The Lost History of Stars Read online

  The

  LOST

  HISTORY

  of

  STARS

  a novel

  DAVE BOLING

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2017

  For the victims of the Anglo-Boer War,

  and those many who suffered

  in its unsettled aftermath in South Africa.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I set out to write a novel based on the experiences of my grandfather, a young British soldier in the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). I discovered that twenty-two thousand Boer children died in British concentration camps—more than the combined fatalities among soldiers on both sides. It wasn’t on the scale of the Holocaust, nor was it of genocidal intent, but it is nevertheless a twentieth-century atrocity—a war against children—that has been largely forgotten.

  The Boers were mostly descended from the Dutch who settled in the Cape Colony and later migrated north to the remote interior of South Africa to escape British colonial influence. But the Brits sought to take over the small Boer republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal after the world’s richest diamond and gold deposits were discovered there late in the nineteenth century.

  The vastly outnumbered Boers changed the way in which future wars would be conducted, introducing the hit-and-run guerilla tactics that allowed small commando units to prolong costly wars against world powers. The tenacity of the Boers caused the British to resort to scorched-earth tactics that led to the burning of thirty-thousand Boer farms. Suddenly homeless Boer women and children were then installed in poorly managed and disease-plagued concentration camps, in which a total of twenty-seven thousand fatalities were recorded. Many thousand native Africans also died in separate camps that the British established, but no one bothered to count them.

  [The Boers] must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, . . . give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. . . . Then finally put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. . . . Combine all these qualities . . . and you have the modern Boer—the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain.

  —SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Great Boer War

  The fatality rate of our soldiers on the battlefields . . . was 52 per thousand per year, while the fatalities of [Boer] women and children in the camps were 450 per thousand per year. We have no right to put women and children into such a position.

  —DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, British member of Parliament and future prime minister

  The women are wonderful: they cry very little and never complain. The very magnitude of their sufferings, indignities, loss and anxiety seems to lift them beyond tears. . . . I can’t describe what it is to see these children lying about in a state of collapse—it’s just exactly like faded flowers thrown away.

  —EMILY HOBHOUSE, British activist and reformer, on life in the concentration camps

  Contents

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  PART II

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  PART III

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  PART IV

  35

  About the Author

  About Algonquin

  PART I

  Weeping Love Grass

  1

  September 1900, Venter Farm

  The first warning was so delicate: Moeder’s hanging cups lightly touched lips in the china cabinet. By the time we turned to look at them, stacked plates rattled on the shelves from the vibration of hoofbeats.

  “Ma . . . they’re coming,” Willem said, his voice so calm I didn’t believe him. “It’s them.”

  “Is it just our men again?”

  “Too much dust, it’s them . . . the British.”

  “Lettie, take your sister. . . . Willem, turn out the stock. . . . Bina, gather food,” my mother said with rehearsed precision.

  “I’ll get your point-two-two,” Willem said, retrieving the rifle my mother kept in her bed on the side where my father had slept before the war. The weapon was almost as tall as my little brother.

  The British swept upon us like a grass fire, and by the time we reached the stoep, two dozen soldiers had dismounted; more were pouring into the barn and rounding up stock. Mother had drilled us for this moment every day since the men left almost a year earlier. Her first rule was that the children were not to speak. Not a single word, no matter what the Tommies did. Say nothing, she told us, pointing her finger as if to jab the rule inside us.

  “Where are your men?” the officer at the front of the group shouted.

  “Out killing British,” I yelled, my silence lasting no more than five seconds.

  My mother and the soldiers focused stares on me.

  “We know they’ve been here. . . . You’ve been supplying them and that makes you spies,” the officer said. “They destroyed the rail line near here . . .”

  “Were many killed?” I asked.

  “Lettie . . . shhhh.” Mother turned to me with such force that I feared she’d aim her rifle at me.

  “Yes . . . Lettie . . . shhh,” the officer mocked, approaching the stairs. “We’ve been getting sniped at for miles, and you give them support. We could hang you from that tree. All of you.”

  I was enraged. They were at our house, with their fat British horses and their knives on the end of their British rifles. Here . . . in our country, at our house. They were no longer a vague threat, some distant rumbling in the night. They were here, looking into our faces. I stood tall and narrowed my eyes at the officer. The fool. I took a step toward him, sending hatred in my gaze. I am small . . . but dangerous.

  “Do you have more to say, little girl?”

  Little girl?

  I raised both hands above me and shook my fists at him . . . and made a growling noise through my teeth.

  The officer laughed. “Will you hurt us with your dolly?”

  I had gathered my little sister’s things when the soldiers rode up. I still had Cecelia’s doll, Lollie, in my shaking hand. The British were not threatened.

  “Stop laughing at her, rooinek,” Moeder shouted, turning the .22 at the officer.

