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26-0407

6M

p3

Journeywoman

by

John David

Synopsis

 

Set in South Africa just before the release of Nelson Mandela, the novel deals with the battle between a young black woman, Bessie Meer and her Boer captor and interrogator, Pieter Van Dam.

 

Bessie fights to survive the all-powerful Van Dam who has had her arrested and now supervises her torture for the answers to questions he is scared he already knows. It becomes clear that Van Dam is in awe of her resolve to take him on with nothing but her strength as a woman and alarmed by his growing sexual feelings towards her. It forces him to admit that courage and ideals have no color or gender. in fact, Bessie uses a perceived weakness in woman, to help her survive as she comes close to breaking several times.

 

There is no logic to Bessie’s arrest and torture any more than there is to Van Dam’s fear of her (the nature of racism). However, her determination to survive, for its own sake, in a situation where reason has no validity has a deep and lasting effect on Van Dam. For her part, being black and a woman and prepared to fight black, Bessie senses the feeling of alarm that she raises in him.

 

In the end, a jagged understanding form between them and a rough deal fashioned that each of them realizes is the best they can hope for at the time.

 

                                                                                         CHAPTER 1

 

I am Bessie Meer. I say, ‘I am’, rather than ‘I am called’, because it is vital for me to be, and not just to be called, more important now than at any time during the twenty-four years and fifty-three days of my life. For if I cease to be who I am, then they have won, and I shall have lost everything. If I do not remain Bessie Meer, they can call me anything they like; make me anything they like; I shall be anything they like. I am Bessie Meer, which was my maiden name.

 

I was born on the dirt floor of a corrugated iron hut on a white-owned farm in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. I am fit and healthy, can play the piano, am fairly well educated and I like to read a lot; and I once went to the beach on holiday; and I am black. Shortly after my birth, my father got another job and we moved to a slightly better hut, the roof of which was painted so as to look better from the air for the tourists flying over the vast, sprawling, dangerous maze that is Soweto (South West Townships), on their way to Jan Smuts Airport. This was twelve miles away from the golden city of Johannesburg, and after marrying Oliver — ‘Olly’ — who is a teacher, I lived closer still; for five years and twenty-three days, to be precise. I need to be exact because it’s a way of holding on, a way of staying who I am.

 

We lived in a small white painted bungalow in the Johannesburg suburb of La Rochelle, a short distance away from a boating lake called the Wemmer Pan. On summer nights, if the wind was in the right direction, we could hear the musical fountain playing there. Ours was a pleasant street of well-maintained, older style houses, mature trees and well-kept lawns. Grass verges ran down to a wide, metalled road with street lights along one side, which worked. On some nights a misty, shimmering cloud of sausage flies would dazzle and sparkle there, after being flooded from their termite homes out in the contra by heavy summer storms. It was a nice little bungalow, with a shower. How I loved that shower; it was the first I had ever known, and it was mine. It was ... I don’t know why I talk about it all as thought it were no longer there; it’s we who have gone, me and Olly and Naddy, my daughter Nadine, who is three years and fifty-nine days old.

 

I lived there with them until three days, some hours, and some minutes ago. I can be certain of the days, for that has been the length of my period, which is always very regular, but I have lost track of the hours and minutes because here there are no clocks, no way to make the passage of time other than by myself. There are no windows, and no sound besides those I make. Sunrise and sunset have no meaning here in the endless electric day thrown down by the single powerful light bulb. Set in the ceiling, it is protected by a strong, circular metal grid, which casts a grey pattern over the bare concerted walls and floors like the web of a giant spider; and I am trapped in it, awaiting the creature’s return.

 

My world is seven feet square, a concrete world with a concrete sky barely six inches above my five feet nine, so that when I stand up I can feel the heat from the bulb on the top of my head. There is a concrete bench, too short for me to stretch my full length;  I have to keep my legs permanently bent when I lie on it, or the sharp edges cut into my skin. Standing in the far corner is a white, chipped, galvanised bucket minus a handle, which is my lavatory. In the middle of the wall opposite the bench is a large grey metal door that reaches from the floor to the ceiling, through which I must have entered this brutally simple new world, although I have no recollection of the event.

 

There is a smell in the room, a strong mixture of urine, excreta, sweat ... and something less clearly definable, which I find the most disturbing of all. My legs are shackled by a short, heavy, iron chain, which rubs my ankles raw each time I move. Going to the bucket has become a torture, and  I try to hold the iron clamps away from my bleeding skin while I shuffle, bent double, towards it. I have put the crude latrine as far away as possible because of the smell, but in the confined space of the concrete box it makes no difference. I have not been allowed to wash or clean myself in any way since I was brought in here. Very fussy about my appearance and personal hygiene at home, I was always spotlessly clean, but now I am forced to lie here smelling of this filthy cell and the bucket. I have nothing for my period, not even a piece of toilet paper. I smell too of something else, which permeates the very walls of the cell. I don’t know what it is, but I am now part of it; I have added to it.

 

I am completely naked.

It is cold in the cell and there is nothing to keep me warm but one thin, grey blanket, so threadbare that I can see through it. This also smells, and has never been washed; there are patches of dried blood, and other stains which could be semen. The blanket is alive with fleas, which have bitten me all over, raising big red weals that itch me to death. Now I no longer use it, preferring the cold of the cell to the flea-infested rag which I have stuffed into a corner. In the unheated cell I have become so chilled that I no longer shiver.

 

What plays most on my mind is that terrible, frightening uncertainty of not knowing how long I shall stay here. The white laws allow for indefinite detention without trial, and without a visit from any member of my family, or a lawyer. I keep asking myself, how long? How long? And why?

 

I think this is the morning of the fourth day — although I cannot be sure. My period has stopped, so I shan’t be in such a mess, but my stains have been added on the bench to those of others who have lain here before me.

 

Water is brought once a day, I think, but at what time and if it’s the same time each day, I have no idea; for all I know, it could be the middle of the night. There is no advance warning; the heavy iron door simply swings open, just enough to allow an aluminium dixie to be pushed in with a long wooden stick. That’s all I ever see or hear; the stick, and the dixie scraping across the bare, concrete floor. I never see who brings it, or hear any footsteps outside, and to get the water I have to...