covered in lice bites, and my arms were still bruised by Ma’s hard fingers.

Corporal Byrne, on the other hand, looked much as I remembered him — taller, somehow, and bronzed by
many months under an African sun. But there was sadness in his eyes.

Parsons explained that Corporal Byrne had been granted leave on account of his leg — a wound that he had sustained in battle at Elandsfontein. He had heard about the captured
laager
and our transportation to the Free State, but he’d had to wait to join a column on its way to Bloemfontein before he could reach Kroonstad.

“He says he has something to show you,” said Parsons, as Corporal Byrne watched on from the bedside. “A surprise. But it will have to wait until later, when the doctor has left and the nurses are at supper.”

“ ’n Verrassing?”
I asked
.

“That’s right. But you mustn’t mention it to anyone else, understand? Hospital regulations, you know.”

It must have been a few hours before he returned, and I had just begun to doze off to the sound of sleeping noises from other patients in nearby beds. Corporal Byrne arrived cradling a squirming lump bundled in an army blanket.

“Corlie? Look, Corlie — look who’s come to see you …”

He unfurled the blanket far enough to reveal a small black face fringed with white hair. Two large brown eyes peered out at me. As Corporal Byrne loosened the blanket, a long, black-tipped tail extended and curled, and two long, thin arms stretched out to me in a silent plea. The monkey’s skin was pale blue beneath mottled gray fur.

“
Apie?
” I lifted my hand to touch one gray arm, and the monkey wriggled in Corporal Byrne’s embrace. It was as large as a small dog, and probably weighed as much as a sack of mealie corn.

“Easy, Moet,” whispered Byrne — but when the monkey refused to desist, he loosened his grasp and lowered him gently to the bed. The vervet scrambled toward me, pinching my arms through the sheets with his little claws, and drew up so close to my face that our noses were almost touching. Then, with a bark, he leaped into the air.

“He recognizes you,” said Corporal Byrne with a mystified look.

“My
apie
 …” The vervet had climbed up onto the bedpost, where he set about examining my head for any sign of insect life.

“I found him by one of the wagons, howling at the moon,” said Corporal Byrne, who talked to me as if I understood. I liked listening to him even though I could only pick out a few words. “I figured you kids must have been with the
laager
, and when I saw how tame he was — well, I guessed he must have been a child’s pet.” He shook his head. The sadness in his eyes was the same sadness I saw in the parched, battle-scarred land beyond the wire fence: a lonely wilderness that had long since taken root deep inside us both. “I couldn’t find it in my heart to just leave the poor little fella, so I took him home with me. My troop christened him Moet.” Corporal Byrne pointed at the monkey so I would understand. “Moet.” He pronounced it “Mo-ay.”

“Moet,” I repeated. “Moet.”

The vervet immediately stopped fiddling with my hair and scampered to the foot of the bed. He raised himself onto his hind legs, surveying the room filled with sleeping bodies. Then he glanced over one shoulder to Corporal Byrne, his brown eyes questioning.

“He’s looking for Gert,” I whispered.

“Where is Gert?” asked Corporal Byrne. Seeing that I could not reply, he gathered the wee vervet in the army blanket and brought him close to my face so that I could kiss his soft, gray head.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said.

He came back every day for two weeks. Sometimes Parsons would join him, to translate for us. He twice returned with Moet, although Parsons was clearly uncomfortable with smuggling an animal into the hospital. In the end, he convinced us that there would be plenty of time to see the monkey when I was well enough to go outside.

When Parsons was around we would talk about life before the war, and if there was no one to translate we played tic-tac-toe. Corporal Byrne drew me pictures of Canada — majestic mountains circled by handsome birds; sparkling lakes and rivers overflowing with fish; forests lurking with bears and strange, antlered horses called moose; buffalo that looked nothing like ours, with lumpish heads and handlebar horns; cabins built out of
tree trunks — and I wondered if he regretted leaving his homeland for the battlefields of Africa. Once, I asked him if Canada was as beautiful as the Transvaal in the spring. Corporal Byrne had laughed, and said that it was a darn sight colder at that time of year.

