SIX

THE FLIES BUZZED LAZILY AGAINST THE WALLS, BUNCHED together on the tabletop, whirred aimlessly around the mattresses under the table, huddled black on the burnt porridge scrapings.

The early morning sun blazed down on the exposed tin roof, mercilessly scorched the open plains around the small house, trapped the occupants in a bottomless oven.

“It’s very bad at the Big House,” said Hannapat the first day. “Aunt Lulu cries all the time and Mr. Fourie is very cross, worse than ever. It’s because of Boelie being in jail, that’s why.”

“It’s an internment camp, not a jail,” said Pérsomi.

“Oom Attie and Auntie Sis say it’s a jail,” Hannapat argued. “Boelie was in court, Auntie Sis told me, and now he’s behind bars. Are you saying Oom Attie and Auntie Sis are lying? Huh?”

Pérsomi had no idea how long Boelie would be interned.

She walked down to the Pontenilo. It was a muddy, shallow pool. The rocky ledges, submerged when it rained, were dry.

Pérsomi waded in, ankle deep. The water was lukewarm and slimy, the bottom slippery. She kicked away the slimy threads, bent down, and washed her face. In the late afternoon, when it was cooler, she would go upriver to find a cleaner pool to bathe in.

Slowly she waded to the opposite bank. At its deepest, the water reached just below her knees. More than ever she missed the clean dormitory, the dishes filled with cabbage and samp and pumpkin at lunchtime, the bathrooms, and her bed with the stiff white sheets. She missed the library with its books and newspapers, the town, and Mr. Ismail’s store. She missed Beth and their whispered conversations after lights-out. She missed her conversations with Reinier, who thought she was different from other girls.

It felt as if she no longer belonged here.

From the front of her dress she took the gray envelope. She knew the words of the two letters by heart. She always kept them close to her heart and held the words in her heart. She read the letters almost every day, because they were her letters, something tangible to which she could cling.

Dear Pérsomi,

I can’t write much because we’re at the front now and very busy. But you must keep writing because we look out for mail every day it’s nice to get a letter.

I’m still in Abyssinia, near Adis Abeba it’s their capital city. We have defeated the Eyeties completely in Abyssinia and we have put Emperor Haile Selassie that’s their leader back on the throne so we’re their liberators. The Abyssinians I mean. He’s not much to look at you know that Haile Selassie he’s a short thin little man with a face like a raisin. We take all the Eyetie prisoners to the harbor but we don’t have to guard them. They guard us because they want to reach the harbor safely to get out of the country they’re so afraid of the Abyssinians from here they go to the Union. Tonight they sang to us they sing really well almost like on the records.

Last night we drank an awful lot. My friend Jakkals and I and two more guys had a keg of Aquavit we took from the Eyetie prisoners. It looks almost like water but it burns all the way to your stomach and it has a good kick. This morning my head was bloddy sore but now I’m alright. Don’t tell Ma this I’m only telling you.

We’re done here in East Africa at the end of the week we’re going further north to Egypt. That’s where the pyramids are and the River Nile. Our headquarters will be in Cairo I’m looking forward to it.

I’m going to hand in the letter now it will go to the Union by ship. Tell Ma I send my best wishes.

Oh and don’t thank me for the pound I didn’t send old Ismail a pound for you I don’t trust him.

I like it in the army now I’m going to hand in the letter.

Your brother,

Gerbrand

Pérsomi smiled. She could hear Gerbrand speak. The words went from his round handwriting to her eyes and straight to her ears.

If Gerbrand didn’t send Mr. Ismail a pound, where did it come from? She had asked her ma but she only said, “Heavens, Pérsomi, stop asking so many questions.”

Carefully she folded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and unfolded the second letter. The handwriting was also round, but smaller and easier to read, though it was harder to hear the words. Boelie sounded more formal than her brother.

KOFFIEFONTEIN

10 OCTOBER 1941

Dear Pérsomi,

Thank you very much for your letter that I received yesterday. I’d appreciate it if you write again, it’s good to get news from outside the camp.

