But when Moeder turned, she saw Willem looking at me through an air of guilt. His bleeding gums oozed at the corners of his mouth.
“Hey, little soldier,” I said, trying to explain the blood. “Everybody loses their teeth.”
Moeder waved him closer and examined his mouth. She found bloody holes. His permanent teeth were falling out.
“Maybe we need supper early today,” she said.
The stringy tinned beef would do him no good. That challenged anyone with well-rooted teeth.
She opened the ration bin and took out the small bag of mealie meal and the pinch sack of salt.
“Porridge,” I said. “Perfect for Willem.”
I brought the water bucket to Moeder.
“We should try it cold tonight,” she said. “It would be good for us to get used to it cold, just mixed with a little water and salt.”
Willem sniffed. Moeder moved her eyes toward the pot. We had no way to heat water.
FRETFUL WOMEN CLOSED TIGHT around the guards at the front of the hospital tent. They talked at once, frantic, some pawing at the men’s tunics. The guards were deaf to their begging and unmoved by taunts and curses. The women glared when I approached, resentful of my health.
“Nurse Agnes said I could help here,” I told the guards.
“Wait here.”
The women stirred at the word “help.” Was I there to help the children or to help the British? They began talking at once to me, as if I could somehow solve their problems or could help them gain entrance. I erased all expression, gesturing in a way that implied I could not understand them.
It was another outing about which I misled Moeder. These outings were growing more common, and I swallowed back rising bile every time I deceived her. I was growing used to the taste. I expected her to block a trip to the hospital because of exposure to illness and to the British. It was easier just to leave while she was preoccupied. I was not sure she would notice my absence, anyway.
Nurse Agnes appeared, her cape covered in fluids, and her hair coming unpinned. But she was stiff backed and strong voiced. “Aletta . . . good to see you. . . . I have only a few minutes, but I’ll show you our little hospital. Your aunt Hannah told me about you and what a wonderful young woman you are. She is a great help here. She loves the children. She works more hours than any of us. She almost never goes back to her own tent.”
“I didn’t know she was helping here,” I said.
“For months,” she said.
There were dozens lying in low cots, mostly children, a few elderly. Some areas were separated by portable drapes.
“Measles.” She pointed to one portion that was quarantined and then gestured in sequence around the large tent. “Pneumonia, dysentery, whooping cough . . . typhus in that corner.”
“I’ve seen them all,” I told her.
“Just living in this camp should cover half the classes you’d need to get through nursing school.”
“Plus diphtheria,” I said. “I’ve seen that, too.”
“They’ve developed antitoxins for that, but we don’t have any yet,” she said. “Medicine in the twentieth century . . . so fascinating . . . all the new ways to heal people.”
I had not even thought of its being a different century. It sounded so modern. But this tent did not look modern and efficient; some of the children did not even have cots, just blankets on the ground. Coughing and murmurs and low moans arose from the choir of the ill. A few white-skirted nurses floated between the cots like weary ghosts.
“See what it would be like if every mother was allowed in here?” she said. “I’m sorry, but there’d be no room to work. They would be underfoot. I hate to see them out there, and feel for them. And for the children in here, too, it’s heartbreaking. I know they think we’re witches, but it’s impossible. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to understand if it was your child sick in here. But there’s no choice. We couldn’t even walk in here, and fifty women coming in and out would spread so much infection it would turn into a plague.”
“Plague?” I thought of the Middle Ages in Europe. “From rats?”
“No . . . diseases,” she said. “It’s another problem nobody understood when they brought you all here. You have lived so long out there on your own, so isolated, that you’ve lost natural immunities to so many things that wouldn’t bother people in cities . . . children particularly.”
“So . . . what about me . . . my immunities?”
“Something to think about. Be clean, wash your hands. . . . We have soap here. Be careful what you handle. It turns out that nurses stay remarkably healthy . . . build up immunities to just about everything. We always seem on the verge of being sick but rarely come down with anything too serious.”
They did not look robust, but they were not as thin as most of our women.
“Did all the nurses volunteer to come here?” I could not imagine why.
“It’s a job. Some of them thought it would be a holiday, or a chance to meet an officer . . . that’s true,” she said. “I thought the war might be the best place to learn surgical nursing. I liked the idea of nursing soldiers. I was surprised they sent me to a camp instead of a field unit. But work is work. Sometimes it feels like we’re doing some good; sometimes I wonder.”
“They pay you?”
“Ten pounds a month.”
“How can I help?”
“The next time you come back, I’ll introduce you. You’ll do whatever a nurse asks, mostly getting things for them, or sponging off patients, or sometimes just talking to them. Everything you can do to help a nurse allows her to spend that time with a patient. There will be dirty work, too, cleaning up messes . . . sorry.”
She rolled a half-dozen r’s through the word “sorry,” and it had more substance.
“I’ve done it before.”
“And you know you’ll see bad things,” she added. “But you have to stay strong while you’re here. You can do anything you have to once you leave, but you can’t come apart in front of them. That’s the last thing they need . . . that any of us need.”