One morning, he was late. I waited and waited, eventually climbing up onto the window ledge by my bed so that I could see him when he approached.

Outside, the camp was mostly still. Everyone seemed to have retreated into their tents, and the few British soldiers that remained on Steyn Street seemed to be in a hurry to get into the barracks buildings. I looked across the ward at all the empty beds, and realized that almost all the patients had left. Those that could walk had returned to their tents, and those that remained — two frail figures at the far end by the door — were too ill to know that the hospital was empty.

I considered leaving, but then I remembered that I had nowhere to go. My clothes were folded in a pile by my bed. Unnerved by the eerie silence, and desperate to do something, I got dressed.

As I laced my boots with fumbling fingers — it was as if my hands had forgotten the familiar sequence of looping, threading, and pulling tight — the hospital door was flung open to a chorus of voices.

I recognized the officer called Stevens, the doctor, and the gravediggers, as well as a cohort of young soldiers. They poured through the hospital, singing at the tops of their lungs.

It was a fearful racket. Their bellowing voices echoed through the empty ward as the men stomped their feet and clapped their hands, whistling and whooping with delirious joy. They didn’t appear to notice me.

And then, almost as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone. Their voices carried on outside, singing a different tune.

I listened to the voices become more distant, until at last only the wisp of a melody remained.

Then I saw him, standing in the doorway, his handsome face creased into a smile.

“It’s over, Corlie,” said Corporal Byrne. “The war’s over.”

I stood up, sensing that he had said something important. Corporal Byrne came closer, his movements taut with excitement. His voice was soft, but urgent.

“The last of the commandos surrendered yesterday at Rooiwal. There’s to be a treaty at Vereeniging.”

I couldn’t help smiling at the way he pronounced it, garbling the guttural sounds with his crisp, clipped accent. Then I began to understand what he meant. The commandos must have run out of food, or ammunition, or perhaps both. Too many men had wives and children dying in the camps, and saw that the war was destined to be lost. They had given up.

I sat back down on the bed, my mind racing. What would this mean for the others — for Oom Sarel, and Danie and Andries? For Sipho and Lindiwe? Where would we go? Would we be punished for having the audacity to survive?

Corporal Byrne must have noticed that I didn’t share his excitement, because the smile faded as he perched on the bed opposite mine.

“The republics will become a part of the Empire,” he said slowly, as if by speaking clearly I would be able to understand his English.
“Die Transvaal en die Vry
Staat.”
He clasped his hands together, motioning a union.
“Britse.”

British.

“But they will be granted self-government,” continued Byrne in a hopeful voice. He might as well have been talking to the walls. “They will be as good as free …”

I shook my head in disbelief.

Corporal Byrne stood up, and extended one hand.

“Come, Corlie,” he said. “It’s time to leave this place.”

W
e found my mother with a group of women preparing to board a cattle car for Standerton. There was little rejoicing: on every face, I could see grief for those they were leaving behind and grim uncertainty about what they would find waiting for them back home. I saw Heila Du Preez standing alone at the end of the line, and for a moment I thought of calling out to her. Then I noticed that Frikkie was nowhere to be seen, and realized that the spider bite must have been worse than we’d thought.

Each family had been provided with a tent and a month’s rations. As we watched the women turn in their ration cards, I held Corporal Byrne’s hand tightly.

“Don’t make me go with her,” I whispered.

Corporal Byrne looked down at me. Parsons must have told him of my shameful eviction; he must have explained the bruises on my arms.

“Which one is she?” he asked.
“Jou moeder?”

I pointed. Ma still towered over the other women, head held high. Hansie stood at her side, gripping her skirts, wide blue eyes agog at the commotion. He saw me first.

“Corlie!”

Ma smacked him before she even had a chance to see me; it was as if he had uttered a forbidden word, a most grievous blasphemy. When at last she picked me out, hovering on the fringes of the group, next to the Canadian soldier, her eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t die, Ma,” I said, just loud enough for her to hear. “They wouldn’t let me die.”