We are treated well. The food is reasonably good, a lot like the food you get at school.

Yes, Pers, I might have been expecting it, but it was still a shock when the police arrived. The trial was unpleasant. Because I believe in the Afrikaner cause, because I fought for my convictions, I was treated like a criminal. Not only me—thousands of other Afrikaners, many in the highest positions in our country, were arrested and locked up like criminals.

But we are not bitter, Pérsomi. We talk a lot—there’s not much else to do—and we inspire each other.

Today was Kruger Day. One of the men here, John Vorster (he’s an attorney in Port Elizabeth and very involved with the Purified National Party), wrote a short play that we put on tonight. Some of the men recited poetry and we even have a choir. Tonight I realized again what our people are made of. Like the men behind barbed wire in camps in Ceylon forty years ago who refused to take the Red Oath of allegiance, our national pride will never allow us to be forced to swear allegiance to the enemy’s dynasty.

I want you to know, Pérsomi, that I am not ashamed, or sorry for what I did. I do regret the grief I’ve caused my family, but if I had a choice today, I would do it all again. I can’t do anything else.

I’ve been interned because I’m an Afrikaner and I’m proud of it.

Your friend,

Boelie

He wrote to her as if she were a grownup, though she was only fourteen. He talked to her as if she knew what was happening in the world away from the farm.

She missed Boelie, too, she realized. She had seldom seen him during her vacations but she had always known he was somewhere on the farm. Yes, she missed Boelie, just as she missed Beth and Reinier. Because he was her friend.

But most of all she missed Gerbrand.

One sweltering morning in the second week of the vacation, Auntie Sis, breathless from her walk to the house, plopped down on the old car seat and announced, “Christine le Roux has enlisted in the war.”

“Christine?” Pérsomi’s ma asked. “To the war? Heavens, but she’s a girl!”

“She won’t fight, they don’t give girls guns, I know that,” said Oom Attie, arriving behind his wife. “When I was in German South-West during the Great War, where I nearly lost my knee, the girls were nurses.”

Pérsomi’s ma pressed her hands to her face. “Heavens, what does Freddie say, and Old Anne?” she asked.

“Well, what can they say? Christine is twenty-one, and girls don’t know their place anymore,” Auntie Sis answered. “Freddie le Roux walks around like a dog that’s lost its tail and Old Anne lies in a darkened room all day with a wet cloth on her forehead. What’s the use of being rich if you’re going to lie with your eyes shut all day?”

“Do you think Christine will see Gerbrand at the front?” Hannapat asked.

“There are thousands of people at the front,” said Oom Attie. “The chances of their running into each other are probably small.”

“But still,” said Hannapat.

“Ye-es, maybe.”

“Look at this,” said Reinier about two weeks after school had resumed. He handed Pérsomi an article he had torn out of the paper. “Police Force Cleaned Up,” said the headline.

January 20 a special police parade took place at Marshall Square. The National Volunteers’ Brigade was summoned to help. The names of police members who were being interned were read out one by one.

Then the Minister of Justice, Dr. Colin Steyn, made a public announcement.

“It is with great regret that I announce today that we have had to relieve a large number of policemen of their duties because of their treacherous actions,” Steyn said. “But now we know: the police force has been purged, the people of South Africa can sleep easy.”

“Hundreds of policemen, my dad says,” Reinier whispered.

“What now?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Boelie said hundreds of policemen support the Stormjaers,” she whispered. “He said about half the force—”

“Shh.” Reinier motioned with his head in the direction of the teacher’s table.

She lowered her voice. “I think you must believe in a cause and fight for it if it’s expected of you.”

He nodded earnestly, but said nothing further.

Just before lunch he said: “I want to talk to you, about something else.”

“Well, go ahead.”

He took his time to secure his satchel on the carrier of his bike before turning to her. But still he said nothing.

“Speak. I don’t want to miss lunch.”