  “Put it down, missus . . . ,” the officer said. “What—”

  A pebble bounced off the officer’s shoulder. Willem had fired his slingshot at him from the corner of the stoep.

  A dozen soldiers lifted weapons; half aimed at Mother, the others at Willem. Two Tommies twisted at her rifle, a small-caliber shot pinging into the sky before they could wrench it from her.

  “We’ll shoot her right now,” the officer said to Willem. “You’ve attacked us with a weapon and she fired a shot. We could hang you all right now. Or put together a firing squad.”

  Willem waited, considering . . .

  “Put it down, Willem,” Mother said. Willem turned and cocked his head to her. He placed the slingshot on the stoep.

  “Bri
ng him here . . .”

  He looked so small, a barefoot eight-year-old under a too-large hat, wiggling as two soldiers dragged him by the arms. They stood him in front of the officer, and when they released their grip, Willem straightened into a post.

  “Where are the men, boy?”

  Silence.

  “Where are the men, boy?”

  Silence, with a defiant stare.

  “You know the penalty for being a spy . . . and for attacking an officer,” he said, signaling for men to come forward. “Firing squad.”

  I screamed and Moeder pulled at the soldiers holding her arms. She tore free from one, but another came from behind and coiled an arm around her throat. My mouth dried so quickly that I couldn’t speak. I turned to pick up little Cecelia and shield her eyes.

  Five aligned in front of Willem in such a straight line it was clear they had been drilled.

  “Stop it, he doesn’t know where they are. . . . None of us knows,” Moeder said. “They haven’t been home. . . . They could be anywhere.”

  The officer ignored her, focusing on Willem.

  “Where are the men, boy?”

  Silence.

  “Brave officer . . . threatening a little boy,” I said, barely able to raise a sound.

  Willem broke his focus on the officer to glare at me.

  “It’s no threat. . . . Where are the men?”

  Silence.

  “Ready . . .”

  Moeder twisted again, and the soldier lifted so hard against her neck he squeezed out a choking gasp.

  “He doesn’t know,” I said. “They never tell us where they’re going. No, wait, they never come home. They haven’t been home.”

  “Aim. . . . Where are the men?” The officer screamed it this time.

  Silence.

  Soldiers’ rifles angled toward his center, Willem inhaled to expand his chest toward their rifles. He curled his bottom lip over his top.

  The tension in my arms pinched Cecelia so tightly she raised a wail, so long and at such a pitch that the officer and the men recoiled from their rigid stance.

  “As you were,” the officer said.

  The squad lowered weapons.

  “Fine boy you have there, ma’am,” the officer said to Moeder. “They usually start crying and tell everything they know the second the squad lines up. He’s the first one to just go mute.” He offered his hand to Willem to shake but withdrew it empty when Willem sneered. “But you’re still spies, and we’re taking you in. You have ten minutes to get what you can from the house.”

  Mother spent the first moments staring at the officer, and then at every Tommy who walked past her, studying each man’s face as if memorizing it for later.

  Willem and I scrambled into the house to get our bags as two of the soldiers carried our chests and tossed them from the stoep. In the parlor, a soldier started up at mother’s organ, a man at each shoulder. Offended by their nerve, Moeder rushed at them. She was blocked by the men. The Tommy played so well I stopped to listen. His playing was equal to Moeder’s as he read off the sheet music that had been open on the stand. Three sang in ragged harmony as Moeder stood helpless.

  Rock of ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee;

  Let the water and the blood,

  From thy wounded side which flowed,

  Be of sin, the double cure;

  Save from wrath and make me pure.

  The singing felt so out of place but struck me as the perfect prayer.

  Let me hide myself . . . yes, I thought, please, dear God.

  Save us from wrath . . . yes . . . yes . . . now, please.

  Another soldier pushed through and smashed the keys with his rifle butt, startling his fellows, and the organ rendered a death moan until the soldier beat it breathless.

  “Stop . . . ,” Moeder screamed. She had promised never to satisfy them by showing emotion. But the organ . . . how could they?

  I pulled Cecelia tighter to my hip when the Tommies became more violent. One smashed the glass of the china cabinet and crushed the contents with repeated rifle thrusts. The force of the sound stunned me, as if the glass shards themselves had flown into my flesh.

  Pictures of ancestors were ripped down, and the painting of Jesus was knocked to the floor when they tore into the walls with their axes. It took them only a few wild ax chops to discover the silver setting and valuables we’d hidden behind a false wall.

  “What did you think you were saving?” one asked. “We’re going to dynamite the place in a few minutes, anyway.”

  “Get them out of here,” said the officer, now bored by our presence.

  They herded us with the tips of their bayonets. Our native girl, Bina, carried the largest basket of our belongings on her head. We stepped outside into a chorus of death wails. The pig produced a heartbreaking squeal as it was speared; one sheep after another raised pathetic pleas that turned into bloody gurgles when the knives were pulled across their throats. And beheaded chickens spun through their frantic death dance by the dozens.