I understood.
“You’ve seen bad things already . . .”
I nodded. “I’ll get to see Tante Hannah?”
“Of course, she’ll be so excited,” she said. “We use her husband, Sarel, too.”
“I saw him one night . . . pulling the cart.”
“Yes . . . he still does that, but he works here, for us, too. He’s one of the best helpers we have because there’s nothing he won’t do.”
Oom Sarel at the hospital? “What?”
“It’s not a pleasant job, but he offered,” she said. “He collects the messes of the typhus patients and carts it all outside the camp, where he burns it in big barrels when the wind is blowing away from us. I can’t imagine how hideous it must be, and really very dangerous, but he volunteered. Certainly no one else wants to do it. We all think he’s a hero.”
MAPLES SHIFTED HIS EYES toward the fence and turned his back to me when I approached. I didn’t understand. I had been so upset with him that I’d avoided him for a few days. But thinking I’d offended him caused my chin to sink to my chest. He looked back and moved his head as if trying to pull me closer with a gesture. I stepped to his side. From his pocket he pulled a graying handkerchief covering a lump bigger than a man’s fist.
“I thought you could use it more than me,” he said.
I held it in both hands, feeling a familiar weight and density but allowing anticipation to build. I peeled back the corners of the handkerchief to reveal a glorious brown potato. I had not seen one in more than a year, or was it two? I wanted to bite into it raw. I lifted it to my nose and it smelled of the earth.
“I’m sorry. . . . I could get just the one . . .”
I turned away; I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the potato.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t let anybody see it.”
“Moeder?”
“Of course . . .
but just your family.”
“Where did you get it . . . how?”
“It was headed for the officers, I suspect.”
I rolled it over, examining it.
“Won’t this get you in more trouble?”
“It could if you don’t put it away and go.”
I slipped it in the pocket of my pinafore as I scanned for anyone who might have watched. I spun to thank him again, to run up to him and hug him with both arms, but he was walking along the fence line in the other direction, rifle at his shoulder, as if marching in a parade.
I dared not look at anyone I passed, fearing I might give away the secret in my pocket. I felt its weight against my thigh as I walked. No one had ever given me a more valuable present.
The tent was quiet; the Huiseveldts were on their side. I had not thought of them. I remembered the way we shared with neighbors after animals were butchered, but that was in times of surplus, and as much as we talked about the value of sharing, we did so because the meat would go bad if we did not, and the act came with the expectation of sharing in return. This was different. It was not a pig or kudu. This was a potato.
I stood in front of Moeder with my back to everyone else.
“Look . . .” I held it in front of me with both hands.
She choked off a sound and looked over her shoulder at the others.
“Where . . .”
“Someone gave it to me . . .”
“Tante? Oom?”
“No.”
I feared greater protest, but she was overtaken by the sight. She scrubbed it like a family treasure.
“Not raw,” I said. “Not tonight.”
She questioned without speaking.
“Come here, little soldier,” I said to Willem. “Get the pot, Moeder.”
I took out my African Farm book and positioned an empty tin beneath the pot. I ripped a few pages from the book, the sound of tearing paper filling the tent.
“Match?”
“Lettie, no,” Moeder said.
I lit a few pages, and the flare warmed my fingers.
“That won’t be enough,” Moeder said.
“The whole book might.”
Willem edged close.
“Here, Willem, I’ll tear them. . . . You put them in, just a page or two at a time,” I said. “Wait until one is almost burned down and then light the next one with it. Don’t hurry.”
With responsibility for such an important task, Willem grew serious, and we formed a tight circle.
“Lettie . . . are you sure?” Moeder asked.
“I know this book almost by heart.”
I scanned pages as I tore them from the book, reading passages that I had marked as favorites, thinking my reading would keep Willem at a steady pace.
“ ‘When I am grown up,’ she said, ‘I shall wear real diamonds.’ ”
The paper flamed quickly, and Willem startled, almost tipping the pot.
“Careful,” Moeder said, dropping a few pinches of salt into the water, the smoke and smell of the burning paper climbing the sides of the pot.
“It seemed as though Death had known and loved the old man, so gently it touched him. . . . So it . . . sealed the eyes that they might not weep again; and then the short sleep of time was melted into the long, long sleep of eternity.”
I extended the words “long . . . long” and “eternity” to hold off Willem.
Moeder eased the potato into the center of the pot as gently as if bathing a newborn.
“Didn’t the minister tell me, when I was confirmed, not to read any book except my Bible and hymn-book, that the devil was in all the rest?”
My tongue swelled at the smell, so that it was difficult to read. Moeder leaned over the pot but knew it was too early.
“Overhead it was one of those brilliant southern nights when . . . the Milky-Way is a belt of sharp frosted silver.”
I was almost halfway through the book.
“We need more at a time,” she said.
“The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth, the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still.”
“Save that page, Lettie,” Moeder said. “It’s beautiful.”
I shook my head. “I’ve written some of these down in my journal.” I peeled more pages from the binding.