“It’s hard,” he said, blushing.

“Hmm,” said Pérsomi, “so it must be a girl.”

Reinier gave her a lopsided smile and nodded, embarrassed.

“And I must play Cupid?”

He nodded again.

“Is the girl Beth?” she asked.

His jaw dropped. “Beth?” he asked. “Beth? Pérsomi, she’s a real goody two-shoes, and besides, she’s fat! Have a heart!”

Pérsomi felt annoyed. “Don’t speak that way of Beth! She’s a lovely girl!”

He shrugged.

She felt like leaving right away. But she wondered who the girl could be who had Reinier in such a state. “Well, if it isn’t Beth, who is it?” she demanded.

“Irene,” he said.

“Irene!” she exclaimed. “Reinier, have you lost your mind?”

“She’s beautiful,” he said. “She’s small and . . . very pretty, and cheeky as well. And she’s not afraid of anything.”

“Irene! You don’t know Irene!”

“I’d like to get to know her better.” Reinier smiled.

“Well, it’ll be without any help from me.” She turned and headed for the dormitory.

“Pérsomi!” Reinier called after her.

She stopped. “What?” She put her hand on her hip.

“Please?”

“You won’t get any help from me.” She turned and hurried back to the dormitory.

Letters came for Pérsomi frequently. Most were from Boelie, impersonal accounts of what they were doing in the camp and how he felt. Pérsomi wrote back every time. Klara had given her a pile of envelopes and stamps, probably under the impression that Pérsomi would be writing to Gerbrand. In her letters to both Boelie and her brother she wrote about school and athletics and how dry the bushveld was this year.

Klara didn’t know Boelie was writing to her. Neither did Irene. Only Beth knew. Oh yes, and Reinier.

But best of all were the rare letters from Gerbrand.

Dear Pérsomi,

I am near Tobruk that’s in North Africa. We have to guard the harbor which is full of oil from the sunken ships and a railroad that gets supplies and things to our men further along. The only reason why we’re fighting in the desert is the Suez Canal. At night it is ice cold and by day it is very hot. It’s winter now in summer we’re going to die and not because of the bombs. There are many snakes and scorpions here just like in the bushveld but no buck to shoot so we eat Spam. There are swarms of flies buzzing around us and crawling up our nostrils looking for moisture. There is very little water but we have to shave every morning even if we’re going into battle the army has strange rules.

We do nothing all day long it’s very boring. I get really burnt by the sun because you know I’ve got red hair not like you who don’t mind the sun.

At Christmas I went to visit Christine le Roux in Cairo it was very nice. You know she’s here too. I hope she can make it in the war and here in the desert but I don’t know. She’s soft and really fair.

The leader of the Germans and the Eyeties is a German called General Rommel and our leader is General Montgomery he’s our commander he’s an Englishman from England but good. There was a battle at Sidi Rezegh where they captured more than 3 000 of our guys and sent them to camps in Italy or Germany. Pérsomi I’ll die if they put me behind barbed wire or in a prison behind bars like Boelie then they must rather shoot me.

I’m finding out what to do to learn to fly planes. It seems I need to have passed matric but I’ll study to get it because it’s what I want to do. You must also learn hard.

Did you know America is also in the war now well now you know.

Give my best wishes to Ma and tell her I’m fine.

Your brother,

Gerbrand

Her longing for Gerbrand flared up and burned behind her eyelids. When he came home again one day, she would talk to him. Really talk, the way she talked to Reinier, or sometimes to Boelie. She was bigger now. She could talk to Gerbrand now, almost like an equal.

After he returned, the two of them could live together in Joburg and find jobs and both pass matric. Gerbrand could look after her and she could cook for him and help him with his schoolwork. He could help her figure out how to become a lawyer.

She read the letter over and over before she folded it and started with her homework.

