| |
––––––––
Annamari sat on the stoep and gazed out towards the mountains. It was another beautiful day with just a hint of the approaching summer in the bleached sky. She wondered – as she did every year – why the sky was so much bluer in summer. Something to do with the sun, maybe. Far in the distance she could see the tractor moving slowly, throwing up a small cloud of dust that obscured the poplars. The rains would come soon, Petrus said. They had to start preparing the fields for planting.
She smiled. Petrus took his new position as farm manager exceptionally seriously. And he was doing a fantastic job. Thys had been right, again. Her husband might not know much about farming, but his suggestion that they offer Petrus the farm manager’s job now that that filthy pig, Stefan Smit, was gone, had been truly inspired.
She wasn’t so sure about his other suggestion. But she’d promised to think it over, and she would. In five minutes. In five minutes she’d get up and walk down the path to Christo’s house. They’d offered it to Petrus, but he’d refused. He wanted to live with his people, in the khaya, as always. It was better that way, he said. He even refused to take the old farm manager’s house, even after it had been scrubbed and painted to remove all traces of the pig. No one wanted to live there, not permanently, but it was providing useful temporary accommodation for the workers now that they were renovating the entire khaya. Another of Thys’ inspired ideas.
‘Those rooms are appalling,’ he’d said after getting back from seeing about repairing the door and ceiling in Pretty’s room. ‘We should at least paint them.’
Annamari never quite figured out exactly how agreeing to paint the farm workers’ rooms had evolved into a decision to build neat little houses for them, complete with kitchenette and indoor bathroom. Nor could she remember when it had been decided to vary the size of the houses, so that families could live comfortably together.
She stood up. It was time. She wished Thys was with her. She hadn’t been into Christo’s house since the murders. The pig had wanted to move in. His insensitivity had left her breathless. They’d barely finished covering the graves before Stefan Smit was at her side, wringing his hands, tremulously suggesting that perhaps it would be better, more appropriate, if he moved in to the bigger, newer house.
‘It’s Christo’s house. It will always be Christo’s house. He built it,’ she’d said, closing her fingers around the key Petrus had brought to her when he locked up after the police had left. She hadn’t gone back to look around. Like the room where they’d found her family’s brutalised bodies, it remained locked. But now... she couldn’t put it off any longer. And, as Thys said, it would be a wonderful tribute to Christo. Oh God, she missed him and Ma and Pa. Even after two years, it didn’t get any easier. Thank God for Thys. He was her rock. So sensible. So caring. Too caring. Too willing to believe in people. He even believed that Mandela and all the other terrorists had changed. He believed everyone, even the worst people, were deserving of compassion. Even a perverted pig like Stefan Smit.
‘Lord forgive me,’ Thys had said, collapsing onto the couch that dreadful day. He’d left the rugby tournament in Johannesburg and rushed back as soon as he got her hysterical, garbled telephone call about a terrorist attack and a rape and Stefan and Magnus standing guard and she didn’t know what to do. Thys somehow managed the long drive home in under four hours.
He’d held her in his arms, so tightly she could barely breathe.
‘Thank you Lord,’ he’d said. ‘I love you liefie. You are such a brave, strong, resourceful, wonderful woman. I’m so proud of you. I should never have left you alone like that. What if it really had been terrorists? Thank the Lord you are safe. I couldn’t live without you – or our boys.’
Then he’d gone down to the farm manager’s house to deal with Stefan.
‘I’ve never done that before. I pray I never get the urge to do that again. It’s just that when Petrus untied him and he ... that smile on his face, like he knew something I didn’t. I couldn’t help it. I nearly broke his jaw,’ he said, rubbing his fist.
‘I wish you had,’ Annamari said.
‘But he’s had terrible tragedy in his life – to lose his wife and child like that – it’s terrible. And then to go through another terrorist attack here...’
‘But he wasn’t here when Ma and Pa and Christo were murdered. He was in Pretoria.’
‘Ja, well it couldn’t have been easy for him, getting back here after visiting his wife and daughter’s graves and then finding them all like that. Maybe that’s why he did what he did to Beauty.’