  I ran toward the sheep until a soldier turned and pressed his bayonet hard to my breastbone.

  “Don’t you touch that child,” Bina yelled, dropping the basket to come to my side.

  “It’s not your war,” he screamed at her, although the rifle pointing at her chest seemed evidence that it was. “We’re not here to fight kaffirs, too.”

  Men dragged several freshly killed sheep to the well and threw them down. At the house, nails screamed when boards were pried loose from the walls and floors. The wood was hauled out and orderly stacked on a wagon—treated with more respect than we were.

  Appetite for destruction peaking, the officer yelled a command and the Tommies dispersed. The explosion sucked the air from my lungs and sent pieces of the house splintering into the sky. I could feel the heat on my face and was convinced I could see the sound waves roll across the tall veld grasses. The house burned black and loud, the uprights groaning like a wounded thing before it collapsed in upon itself.

  THE THINGS OF OUR life rose as smoke and faded into a high, gray haze. Fire consumed in minutes what had taken generations to accumulate. Had it really been just half an hour since the teacups betrayed their approach? Twenty-five minutes since I had shaken a doll at a British officer? Fifteen minutes since the organ cried and Jesus once again held his silence while beaten to the ground? Half an hour by the clock . . . a week’s worth of heartbeats . . . a lifetime’s tears?

  The Tommies rejected most of the things we tried to bring and heaped them on a pile burning near the barn. We were left with some bedding, clothing, and a few other small things we could carry. To the open mouth of her satchel, Moeder had tossed whatever food she could that would not spoil—biltong and rusks, mostly. She packed the family Bible and swept some personal things off her bureau before the khaki-clad locusts swarmed in to devour the rest.

  Oupa Gideon would have been so disappointed if he’d seen us; we had maintained less order than our headless chickens. I had gathered up my notebook and some bedding and then helped Cecelia with her clothes and her doll. Willem carried his slingshot in one hand and his little riempie stool that Vader had made him in the other. Moeder shouted at him to put on his boots, which he wore only in the coldest months. The Tommies snatched his slingshot and tossed it on the fire. One tried twisting the stool from his hands, but Willem’s kicks made it not worth his bother.

  They marshaled us toward an ox wagon. A soldier pushed my mother with a hand low on her hip.

  “Don’t . . . push . . . me . . . ” She turned on him with her fists. Our house was burning, our stock being slaughtered as we watched, and that push was a final insult.

  He swung his rifle off his shoulder so that the bayonet was at her throat, the tip still wet with sheeps’ blood, dripping a roselike pattern onto the front of her dress.

  “Well, you’re not staying here.”

  He pulled the bayonet back, but only an inch.

  �
�We’ll find somewhere,” she said after a deep breath.

  “Have you heard of the families that tried to stay out . . . women with children who thought they could live off the land? . . . You know what happened to them?” the soldier asked. “Bands of angry kaffirs raped the women and killed the children. You want to be used like that, missus?”

  “No . . . no such thing,” Bina shouted.

  “Want to risk it?” he asked Moeder. The soldier slung his rifle back over one shoulder and attempted to lift her onto the wagon.

  “Don’t you touch her,” Willem yelled.

  He ignored Willem and put both arms around Moeder’s waist to lift her so that her thrashing boot heals could not threaten his shins.

  Willem glared and closed in.

  “Tucker . . . that’s enough,” shouted another soldier, of sufficient rank to cause the Tommy to release her. “Back away, or help her climb up. They’re not animals.”

  She made one last shove at the Tommy’s arms, handed her bag to me, and mounted the wagon on her own.

  Bina came last, our large basket on her head.

  “Go . . . ,” a soldier said, making small stabbing motions with his bayonet. “Go to your people.”

  Bina’s eyes showed white and she tried to push around the soldier to get to the wagon, but he caught her across the throat with his rifle stock. She dropped in a pile, our things scattering around her. On her back, bayonet now at her throat, she could only watch as our wagon pulled away. I held both arms toward her, hugging the air between us, and focused on her eyes until they faded with distance.

  I recognized the family in the wagon. We did not know the Prinsloos well; they were Doppers who lived near the railway and stayed to themselves. Their kind rarely joined in Sunday sermons or Nachtmaal services and struck me as joyless by choice. They were already backed toward the front of the wagon with their few possessions, eyes fixed on our flaming house. The children squeezed closer to their mother, as if trying to hide beneath her skirts.

  I lost my footing and arrested my fall with a hand to the greasy cart bed. It had been used to haul livestock and was still slick with wastes. We stood holding on to the back gate of the wagon, staring at the burning farmhouse and at the gray mounds of dead sheep.