The war became a series of loose incidents somewhere distant where the sun always shone and where her brother lay behind rolls of barbed wire, shooting, with a steel helmet on his head. The war was fragments of reports from a week’s newspapers, scraps of stories from Gerbrand’s unpunctuated letters, frozen images from newspaper photos, flat sounds from a visit to the movies.

“I can’t imagine what the war is really like,” Pérsomi whispered to Beth late at night.

“It must be terrible,” Beth whispered back. “We must pray for them, for our men.”

“Depends on where you are,” said Reinier the next day. “I think there’s a big difference between being in the Sahara desert, or in Russia, where the soldiers freeze to death in the snow, or at sea, where a submarine can move in under your ship and sink it.”

“There are terrible sandstorms in the desert, dust storms,” wrote Gerbrand in one of his letters. “You have to wear a dust mask or you die. Everyone looks like meerkats, or aardvarks with long blunt snouts. But inside the mask you suffocate anyway.”

In the paper Pérsomi read about thousands of Italians taken prisoner. Some of them were sent to the Union. She read about air strikes in Europe and North Africa. She read how the German Stuka dive-bombers and the Messerschmitts strafed the Allieds from the air.

“It’s terrible,” she wrote to Gerbrand, “in the desert you must have nowhere to hide.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but after a while you get used to being scared. The sun is actually worse than the planes, at least the planes go away sometimes.”

“It’s not too bad in the camp,” Boelie wrote. “I help some of the older men with math and science. Many of them are using the opportunity to write matric. You won’t believe it, Pérsomi, I play in the camp orchestra.”

In his next letter Boelie wrote that he had taken up boxing. In fact, he was the camp champion.

“Boxing!” Pérsomi said to Reinier. “That’s rather brutal.”

“Well, you think men are brutes anyway,” he said.

He might be released before the end of the year, Boelie wrote shortly before the June exams began. But he’d be confined to the farm, which meant he would have to stay on the farm and report to the police every day.

At least he would be home.

She was at the point of heading for the dormitory to fetch her sandwiches when Reinier said, “Pérsomi, please, you have to help me.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she warned him. “What do you want?”

“Please don’t bite my head off like last time,” he said.

“Reinier, what are you talking about?”

He sighed. “Irene.”

She gave him an earnest look. “No,” she said.

“Pérsomi . . .”

“No.”

She turned and set off for the dormitory.

“Stubborn mule,” he said to her back.

After break she ignored him. At the end of the day she didn’t say good-bye.

The vacation of April 1942 was still sizzling hot and dry, and Persomi felt beaten. Boelie remained in the camp. Gerbrand had not written recently.

The house on the farm was in a worse state than ever. The dung floor was worn through in places. It hadn’t been plastered in months. Fly specks covered the mouldy curtain separating the front room from the bedroom.

Pérsomi stared at the filthy mattresses, the dirty gray blankets. “We must plaster the floor,” she said the first day, “and wash the bedding.”

“Oh heavens, Pérsomi,” said her ma.

“I’m not going to plaster the floor with dung,” said Hannapat.

“I’ll do it if you’ll wash the blankets,” Pérsomi offered. “We really can’t live like this!”

“Just listen to Miss High-and-Mighty!” Hannapat sneered. “If our house is no longer good enough for you, why don’t you stay at the dormitory? It will suit me.”

“Oh heavens above,” said their ma.

It was probably better that Gertjie and Baby had been taken away and not returned.

She pulled herself together. Tomorrow she would go to the kraal to collect dung for the floor. She would wash everything inside the house. She would hoe the little field next to the house and remove the weeds and sweep the yard.

When everything was spick-and-span, Ma’s and Hannapat’s spirits might lift a little.

In the second week of the vacation Pérsomi went to the bywoner house on Freddie le Roux’s farm. Oom Attie wasn’t home, and before Auntie Sis could start talking, Pérsomi came to the point.

“Auntie Sis, I know Lewies Pieterse is not my pa.”

“Child, don’t say such a thing!” Auntie Sis wiped the sweat from her round face with her gray hankie. “Your ma told me you said it in court. You shouldn’t have done that. What must people think of her?”