‘Oh please! You can’t be serious? That man was plain evil.’
‘Annamari! You mustn’t say things like that. We have to forgive. Even when it is difficult. Even when we don’t want to. Anyway, it wasn’t for me to punish him. The Lord will see that he gets what he deserves.’
‘We should have had him arrested,’ Annamari said. She had tried to argue with Thys about this. But he had taken her in his arms and held her close.
‘What’s the point?’ he’d asked. ‘Like Stefan said – who’s going to take the rape of a girl like Beauty seriously? It would just make it worse for her. They’ll make it as humiliating as possible – and then they’ll drop the charges because how can you prove it was rape? She wasn’t hurt.’
‘She was!’
‘I know. I know that. But it’s not a hurt you can see.’
‘But she’s only thirteen!’
‘The police won’t do anything.’
‘But he raped her.’
‘He says he didn’t...’
‘But his pants were down. She was... and look at what he did to Pretty.’
‘The police won’t care. To them, Beauty and Pretty are just kaffirs.’
She hadn’t believed him. Things were changing. They said so on the news, every night. They’d even signed a Peace Accord thing which was supposed to mean that all the fighting and violence would be over. A bit late for Ma and Pa and Christo, but Thys was optimistic about it. He always fought with his father about it. Every time they went to visit the Dominee and Mrs van Zyl at their fancy new house in Kroonstad.
‘It’s a start,’ Thys always said. ‘Things have to start somewhere.’
And she always bit her tongue. She hated arguing with Thys – even if he was wrong this time. She hated the fact that she found herself agreeing with his father.
What about those terrorist organisations that refused to sign the Peace Accord? she wanted to ask. They refused to lay down their arms, they said on the news. The newspaper said there were terrorists all over the place now, they had been allowed to come back into the country and they all had weapons and Die Volksblad said the violence in the townships was getting worse too – and the police couldn’t do anything about it.
But this was different. This wasn’t about politics. This was about Beauty.
She phoned Wynand and he laughed at her. What did she expect him to do? Arrest a white man for fucking a kaffir girl? Hadn’t she heard? PW Botha himself had repealed the Immorality Act years ago, so whites fucking blacks and blacks fucking whites was absolutely okay. And legal. And now with everything FW was doing, it would probably soon be legal for terrorists to kill white folks. She put the phone down.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Something had to be done. Perhaps Thys was a little bit right – perhaps his latest idea would help.
He’d come up with it when she told him that Rosie had told her that Stefan Smit had been raping Pretty for years before turning his attention to Beauty.
‘Why didn’t Pretty say anything? Why didn’t you?’ she asked Rosie.
‘Do you really think Baas Stefan was doing anything new? It happens all the time. Anyway Pretty was used to it. But when she tried to stop him doing the same thing to Beauty – I thought he was going to kill her. That’s why I ran to get you.’
‘But Beauty is a child. How could he...’
‘Pretty was only thirteen when she had Beauty. That’s why she’s never had any more children. Because she was too small when Beauty was born. She nearly died. They had to take her to the hospital.’
Annamari was stunned. She’d always suspected that Pretty was probably younger than her – and she’d been seventeen when Arno was born – but she’d never really thought about it, not like that.
‘Only thirteen? Oh my word, she was just a child! Who was ... who did it... who made her pregnant?’
‘I don’t know. I heard he was a young white baas. He lived in town. They said he came to the lokshin all the time to sleep with the girls. But when he saw Pretty, he didn’t want any of the others anymore, and then after Beauty was born... well, he stopped visiting. But then others also ... and it wasn’t just the whites. The lokshin girls, they think it’s something they have to do. It’s the only way to get money to feed their children. But Pretty, she didn’t understand. She just did what she was told. I think the other girls took her money. Anyway, Baas Stefan never paid her. He just said he’d fire her if she didn’t let him.’
Annamari wondered if she knew Beauty’s father. She knew almost everyone in Driespruitfontein.