“Oh, my darling, I think of you all night, all day. I think of nothing else, love, nothing else.”
Moeder looked alarmed by the passage but withheld comment, returning her focus to the small flames. I ripped out the pages in larger portions now, and the smell of the warming potato overtook the scent of burning paper. Mevrou Huiseveldt sniffed so loudly we could hear. She’d been watching all along. I didn’t care. I could easily deny her a part of this . . . payment for all the sleepless nights and complaints.
“So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and the joy of the dreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth.”
Only the cover remained now; I ripped it at the spine of the book.
“Wait,” Moeder said. “The binding may be gum. . . . We might need to eat that later.”
I put it aside.
With a spoon, Moeder rescued the potato and positioned it in the middle of a plate. She sliced it in half lengthwise, the steamy mist of scent rising from the incision. The halves fell open.
“Ohhh,” Willem said. It drew Rachel to stand over us, Mevrou Huiseveldt holding vigil from her cot.
Moeder then made three slices crossways through the two halves. She sprinkled most of our weekly salt ration across the pieces, the salt reflecting like tiny diamonds on the soft, golden pulp. We sat silent, pulling the smell into our lungs, my stomach begging loudly enough that all could hear.
She held the plate out in my direction. I placed a piece on my tongue and allowed the salty warmth to fill my mouth; I dared not chew. She held the plate out to Willem, and he studied the pieces and took the largest. Rachel had retreated to the cot with her mother. Moeder held the plate toward Rachel, who put down Lollie and looked to her mother for approval. She used both hands to lift the small piece, placing one beneath it as if holding an invisible plate in case it fell.
“What do you say, Rachel?” The little girl looked at her mother and bobbed her head sincerely, not willing to open her mouth to voice appreciation.
“Here,” Moeder said, extending the plate toward Mevrou Huiseveldt. “Mathilda . . .”
Mevrou Huiseveldt looked to the top of the tent, wiped her eyes, and took the next piece.
“Thank you,” she said. She knew the words after all.
Moeder took a small end piece for herself and cut the last piece in two for Willem and me. I looked at the others; all sat with eyes closed, absorbing the potato more than eating it. . . . It felt like a holiday.
I panicked when I realized we had not blessed the food. But I didn’t know whether a simple blessing was enough for an occasion like this. We should have sworn a solemn vow on the spot to recognize the Miracle of the Potato each year.
I thought of my favorite meals at home and I knew I had never cherished any as much as this. Without having recognized it, I had always admired the versatile potato. Moeder cooked potatoes in so many different ways, but they had been afterthoughts, something to fill up on after enjoying the flavor of the meat that was the foundation of our meals. I had never taken time to think about a simple potato, to understand how delicious a single mouthful could taste. How I wished we had butter, and then immediately felt like an ingrate for even thinking of such a luxury.
The tent was still the rest of the night, but each face, in turn, offered me a brief smile before returning to quiet thoughtfulness. It wasn’t until the next day that Moeder thought to ask me again about the potato’s journey to our tent.
32
November 1901, Concentration Camp
My inner war never relented, conscience an
d guilt battling for dominion. Oupa always preached that we were to live by “the Word of God,” but in quiet moments, Moeder had a different message: “People can bend the Holy Word to their own purposes,” she said. “You should let your own conscience be your guide.” When she said that, she was trusting that I had one that worked. But I’d failed her. I was weak.
I had known for months that Moeder would ask the question, and I had prepared a series of responses that evolved over time. But it arrived in a form I had not expected, and I felt ambushed.
“Who is your guard?” she asked.
“My guard?”
“Your guard.”
“I don’t have a guard to myself. . . . I don’t understand. . . . They guard all of us.”
“Aletta . . . a woman doing wash asked me what I knew about ‘your guard, ’ ” she said. “She looked at me as if it was a well-known fact. So, who is ‘your guard’?”
None of my prepared excuses involved someone’s telling my mother before I could. And certainly no one had the right to call him “my guard,” although just hearing that caused me to shudder with what felt like ownership.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, Moeder, but haven’t because you’ve been so busy and there’s been . . . so much. I knew you would worry, and there really was no need. I was thinking all along it would be better for you if I didn’t tell you.”
“You were doing it for my benefit?” she said. “Nonsense.”
“Since I don’t have a school to go to, I have talked a few times with a British guard about educational things . . . books . . . geography . . . that sort of thing.”
Silence. I knew what she was thinking.
“No, that’s not it, Ma, he’s not handsome . . . not at all . . . a boy, really, not much older than Schalk. And short. I’ve been learning about British culture . . . and Dickens. . . . That’s where I got the Dickens book.”
She looked at me with a strained focus I hadn’t seen directed my way before, and when I finished my explanation she said the most punishing words I could have heard.
“I trusted you.”
Not stones, these words, but daggers. I did not change my expression or breathing, but my eyes filled immediately. I would not look away from her. I deserved this. She had trusted me and I had failed. She expected more of me. She thought I could be as strong as she was, but I knew I never could. And she could probably never understand that.