“I have to find out who my pa was . . . or is.”

“Let it go, Pérsomi. Winter is a long time coming this year. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Auntie Sis, it’s important to me.”

“It’s still so hot.”

Pérsomi took a chance. “You know who my pa is.”

Silence.

“Auntie Sis?”

“Pérsomi, you’re looking for trouble.”

“You must know who was courting my ma at the time?”

“I don’t know who your pa is, Pérsomi. It’s no use snooping. I wasn’t living at home then. I was married, with children of my own.”

“But you and Oom Attie always lived nearby. Surely you know something?” Pérsomi persisted.

“Child, I don’t know a thing, and your ma never spoke, of that I’m sure.”

A kind of despair took hold of Pérsomi. “Ma must tell me, Auntie Sis. I have a right to know who my own pa is. Do you promise you don’t know?”

“I know nothing, child. And your ma won’t tell. The cows will come home before she’ll say anything. I knew when she began to show and our pa beat the living daylights out of her. She refused to talk even then. He thrashed her so that she had to stay in bed for three days. I thought both she and you would die protecting some good-for-nothing bum.”

Pérsomi drew a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. The picture in her mind wouldn’t go away.

“The only people in the house at the time,” Auntie Sis said, “were your late oupa, your ma, and Gerbrand. Gerbrand was just a little boy, but he must have seen something. Someone who came to fetch your ma, or something.”

Her ma must have loved the man. Her ma must have loved her pa so much that she protected him with her life.

“Auntie Sis, I wonder if Oom Freddie might be my pa.”

Auntie Sis looked the other way. “You’re looking for trouble.”

Pérsomi waited. Sometimes waiting led to answers.

Auntie Sis gave a slight nod. “You said it, not me.”

“What do you think?”

“No, I’m not saying a word,” said Auntie Sis, and sniffed loudly. “I like living on this farm, and Freddie le Roux is a good man. I’m not saying a word.”

“Someone gives Mr. Ismail money for me, Auntie Sis, so I can buy soap and stuff, and even school shoes when mine are worn through.”

“Must be Gerbrand,” said Auntie Sis.

“No, I know it’s not. I think it might be Oom Freddie. I’ve seen him give Ma money.”

“I’m not saying a word, Pérsomi.”

“But you agree, don’t you, Auntie Sis, that it could be Oom Freddie?”

“Pérsomi, stop prying. I don’t know who your pa is.”

“Oh, by the way, a letter came for you,” Klara Fourie said when Pérsomi went to the back door of the Big House to collect the old newspapers for the new longdrop. “It’s Gerbrand’s handwriting. He must know you’re on vacation. I had a letter from him yesterday. Does he write more often now?”

“Yes, he does. He probably misses home,” said Pérsomi.

“I hear the troops are given a pass when they’ve been at the front for eighteen months,” said Klara. “Maybe Gerbrand will be home before Christmas.”

“That would be nice.”

Pérsomi walked to the river with the letter in her hand and the pile of old papers under her arm. She sat down on the warm rocks and stretched her legs in front of her before she carefully opened the envelope.

30 JUNE 1942

Dear Pérsomi,

Thank you for your letters when I read them it almost feels as if I’m home.

I’ve just written to Klara and told her about the Gazala Gallop but it’s too much to write again so if you see her ask her to give you that letter then you can read about the Gazala Gallop to Ma. It was bad with bombs and planes overhead and tanks. We started out with 300 tanks after two days we had only 70 left now you know how bad it was. Then they told us to retreat then there was terrible chaos getting back to Egypt because Tobruk is in Libya. Then during the night a terrible thunderstorm came up the storms are terrible here like in the bushveld but there’s no place to hide from the lightning. But we could see a little because of the lightning in the dark and so we got out.

Our entire division retreated to a small station called El Alamein. It’s much smaller than our station at home so now you know. It was such a hurried operation the troops panicked and the commanders too. Now they call it the Gazala Gallop because we started at Gazala.

General Dan Pienaar is still our commander he is very good. El Alamein is on the coast and just about 40 miles to the south lies the Qattara depression they say it’s a harsh sandy wilderness. We hold a line now from the coast up to that wilderness no one can get through anyway. But we lost a lot of ground because the Germans and Eyeties want to get to Cairo and we’re only 100 miles from Cairo now.

We’re not fighting at all just building camouflaged shelters and having parades in the sand and digging ditches for trenches all day long. Instead of charging and overpowering them. It’s hotter than blazes here that’s why I think it’s better to fly planes.

I saw Christine in Cairo again she’s very well and tell Ma I’m fine and I don’t know who gave old Ismail money for you again but it was definitely not me must be Father Christmas. I would have told you if it was me.

Best wishes.

Your brother,

Gerbrand

Pérsomi confronted her ma late in the afternoon. “Gerbrand told me again he’s not the one who’s giving Mr. Ismail money for me,”

“Heavens above, Pérsomi . . .”

“Stop saying that. I want answers. I’m fifteen.”

Her ma pressed her lips together.

“I know it’s my pa who’s paying the money.”

Silence.

“I’d like to thank him.”

Silence.

“It’s a lot of money. It’s just good manners.”

“Oh heavens, child, please stop.” Her ma was almost pleading.

“If you won’t tell me who he is, just tell me why he didn’t marry you when you got pregnant.”

Silence.

“Did he know about me? Did he know you were pregnant?”

“Heavens above. Yes.”

“Well, if he was a decent man, he would have married you.”

“He is a decent man, Pérsomi. Heavens, child, he couldn’t marry me, or he would have.”

Pérsomi looked up quickly. Her ma’s face had changed, become softer. Pérsomi felt tenderness well up inside her. She reached for her ma, but didn’t touch her.

“You loved him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Was he already married? Is that why he couldn’t marry you?”

Silence.

“Married men can leave their wives and marry the woman they made pregnant,” said Pérsomi.

“He couldn’t. His wife was also . . .” She stopped.

Pérsomi narrowed her eyes. “Also pregnant?”

Her ma got up. “Pérsomi, stop stepping all over me with dirty feet,” she said. She turned and walked off into the veld—a thin, lonely woman in a threadbare dress and worn shoes.

Pérsomi did some math in her head. If the man’s wife was pregnant, Freddie le Roux couldn’t be her father. Christine was his only child, and she was six years older than Pérsomi.

“Auntie Sis, why did my ma marry a man like Lewies Pieterse?”

“Don’t speak of your pa like that. Show some respect!” Auntie Sis scolded.

“Why did my ma marry him?” Pérsomi insisted.

“Your ma’s time for picking and choosing was over, Pérsomi. She didn’t have a roof over her head, she didn’t have food to eat. She was pregnant and Gerbrand was young. Lewies Pieterse was the answer. In return she looked after his children. Especially Sissie, with her falling sickness and all. Your ma was trapped, Pérsomi, she was trapped.”

There were so many things she knew nothing about, Pérsomi thought later, on her way back to Mr. Fourie’s farm.

So many things.

One afternoon Pérsomi told her ma, “Come with me. I want to show you something wonderful.”

Her ma got up from where she had been sitting at the kitchen table. “Now?” she asked.

“Yes, come.”

“Is it far?” her ma asked when they turned toward the mountain.

“No, not really, and it’s lovely,” said Pérsomi.

On a ridge some distance from the house was an enormous wild fig tree. “I hope they’re still here,” said Pérsomi as they approached. “Come and see.”

“Look, Ma,” she whispered. “Bushveld parrots. They’re after the ripe fruit.”

They looked up into the branches. Small birds with hooked beaks swarmed all over.

“I see them,” her ma said softly.

The parrots were dark on top, with green and blue undersides.

“They’re . . . pretty,” said her ma.

They fluttered on bright yellow wings from one fig to the next.

“Pretty,” her ma whispered.

Pérsomi turned her head slowly and looked at her ma. Her entire face had gone soft. Her eyes had come alive.

“Let’s sit for a while and watch them,” she said.

Gently they sat down among the ripe figs that had fallen. “They don’t eat the rotten ones,” her ma whispered.

They sat, silently looking up into the tree.

Pérsomi wanted to put her arm around her ma, or stroke her hair. But she couldn’t do it. Maybe this was what it was like to have a conversation with someone close to you.

“Ma, everyone always wants to know where I got my name. Will you tell me?”

“I just thought it’s a grand name,” said her ma, almost inaudibly.

Above their heads the parrots screeched and called out, chee-chee-chee.

“It’s the best name you could’ve given me,” she said. She kept talking softly, not wanting to spoil the moment. “No one else has a name like it.”

“I . . . had nothing,” said her ma. She didn’t look at Pérsomi. She wasn’t looking at the parrots anymore either, but at her feet. “But I knew one day you’d be smart and pretty, because . . . he’s smart, and good-looking, see?”

Pérsomi’s heart was thumping in her chest, in her throat.

“And when Auntie Sis—she came to help me when it was my time—when she said, ‘Jemima, it’s a little girl,’ I just knew your name would be Pérsomi. I wanted to give you a grand name.”

“You have a pretty name too—Jemima.”

“Yes, I always liked it. But your pa says it’s a . . .” She fell silent.

“Lewies Pieterse is just jealous. What does he know about anything pretty? Forget about him.”

“Yes,” said her ma.

The parrots twittered overhead.

“Where did you first hear my name?”

Her ma was silent for a long time. A ripe fruit thudded on the ground close to them. “From him,” she said at last.

My father, Pérsomi thought breathlessly, slivers of information about my father. She kept quiet, waiting.

“He told me about the name one evening. He came courting, just like a gentleman, in his motorcar. He’s rich. He came at night.

“He always wore smart clothes. And he gave me a necklace, and often he brought chocolates. Then that night he told me about the play. He said everything was so beautiful, with candles and everything, and he said the man on the stage said, ‘Pérsomi, light the candle,’ and then he died. The man on the stage. ‘Pérsomi is a beautiful name, isn’t it, Jemima?’ he said. He always spoke to me like a man should speak to a girl.

“By that time I knew I was expecting. But I couldn’t say anything.”

Her ma was quiet for a long time. Pérsomi couldn’t let her stop talking. “Why not, Ma?”

Her ma’s voice changed slightly. “Men, rich men, don’t like their girlfriends to be expecting.”

Pérsomi almost said, You have to fight for your rights. A woman must be able to stand up for herself in this unfair man’s world. But she remembered her ma saying, “Pérsomi, stop stepping all over me with dirty feet,” and she remembered the lonely figure walking away across the bare veld.

So she just nodded and said, “Yes, that’s true. And then?”

“So I thought now I must speak, because I saw he . . .”

Her ma just shook her head slowly from side to side.

“You saw he loved you,” Pérsomi said softly.

Her mother nodded.

The smell of the fruit was all around them.

“And then, Mama?”

Her ma looked up. There was a deep desolation in her eyes, a loneliness like nothing Pérsomi had ever seen before.

“Then he never came again.”

“El Alamein is just a tiny station, even smaller than our own station in town,” Pérsomi said a week after the school had reopened.

“If you read the papers you’d know El Alamein is an important strategic point,” Reinier said. “Do you know of the battles that have been fought there by the British and the Germans? Just yesterday I read that the Eighth Army captured more than seven thousand Germans and Italians there and—”

“It’s still a tiny station in the middle of the desert,” Pérsomi said. “Gerbrand says so and he should know. He’s there.”

“Bloody Red Tab,” said Reinier.

“Oh, I thought it was his business?” Pérsomi said.

“He’s still a Red Tab,” said Reinier.

At the beginning of September Reinier brought a newspaper clipping to school. “Take a look at what’s going on at your tiny little station,” he said, slapping the clipping down in front of Pérsomi.

She took her time ironing out the creases and began to read:

During the past week Rommel launched another offensive against the strategic station El Alamein. He is estimated to have no more than 200 serviceable tanks and a few substandard Italian armored vehicles to deploy against the 700 tanks of the British Forces. It is also alleged that the Germans have very little fuel and that their food rations are almost completely depleted.

“Poor Germans,” said Pérsomi, frowning.

“You’re supposed to be against them,” said Reinier.

“I’m on no one’s side,” Pérsomi said firmly. “War is a dumb game thought out by men when they became too old to play cowboys and crooks. They don’t think about the people caught up in the war.”

“It’s a lot more than that!” Reinier cried, outraged. “There are politics involved, ideologies that—”

“That’s what your dad says, I know. But if people are suffering because of their own ideologies, it’s dumb. Be quiet so I can read the rest.”

“You’re impossible,” Reinier muttered.

Allied fighter planes are constantly attacking the Axis forces,

Pérsomi read on.

General Montgomery had expected Rommel’s forces to advance northward to the sea and that’s why he went to great trouble to fortify the Alam el Halfa ridge—a clever strategic decision. The British 2^nd Armored Brigade could therefore stop Rommel’s 2^nd Panzer Division just before the ridge. On September 3 Rommel ordered a withdrawal.

“So actually they didn’t achieve anything, except to kill a lot of people,” Pérsomi said, returning the clipping to Reinier.

“I’ll never understand you women,” Reinier said.

A letter was waiting for her back at the dormitory.

EL ALAMEIN

OCTOBER 1942

Dear Pérsomi,

Thank you for your letters I also get letters from Klara it’s always very nice to get news from home.

Pérsomi we’re preparing for a major offensive that’s why I’m writing now because we’re going to be very busy. We’re going to chase the Germans and the Eyeties from El Alamein into the sea on the other side of the desert not just drive them back like at Alam el Halfa where we just stopped them. We have plenty of reinforcements and supplies now I feel certain we’re going to win because we are preparing very thoroughly it’s very good.

This is the best time of my life because we’re all friends no matter what language we speak and we have lots of fun. Tell Ma as well.

Sometimes we get a pass then we go to Cairo then I sometimes see Christine. I saw her in September when we were in Cairo but I don’t think I’ll visit her again even if I’m in Cairo because she’s getting to be a nuisance. She seems to think I have to come and visit her when I’m there but I’m not her boyfriend. Pérsomi if you get a boyfriend one day you mustn’t be a nuisance and don’t cry men don’t like it. But you mustn’t get a boyfriend now only later.

Maybe I’ll be home soon maybe even before Christmas.

Pérsomi I’m going to learn to fly planes and when the war is over I’m going to stay in the air force. One day I might even come home in a plane.

Best wishes.

Your brother,

Gerbrand

“Gerbrand may be home before Christmas,” Pérsomi told Beth that evening.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“It would be the best Christmas in the whole world,” Pérsomi smiled in the dark.

Monday morning was hot. The English teacher was reading in a monotonous voice. A bluebottle buzzed against the windowpane next to Pérsomi. Reinier was leaning back, the book propped on his desk to hide the fact that his eyes were closed.

Two rows in front of her Beth sat up straight, following in her book. Diagonally in front of her Irene was drawing hearts on her desk.

The principal’s secretary entered and everyone looked up. She spoke to the teacher, then shrugged her shoulders.

“Pérsomi, please go to the principal’s office with Mrs. Lubbe,” the teacher said.

She followed the secretary. Her feet felt heavy, her heart was thumping in her chest, her mind was blank. The principal got to his feet when she entered and came walking around the desk. His eyes looked strange.

His lips moved.

She saw his lips move.

His words bounced off the ceiling and the white walls and the windowpanes. Her mind did not hear the words.

Her feet began to run.